Knowing Your Audience for the Best Marketing Strategy (feat. Andrea Casanova)

Into It QuickBooks does not have any responsibility for updating or revising any information presented. Listeners should verify statements before relying on them. Hey everyone, I'm Austin Hankwitz, host of the Rate of Return podcast and co founder of wits Ventures, but you may instead recognize me from my short form videos about personal finance and investing on TikTok and I'm Jane's Torres, creator and host of the award winning personal

finance podcast jokierro de Neto. You may also have come across one of my videos on social media where I empower others with personal finance knowledge. Welcome to Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, a podcast brought to you by iHeartRadio and Into It QuickBooks. In each episode, Austin and I chat with small business owners as they share their stories about the ups and downs of owning a small business. Plus, we'll learn from their experience about how

you can help fortify and strengthen your own business. Now, this episode is especially special to Jennie and me as we discuss marketing your small business, which is a big part of our own success stories. Genius, what was one of your first file moments online and how did it come about for you? So, I feel like I am a dinosaur when it comes to virility in social media.

For me, it was actually in a Facebook group. So I started my journey as a content creator as a food blogger, and so part of my marketing strategy was to join Facebook groups where folks were already looking for recipes, and I ended up sharing a recipe I think it was for like stuffed shells, and it crashed my website. So that's the first time that I realized, Oh, I think I need a better hosting plan and I also needs to plan for what virality actually looks like. And

so I'm really cited about today's conversation. What about you, Austin, what was your first viral moment? Yeah, so, weirdly enough, the very first video I shared to TikTok went viral and I'm masked over one million views in just a few days. This really jump started my creator business and

got me excited about creating content and connecting with my followers. However, we hear about social media being such a major factor in marketing, but I don't want people to forget that there are other ways to market your business besides social You have to know your target audience and meet them where they're at. So, for example, one of the products inside of my small business is my paid subscription newsletter.

It comes with a ton of cool updates and access to exclusive content, but what had really helped me take it off the ground was allowing people to gift these subscriptions. Another massive growth lever from a marketing perspective for me was collaboration. I find a creator who was also talking about similar topics as myself, and then we'd collaborate on cool content and share with both of our audiences. This strategy can be applicable to nearly anyone, but the collaborator

doesn't need to be a person or an entity. It can also be an event. Right, so think about all those Valentine's Day themed candies and chocolates we saw in February that could be applicable to your small business. What about Eugenius? So I had to learn that followers does not equal dollars, and I think that's a big mistake that a lot of people make when it comes to

building their audiences on social media. I learned about SEO, or search engine optimization as I was in my journey as a blogger, and I realized now that ninety percent of my traffic comes from SEO. It doesn't come from social media. It comes from folks going on a search engine and typing in a recipe that they're looking for.

And as a business coach, when I first started, instead of launching a group program using paid ads to advertise that, I was doing one on one consultations to make sure that I'm qualifying the right people that are going to get the most benefit out of my product. And so there's just so many different ways to market yourself as a business. And that's why our audience is so lucky today because we are talking to a verifyable marketing guru.

Andrea Casanova was born in Venezuela but moved to the United States by herself when she was a teen halfway through pursuing a college degree. Her parents nearly went bankrupt and she could not get financial aid With a student visa, her working options were limited. She decided to work for free as much as she could, and eventually got picked up by an internet media company that flew her out to Los Angeles to produce viral content for influencers at

the mere age of eighteen. In twenty twenty, she decided to go solo and open up her own viral marketing agency. Growing as an educator on multiple platforms and strategizing for brands like TikTok, ten Cent, Amazon, the Russo Brothers, Cricket, Universal Music Group, and more. She is now refocusing her business called We Shape This, to specifically address building platforms for fellow Latina creators and brands. Andrea, Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

So I gave the audience a little bit of your background, right, but I really want to hear from you. How did you get started in marketing and how did you come up with the idea of your company? Oh my gosh, how far back do I start? I was raised in a very supportive home that was like, yeah, you want to be a singer, go be a singer. You want

to be an actress, go be an actress. But I always have this business savvy part of me where I was like, Okay, what is actually logical for me to pursue at a young age that will be able to set me up for financial success. And so I realized that marketing is the way to go, because that way I can pursue some sort of storytelling. I just have

to figure out how I come into the equation. And so I decided to pursue a degree here in the States of Media Communications, and by the time graduation hit our last project our exams were essentially having a portfolio, website built, having our business cards to build, and a business plan. But I had to hustle and just get

a lot of unpaid work. Even if it was unpaid work, I could still build my portfolio, and so that slowly started setting me up in the route of Okay, I understand viral marketing, I understand the psychology and the research as to why it works, and now I understand how to produce it as well, not for myself yet, but for other people. And so I moved to LA because I actually ended up producing for one of Latin America's biggest content creators and then start to realize that that

path was not for me. In that moment, let me now go try the more corporate side of marketing and social media. And the last company that I worked at was when I was twenty one twenty two and it was called Sapphire and they were one of the first companies in the world that was a TikTok approved agency.

And what that meant was before TikTok blew up back in twenty nineteen twenty eighteen, they had a couple agencies in the world that they worked with, and in fact, even to be considered a partner you had to fly to Beijing to get I approved by bite Dams themselves. It was gnarly, but it was really awesome because since I was really young and the team was really small, I was able to have my title as director, so I was ahead of global trends overseeing the campaigns of

amplification for byte Dands and TikTok. Essentially, what I did was oversee their amplification program to drive user acquisition, and that meant viralizing content through meme pages and a bunch of other cool stuff here in the US and France, Italy, Russia, Spain, and I started understanding the value of TikTok. I'm like, oh my gosh, people should be hopping on TikTok. And so I started onboarding brands and eventually I was like, you know what, I don't need to be working with

someone else. I'd rather do it myself, and so I left in twenty twenty and solo ever since. As a small business owner, I think one of the biggest hangups that we have is around spending money. And you got to spend some money on marketing, right, So first off, how do you determine a marketing budget? And then secondly, what if you don't have the money to spend, What are some ways that you can market when you don't have a lot of initial capital. Oh my gosh. I

love this question the way that I see it. Rather than seeing it as marketing as a whole, start seeing the gaps in your business and the gaps in your messaging. So when I work with small business owners, I cannot just tell them like, hire a whole social media marketer. What I tell them instead is what is a hat that you can realistically wear right now, and where are

the gaps? And so they'll tell me, you know, I can film myself and I can start dabbling into organic social content, but I don't like to edit, and so I go, okay, then your gap is a video editor for now. Focus on getting that done and then we'll see that the next gap is probably copyrighting or a community manager. But the thing is, we like to tackle

marketing in all aspects. We'd like to think of, oh my gosh, I need to do prints, I need to do social media marketing, I need to do paid marketing and all these different things, and then we start leaking almost a lot of that money because first we don't have data. Right, in my opinion, you should always go organic first, then paid, because that way you have data

to work off of. So my recommendation is to always before thinking of your marketing budget is understand where you're apps are, what can you do in house, what can you do yourself? I mean even myself, I do have a team, but I still do a lot of the nitty gritty just because I love that it has my

touch on it, and so it's a personal preference. But in the beginning, when I couldn't afford having a video editor or content producer on my team, I was just like, Okay, what are the hell knows and what are the hell yeses that I want to be investing time into. Yeah, that's brilliant. And a sort of a follow up on that question here is you know, let's say that someone is building that marketing plan, right, how do they evaluate the success? Is it sales conversion? Is it impressions? Is

it followers? Right? How does someone know if their marketing efforts are actually working at the end of the day. I measure the campaign's success based on what your main goal is in my opinion, followers, engagement views, that is nothing if you're not making money, at least for a business owner. However, there's people that just want to be known and they just want to start putting their brand out there, and then in a couple months they want

to start a monetize. So it really does depend how would a small business owner like to run their campaign. They're having a blast, but how do they determine which platform is like for them? Right? Should they be doing TikTok? Is it Instagram? Is at Facebook? Like? How do they determine the platform that's going to give them the results that they want. It all comes down to trying things out first and seeing what you feel the most comfortable with.

In terms of the process of getting the content out there. I have clients that they love TikTok, and then I have other clients that just love to express themselves on a long form and so they choose podcasting or they choose YouTube. But the thing is, in my humble opinion right now, TikTok has been a trendsetter for a lot of the other platforms, and so you have an advantage storytelling wise, industry wise by being in the app and consuming its culture and consuming it's things, because all the

other apps are grabbing from them. I go on Amazon now and now I'm fed up for you page of Amazon, which is wild, right, YouTube shorts, reels, all these different things. So I do believe that everyone should beyond TikTok because of that reason. But should you be investing a lot of time in there if you get more reach on Facebook? Maybe not right. I have friends that are for some reason making a lot of money off of Facebook, and

they're getting a lot of clients off of there. So I would say beyond TikTok, just to be on the know, but then start testing things out and whatever works, keep repeating, don't refine until it doesn't work anymore. Coming up on Mind the Business Small Business success Stories. We forget that the most mundane little moments are the ones that create

the best stories. So record yourself sending orders out from your basement because one day you'll have a bigger place to send them out from and you'll want to use that footage. We'll be right back after the break. Welcome back to Mind the Business Small Business success Stories, brought to you by iHeartRadio and into a quick books. Now. I want to keep rolling with this idea of providing

value and engagement and stuff like that. So I was actually just watching one of your recent collaborations with TikTok on TikTok, which is just kind of funny to think about it, But in one of the videos you shared an incredible tip for small business owners trying to grow their presence on the platform. You said, your account should be an experience and a space for your audience. It should provide value. I don't think enough small business owners

understand just how important that is. Do you mind unpacking that a little bit for us. Yes, that's one of my favorite things to talk about as why your account should be an experience in a space rather than a person. And it's because right now, whenever you go meet someone, they're like, hey, what's your Instagram? Let's connect, right, and so they get a little vibe of scrolling from your feet. And that doesn't mean they need to make an aesthetic.

I actually hate that narrative. But what I'm talking about is it just needs to be consistent enough so people know what to expect from you. Like I know, if I can go to du A Lingos page, I can expect to laugh a lot. I know that if I go to my own page, I can expect to be given some constant strategy. I can expect giving some motivation, talking about manifestation and stuff. I can expect a lot of good value around money from the Yukio l Nano podcast. So it's like you have to see it as, Okay,

what space am I creating for my audience here? What are the constant themes that they're going to be seeing that actually communicate my message? How do I put my content out there? What's the tone, what's the music? And so when you start seeing content as this whole of storytelling, you start detaching from it rather than thinking individually per content piece, you think of an overall theme feel sound look.

That is when you actually start to create a pattern in your audience's head, subconsciously making them more attracted to you because they already know what to expect. You're just expressing yourself. It just so happens that they see it a certain way and they relate to it a certain way. Now, I think a lot of folks will think that followers equals dollars. Probably not the case, right, So how do

we actually turn followers into paid customers? That's a loaded question because not every follower will be a qualified lead for you. I actually care a lot more about viewership than the follower rate. I've seen people with two thousand followers that are making millions of dollars because they've been able to really nurture that following in the first place. And the way that I see it is if you can't nurture one hundred or a thousand of your qualified leads,

then you can't do two million. Then I've seen creators that have two million, five million followers that are like, hey, can you spot me twenty? And it's really bizarre, it's really crazy. And so what happens is we equate a follower a count with a success rate almost And the way that I see it is, rather than focusing on

your followers, focus on your personal brand. I've seen creators that are so small, at least compared to some of the bigger creators, but they have a lot of press, they're in the right networks, they'll have their right channels in terms of they get big people on their podcasts, they get people on their events and whatnot. And it's because they care a lot about their personal brands. It's the equivalent as to why a lot of creators that are not necessarily huge charge a lot of money in

brand deals. The way that I see it is, you're not paying just for my audience to convert to you. You're paying for my reputation, for the credibility that I already have. And so when you focus on growing your personal brand rather than growing your followers, that's when things just start to align. You know. As an online business coach, one of the most common things that I've heard time and time again is this fear of showing up in front of the camera. Right As a small business owner,

you know you have to market yourself. But this idea of like, I don't want to get in front of the camera and start dancing and learning choreography. What do you say to folks who have that fear of showing up? And the way that I see it is you just have to find the way that you feel the most comfortable to be seen in. I recently had a client. She came up to me. She's like, listen, I connect with people so well in real life, and as soon as you turn on a camera, I just freeze up

and I don't know what else to say. And then I realize that, Okay, let's just keep a mic a laugh on you when you're doing speeches, when you're a public speaking, when you're meeting people, and let's have a cameragrapher rolling and whenever you're giving them advice or tips and whatnot, let's just record that and utilize that for content.

That's what I do when I go to my speaking gigs, I always have a laugh connected to me, and it's hours of footage that then we cut down and then we grab content from there because that is where I excel at it's public speaking, it's in front of a crowd. I cannot really just do it when my camera's on and I'm alone in my room for some reason. And so just focus on the ways in the creative outlets that makes sense for you. You don't have to be

doing the little trends if you don't want to. You don't have to be speaking a camera if you don't want to. You could simply find the ways that that works for you and go from there. Now, the second answer, when you attach yourself to the good comments, Unfortunately, you also attach yourself to the negative comments. And so winner on social media and on anything that they do will come from a place of neutrality. You have to get to the place where bad comments are as neutral as

good comments. Then you can start putting yourself out there. Because of true this, we don't fear the common itself. The comments is not going to come bite us. It's just words on a screen. What we fear is that we cannot handle that reaction. We cannot handle that rejection. And I have a lot of clients in mind the love negative comments because they know it boosts their page. But I have other clients I disappear for years months, because they just simply get so attached to both the

negatives and the positives. I started making content three years ago, and I encourage everyone listening right now to go scroll endlessly all through eight hundred videos of mine on TikTok. You tell me how many videos have my face in them? Absolutely zero until I was two years into this, because I was afraid to be on camera. And so what I did to sort of solve that problem, as I said, Well, you know, I've got a decent voice. I feel like

I can tell a story. Let me just like write some stuff out on a notepad and like show the camera and like just kind of get people step by step ideas. There's always a way. That's literally why I started a podcast. I'm like, nobody needs to see my face. They can just listen to me. And here we are. Now here's a fun question for you, Andrea. How have you used your own marketing advice to grow your own business?

A lot of my videos are value driven and not in a way where I'm saying, hey, go buy my services, go buy my services, right I'm talking about the results that I've brought to people previously in an educational way, something that I love doing is always integrating the word clients and my videos because when I say clients or when I say yeah, one of my clients, I did this for them, or this is the process that I

use with one of my clients. As soon as you say the word clients, customers and you start talking about successes, problem aware of things you put in your audience's head that it could be possible for them too, They're like, oh clients, Oh, I could work with them, right. So I focus on telling the stories from my personal experience, telling the stories of people that happen and work with me, because I know that it's something that people can relate

to a lot. This whole idea of like talking to a camera and talking about what you're offering will not ressonate the same if there's not a story attached to it, because there's no emotion attached to it. Everything we do communicate, so when you see it from that perspective, it becomes a lot easier. So we typically think of social media when it comes to marketing, but can you talk about other ways that you can leverage different tools for marketing

your business that don't necessarily involve social media. Well, in my opinion. Besides social media marketing, email marketing is one of my favorite ways. When it comes to email, you're having a direct access to your consumer that normally you wouldn't get and it's a much more intimate customer journey. Right. Something that I would probably write on my newsletter is not the same as I would post on my TikTok because TikTok is a much more discovery driven platform. And

so that's the way that I see it. It's like it depends on the level of intimacy. It's the right word actually that you have with your customers, and so with these newsletters, you get a lot of more opportunity to be in a more intimate conversation with your consumer. Yeah. I always like to think of when someone gives you their email address, it's like the digital version of them inviting you into their home, so you really get a chance to spend some time with them and they get

to know you. So I love that tip. So you've mentioned the word brand a couple of times, and I'd love for you to kind of expand on what it actually means to be a personal brand, because I don't know if a lot of folks really understand what are the nuances there. A personal brand, in my opinion, is essentially the way that you choose how your audience feels and perceives you. Contrary to popular belief, a brand does not necessarily mean that it's a corporation or an organization.

It just means that they have a clear understanding of what your boundaries are, what you stand for, what you don't stand for, the way that you speak, the way that you feel, the way that you communicate. The way that I like to break these down is by utilizing characters and film and stories huge on brand archetypes. The Explorer is a brand archeset, for example, and it's a character that represents and breaking the status quo and going

out there and discovering new things. And you see a lot of adventure creators or travel creators embodying this brand archetype. And a very big brand that's known for this archetype is Jeep. Right when you think of Disney, you think of oh, amazing, magic, incredible, all these different actives, and you realize, oh, that's a magician's archetype. And when you realize that all of these things are just characters, it's so easy for you to realize which one resonates with

you the most. And so when I am doing this exercise with my clients, I have them go through a whole archetype test and seeing, Okay, which one do you relate to the most and why, and so it's easier for them to communicate. But a personal brand is essentially how you choose to put yourself out there. Yeah, that's great. What's one thing that a small business owner should be doing with regards to their marketing today? Should it be focusing on social should it be long form content? Like?

What's the one most return on investment driven thing that people should be focusing on. I think every small business owners should be focusing on documenting their journey, even if they don't have a video editor on hand, even if they don't plan on posting them, because at the end of the day, you will at some point, whether you want it or not, if you want to build a successful business, you have to create some sort of content. And I'd rather you have the content than not have

it at all. And what I always tell you, boots like, we tend to create around moments that are iconic. I got invited to this event, I'm going to film myself. I got this new car, I'm going to film myself. I got this I'm going to film myself. But then we forget that the most mundane little moments are the ones that create the best stories. So record yourself sending out that first package, even if the person didn't pay

you full price. Record yourself sending orders out from your basement, because one day you'll have a bigger place to send them out from and you'll want to use that footage. So document your journey whatever that looks for you. Even if you don't use it, it'll still be so valuable. I could not agree anymore. At the end of the day, like everyone has their own journey, everyone is doing something

that is important too. If it's a customer, a potential customer, if it's someone who aspires to be like you as a small business owner. I think documenting the journey is so powerful. Totally agree. Thank you so much Andrea for being here, and I can't wait for folks to tune into this episode. There are so many gems that you dropped. Thank you and thank you both so much. I really appreciate it. Andrea was such an incredible guest. Her story

as an immigrant really embodies the American dream. Austin, what struck you as most impactful about her journey? Yeah, I think for me, it was her tenacity and her focus to succeed, Just having this awesome mindset to say, I'm passionate about this, I'm going to use the resources my college has, I'm going to use every single piece that I can pull together to succeed against this dream. And her willingness to say I'm not going to give up.

I'm going to do this regardless. Yeah, I think for me there was a lot that I could resonate with, being a fellow entrepreneur and being the first in my family to do something like this, right. I definitely identified with her story around not feeling worthy of asking for what you're worth, And I think a lot of people can identify with this idea of not really understanding the

value of our skills. And so I just really like to remind folks they're not just paying you for the time and the labor that you're investing into whoever you're working with as a client. You also have to pay for the years of experience that I've collected along the way, all of the trials and errors. That's really how you start to get your worth as a small business owner. So I think it's important that you mentioned that, and

also the mindset work that it takes. Right. You got to kind of build your confidence muscle as an entrepreneur the same way that you would build your muscles at the gym. I just really want to speak now to all the small business owners who are listening that might have not taken that step to create content yet, if it's a video on TikTok or video anywhere else or

whatever that content might be, Like, document the journey. You don't have to have a crazy content plan, not to have a calendar, you do not to have a notion page. You literally just pick up your phone and say I'm packing packages today, I'm just gonna record myself or this just happened to me in an email, just like whatever. The mundane things that you're thinking is so like, oh no, I wants to listen to that. Seriously, Just share it.

Just document the journey, Share it with people, and someone's going to resonate and that will turn into hopefully something larger than just a posting. Beginning. Absolutely, people love to watch the journey. I get messages from followers who started listening to the podcast back in twenty twenty and they're just like wow. You know, watching you grow as an entrepreneur also inspires me in my own journey to see what is possible. So you never know who you're inspiring

just by being yourself. Well that's it for today's episode. You can find me on social media at Austin Hankwitz

and you can find me at Jokiero Dineto podcast. You can follow Into It QuickBooks on all social media at QuickBooks, and to get the tools that you need to start, run and grow your business, head to QuickBooks dot com today and be sure to catch the next episode of Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories on Thursday, April twenty seventh, where we speak to Chocolate Tier Jessica Spalding

on balancing the books. You won't want to miss that one, so don't forget to follow, rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcast so you can stay up to date on our future episodes and check out our show notes for more information from this episode and marketing your business. And a huge thank you to our guest

Andrea Casanova. This podcast is a production of iHeartRadio and Into It QuickBooks Our executive producer is Molly Sosha, our supervising producer is na Kia Swinton, and our writer is Tyree Rush. Our Head of post production is James Foster. And we will see you next time. Bye.