I’m celebrating a year of business and networking through MTZ Media, LLC, where I serve as a marketing contractor, and ZIP Code Marketing, where I serve as a consultant, trainer and educator for nonprofits and local small business owners.
A lot has happened in a year, and it’s been rewarding to work and connect with several industries.
So celebrate with me and keep this article as a party favor. It’s a rundown of 9 of the 12 local and service-based industries I have worked with or pitched to.
BONUS Glossary at the end of this piece.
Client | Beauty Services
Strongest Brand Asset: A large inventory of videos and Reels to post daily.
What they wanted from me: Ads to increase scheduled appointments.
Struggle: Their appointment scheduler is a third-party tool linked to their website incompatible with ad tracking.
Success: With their consistent routine of creating reels and my ad engagement strategy, we built a large and healthy custom audience they can retarget with sales and promotions.
Opportunity: I recommend adding educational posts or videos for essential at-home hair maintenance or shoe-string budgets to build trust from new future clients.
Client | Dentistry
Strongest Brand Asset: A business owner and decision-maker who knows the value of marketing. Yes, a single person can be a strong (or weak) asset to a brand.
What they wanted from me: General marketing
Struggle: The business owner needed help to delegate content tasks to others.
Success: We implemented a business process that proactively collected positive testimonials from satisfied patients and routed complaints offline.
Opportunity: Google Ads and SEO are two areas they can enhance to dominate a search.
Client | Fitness & Wellness
Strongest Brand Asset: They have consistent energy and a magnetic personality!
What they wanted from me: General marketing
Struggle: Creating a rhythm and routine for new business marketing processes
Success: They now have an active Facebook™ page, recurring events, and no trouble creating videos pitching their benefits.
Opportunity: Their 200+ Facebook™ Group is invested and engaged with the energy – they can test some memberships and subscriptions with the group before placing ads.
Client | Home Construction & Repair
Strongest Brand Asset: B-roll of dirt digging, building, repairing, and end results.
What they wanted from me: Ads for more form-fill leads.
Struggle: Nearly all their social media posts ended with a call to action.
Success: The client received 4X more leads in one month and lowered costs closer to the industry average when we paired a talking head and jump-cut video with a Facebook™ instant form.
Opportunity: This client had some great personalities on staff, so if they pair more people in videos or photos with educational content WITHOUT a call-to-action, it can result in more leads in future ads.
Client | Landscaping & Irrigation Services
Strongest Brand Asset: Many before and after-rendering images
What they wanted from me: Ads for more form-fill leads.
Struggle: Most of their social media posts ended with a call to action and needed more personality.
Success: Increased engagement by adding personality to copy and an opportunity to continue the engagement in the ad with an image carousel
Opportunity: Repurpose current testimonials as static image quotes and voice-overs on b-roll videos of doing the work in the testimony.
Client | Medical Specialty Clinic
Strongest Brand Asset: Charismatic clinicians who are great at making compelling short-form videos that educate and entertain more than sell and pitch.
What they wanted from me: Ads to launch a new location and bring in leads for both locations
Struggle: Like the Beauty Services client, their appointment scheduler is a third-party tool linked from their website incompatible with ad tracking. Unfortunately, they would not consider a shorter lead form to capture emails to recover conversions.
Success: This client came in with disjointed Google properties and an incomplete Meta account setup. Within one month, we built a large custom audience to retarget and correctly tag website interactions and triggers through Google Tag Manager.
Opportunity: Their main competitor is winning the SEO game with several high-ranking blog posts. This clinic can compete by accompanying its short-form video with blogs to gain awareness and trust.
Additionally, this client would value significantly with a simple YouTube channel that repurposed their Reels as Shorts to advertise videos on YouTube.
Client | Pet Grooming/Boarding/Training
Strongest Brand Asset: Cute dog pictures and videos!
What they wanted from me: Ads to increase boarding and doggy daycare bookings.
Struggle: Besides having a disjointed third-party scheduler, the ads’ image and video inventory needed to be larger.
Success: This client had a loyal customer base with glowing testimonials on Google and in post comments. I repurposed these testimonials as image quotes or ad captions on carousel ads with adorable dogs as the images. This approach broadened their content strategy and added life to their feed.
Opportunity: The client never made themselves the face of the brand despite the business named after them. Talking head or voice-over short-form videos educating pet owners on simple at-home maintenance and training would increase the trust of new potential clients.
Pitch | Auto Restoration
Strongest Brand Asset: The established reputation of impressive quality and excellent customer service
What they wanted from me: Business model and marketing pivot
Struggle: Lack of website presence and inconsistent business names on digital accounts.
Proposal: A six-month incremental build-up with branding and digital footprint as the first priority. Additionally, I would have been thrilled to implement simple workflows that streamline their social media content.
Pitch | Real Estate Agent
Strongest Brand Asset: Established reputation as a trustworthy community member and employee.
What they wanted from me: General marketing and social media strategy
Struggle: Buy-in on approach and advice on securing their own website and email presence instead of only relying on their broker’s digital assets.
Proposal: Build a content strategy and workflow that leverages their personality, character, integrity, humor, and trustworthiness as a new Agent.
Overall Takeaways
- Not every email or social media post need to have an ask or include a link
- Video is the fastest way to grow on social media, but don’t abandon other content types
- Ads should be a part of the plan, not the whole plan
- Patience and quality content are needed to build a strong brand
- And, if you don’t have the patience, you need the Mula!
I didn’t win every pitch, and I sent out more proposals than weeks in a year – but it was all worth it to grow just as much as the businesses I helped.
Here’s to another year of connecting and growing together!
Cheers,
Lisa Martinez
Glossary
4X more Leads: Four times more individuals are filling out forms to show interest in something than previously reported.
B-roll: Refers to B-Video (secondary/supplemental) added to an A-Video (primary video), which helps provide context or background for the main story
Before-and-after: Visuals (images and video) that show the status before the change (Before) compared to the state after the change (After).
Business Process: A tested workflow that guides the business to complete a specific task or accomplish a particular goal
Call-to-action: A prompt that encourages people to take action.
Carousel: A carousel ad on Facebook has multiple pictures, videos, and texts you can scroll through.
Content Tasks: Any written or graphic type of content that is needed to communicate. Ie. An email, a short video, a post, or a text message
Copy: The actual words that make up the written content. It can also be referred to as ‘text.’
Custom Audience: Regarding Meta Ads(Facebook and Instagram ads) it’s a bucket of data created that reflects specific criteria, such as website visitors or user behavior.
Decision-maker: Referring to marketing, the person with the access and privilege to make decisions on behalf of the business.
Educational content WITHOUT a call-to-action: Sharing content for the sole purpose of educating without any ask or obligation for the user to take action.
Engagement: Metric on social media to measure their popularity and reach by interacting with brands or other users through comments, likes, shares, and other forms of communication.
Facebook Instant Form: A way to quickly fill out forms on the Facebook platform.
Form-fill leads: When individuals fill out a form with their information to show interest in something.
General Marketing: The process of understanding customer needs, crafting a message that resonates with them, and utilizing channels such as advertising, public relations, and digital media to reach those customers.
Google Ads: An online advertising platform by Google that allows businesses to create and manage ads for their services, products, and content,
Google Properties: Services offered by Google such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, Search Console, and Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager: Google Tag Manager is a tool to help businesses manage their online tracking.
Image & Video Inventory: A collection of visuals, such as pictures, videos, GIFs, and other media content, that can be used to create marketing and social media content.
Inconsistent business names on digital accounts: A common mistake where the name of the brand or business is not consistent, verbatim, on prominent digital platforms such as their website, website copy, social media profiles, and online business listings tools like Google Business.
Jump-cut video: A technique used to edit video clips and create a faster pace by removing sections of the clip and splicing the remaining pieces together to create an entirely new flow.
Meta Account Setup: The formal method to create and build a business presence on Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Reels: Instagram Reels are short-form videos that allow users to create and share clips with audio, effects, and other creative tools
Retarget: An online advertising tactic that allows businesses to show ads to people who have already visited their website or interacted with their brand
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): A professional practice that helps a website shows up in search results.
(YouTube) Shorts: Rival to TikTok and Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts are short-form videos that allow users to create and share creative clips with audio, effects, and other fun tools.
Short-form video: Videos that typically span between 10 seconds and up to a little over a minute to deliver information with little fluff.
Talking Head: Videos with someone talking while showing their face.
Voice-overs: Audio of someone speaking while the video plays, providing context and narration to the visuals.
Workflows: A set of steps that are followed to achieve a specific goal, and it typically involves tasks such as collecting data and organizing information.
