The Interview Series: Spotlight on Doe Deere

Doe Deere's Advice on Making the Journey to Success in Business

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As one of today's leading female entrepreneurs, Lime Crime cosmetic founder Doe Deere is often asked how she managed to make her passion a success. Her revolutionary line of makeup products and innovative styles have often labeled her as controversial. However, it is this type of forward thinking that actually propelled Ms. Deere and her company into the spotlight. She often comments on the passion and drive she drew upon to create a name for herself in the field of beauty. She believes the key to success in any field comes from the motivation a person feels when they choose to pursue something they feel passionate about.

Even though Doe Deere became a success using her creative skills to develop her line of cosmetics, she continues to search for new and interesting ways to help her company grow. Anyone interested in starting their own business should be open to the idea of expanding the skills they have. While it is always a good idea for people to create their business based on what they are knowledgeable about, the start-up of the business needs to endure over time. This is accomplished by continuing to look for new ways to help the company grow.

Anyone starting a new business should be prepared to invest a lot of their time, effort and some amount of money. In the case of Ms. Deere's cosmetic company, she managed to save some investment money by launching her company online rather than through a physical store. A good business plan could help people decide the best way to launch their new business based on how much money they have to invest. During the initial start-up of a new business venture, it is common to expect to go without making any profit for anywhere from a couple months to the entire first year.

Once Doe Deere had her company up and running, she did learn a few helpful tips along the way. She always takes a proactive approach to facing problems. It is best to anticipate having a few issues that might need to be ironed out during the start-up phase of a new business. Tackling these issues as they arise helps the person stay focused on their ultimate goal. New business owners could also benefit from the advice given by seasoned business owners who are in the same field of industry. Doe Deere views her success as a journey that requires passion, commitment and dedication.

Would you like to be featured in the Entrepreneur Spotlight? Reach out to us at info@silvershadegroup.com

Influencer Marketing

More than 75% of consumers made a purchase based on a recommendation from an influencer in the last 24 months according to Retail Dive. Influencer marketing is leveraging someone else’s network to sell your products or services. Influencers act as brand advocates and create authentic messages and content about their experience with your products to help sell those products to others.

More and more consumer brands are adding Influencer Marketing to their toolkit. Some brands are new at Influencer Marketing, so they build the program from the ground up or learn from others in their industry. There are services like Impact or Meltwater that can be used to help identify and partner with influencers and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Large brands frequently have in-house teams or use their advertising agency partners to do influencer research and uphold their brand standards.

Most often, the influencer is paid in product, paid a commission rate (Also called an Affiliate Influencer), or paid a fee for producing content that they share with their audience on your brand’s behalf. Depending on the size of the brand, a combination of these options can make sense to help build out an Influencer Marketing program over time. Some brands only want to partner with celebrities, in which case every partner will either be paid for content or will be given free products. Most celebrities do not work on commission. Micro-influencers with an engaged following are more likely to work on a commission basis. For some brands, affiliate marketing is the most cost-effective way to build an influencer program.

Regardless of the potential sales upside and the size of the influencer’s audience, Influencer Marketing is risky for brands. Even the “Nicest guy on the Internet” who has millions of followers is currently under fire as of this writing. All influencers are subject to scrutiny by the public and all influencers are humans. Which means they are also capable of making mistakes. A successful Influencer Marketing strategy requires planning, contracts, and thoughtful PR. All of these are achievable for any brand.

With strong influencer partnerships, a brand can typically reach a larger audience than other digital marketing channels. By partnering with authentic brand champions, the messages your influencers create will advocate for your brand and increase your reach and conversions. Influencer Marketing can be managed internally or externally, but it should be reviewed monthly or quarterly as part of your larger marketing strategy.

If you need help to get your Influencer Marketing program off the ground, reach out! We’d love to talk about your goals and help you determine what kind of influencers might be right for your brand.

Marketing is Art and Science

Marketing is Art and Science

Modern marketing is equal parts art and science.

Marketing teams create beautiful graphics and compelling copy lines after they know their customer and the audience of each platform used to deliver the message. Identifying the customer and appreciating the platform audience both require analytical data. Marketers use data to determine customer preferences and behavior. Companies with strong data-driven teams can pinpoint where a customer is in their purchase journey based on the behavior and profile of the individual customer, grouped with the data of hundreds or thousands of past customers and brand interactions.

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Marketing for Consumers with a Short Attention Span

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Marketing for Consumers with a Short Attention Span

Today’s consumers have an extremely short attention span. The title of this post is technically too long for modern consumers - to make a point, obviously.

According to medical research, over the last 20 years, the average attention span has dropped from 2 1/2 minutes to just 45 seconds. Our smartphones and technology are decreasing our attention span. Consumers are inundated by information and it’s changing their behavior across all industries. As marketers, once we learn about our customers, we adapt our practices to match their behavior and potentially influence it. Knowing that consumers only pay attention to ads for 45 seconds or less, we create shorter content clips that get the point across faster. This is true across all platforms, but particularly on social media.

Startup Marketing v. Large Company Marketing

Startup Marketing v. Large Company Marketing

I recently gave a presentation about Consumer Behavior to a group of Freshman business students at UT Dallas. Consumer Behavior is one of my favorite marketing topics. Customers are (or certainly should be) at the center of a marketing plan and typically even a larger business plan. Overall consumer trends and macroeconomic factors impact so much of how customers behave that some of the best marketing organizations I deal with now rely heavily on data to make informed decisions. This data can be sourced from different tools, but most of those tools cost money. I talked about some of the tools that bigger clients and my previous larger employers used, plus some of the tools that everyone uses, regardless of size.

Performance Marketing v. Brand Marketing: What is the Right Combination?

Performance Marketing v. Brand Marketing: What is the Right Combination?

Good marketing contains multiple components that consider both the long-term and short-term success of your business. Performance marketing is the short-term, easier to measure marketing tactics that include, pay per click ads, discount offers, etc. Brand marketing is the long-term, brand building efforts that can be more difficult to measure. Examples of brand marketing are TV, radio, and sponsoring the lanyards at an event. Healthy marketing includes both performance and brand marketing. Building brand awareness takes time, effort, and/or monetary investments in the brand. Depending on the type of business and the market you’re entering, it can be more difficult to build brand awareness and you may need to lean on performance marketing before your brand marketing efforts pay off.

Brand marketing is accretive, which means that it builds upon itself over time. Each brand marketing action helps to form the overall brand experience and the brand equity with the customer. Many household brands have built their name and reputation with long-term investments in brand marketing. It’s hard to separate the Coca-Cola product from the Coca-Cola brand at this point and a lesser brand might not have gotten away with a misstep like New Coke.

Is AI Right for My Business?

Is AI Right for My Business?

AI is a popular buzzword right now in marketing and other aspects of business. AI is probably right for most businesses in some capacity, especially if protection is layered into the tools. Salesforce, for example, is building an AI environment on top of Open AI that allows its customers to use AI within the Salesforce ecosystem, while protecting their data and the data of their end users. Even without a protected environment, AI is being integrated into many of the tools we use at work every day. Google now uses Generative AI to render summarized search results. Creepy? Maybe? In the end, the search users get to decide and will tell Google if they’ve gone too far. If users begin to search using other platforms, that sends a clear message.

AI is capable of automating tasks quickly and with accuracy if the prompts you provide the tools are specific and accurate, but still relies on a human behind the keyboard to provide prompts and direction. To prove the point, I had ChatGPT write the following using the following prompt: “Write me a blog article about AI in marketing and the benefits and drawbacks of using AI”

What is Website Taxonomy?

What is Website Taxonomy?

Taxonomy is the classification system you use to organize your website. Taxonomy is a hierarchy for organizing your offering and assortment to make it easy for your website visitors to find what they are looking for on your site. You can think about it the way a retail store does footprints and planograms. Your taxonomy guides your customers through your website to help them find the products they are looking to purchase.

Forecast for Success

Forecast for Success

Forecasting is simultaneously one of the most important and challenging aspects of launching a new product line for your business.

When you create product and sales forecasts, you can use market information and your previous launch data to determine the potential rate of sale for your products and the amount of inventory you should keep on hand to fulfill customer demand. If you launched a similar product to a similar audience in the past 12-18 months, you can expect the results of your new product launch to mimic your previous launch or launches. If your market has changed in the last 12 months, you can use market data to determine what changes might have disrupted your industry or market since your last launch. If your new products are in line with the shifts in the market and customer preferences, you can expect similar results to your previous product launches.

What is the Right Timeframe for Beta Testing?

What is the Right Timeframe for Beta Testing?

Beta testing your products and services before you go to market is important for both customer-facing (B2C and DTC) and business to business (B2B) brands. Beta testing your products and services allows you to identify and resolve potential pain points for your customers. Beta testing can be expensive, depending on the structure of your testing and the length of time you decide to test your products.

What Social Media Platforms Should I Use to Promote My Business?

What Social Media Platforms Should I Use to Promote My Business?

Choosing your social media platforms is one of the most important aspects of creating a communication and content plan. The platforms where you engage with your customers dictate the type of content you should create, the frequency of your posts, and the type of engagement you can expect from your customers. When you’re creating a communication plan, you should use the intersection of your brand, your customers, and your capabilities to determine which platforms are right for you and your business. It’s important to consider where your potential customers are particularly active and the type of business you operate, particularly when choosing social platforms.

How Do I Determine Which Opportunities are Right for My Business?

How Do I Determine Which Opportunities are Right for My Business?

When you’re planning your marketing efforts, it’s important to determine which actions best align with your brand vision and values. It’s important to know when to say '“YES” and when to say “NO” to the projects that come across your desk and the platforms where your brand can be found.

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Create an Online Course for Your Business

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Create an Online Course for Your Business

If you offer a service that you sell online, you might be thinking about offering a course or a portfolio of courses. These courses can help you sell your other products and services, as well as offer a somewhat passive source of incremental income. There is a lot of upfront work that goes into creating your course. However, once you do that work, your course should only need to be updated when some piece of information changes or if your want to introduce a new concept or module.

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5 Ways to Find Topics for Your Blog

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5 Ways to Find Topics for Your Blog

Keeping a blog for your business can help you reach a wider audience and build stronger relationships with your current and potential customers. Keeping a blog can also help your business get found by search engines and improve your website's SEO and authority. You can keep a running list of topics that make sense for your business so that you always have ideas and information from which you can pull your blog posts, but you have to start that list somewhere, so...

How do you determine the best blog topics for your business?

Whether you blog weekly or monthly, there are several ways you can determine the best topics for your blog posts. Here's a list of five of our favorites that we use here at Silver Shade Group to create our own blog topic lists.

How Can I Use Digital Marketing to Promote My Business?

How Can I Use Digital Marketing to Promote My Business?

Whether you have an online business or a brick and mortar location, digital marketing can help drive revenue for your company. Digital marketing can help put your business in front of customers who would not otherwise find you. I typically recommend that clients spread out their marketing budget across various digital channels, but you can leverage digital in whatever ways make the most sense for your business. Detailed below are some of the options available as digital marketing channels. This is a quick guide to help you make decisions about where you spend your digital dollars.

The Interview Series: Spotlight on Kaleigh Pettis

The Interview Series: Spotlight on Kaleigh Pettis

Tell me a little about you and your company. 

I love working with Mompreneurs who are passionate about being moms and equally passionate about their careers. My passion for helping women create the life of their dreams is what keeps me going every day!

I currently run two businesses, I’m an online Mindset Expert + Coach for Mompreneurs who need help working through self-limiting beliefs and fear in life and in business.

How Do I Get My First Clients?

How Do I Get My First Clients?

You're ready to launch your new business. You have a shiny new website with great content and copy and you've started a blog so people can find you when they Google your products and services and.... Crickets.

So how do you get clients for your brand new business?

Start with people you know and people who you've worked with in the past. Even if you offer them help and advice at a discounted rate, or even for free. Doing free and discounted work for a complete stranger just for 'exposure' may or may not help you land that first client, but doing the same work for people within your current network is more likely to lead to paid referrals and more business. 

The Interview Series: Spotlight on Julienne DesJardins

The Interview Series: Spotlight on Julienne DesJardins

Tell me a little about you and your company.

I’m a digital marketing virtual assistant, specializing in social media management and email marketing. My ideal client is a passionate, small business owner who is ready to offload some of her recurring work, with the goal of turning her attention to business growth activities.

What Should I Do When Business Is Slow?

What Should I Do When Business Is Slow?

When business is slow, it's important to take note of what may have changed recently (analyzing trends) and what was going on in your business last year at this time (year over year comparisons). Looking at the data can help you realize whether your slow down is a result of the natural progression of your business or the result of changes to your business or the overall market. If you're unsure about changes that you've made recently or about something going on in the market, ask your customers how they feel about those new services or the restructured pricing that you implemented.