[00:00:00] Mia Fileman
Are you tired of empty promises and stolen ideas? Me too. Got. Marketing is a podcast for marketers and small brands who want real talk and clever strategies without the bs. Running an online business is hard, but everything gets easier when your marketing starts performing. I am Mia FileMan, your straight shooting campaign loving friend here to talk marketing, running a business, pop culture, and everything in between.
Let's dive in.
Mia
Hello friend and welcome back to Got Marketing. Joining me today is Lillie Brown, Campaign Del Mars Community Manager. We are back with a bit more of an unscripted, unstructured episode for you where we are gonna discuss a lot of things, namely dead internet theory marketing without [00:01:00] social media, because.
Dead internet theory and also one of our favorite campaigns at the moment. So welcome back, Lillie.
Lillie
Thanks for having me. Always such a treat to have these conversations with you.
Mia
Oh, it's so good. You are my like, I need to do a podcast episode. I wanna do a podcast episode. Who do I do it with? Well, of course I'm gonna call Lillie.
I'm gonna just gonna. Do it together. And we always have such a good time as well. We do, we do. Do you know a fun fact, when I started got marketing, I actually wanted it to have a co-host. Oh yeah. 'cause talking to yourself is so, it is, it is. As somebody who has worked from home for the last four years exclusively, it's usually just me talking to myself or the dog. So I am so on board for any like human to human conversations. I need more of them. Yeah, I actually asked Erin Morris to be the co-host. She's amazing. But you know, we both live such busy, big lives and I just don't think it was gonna work for both of us [00:02:00] to schedule that. But yeah, that was always the intention is to, to just get a co-host and then we can riff off each other and.
Less discussion guides and all of those things.
Lillie
Yes, absolutely. So this is a good exercise in getting a little bit of that co-host energy into it. I love it.
Mia
Yeah. Alright, let's dive in because I don't know about you, but the internet, what used to give me so much joy is just not anymore. I just, I'm just not feeling it.
Hey, I really, obviously I need to go out and touch grass. But I am just so over the bots, talking to the bots on LinkedIn. I'm so over the chat, GPT obvious ridden caption. That's like with the line breaks and the rhetorical questions, and I'm just so over it. It's.
Lillie
So lame. It's so lame. It feels like all the joy and creativity and originality has just been bleeding out of the [00:03:00] internet in recent years, particularly as chat GBT has become more commonplace for people to be using. And what you just said about those captions within the first three or four words of a caption or blog post, I can tell if it's been written by chat, GPT. The cadence, the rhythm, the words that it uses. It has a very predictable formula. And I don't know, like recently I've just been pining and yearning for the glory days of Tumblr.
Did you ever use Tumblr?
Mia
No. No. It was amazing. Honestly, I have so much nostalgia about Tumblr, and it was honestly one of the best places on the internet in my humble opinion. And one of the reasons Tumblr took a downfall after it was sold many years ago, they removed a lot of adult content from the platform.
Also, they were really struggling to continue to fund the platform because they didn't have any kind of targeted advertising capability because Tumblr at its core was essentially in an anonymous platform, so it didn't actually capture user data and behavioral data and all those [00:04:00] sorts of things that we can use for targeted ad campaign. So it kind of ended up dying off. It is having a little bit of a resurgence at the moment, so my fingers and toes are crossed that it will come back in all of its glory, but that kind of freedom and creative expression, and it was so no holds barred. And I remember as I was building my Tumblr blog, it was just so fun.
I was doing it for me. I wasn't doing it with anyone else in mind, an audience in mind, and there was so much more freedom and creativity that came to the party, and I think that's what's missing in the internet now.
Mia
I do wonder whether people who don't use ai, are they going to get left behind or are we going to get to a point where we're so fed up with AI generated.
Slop that those people who held out now capture the attention that we all sorely are chasing because they're the only ones who haven't handed over the creativity, uh, to ai. And I just wanna share [00:05:00] something that I discovered this week, which is so fascinating to me, which is that chat, GPT is not really AI because it lacks.
True cognition. Everything that you get from chat GPT, it has been trained on. So it doesn't understand. It doesn't think in a human sense. It doesn't reason, it doesn't form intentions or possess any self-awareness, which is the classical definition of artificial intelligence. It operates based on pre-trained models and statistical probabilities, not genuine. Comprehension or creativity.
Lillie
It's kind of horrifying to hear that. And also to reconcile how so many of us are super reliant on AI now, particularly in our marketing workflows. And I think this is an interesting thing to discuss because it does tie into this idea of marketing without social media.
Because what I've noticed, particularly in. Content and copywriting across social media, blog, even website copy that I've been seeing in the last 12 months in [00:06:00] particular, brand voice and people's personality is leaching out of it. It's all just sounding really same. Same. And I think when we're trying to market our businesses, whether we're our product or service providers, our humanness.
Is a really important part of that, right? And so if we're getting rid of that and essentially systematically erasing it through a wanton use of ai, then we are not actually going to be able to build genuine emotional connections with our audience because there's nothing to connect to there. And I think that's why when we were speaking earlier this week about doing this episode, one of the things that came up for me was that we wanna be connecting beyond digital.
And in order to do that. We need to be human. We need to be bringing our whole real selves to the party and not having chat. GPT erase that. Right? And this is by all means, for everybody listening. We are not poo-pooing ai. I use it, me, I uses [00:07:00] it. We all use it. But it's about using it in a way that actually.
Assists you rather than erases you. And what I'm seeing across the board is this complete erasure of brand voice and the human personality that's behind brands.
Mia
The problem is, is people are afraid to show up as themselves because cancel culture is so alive and kicking. And I've seen it recently with one of my videos hitting over a hundred thousand views for all the wrong reasons, and we've lost all.
Nuance online and elastic elasticity. People want certainty. They talk in absolutes. The internet is not a place where you can go to work out your ideas and workshop them with other people. It's like you say something that's out of line and you are a horrific person. You deserve to be canceled and there's no room for growth.
And so people are relying on Chat GPT to write their captions because we all live with this inevitability that we're going to get canceled [00:08:00] one day.
Lillie
Mm, absolutely. And particularly in the marketing space and with more things like founder led content. I have observed from people that you know, clients that I've spoken to, and people who are in a similar field to me, that there is a lot of anxiety around like, Ooh, could this potentially be offensive?
Have I worded this in the right way? Is this going to hit the mark or not? And it's so subjective and on the internet. We are getting super black and white in our interpretations and perspective, right? It doesn't feel like in modern internet culture where we are sitting right now, that there's much room for nuance or critical thinking, particularly when we are discussing quite emotive topics and.
That is what we need to have, like being able to see and understand and unpack nuance and use our critical thinking skills and continue to develop them is personally, I think, critical to our development as human beings, regardless of whether or not we're in business, but even more so when we're in business and actively marketing our office, [00:09:00] we need to be able to have those skills of being able to identify and.
Unpack nuance and critically think about the different perspectives that we are being shown. And I think as well, something that comes up for me a lot in my work, I, I fucking hate Instagram, okay? I, every time I spend more than five minutes on that platform, I am struck down with the most violent comparisonitis spiral.
And what really gets me when I'm creating content is, you know, I'm a certified yapper, okay? I could talk six feet under the ground. All day. And so I find it hard to say less, especially when I'm talking about big, complex topics, because I wanna make sure that I'm covering all of my bases, because I think people have a tendency to see, say, if you're just talking about one aspect of a topic or an issue in a Instagram post, for example, they just think that that is all you understand about that post, right?
It's like it is so much bigger than that, but there's. [00:10:00] Only a certain amount of content that I can actually put out.
Mia
Correct. And it's the curse of the intellect. I, I have this problem with everyone that I work with because I work with really, really smart women that they actually are not the best at social media and Instagram specifically because it requires these three words, slogans, and some things are just.
Too complicated, too nuanced. Too layered to be distilled into a 32nd reel.
Lillie
Absolutely. And I think as consumers on the internet. We all need to be more mindful of that, right? There is limited characters. There is a limited amount of content and information that we can put into each post, and that doesn't mean if you're only seeing what you think is five or 10% of a topic or perspective, that doesn't necessarily reflect the views of the person who posted it or their understanding of that concept as a whole, right?
Social media is so siloed and it's like every little piece of content. [00:11:00] Yeah, it is working together for a bigger purpose. Hopefully if you're doing it well, but at the same time, there is only so much that we can communicate within that platform. And so I think that's why we also wanted to have this conversation about what does marketing look like beyond social media? Because something you and I, Mia, we speak about all the time, is this chronic overinvestment in social media. From small business owners, almost all of their marketing eggs are in the social media basket, which is a hugely risky strategy given it's a borrowed channel, 100%.
Mia
Uh, but also I'm coming to understand this with Ripple Festival.
I'm meeting some really fascinating people who've got really big networks and really good connections to industry. Power players and you know, media contacts, and none of them spend all their fucking time on Instagram or LinkedIn. It's like they have better things to do than be posting on [00:12:00] Instagram all the time.
They're out there in the world meeting people, and a lot of it is happening in one-on-one coffee. Or in person or even online coffee chats, lots of phone calls, like Odette is constantly on the phone. Literally like the thing that people are afraid to pick up anymore. And, um, yeah, it's really, it's really shifted my perspective because we have really finite resources with Ripple Festival and not a lot of time, like we've had nine months to build.
A brand and sell out a first event. And I've been thinking a lot about where, how to prioritize my money and my time when it comes to marketing. And I've spoken to a lot of people who, uh, do a lot of event marketing and it's been so interesting what they have said to prioritize, it's not social media, it's not paid advertising, it is reaching out. To people who have an existing audience and potentially gifting them a ticket and seeing if they can bring their audience to Ripple. It is [00:13:00] reaching out to companies with 10 people and seeing about how they can bring five people at a time to ripple. It's all of those like little engine that could work that is happening behind the scenes that is not just posting relentlessly on social media.
Lillie
Absolutely. And all those things that you just talked through. We know have a much higher return on investment than social media, particularly in this day and age, right? Social media has increasingly become a pay to play platform. It's not like Instagram in, you know, 2014, where it was possible to get hundreds of thousands of followers in a relatively short period of time. We know reach is tanking. Engagement is tanking, and that's not always related to the quality of the content. Of course, that's a really important part of it, but we are kind of at the mercy of the algorithm. I think it's important to mention now that it is harder for some types of businesses to grow on social media than others. For those of the listeners that aren't aware, and in addition to my role as community [00:14:00] manager at Campaign Telma, I'm also a sexologist, so I work in the sexual wellness space and it is a heavily censored space, particularly on social media. When I first started my business and signed up to Stripe, my Stripe account got suspended three times without paying out my funds because.
I was working in the sexual wellness industry, and so there's so many layers of censorship where it's like, okay, well actually it's even more challenging for people in these sort of more controversial industries to actually be able to grow on social media. So we need to look outside of the box and. I think get off these apps and get out into the world and do some more interesting things.
Mia
Yeah. It's such a curse, isn't it, Lil? I've had this conversation with Dr. Patrick Award on an episode a few weeks ago where healthcare, and like I consider what you do to be healthcare, like sexual wellness is. Health and wellbeing, but it is so heavily regulated [00:15:00] and so censored that you who have degree qualified qualifications in helping women with painful sex and more pleasurable sex. Uh, you've got tape over your mouth. Meanwhile, people can claim that celery juice will cure cancer. No problem. No, no, no issues there. It's just appalling and it's like It's unfair. Yeah, it's unfair. It's not like, it's not an even playing field where you hamstrung health businesses so much, they can't even share testimonials and case studies. There is so much regulation around the industry. Meanwhile, anyone can say anything about anything, and then how do you combat the bullshit? How do you. Said it. How does someone come out and say, that's not gonna work, dude. Yeah, it frustrates me completely.
Lillie
And there's also gender dynamics at play here because things like erectile dysfunction, drugs like Viagra and Cialis, erectile dysfunction programs, [00:16:00] you could do paid meta campaigns that reach hundreds of thousands of people without.
Peril or punishment. But if I, heaven forbid, say vulva in an Instagram post that's educating people about their anatomy, I get banned. It is actually insane. Thinking about last year as well, I think it was last year, Tommy Lee posted a full frontal shot of his junk to Instagram that was live for six hours.
Six hours on the platform. Yet, we can't talk about painful sex conditions. We can't talk about sexual health. We can't mention the word pleasure or use the anatomically correct terms for our body parts without punishment and censorship. And I think that's a really dangerous game to be playing. And I think these platforms that we're on really need to do some work in addressing.
These issues because the type of content that is allowed to be on these platforms is quite frankly horrifying.
Mia
Exactly. It's so true. Uh, girls get off, uh, [00:17:00] similar, their sexual pleasure and they have had same sorts of issues as you. Their Instagram account has been restricted a couple of times. And yesterday, Viv Conway, who's the founder of Girls Get Off, she shared a really cool trick for recovering your Instagram account when it is restricted. So, uh, you search for girls Get Off, or the brand in the search bar, and then it's restricted, so you won't find it. So you shake your iPhone, which I've never heard of before. And then a little message comes up on Instagram saying, do you need to report a problem? And then you type in there. I cannot find the girls Get Off Instagram account and you send that off to Instagram and that to Instagram is like a sign that people are looking for this account but can't find it.
And Instagram only cares about money. And so if you are going to the platform to find something that you can't find, you are gonna leave. So it's like, oh, hang on, people want this. That's time on platform. Let me. [00:18:00] Restore it because it will be good for us. So she was able to recover their Instagram account yesterday after several people on LinkedIn shook their phones. So I'm gonna link that in the show notes in case anyone is having their account restricted and wants a cool little trick. To get it back. Amazing. Yes. And this is such an important conversation to be having because as you said earlier, sexual health is health. It's a core part of wellness. And when we think about the types of sex education that we've received through schooling, how what we see in film, pop culture, television.
It's dismal at best and harmful at worst. And so restricting access for people to find accurate, unbiased information about their bodies and their sexual functioning is really damaging from a health perspective. It really is. So let's talk about how to market your brand with less or no social media. And I think I've worked it out.
Mia
[00:19:00] Right. I've, I figure I've got this. Okay, so after spending 10 months overseas last year, and especially the last four months, it was really just the four of us. Um, my husband and my two kids. I was craving in person connection. So when I came back to Australia. I kind of hit it really hard and I was traveling a lot around Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and I decided that each place I was going to, I was just gonna host a really casual event, like no tickets, no agenda, no keynotes, no panels, nothing.
Come along, pay your own way and just hang out and meet people. And I can't tell you how successful that was for my business. Like that has worked better than. Anything in terms of securing actual members in Marketing Circle, and I was like, I am on to something, right? Just popping up in a city and asking.
Your target audience to come along with no obligation, and that [00:20:00] in-person connection really worked really well. The problem I have now is I live a million fucking miles from anywhere and I'm up in the Northern Territory, which is a five hour overnight. Flight from the rest of Australia. And I've got this struggle because all of my family have said that I spend way too much time on my phone and social media, and I wanna spend less time doing that.
But the only really other workable solution for me is to go and meet people in person, which requires me. Physically away, and it's this really annoying sandwich, and this is why we're working so hard to try to leave the Northern Territory hopefully this year, and be closer to family and be closer to my community because it's really, really isolating up here.
And for anyone listening, thinking, why don't you just go and meet with small business owners in Darwin? Darwin is a military town. It's a government town, so everyone here works for the government. Or they work in the military. There is not that many small [00:21:00] business owners in Darwin, and also we know we are leaving.
So investing a lot in Darwin doesn't really make the most amount of sense. But I think that if you have a loathing for social media, then as much as possible connecting with people in person has a far better. Return on investment. Absolutely.
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Lillie
I think it's something that people are increasingly hungry for is this in-person connection, particularly free of agenda, and I think that's why these meetups that you've run have gone so well, right? Because. There's not an agenda. There's no expectation. It's like, come as you are, find some new friends to hang out with.
One of my friends down here on the South coast is an incredible hospitality consultant and creative, and she started running monthly creatives lunches at cafes and restaurants on the last Friday of the month down here. And every time there's more and more people coming and it's so nice for all of us to get out of the solo work.
Silo and come together, connect, talk about business, use each other as a sounding board, and just get some of that human connection that we've all been missing for so long. And there's already collaborations coming out of these lunches, and I think it's a really beautiful space. It's also about building community, right?
[00:23:00] I think when we are hosting these events that are free of agenda, that is community building in its purest form because we are not trying to slyly sell anything at that time. We're here purely for connection.
Mia
Totally. So let's talk ROI, because. People need to see these numbers to believe them. Okay, so organic social media has one of the worst returns on investment, okay?
So email marketing, number one. For every dollar spend you get $40. So it has by far the best. ROI. Second is search engine optimization. Interestingly. Around $15 for every dollar spend, and it is on par with paid speaking, so that is really interesting. If you can secure more paid speaking jobs, then this is a great way to spend less time on social media. However, let me please explain that this has been quite an initiation for fee and I in planning Ripple fast dual. Everyone wants to be a paid speaker. We are paying all [00:24:00] of our speakers, and it's been really fascinating seeing human behavior around this. People will pitch us to be a speaker. We will either politely decline or just haven't gotten back to them, and then we'll never hear from them again, like ever.
And I just find that so interesting. It's like they've gone straight in for the ask. And when they haven't gotten what they've wanted, they're gone. And so what you were saying before about investing in relationships or investing in community? Honestly, I feel like this is a trick that a lot of people are missing because we've had a few people that.
Have kind of supported us before. We've supported them like they were, they bought a Ripple Festival ticket or they've shared our posts, or they've offered to help us with our meta ads free of charge. And I mean, we are absolutely trying very hard to find these people a paid speaking gig at Ripple as a result, because they've led with value they've given more than they've taken. So anyway, paid speaking is great, but don't just. Go out there, [00:25:00] ask for paid speaking gigs, and then ghost event organizers build a relationship. Interestingly, number four is podcasting. So that is sitting at about five or $6 return on investment. It's the long game, I, let me tell you, it is the long game. Then we have referral marketing, then we have page search advertising, so like Google ads, partnerships and collaborations, events in person, and then right at the bottom. Is social media at around $2 return on investment for every dollar spent. So it is not great bang for buck. And I think what's happening Lil, is that it used to be amazing, right? Like what you were talking about 2014 era where you could get to 10,000 followers in a couple of months. And big brands were built on free social media accounts and we are still trying to make that fetch happen and it's. [00:26:00] Those days are, are long, long gone.
Lillie
Yeah. It's almost like a futile attempt because the social media landscape, particularly the big players, like the meta platforms, they're, they don't care.
They wanna get their bag and they will do whatever it takes to get that. They don't care about helping creators genuinely build their accounts or connect with their audiences. Sure, they say that in their shiny press releases, but we know that's just lip service. So it's a really risky strategy to be over investing in social media in that way.
And even as you said. The ROI being approximately $2 for every dollar spent. I'm sorry, but that is, you're really running the gauntlet there. Yeah. And it's almost like you're banking on hope. Totally. I mean, I would, we mentioned podcasting. We mentioned events, we mentioned collaboration. We mentioned SEO, like I would.
Look at those channels and make sure that brands have a smart mix of paid, earned, owned, and borrowed, and not just over invests.
Mia
[00:27:00] Here's a fun fact that I discovered working with Brooke Hbe, who's a marketing analytics specialist. 68% of our website traffic at Campaign Delmar. Comes through our blogs. I mean, wild, wild.
Lillie
We weren't expecting that. I remember the shock once when Brooke told us that. We were like, huh, what? Out of all the other things that we are doing.
Mia
I know, and there is a couple of blogs that I wrote years ago before I even went overseas, like why Spotify Wrapped is marketing genius that is driving a lot of that traffic and I. Did that years ago, and I'm still weeping the benefits. How is that for Evergreen? Meanwhile, what I posted on Instagram yesterday is already gone like into the ether, never to be seen again. I think we really need to focus on not so much what's sexy, but what is actually driving. Revenue [00:28:00] and driving our results and really zero in on that because it's not often what you think.
And doing that data analytics piece with Brooke was so interesting to me because LinkedIn is driving more conversions than Instagram. So that's a case for me to reprioritize social media. Email marketing is my number one converter. No surprises there. So I send three emails a week across the two brands.
One for Ripple Festival, one for Campaign Delmar, and now I send a got marketing Substack. And so between the three emails I'm spending around five hours a week writing emails. Is that a good use of time? Yes. Yes, of course.
Lillie
Yeah, it is. And one thing as well that you always talk about with me that I think is so worth mentioning here, particularly as we're talking about social media, is that one email subscriber is worth a hundred social media followers easily.
And I think [00:29:00] as well, we are not here to saying, don't use social media. Right, of course. If it's absolutely not right for your brand. Consider this your get out of jail free card to not have to use it. We want you to be thinking about using social media more strategically, and particularly if you are using social media platforms, funneling them into your email subscriber list and to your website.
You should be using all of your activity on social media as a vehicle to transport people to your mailing list or to your website, not just hoping for the best and building your community there. So I'm curious, Mia, if brands are wanting to divest from social media. How do they know what other tactics to prioritize?
We've spoken about SEO, blogging, podcasting, lots of other tactics. How do you know what to prioritize for your business?
Mia
Don't just guess. Actually look at your data, like go into Google Analytics and actually see what is driving leads, what is driving conversions. That data is sitting there. Yes, you might need some help [00:30:00] interpreting it, but it is there.
So don't just assume though I made a lot of assumptions as well. So, uh, that would be the first thing. And then test, test. What happens if you were to pull back from Instagram and start building a substack and give it, give it a good amount of time, like three months. And I'm a big proponent in fewer, bigger, better.
And I know that this is contradictory, but humans are full of contradictions. There's this dichotomy between we need to be multichannel. You have to be. Otherwise you've got all of your eggs in one basket. However, you also need to give the platforms that you are on 110% effort. And those two things can seem really opposing.
And I'm sorry, business is hard. That's a you problem. You know, like it's just, it's a US problem. So if you are. Figure out better channels and go 110% on them. So if you are going to do Substack, do it really well for three months and then report back. If you are [00:31:00] going to spend some money on an out of home campaign, which I bloody love, like it's one of my favorite channels, then do it really well. Get a really good designer to design your out-of-home creatives. Don't just mock it up in Canva and hope for the best. So that would be my suggestions in terms of how to divest. I also think the biggest thing is you only really need one social media channel, and that's gonna change your life. Like maybe meta is what is soul destroying for you and you need to go all in on LinkedIn or all in on Pinterest, and you can leave Facebook and Instagram behind because they're often the problematic ones.
Lillie
Absolutely. For sure, and I think there's also a bunch of other tactics that we haven't discussed as well that come into play. Things like pr, we mentioned Odette before. She's an incredible PR practitioner and has a wonderful program Hack your own pr. So PR outsourced is. Incredibly expensive. And for small business owners it's often really cost prohibitive. But there are [00:32:00] ways like through Odette's course that you can learn how to DIY it. Things like radio advertising referral and building a referral network. I know that's been something that's been super important for my business as a sexologist. Building referral networks with other allied health practitioners, psychologists, counselors, physiotherapists.
All of those sorts of practitioners so they know that a I exist and that they can refer clients to me for specialized sexual health support. That has been really useful, not only to generate more leads for my business, but also to build relationships with other practitioners as well. And create that sense of community.
Mia
I love strategic partnerships and collaborations, like what you're talking about. I also love affiliate marketing. When it's transparent and people are really upfront about it, I think that this is a really good option for people. We mentioned out of home, we mentioned print. Direct mail has a weirdly good return on investment.
One of my members, Jess [00:33:00] heading did a five postcards. She was dropping into coworking spaces around Brisbane with a QR code. They were great, sensational. So don't just throw your hands up in the air and be like, ah, it's so hard. There's nothing else. Like, you know, reach out. I'll give you 10 suggestions right now that you can go out and try and, and test if you do not want to be on social media.
Then you don't have to be in 2025. There are lots of other options, and I know some very successful business owners that have almost no social media presence, like KA O'Keeffe is a Gruin panelist. She's active on LinkedIn. She doesn't even have an Instagram account and she's on television. Guys like I think we've led ourselves to believe that we have to do certain things in order to be successful and it's not true.
Lillie
Agree. What are your thoughts on, just off the back of what you said around we've led ourself to believe that we have to do certain things to be [00:34:00] successful. I think something that I see for a lot of small business owners, and particularly those that are front facing with their brands, they're almost treating themselves as influencers, and that's kind of par for the course when we're running a front facing brand, I think in this day and age.
Yeah. But how do we tow the line between. Not essentially exploiting ourselves and our personality on social media. For clout and social capital. I think that's an interesting part of this conversation around like are is is the reason we're so hell bent on building big Instagram audience, even though in this day and age it's kind of like pushing shit uphill unless you've got big ads budget to go with it.
Is that just because we're like, oh. That's something I need in order to be seen as successful, to get social capital, to be able to leverage other opportunities for my business.
Mia
Yeah, there's more than one way to succeed. I think we could have a whole podcast episode on that. And there are people like Brittany Saunders [00:35:00] who started, I would say as an influencer. She started as a YouTube creator doing like beauty tutorials and a lot of lifestyle content, and now she's moved into the entrepreneur. Space and all of that. Social capital has been really, really helpful in fueling the growth of fate, the label and a book deal. And she's speaking at TED in Newcastle and like that is one way to do it right. But then we confuse. Influencers with founder-led content, they are different. I don't create that kind of content. The, you know, get ready with me and a day in the life and here's me and my family and talking about my relationship buying dresses. I stay very much in the marketing lane, but there is still founder led content and sometimes it's. My most successful content, like while we were overseas, footage of skiing or tours of our Airbnb, people [00:36:00] really, really, really loved that. But that's a small part of my brand. I would say about 20%. And then the rest is a lot of marketing tips and training and thought leadership and booth work. Right. I mean they work in different ways, so influencers get paid on views and they get brand deals, and the bigger their audience and the more comments they get and the more engagement, the more brand deals they're gonna get.
I'm not getting any brand deals, right? I am a brand and so I get paid through my office and through my services, and so all of this lifestyle content that might perform really well on social media and get me lots of views and get me lots of comments. Is it gonna get me lots of members in Marketing Circle?
No, it's not right? I'm not an influencer. I think we confuse these metrics on social media. We think, oh, that was a really low performing post because it only got 12 likes and three saves. Those three saves could be three customers, right? Whereas we think virality equals dollars, and it doesn't for [00:37:00] us because we're not paid on view.
Lillie
Mm, absolutely. And I think that's something really important for all of us as small business owners to be mindful of because I think there's a lot of pressure that we all feel about, oh, chasing virality, or we want really high performing content because that is what is going to generate leads and bring money in the door.
But that's not always true. Particularly for small business owners, it's quite unlikely for that to be the case.
Mia
Yeah, totally. Amazing. Alright, well you know that I love the Got Milk campaign. I mean, hello. It's the inspiration for the name of my podcast. Well, Oli Pop, which is a low. Cal soda. It's sadly not available in Australia, but I loved it when I was in North America last year.
Uh, they have created a new campaign called Soda Stories and it is completely inspired by got milk. And so the art direction is all very nostalgic [00:38:00] nineties. Print advertising and the idea is that they, oh, the visuals are amazing. Amazing. So good. So it's a, it's a serialized campaign, which, you know, I love Lily because.
We are not just advertising on TV anymore. Like Ali Pop isn't buying television advertising where you just get a 32nd spot and you replay that for three weeks straight. That strategy is cooked. So we need lots of content during our campaigns because it's going to play across social and digital platforms.
And serialized content allows us to have lots to share over the life of our campaign. So it's a series of. Stories with 1990s heroes like Kristin Chenoweth and Joshua Jackson, and they're talking about how soda was like a big part of their childhood and how it was quite nostalgic, but that soda isn't good for them, right?
And so they have had to say no to to soda because yeah, it's just not healthy. [00:39:00] But now, thanks to OP and the really nostalgic flavors. Like Dr. Goodwin, which tastes like Dr. Pepper. So it's got like the Dr. Pepper vibes. I never got into the Dr. Pepper thing, by the way, but some people, like my husband thinks it's the best drink ever made.
Lillie
Oh, 100%. A fake cherry flavor is like cracked to me.
Mia
Oh, really? Yeah, they have like, like a creamy soda type flavor, which is really good. So they're like prebiotic sodas and, yeah. So Joshua. Jackson is talking about how he's able to enjoy soda again and tap into those really fond childhood memories of getting an ice cold soda after playing ice hockey and being able to feel all those feels with, but without the guilt. And it's so good because now all I wanna do is watch Mighty Ducks again. Right. And I think as well, like they've completely nailed their brand positioning as well. They're not saying that this is a miracle [00:40:00] drink. It's a better for you soda. So when you are craving a sugar hit nice little bubbly beverage, you might reach for that one instead 'cause it's a little bit better for you. Right? I think they've really nailed that brand positioning. I think so too. They're not saying it's healthy, like eating steamed broccoli. They're saying it's a better choice. So I stopped drinking alcohol last year and I allow myself one prebiotic soda every night with dinner and it is a much better choice.
Than booze. The best choice is water. But you know, also joy.
Lillie
Seriously. I know. Come on. We need something yummy for our taste buds sometimes. And I think as well, you and I have been speaking a lot about the honest marketing framework that you're developing. You spoke about it on the pod last week and their brand positioning as a better for you.
Soda, I think is a really great example of the honest marketing method in practice because they're being really honest about [00:41:00] what this product is. They're not saying this is a healthy soda, blah, blah, blah. It's like this is the better for you option. So it's really honest to the consumer. You're not being bamboozled.
It feels believable.
Mia
Yeah, exactly. And even all the phraseology, like finding a happy middle ground better for you. All of these words are not, like we were saying before, they're not absolutes, they're about trade-offs, right? It's like it's not perfect, but it's an alternative that is healthier. I love it.
Lillie
Love. So good. Definitely. And that honesty is giving people information to make an informed decision, which I think that's a really big trend that I've seen in consumer behavior over the last five or so years, is that they want to make informed decisions, right? Consumers are no longer having the wool pulled over their eyes.
They're able to spot disingenuity from a mile away, and so this type of marketing does a lot to generate brand affinity and trust with your audience. [00:42:00] You're being real with them, showing them what the expectations are with your brand rather than talking it up and over-hyping it. To ultimately let them down
Mia
100%. Well, to your point, there was a 2025 pulse survey by Sprout Social, and they asked customers what traits did they associate with bold brands and the number one trait. Was honesty, it scored in at 50%. So in customer's eyes, if you are an honest brand, you are a bold brand. How good is that? Yeah. How good is that?
That is such an important point because when we think about being a bold brand, being a trailblazing brand. I think a lot of people get caught up in, okay, I've gotta create hype. I've gotta make myself and my brand larger than life. And it's like, that's not what people actually want. They don't want this spectacle and performance.
They want something that's real that they can actually connect with [00:43:00] that speaks to and resonates to who they are as a human. And I think this is an excellent example of this, done really, really well. Well, interestingly, this same Sprout survey, honest was number one at 50%. Inspirational, 40% viral or trendy, 35% humorous.
34%, and then unhinged was right at the bottom at 23%. So anyone going, oh, I need to be really kooky and unhinged and you know, agitate. That's not actually what customers consider to be a bold brand. So, I mean, of course I've put this survey. In the Honest Marketing Method deck. Yeah, it's gonna be such a good one.
I can't wait. And yeah, I think it's also the honest marketing method really relates to this idea of marketing without social media as well, because. We're looking broader about how we can take a holistic approach to our marketing, which is really the principle that we've been discussing [00:44:00] today, right? Of, okay, investing all of your eggs into the social media basket, in my eyes, is not a holistic way of marketing your business or brand.
So what can we do outside of that? We've spoken about all the tactics that are available today and some of these principles that underpin the honest marketing method. Customers are wanting honesty. They want transparency. Actually, I'd say it goes beyond a want. I'd say it's a non-negotiable for most consumers nowadays because we are getting more and more sophisticated and discerning.
Mia
I'm just really curious to see what happens with the internet. Like there is a lot of dead internet theories floating around. Like I said earlier, bots talking to bots like a bot posts a bot responds like, what are we all doing here? And so, and we've hit saturation point. So are we gonna actually start to see things look different?
Are people going to spend less time on some of these platforms and then invest more in other platforms? And can we preempt that as marketers? Can we meet them at the next place? Can [00:45:00] we meet them on Substack? 'cause that's where they. Seeming to wanna go, can we meet them at a live event like Ripple Festival?
Lillie
Because if you are feeling done and I'm feeling done, then they're feeling done too, right? So as marketers, we need to constantly think ahead and stay ahead of the curve and with everyone disillusioned with the internet, then we should be thinking about where we're gonna meet our. Customers outside of these social platforms could not agree more.
And just quickly before we wrap up, I just wanted to add to what you said about if we are feeling disillusioned and over the internet, our clients are going to be as well, that comes out in our marketing. If we're feeling, ugh, I do not wanna borrow of Instagram that comes through in our content, your audience is going to be able to feel that.
So we need to be marketing our business in a way. It is ultimately palatable and feels good for us, right? For example, you invest a shit load of time in writing, blogging. All the email marketing that you do across the brands, that [00:46:00] works really well for you because you're a great writer. It's how you process.
It's how you flesh out and form your ideas, and people really resonate with that. The substack has popped off. Your email list has popped off. And you could be trying to flog a dead horse by making yourself use more social media platforms or other tactics, but it would not have the resonance that things like your writing and longer form content does.
So I think that's also a really important consideration. The marketing that we do. Okay. I won't say we need to enjoy it because most small business owners are never gonna get to a spot where they actually. Actively enjoy marketing their business, but we need to be coming from a place of feeling at least quite energized and inspired about what we're creating because our audience is gonna be able to feel that, right?
If we're putting out content for the sake of it and thinking, I hate this, our audience is going to be able to absorb that and cotton onto that. Usually on a subconscious level, which means your engagement's gonna tank and you're gonna hate this social media thing [00:47:00] even more.
Mia
Oh, 100%. I see it all the time.
I'm like, she seems really tired. She seems jaded. She seems burnt out. Like you can read that through the copy. I am 100% on board with that. Kira's gonna kick our ass if this episode goes any longer. So better wrap this up.
Lillie
We need to cut the mic.
Mia
We're gonna hear about it. Alright, so let's do this again and, um, keep this conversation going.
But it has been an absolute pleasure chatting all the things again with you Lil.
Lillie
Oh, always a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Can't wait for the next one. All right. Chat soon. Bye.
Outro
I've started a substack as the ideal companion to the podcast. It's packed with extra insights, visuals, and nuggets that didn't make it into the episodes.
Plus you can revisit past editions anytime. If you want more or just prefer to read, you'll love it. Plus, it's a place for us to connect. [00:48:00] Want the backstage pass to Got Marketing? Subscribe [email protected]. Thank you. You listened right up until the end, so why not hit that subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling. Podcast reviews are like warm hugs and they're also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with me, Mia FileMan on Instagram or LinkedIn, and feel free to send me a message. I'm super friendly.
