Dave Gulas:
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast. I'm your host, Dave Gulas, and this week my guest is founder of a digital marketing consultancy, keynote speaker, author of five books, and podcast host, Neal Schaefer. Welcome, Neil.
Neal Schaffer:
Hey Dave, thanks so much for inviting me. It's an honor to be here. I'm ready to get started and hope we offer some value to all the people in the audience.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So you've had quite a journey in terms of your digital marketing career. Can you just give us your backstory up until where you are now?
Neal Schaffer:
Sure. Well, I started my career in finance. Always wanted to be in an outward facing role, so got into sales and b, two b, sales, semiconductors, and then embedded software for those that are familiar with the industry, but basically selling to consumer electronic manufacturers in Asia. I actually started my career living in Japan for 15 years, and I speak Japanese and Chinese, so that's a whole other story. But that experience and becoming vp of Asia sales and launching a sales office in China and in Japan really taught me this holistic perspective on business. And it also taught me the importance of marketing and of differentiation and of storytelling as part of the sales process. So I moved back to the US, got a job in network management software, and then we had the 2008 2009 crashed. Three and a half months after they hired me, they decided they were going to sell off the company.
Neal Schaffer:
They got rid of international sales and which I was part of. They got rid of their corporate marketing, and there I was on election day 2008 trying to reinvent myself. And at the time I got really involved in LinkedIn. My sales background taught me that it was this fantastic tool that most people didn't leverage properly. And I began blogging about it and my wife sort of joked with me, hey, if you don't find a job, why don't you write a book? This is exactly what happened. I ended up writing a book in 2009 that led to speaking opportunities. And then in January of 2010, I launched my marketing consultancy. At the time more of a focus on social media marketing.
Neal Schaffer:
Today it's all digital. But, but yeah, I've been doing this for, man, 14 and a half years now. I haven't really turned back. Love every day. I learn every day with every client that I help. I learn a lot as well. And you know, I work with a lot of large companies, but I also work with a lot of startups and founders. And really it's the small business owner is like at the heart of what I do because that's me as well.
Neal Schaffer:
So, yeah, so for the last 14 and a half years, I have my consultancy today that's more of like a fractional CMO type of consultancy. I do a lot of speaking on stages. I've written a few books, including this new one, digital threads, which is going to come out, actually, in the next few weeks. And I teach at a few universities at UCLA extension, a Rutgers business school, and I've. I've taught in Europe. Yeah. So I do a lot of different things, but it's all around the education for mainly small businesses and entrepreneurs around everything. Digital content, influencer, social media marketing.
Neal Schaffer:
So in a nutshell, that's what I've been up to. Jeff.
Dave Gulas:
Wow. Okay. So some serendipitous events led you, basically, a company you were working for got shut down in the financial crisis, and trying to reinvent yourself led you into speaking and writing and teaching about, at first, social media marketing.
Neal Schaffer:
Yeah. I did not strategically say, I'm going to become a millionaire with social media marketing. Right. It really happened organically. And I think also, though, looking back, and I think that a lot of people that are listening probably feel the same way, things don't happen organically because you also have to strategically make the decision that there's opportunity. So back in January 2010, I was already actually negotiating my first contract. I was about to establish an LLC, and at the same time, I had an offer from a company in the Bay Area to become their director of Asia Pacific business development for a FTP software company. And these were really young, the CEO, CTO were husband wife founders.
Neal Schaffer:
They were late twenties. And they said, Neil, we know you're really active in social media, but for this job, you need to absolutely pull the plug on everything you do on social media. And to me, that was the fork in the road that said, okay, are we going to go back to corporate where we know what we can achieve? And I was getting a good salary, don't get me wrong, but it's sort of limited. Or do we go to this new social media marketing where there's really a tremendous potential and I can create my own future? So that was the fork in the road. But for everything that happens in life, we all make a strategic decision. Even continuing. Right. Continuing on a business model or continuing doing what we're doing is a strategic decision.
Neal Schaffer:
And I think that everybody out there who is a founder or a business owner faces that every day. Should we continue doing what we're doing, or does it make sense to do something new where we have seen opportunity either anecdotally or what have you.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, so you talk about that fork in the road, too, because 2010, that's really, as social media was really just starting to take off right at very early days. But did you see, like, the potential of what it could turn into and. Cause obviously you turned down the corporate offer and to follow this, but, I mean, did you see back then how big this is gonna get and what you could potentially do starting so early?
Neal Schaffer:
Yeah, it was those speaking opportunities. So I published this book. My first book was on LinkedIn because of my b two b background. So I published that in September of 2009, and I was already, beginning in July of 2009, had opportunities to speak about LinkedIn. But when I talked to companies, they needed more than just LinkedIn. Right? Business isn't just reliant on LinkedIn. And it was really, I had four different business opportunities that January. I was negotiating a contract with a University of California alumni Association, but I also had an asset management company.
Neal Schaffer:
I had a garden landscape construction company, and I had another company in another unrelated industry. So four companies and unrelated industries that were reaching out to me, and none of them knew what they needed to know. They didn't know what to do. They just said, Neil, can you help us? Because we're new to social media marketing. So it was at that point that I realized that this is going to touch across every industry. It's more than just LinkedIn. It's a lot, and there's plenty of opportunity, and I needed to learn a lot as well. But I felt that I could begin by offering, because I don't have an agency background.
Neal Schaffer:
My solution was to offer a package which included strategy and education. And I thought those were the two things that businesses needed then. I think they still need them now. But I created basically my own social media marketing strategy consulting practice. So companies would engage with me. It would be a few month process, there'd be a few meetings, and the deliverable would be a PDF of 50, 60, 70 pages where I would outline what their social media marketing strategy should be. And that work actually became another book that I wrote. My third book called maximize your social, was really based on all of that work that I did for all these different companies that I helped through that process.
Neal Schaffer:
So, yeah, and, you know, today, we know social media marketing is mainstream, but there's a lot of companies that still don't do it. Well, social media marketing today is very different than it was just pre Covid. Right. Are you doing short form videos? Cause if you're not, you miss out on the opportunity. And there's still a lot of businesses that aren't dipping their toe in that water yet. So I think there's tremendous opportunity. And you know, I wrote a book on influencer marketing and I even email marketing, I think still has tremendous potential. And most companies don't give it, don't give it the importance that it deserves.
Neal Schaffer:
So there's always opportunity, right? And I think in every industry, hopefully all of you are nodding. It's really that opportunity that keeps me driven to want to continue on doing what I'm doing, because I know that there's still unlimited potential out there.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, so now you talk about the way social media marketing has evolved, and even particularly since post Covid. So for like other entrepreneurs listening, like present day 2024, what should like a small business kind of a startup and someone just growing, what should their marketing strategy focus on with regards to social media and other digital channels?
Neal Schaffer:
Yeah, so this is exactly the topic of this book, digital threads, which I'm publishing. But to give you sort of a taste, this is exactly the type of client that I had a, when I published my last book, the Age of Influence, which was about influencer marketing. So I had a lot of businesses, some bigger, some smaller, reaching out to me, and this is during COVID in 2020, saying they wanted help with their influencer marketing. But when I realized what they wanted to achieve, I also realized that maybe there were other ways to achieve it that were more cost effective or that would get better results. So that's what got me into not just social media, but all of digital marketing. Things like SEO link building, email marketing, marketing automation. And I realized that all of these like, boring digital marketing channels, I saw them in a new way and I see them with new potential when everybody is just looking at TikTok, I think those boring old channels still have tremendous opportunity. So actually, in my book, I really map out what every small business and entrepreneur should do in digital marketing.
Neal Schaffer:
I think there's basically three different channels. Okay? And if we dumb all this stuff down to three channels, I think it begins to make more sense as to where you need to be. So the first is search. Now we know that Google is still the king of search. Obviously with AI, that sort of changed the way we use search engines. So the verdict is still out on that. But YouTube is also a search engine. And for Gen Z, if you serve that market, TikTok is definitely a search engine for that market.
Neal Schaffer:
So podcasting is another way to be found if you're an entrepreneur with a podcast. Right? So there's all these different ways in which we get discovered, but in order to be known, we have to be on one of those networks and in order to be on one of those networks, we have to publish content. And that's really, we need to be content driven in what we do. So that's the first approach. I talk about building this library of content, and the library of content concept is really about showing the search engines that you are an expert in what you are. And by publishing enough content on a specific subject, it sort of kicks. The algorithm is in understanding your expertise and it also gives you content that then you can repurpose across all these other channels that I'm going to get into. So I think that every, every business owner entrepreneur should build that library of content.
Neal Schaffer:
The great thing is with AI, it becomes even easier to do, but it has to be in your voice. So, you know, I have a dedicated chapter on how to leverage generative AI in my book. I would not just like create, you know, everything out of AI and thin air, because if you're an expert, you don't really need the AI, but it can help you outline things, structure things, you know, find things to include that you might have missed, what have you. So that's the first part. Now we have, that's the brand awareness, right? And that's, you know, search engines, it's also social media. The next part is we need to get people on our email list because we do not own social media, we do not own search engine algorithms. The only thing we own is our website. And really the only thing we own is our email list.
Neal Schaffer:
Right. So even if you're e commerce or b, two, b. We need to be able to create a deeper relationship with people and that's really where email comes in. And in order to build an email list, you need something called a lead magnet, right. And I have a dedicated chapter on every single thing I'm talking about here, including lead magnets, because I think a lot of companies don't understand this concept or maybe get it wrong, but there's so many different types of lead magnets you can create. A free consulting call is a type of lead magnet, a 10% off coupon as a lead magnet, a free ebook checklist, and we can go on and on a webinar. These are all examples of lead magnets, but when done right, they can help build your list with targeted prospects over time. So that's the email.
Neal Schaffer:
Once you get your list, then how do you communicate with these people? That's topics of other chapters I have. You need to build what I call communication pathways. And then there's ways to leverage marketing automation to sort of automate a lot of this conversation, to really create this flywheel of conversations 24/7 um, that's going to generate more revenue for you. And then we have the social piece, right? So it's search, email, social. And the social is really interesting because I would argue, and I know this is going to be counterintuitive, but it is so hard to be able to create the type of content that influencers create on social media and really gain traction. It is so hard to create that content that, you know, I would argue that you do not need to become the media. Now, I talked about creating content for like search engines and, you know, YouTube, podcast, um, uh, you know, blog, that sort of cornerstone library of content. But when it comes to social media, that content's not evergreen.
Neal Schaffer:
It's. It's here today, gone tomorrow. And I've seen a lot of companies waste a lot of time on this hamster wheel of content, feeling that they always need to be producing content that gets less and less visibility in the algorithm. So I argue, okay, you're gonna have to hear me out on this. I argue that every company should have as close to a 100% user generated content strategy as possible. User generated content is also called UGC, but a customer testimonial, a customer review, or you meeting with a customer and including them in the photo that you put on Instagram, ideally this comes from the customer. But anybody that talks about your company that is posted on social media, the idea is that you want to leverage that content for your own profile. So in other words, you're not creating your own content, you're leveraging the content of other people talking about you.
Neal Schaffer:
And in e commerce, this is where influencer marketing comes in. Because in e commerce, we see a lot of companies that are gifting product. Like, all we ask is that you post a story on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, we'll give you free product. Will you post a photo and allow us to use that on our feed? It can be done in b. Two, b. You can do it through swag, through customer experience, through sales calls, through events. But it's really trying to get a library of user generated content and how to do it organically, how to create a more instagrammable customer experience or a ugc friendly customer experience. And every one of these topics, Dave, we could have like a separate podcast episode on.
Neal Schaffer:
But it really comes down to being able to generate that, because the whole idea about social media, and we were talking before we hit the record button that I always say social media was made for people, not for businesses, is that marketers became interested in social media back in 2009 and 2010 and 2011 because Facebook was really viral Facebook pages. If someone liked to post on your Facebook page that went out in their feed to their friends that so and so liked this page, we don't see that in social media these days, with the exception of LinkedIn, which is really interesting. But you know, the whole idea of social media marketing is viral word of mouth. And the only way to get viral word of mouth is to get people talking about you. And the only way to get people talking about you is through creating an infrastructure that encourages this creation of user generated content. And if you can get that far, much easier for e commerce, consumer brand. But if you can get that far, right, you're off the hamster wheel. Content.
Neal Schaffer:
You only create content when you have a promo or new product or what have you. And the great thing is now you have an army of people, maybe a dozen people, a few people or more than that, that are creating content around your brand that then you can convert into what I call a brand ambassador program. And when you have a brand ambassador program now, you're going to get even greater value from this team of social media users that already likes, knows and trusts you and is already talking about you. And to me, that is a type of influencer marketing. We're not throwing millions of dollars at Kim Kardashian and asking her for a sexy photograph. This is rooted in your customers, your fans, and sometimes your employees, especially if you're a b two b brand. So to me, that is the whole picture of how I see the search, the email, the social, and you'll notice that I did not mention anything paid because you first want to get this organic engine going. And you can use paid Facebook ads, paid Google Ads to accelerate this.
Neal Schaffer:
But it's going to be crap in, crap out if you don't have that infrastructure to begin with. The paid doesn't work as well. The more people you attract your website through your blogs, the more people on your email list, the custom audiences, the retargeting audiences, it makes all the advertising more efficient. There's a role for paid. Too many companies enough. You know, it kills me. I've worked with small businesses where they were spending $10,000 a month on Google Ads with zero ROI. It kills me, right? And I don't know if it was an agency recommendation or maybe the CEO that it was a good idea, but I just see so much waste, Dave, in the world of small business marketing.
Neal Schaffer:
And that's what really drives me, you know, to do what I do. Now, ads are immediate, right? But it's immediate on, immediate off. Everything else I talk about here has you're building asset over time. So if you have a six to twelve month Runway, that's plenty to be able to get this modern marketing machine that I talk about in digital threads in place. Now, I know that was a lot to consume, but I wanted to give you the whole picture because I'm sure you would have asked. Well, you talked about SEO, what about social? But in a nutshell, if you're not doing anything that is related to anything I talked about there, you're probably wasting your time. Hopefully that serves as good advice.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah, yeah. That's very comprehensive advice. That's a whole lot to digest there. And you mentioned too, right? And I was gonna ask you, and then you went into it just in terms of like, how many businesses these days are making that mistake of just rushing right to paid without having the whole organic strategy in place.
Neal Schaffer:
Too many. And, you know, I've worked with small businesses where, you know, they just wanted to throw, and once again, it's usually, it's usually like five to $10,000. Just every month they're gonna throw $5,000 at Facebook ads, right? Even e commerce companies, where we had greater ROI from, let's say, Amazon ads, they still wanted to pursue Facebook ads for brand building. Right? So the problem is that the small business owner does not have the budget to hire like a cmo. Obviously they sometimes hire a fractional cmo, but often the marketing help of these companies is more, is more junior, or their experience is only on certain networks. Right? Like, the person knew Facebook pretty well, but maybe they didn't know Pinterest, maybe they didn't know TikTok, or maybe they didn't know LinkedIn and those networks were more valuable. So I find it's just the system of where you hire someone to do your marketing is often limited by their knowledge, their experience, and often they want to show their value and they want to stay on for a long time. So they don't necessarily make the best strategic decision, and the CEO doesn't have enough knowledge to be able to say, hey, I think we should try this.
Neal Schaffer:
So really what I'm hoping, Dave, with digital threads, is that the business owner, the entrepreneur, can read it, buy into it, send it over to that agency, send it over to the marketing manager, or the freelancer, whoever they're working with, have them read it and really implement according to that advice. And I think that alone is going to solve a lot of the waste that I see.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And speaking of being efficient and reducing wasteland, you know, another thing too, I've seen on your website too, is you talk about that you're always operating in the Kaizen philosophy and obviously lived in Japan for 15 years. How much do you think that experience has helped you in terms of. Because you look at how efficient you are with all the different platforms you're on and how you leverage different digital channels. How do you think that experience has shaped you as an entrepreneur?
Neal Schaffer:
I think it was a combination of Kaizen living in Japan 15 years, but also b two B sales where I had a boss who was global vp of sales and he came from PTC. And I don't know how many of you know PTC, but their sales team in terms of it sales, if we talk about zero to 100 on the aggressive level, they were way over 100. I worked in a very, very intense b two B sales environment where you were only as good as your sales last quarter. And in fact, you weren't even good as them because then you had to build pipeline for the next one, right? So you couldn't live on what you did in the past. You always had to be, always had to be hustling and it was all driven by numbers. You couldn't lie about your performance. Now we'd have debates over, Neil, I want you to take this off the pipeline. I don't think it's going to close.
Neal Schaffer:
It's like, no, no, boss, it's going to close. We could have those conversations. What I found with marketing is that especially in the early days of social media, there was so much fluff, right? And it's funny, I'm working on my weekly newsletter and there was an article about marketing leaders and their the biggest challenges. You know, what are the things they're focusing on? And the number one thing was brand awareness. And I'm thinking if I'm a small business owner, I don't want brand awareness, man. I want sales. Right? So it is very much this b two b sales driven approach that's, that's based on numbers, not fluff. That's always driven me.
Neal Schaffer:
So you combine that with the Kaizen or PDCA, and the name of my company is pDCA socials. It's plan do check act. Professor Edwards Deming, the godfather of quality control. I actually learned about him in Japan when I worked for the semiconductor manufacturer. And it's always just on a regular basis. It's treating all of this as an experiment and getting data to prove did this work or not. I do this on a monthly basis. I have these monthly tasks and on other things I look at more frequently.
Neal Schaffer:
But I just made the decision recently. You know what? Looking at my Google Analytics X is just not delivering the traffic and leads that it used to. But Pinterest is doing great and now I can also post the threads and maybe I want to focus more on topics more related to my book than other topics that don't perform as well. So everything in marketing to some extent can be data driven, but you need to get the data like the $10,000 a month with zero ROI. You wouldn't know that until you actually got the data. But it's really just this endless pursuit of improvement, of trying to do better next month than we did this month, or next year than we did this year, or quarter by quarter. That is like the sales background, but it's also just in pursuit of excellence. I mean, we only have one chance at this thing called life.
Neal Schaffer:
And I think everybody would like to be a over performer rather than less of a performer. And it's just being serious about the craft. It's almost like a samurai approach, that this is a lifelong learning experience and I want to take every day as a, as a learning opportunity and see what I can do to further improve upon that of, you know, of sharpening the axe or the knife or the sword, so to speak. So that's probably very japanese influence, but that's, you know, that's what drives me and, and I think it drives a lot of other people. It definitely drives the entrepreneurs and business owners, but it's really taking that data and understanding what to look for and then how to improve upon what you're doing in marketing with that data.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, that's excellent advice for sure. Okay. The new book is called Digital Threads. And when does that come out? Where can people buy it?
Neal Schaffer:
So for this book, I am doing a very unorthodox approach. I'm actually doing a Kickstarter launch first to allow people to order, like signed editions, get special discounts, book 30 minutes, 1 hour coaching calls with me, which I don't offer on my website. So that Kickstarter is currently in pre launch. I expect to actually launch it next week. So mid July, I expect by the first week of August it'll be done, and then it'll definitely be in Amazon in the stores. If you don't want to take part in the Kickstarter. It'll definitely be in the stores no later than October 1, so probably sometime in September.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And if people want to get in touch about your fractional CMO services or speaking engagements, what's the best way that people can reach out to you?
Neal Schaffer:
Sure. Well, I'm Neil Schaefer everywhere, so Neil schaefer.com, that's n e A l S c h A F F E R. There's contact forms. You could find out more information about all these different services. And for the Kickstarter, it is neilshafer.com Kickstarter. If you want to do, go check that out.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. We'll link all that in the show notes for everyone. All right, Neil, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. I had a great time, enjoyed our conversation. Best of luck to you and all your endeavors. That's all.
Neal Schaffer:
Thank you. I'm happy to serve and I hope this serves all of the listeners well.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, excellent. That's all the time we have for now. We will see you next time.