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Jaime O’Connor is a digital strategy nerd who is dedicated to helping brands understand their growth opportunities in the digital landscape. Her windy path to building Inspired Focus Digital has included selling scrunchies in 4th grade, a grocery delivery business, a social enterprise that bled itself dry, and an event operations company. She has also built marketing teams at venture-backed organizations and bootstrapped products brands that achieved 6x growth and 8 figure success. She has worked with major organizations like the NFL, NCAA, USA Cycling and growing brands like Pro Challenge, Silipint, Happy Hair Brush and Savor Beauty. She is on a mission to educate up and coming brands with the knowledge they need to level up and play in the professional arena. Thank you so much for listening! WE ARE SO GRATEFUL!!!! Our Sponsor: Multifamily Foundation If you are serious about learning how to buy apartment buildings then don’t wait, go to www.multifamilyfoundation.com and let us help you build your foundation. Investing for Lifestyle and Legacy: https://www.yarusiholdings.com/ Our ENTIRE Podcast, Books and Health Suggestions: https://www.amazon.com/shop/yarusiholdings Subscribe To Us On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1SuXB01d14DC8ZnEWpRQdQ?sub_confi rmation=1 Subscribe To Us on #Libsyn: http://multifamilyfoundation.libsyn.com/website Subscribe To Us on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-multifamily-foundation/id1484177595 Transcription: Hi everyone. And welcome again to the Jason and pili project. I am so excited because I am with Podmax Global today. We are streaming with them and I am so excited to be here. Part of this group, they put me together with the amazing Jamie O'Connor. Jamie O'Connor is, you know what? I am going to actually let her tell you about what she does because she is fantastic. Hi, Jamie! Hey Pili, how's it going? So glad to have you like I was telling you before off camera. You're my new best friend. Please tell all my listeners why? Well, I think it's because you mentioned that I really like to focus on helping people build brands. Um, and for me, that doesn't mean, uh, pretty colors and nice logos. It really is talking about who you are and not truly authentic core way and who you want to be speaking to in that authentic way in building trust and relationship. And I do that mainly by supporting my clients on the paid advertising side of things. So handling the Facebook and Instagram pieces, but I've, um, built brands myself. This is my, my agency's my fourth business. So I've owned my own eCommerce stores. I have helped, um, product based businesses grow to seven and eight figures. I've worked with NCAA and SL before. Um, I like to joke, I actually took the entrepreneurship red pill before I was able to know better. So I saw here, you start, you started selling scrunchies in the raid. I probably, you know, if, if there had been an internet in the fourth grade when I was in the fourth grade, I'm sure I would have bought them from you. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it was, it was my classmates and my, I think it was the yeah, fourth grade class. I would like sell them at home and sell them to my friends and my classmates. I had no idea at the time that I was like a little entrepreneur. Um, I think I also started, you had a little shack in my backyard. Um, and I set up an office when I was 10 and I created like a mom's helper business. So I could like watch her while mom was home. So I apparently it was just like born into via, so I love this. So you were a born entrepreneur, you have helped so many people along the way, build their brands. Let's dive a little deep into that. So say, okay, you bring me on, we have a great conversation about how you can help me. How would that conversation go? Yeah. So, you know, we work with brands and companies that, or I guess I should say first, we work with companies that wants to build a brand that wants you. They want longevity that want to build something that actually has a legacy behind it in whatever way that means for you. So I don't work with people who are dropshipping out of China or like want to be a flash in the pan because I don't feel like I can make an impact and a difference in my own world by helping people. I thought I want to help businesses that are trying to create an impact themselves. So first and foremost, that's usually where any conversation I have starts. And I'm a, I'm a really big believer in what I preach, which is authenticity and honesty and transparency. And so I'm like that from the very beginning, whenever I'm talking to anyone and you know, if you're not there yet, because we focus on the heat advertising side, if I'm just starting to talk to somebody, um, I'll be really honest. Like if you're not there yet, then I'll give you the resources. You need to figure out how to nail down those pieces of your business, your brand, to, to take it to the next level so that you can actually be successful when you start to invest money in getting your name out there. Because so many people want to do that as their quick fix, they want to, they want to, you know, start spending money on, on advertising before really they're ready. And all that's going to do is expose your cracks and expose the things that maybe show me where your company is broken or your product is broken, um, in a more accelerated fashion. And a lot of times you can fix some of those cracks, fix some of that foundation ahead of time, and then be that much more successful when you decide to like invest money to move the needle. I want to pinpoint the hashtag truth, all the truth that you just laid out for so many people out there you are. So right when you say like, if we were to just jump in new company, even like some of the older companies that have been there and they haven't fixed those cracks, once you get yourself out there and you get your I'm sure once they have a conversation with you, you get up people in a very, very big way. If there's cracks in your foundation, if there are, if you're don't, if you don't have your foundation set, I am so sure. Like you said, marketing will just show your cracks in a very large way to vary very large audience. We have this conversation, you figure out that my foundation is very stable that I just need to build. Now I need to like make the house nicer. I have the house started. It's like the, all the sticks are, I should know better than sticks, but you know what? I need the framings up. For some reason my mommy brain doesn't want to work today. The framing's up. Maybe I have supply with slapped on, but you come in. What's the next step after that conversation? Yeah. I mean, of course this is my favorite time, because most of the time, if you are in that place, then you at least no exactly who you want to be talking to you. And if you don't, then that's something that we can work through because you've, you you're like on the edge of it, you figured it out. So typically when we're at this point, then we are first doing basically a really deep dive brain discovery. I had the amazing pleasure opportunity. I don't know, to work with I'm a marketing genius last year, and really learn from his guidance and his tactics, his name's Ron Lynch. And he, um, has been behind really some of the greatest like selling and marketing campaigns that have ever happened. Um, he worked with Billy Mays and Oxyclean and GoPro. And so I got to learn from him how to really deep dive into who is, who is the target market, who is the persona that you want to talk to your avatar, if you will in marketing speak, um, what are their pinpoints like, what really makes them tick and what are the aspirations? Where do they want to go? And then how do you loop your product, your service, whatever it is, or when we're working with a client. So if it was you, how do we loop in what you were providing to those exact people in a way that's going to resonate with them in a deep, fulfilling way that they want to work with you. They want to find out more about you. And so that's the first step in our process is we really dig deep into that so that we create, um, what we like to call our word document, essentially. It's like, it's the thing that you, as the client, us as your agency partner, and honestly, anyone else who's going to talk, touch your marketing can use as kind of your lighthouse. This is the thing that's going to guide. Any decisions you make when you're putting yourself out there in a really public way. And so it guides copywriters and creatives and ad buyers, and what kind of targeting you want. And it creates this really cohesive foundation for everybody. So that not only are we all on the same page, but we're all moving towards the same target basically. So that's kind of, that's the next step that we take. That's usually the first month of working together. What we really focus on. We'll do. Um, I guess one piece that is important is because we're ad buyers as well. We do test this with data. So we test the messaging that we are making, the assumption that your target consumer is going to care about. And we get real data to prove it's going to work before you go spend tons and tons of money. And that's one of those pieces that we see happen. So often it's like, okay, I'm ready to dive in. I'm ready to spend money in advertising and making investment, but we actually don't have anything yet to really prove it that this is what's going to work. So we really take their approach from the angle of being a strategic partner, to anyone we work with that we want your business to be successful. We don't want you to dump tons and tons of money in and just see what happens. We want this to be a long lasting relationship, and we want your company to be a long lasting company. So we'd rather take the time, find the answers and then say, okay, we've got this, let's ramp it up. So how do you test the market? Just to dive a little bit deeper if you don't mind me asking. Cause that's actually a little bit of your core secrets. No. You know? Okay. So before getting into that, one thing I will say is that, and I think this has been a huge reason why we've been successful in my agency and we don't really lose clients, but also in just getting clients, is that I don't believe in hoarding my knowledge and my information. Like I believe, yes. I knew we were best friends. Um, I'm sorry that like we should share the knowledge. There is an abundance of opportunity out there and we hear the knowledge. I am not afraid to like share my tactics with people and then you go out and use them because honestly, that's how I got to where I am is learning from people doing it myself. And that's the type of person I am. So if you're the type of person who's like, okay, I want to try that out and figure out if I can do it, then awesome. Go do it. Because honestly you're not my client. Anyway, my client is the business owner who doesn't have time and doesn't want to be doing this stuff themselves. So go ahead, go do it. And then come talk to me and we'll have a combo and we'll figure out like who you should go after in the market or how I run my systems in my business. So anyway, that's a total tangent, but my, I love tangents and my, my smile. I mean, for everybody, that's watching this on YouTube. My smile is as wide as the screen right now for my podcast listeners. I am smiling really big because my mindset is the exact same. Give it all away. Who cares, who takes it, let their ships level up because chances are they're going to come back and level up your ship. So give it all away. Okay. So what was my question again? Actually do the data testing. So goodness, you know, this is, I think people don't actually realize this incredible opportunity that we have. I mean, you hear bits and pieces about the fact that small businesses have these opportunities that we'd never have before for through the social platforms like Facebook and Instagram and YouTube to get their name out there, but the level of information and the level of data and targeting that we have is so incredible. It's beyond anything that we ever could have imagined. Now there's probably some data conversation to have in there that is about how much information is available, but we don't need to have that conversation. We can, we could go down that rabbit hole and I, you know what, I appreciate it, it's it is what it is now, but let's continue down the rabbit hole. So that's the thing is that, you know, we, as, as business owners, as marketers, we can find the right people at the right time now. And so for a very small amount of money you can take, well, we do is called message block testing. So we'll take, okay, we think this is the pain point of the target market. So we find the target because it's available through Facebook is usually how we use it. Um, and we'll put these messages just at very low dollar amounts up to maybe 400 impressions. And we just see which ones resonate without giving them a call to action, which ones get people to engage in some way to click on that information. And it tells us, okay, this message resonates. This one does it, the solution resonates this one doesn't and therefore we can then create kind of a bigger picture of what is going to connect. And then that can guide creative. It can guide copywriting. It can guide camp, overall campaigns, all of those things, if you do it for a very small amount of money early on, and then do it again and again and again, just, yeah, that is amazing. You just clued me into, uh, like something that we can both share with the audience is Instagram already tells you, if you have a business page on Instagram, Instagram already tells you which, which posts you do that get the biggest hits. And I just realized that I wouldn't have, but to put the two and two for marketing standpoint, unless you had just said that, so people rewind or hit that button. That'd be winds every like two minutes back, two minutes back and listen to everything that Jamie just shared, shared. And do it go to your Instagram accounts, go to your Facebook accounts and see what Facebook tells you about the little, the little ones you don't have to default to actually, like you said, you don't have to spend a couple billion dollars and figure out which ones hit. Oh my goodness. Thank you. That's huge. So let's dive in. Oh, well, one last piece of that is that it depends too on if you're an established business and you already have like raving fans and people, you can put these messages or look at your existing posts either way, whichever way you want to do it in front of your existing people. And that's not much more effective because those are the people you already know are your exact audience. But if you aren't an established business and you're trying to figure it out, you can find two things, both like your, what you think your target markets are and what messages resonate. And maybe, and I had this happen with one of our clients. We did this testing with, they were so off on what they target market was what it turned out. They thought that they were this like weightlifting brand in this light, bro, hang out at the gym brand. But actually people saw them as a wellness brand. It was a different market and a different message than they had been spending a year marketing to. So yeah, there's a lot to…
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