Digital Marketing is a method to upgrade one’s business with the intent of investing less amount of money. It basically improves user engagement reach because it has the ability to connect to people in ways that weren’t possible before.
Today, we have the CEO and Founder of SpringHill Digital, Naira Perez. Naira is a digital marketing and paid media enthusiast. She shares her unique take on data and digital marketing and how it has gradually changed the marketing industry for the better. Tune in to find out more!
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Naira Perez: Data Driven Millions
This episode is powered by Shatter Your Income Ceiling, my private advanced training that breaks down the framework my clients and I are using to experience consistent $30,000 to $100,000 months in their service-based businesses. Learn more and apply now at WorkWithDarnyelle.com. In this episode, I sit down with Naira Perez. If you have been wondering, questioning, and thinking about leveraging the power of digital marketing to move your business to and beyond the million-dollar mark, you can thank me after you read because Naira and I had the most powerful conversation.
Naira Perez is the Owner and Founder of SpringHill Digital. She got her start in direct response advertising, optimizing paid media plans and placements to achieve maximum ROI for her clients. After two decades in the trenches of product advertising, Naira founded SpringHill in 2016 on the concept that data is always in the driver’s seat.
That is what we talked about a lot. From pay-per-click and integrated campaign design to marketing on a shoestring budget, Naira puts her unique spin on all aspects of digital marketing. Let me tell you something. This conversation was so amazing. My favorite part was when we talked about retargeting.
I am not going to steal Naira’s thunder. I want you to hear it first from her. I will bring you back to your remembrance when we do our outro for the show. Grab your pen and paper, get yourself ready, and get your favorite cup of hot tea, coffee, chocolate, or whatever it is you love. Let’s jump into my conversation with Naira Perez.
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Naira Perez, I am so excited to have you here on the show. How are you?
I am doing great. Thank you.
Before we jump in, why do you not take a quick moment and let everybody know who you are in your own words?
I am a digital marketer. That is who I am. I have tried to be other things. I always come back to digital marketing. I moved to the United States some time ago, and I loved it. I loved business, especially in the United States. I come originally from Spain. I worked in performance-based marketing, which means marketing that is based on data.
I moved through the different iterations of performance marketing. I ended up in social paid media, Google ads, and all of that. I love data, and that is how I live my life. I research everything I do. I look for patterns, trends, and how to improve what we are doing. Even going to a restaurant for me is like, “How can I do these better?” It is unconscious. That is who I am, apart from being a mom and Founder of my own digital agency.
I love it because entrepreneurs, CEOs, and small business owners who do not pay attention to the data are doing a tremendous disservice to their businesses and their businesses bottom line. I love that right out the gate, you are like, “We got to pay attention to the data.” You already know this is where we are going in this conversation because not enough people are paying attention. I have been the very first person to introduce many of our clients, students, and attendees at our live events to the term key performance indicator. That is a problem if you are in business. You should know this.
The data tells us everything we need to know. It allows us to determine our behaviors and what it is that we do. Let’s talk about that. If I am in business, not early stage because we do not have early-stage entrepreneurs and small business owners who read this blog, but people who have made it to that first milestone beyond the six-figure mark. They already know that their business needs to scale up to the million-dollar mark and beyond. What are some things that you think are important that they begin to look at and then, eventually, track to help them make a move to millions?
When our business starts, they try different things. They go for what works. It is organic growth. Once you are there, how do you maintain that growth to get to the next level? At that time, you have to go back to the beginning and go back to looking at who is buying your product or service, what they want, what they need, and where you find people like that to continue talking to them and engaging them. Also, by the sheer volume you have achieved, you may have acquired inefficiencies in your marketing that should be optimized.
The most difficult part is to look back at what you have built with critical eyes. If you have gotten this far, it is because you are successful. Why should you not continue doing the same thing and getting the same results? It is the same thought process that you will look at advertising. Whenever we look at advertising, the first part can be very successful, but maintaining it is where the work is. It’s going back and parsing out what has happened, eliminating inefficiencies, and concentrating on what you can duplicate to continue.
There are so many powerful things that you said. I want to pull out some of the things that I caught to make sure that our readers caught them as well. When you are growing organically, it is okay to take what comes, but when you are ready to scale, you have to go back to the beginning and start seeing what you have done. It is challenging because most people do not want to look back. They want to look ahead. You said there are three questions they need to ask themselves, “Who have they been serving? What do they want, and what do they need next? How can you find them?” It is important to understand that maintaining what you have already done is where the real work comes in.
You have to start concentrating on what you have learned about yourself in order to do that. I do not even know if you realize you said all of that, but that was good. If you are joining us, you are reading a prescription from digital marketing and a data perspective of what you need to be focused on if you have got your mind set on millions. If you truly want to scale your business up, the data is going to be important. It cannot be neglected. If you do not understand how to interpret it, you are going to miss the mark.
You are going to need to have someone on your team who can look at all of the data. Naira, I know there are lots of different data points that we could be looking at. I am not giving you an exact scenario of a specific customer, but in your best estimation, what are the data points that are non-negotiable for a company to be looking at if they desire to scale?
The data points depend on the data sources. Let’s say your customers, as an example. If we look at who has purchased it now, we are going to look at many things. One of them is how much is one customer worth to you. It is not the initial purchase. It is the lifetime value. I want to know the lifetime value of that customer.
Do they come more than one time? How frequently do they come? Do they need other services that we can add to their basic service? That is analyzing what the purchase is. What is that basket? How does it look? Are these customers coming three times? Is it coming four times? There are many business models where they lose money getting customers, but because that customer is going to stay long, then they make up that difference. That is the main part of looking at customers that you have acquired. They are going to give you the clues for customers that you are going to acquire.
They are going to tell you what you should be offering too.
You start the business with a product or a service in mind as you would use it. That does not mean that the marketplace uses it the same way or appreciates it for the same values you started. They may have found new ways to use your product. They may have found new reasons to use your services. Look at that. Look at their feedback. That information is free to you. They are your customers. Interact with them and ask them questions. That is part of our conversation. You and I are talking. You are asking me questions. I am answering them. That is how conversations go. That is how our relationship was established.
When people have a plan and know their KPIs, they can make it work.
Do that with your customers. These people had already raised their hands. They are already interested. Go ahead. Know what their pain points are. Know why they are using your product, how they are using it, and what they look forward to. We have clients thinking about the next step. Instead of coming out in the backend and coming out with a new color or a new model, we are going back to our customer and say, “What do you want? What would motivate you to come back to us?” That is how you move forward. Take those clues and then apply them to the marketplace and the other people who have not bought.
That is so simple, and because it is simple, it is overlooked. How many people go back to the people who have previously purchased from them, ask them why did they purchase it, and then do you need next. It is one thing, and there are business models that clearly create what we call a problem progression plan. They know, “Once I solve this problem, this is the next solution I am going to present to them because they are going to have a new problem, etc.”
When you do not necessarily have a litany of products and services already available for your customers, the best thing to do is to go back and ask those customers. This statistic may be a little old, but I remember years ago reading that 78% of the customers who have invested in themselves through you in the past will continue to do so if you continue to present them with solutions to their next problem.
It is that whole adage, “It is cheaper to keep her.” It is cheaper to keep your existing clients than to go out and get a new one. That is another data point, your client acquisition costs, your customer acquisition costs. If I already have customers that have additional problems, and if I am not trying to solve all of their problems as soon as I meet them and I am focused on that one first immediate need, I then open up an opportunity to present additional solutions to them over time, which cuts out that cost.
Regardless, if I spent $1,000 to acquire that customer in the first place and the first thing they purchased was $1,000, it was a wash. I opened up a relationship that allows me to serve that client for the rest of their life. That lifetime value of that client is $50,000. Who cares about the $1,000 it costs me to get them because now I am going to have $50,000 over their lifetime of them?
For those of you who are reading that have a desire to scale your business up, what Naira is saying that I want you to take a key to is that the place you need to start is looking at your existing customers. Do not go creating new products and services. Talk to the people who have already invested in themselves through your products and services and see whether or not they need something additional that would be easy for your team to create.
That is the first point. That is the first place to start. From there, we can start talking about customer acquisition like, “When does it make sense? How much can I pay for a new customer or a new lead?” You have to have a plan. That is why we started with current customers because if you know the lifetime value, you can get to a cost per customer acquisition and, “How much do I need to pay for a click and a lead and a customer?” That plan does not have any sense if you do not know how much that customer will be for you.
For transparency, we in 2019 started running ads across multiple platforms, the largest being Facebook ads. They are the largest platform. Prior to that, my mindset was so wrong. I do not even know where it came from, but I had this aversion to spending money on advertising without knowing if it was going to produce a client, whereas now, we might spend $50 to get an application for our program. That person fills out that application and they are approved, enrolled, and invest five figures in our program. When I think about myself, who is open to advertising, I am like, “Why were you so afraid of it? Did you spend $50 to make 5-figures? What are we talking about?”
I want you to talk about that because I am sure you see this all the time in your space. People are coming in, and they are like, “I want to get customers, but I do not want it to cost that much.” How do you help people break through that barrier and that small-mindedness? That is what it is that is going to keep them not being able to get in front of the customers they say they want to serve if they are unwilling to spend the money. What would you say to someone if you were in consultation with them?
We use data and a plan. You can demonstrate very objectively that when people have a plan and know their KPIs, they can make it work. If I set out a plan in front of you and tell you, “Your cost per acquisition is X. Your cost per lead has to be Y. Your cost per click has to be X.” You can see how you can progress. You can see where we will move the leverage and where we will optimize to get you there.
Also, we start with pilot programs. You will say that you do not feel comfortable investing $10,000. I get it. Nobody is comfortable investing $10,000. Let’s start with $2,000. Let’s start boosting the messages. Let’s start showing you for a very small investment what the learnings you are going to get and how much you are going to get even if you do not get the customer you want right away.
We are going to learn so much that by the time you are done with this test, you are going to have the learnings to improve your business. It is much easier than buying research studies that do not relate to your business directly and that are in the industry but not to your business directly. It is much easier and cheaper to advertise and get learnings than go and do focus groups, which are very limited. I love focus groups, but they are a very limited view of what your customers want and think. Through advertising and social media, you get feedback. It is another barrier to entry because a lot of people are afraid of negative feedback. People will comment on ads as if they were posts.
They are as honest or even more because they feel like they can be even more honest or meaner because you are paying for ads. It generates sometimes. Do not be afraid of those things because those are opportunities. They are opportunities to see where your product or service or messaging is failing or where do you have to educate your clients or your audience. We have had a lot of businesses that are high-priced products. The first thing that audiences are going to comment on is, “This is too expensive.”
It is expensive, but let me tell you why. Let me tell you why you want to pay more. Let me tell you the love and the quality that we put in. Let me tell you all the things that we do to make these products superior to any other competitor that can sell it cheaper. They can sell it cheaper because they do not take these measures. It is an education process.
Whenever you take it that way, those negative comments look like opportunities and learning experiences. In social media, advertising is going to give you learnings that you could not get any other way. Between the data, process, plan, and learnings, and we have case studies for all of them, people accept that, “This is an opportunity that I should explore.”
Do you often get people who are confused about the difference between advertising on Google versus advertising on social media?
Advertising in different channels means different things.
Yes, very often. Advertising in different channels means different things. In Google, people are looking for something. If they are looking for snow tires, they have a car that needs them. Normally, those searches spike in the winter. It is an opportunity. However, you do not know who is buying and searching.
It could be a student making a paper on snow tire effectiveness or somebody who wants to buy, but you know they are in the frame of mind. The offer that you are going to give them or the place where you are going to try them is different than whenever you know the profile of the person but you do not know their frame of mind. You do not know where they are in their customer journey.
In social media, it is more about education. It is brand awareness. You know who that person is. It is a male or a female, 35 years old, with a family that has an SUV and lives in Denver, Colorado. You know who that person is, but you do not know if they need snow tires or not. It is an education process on why my snow tires are better than the competitors. Why should you consider snow tires whenever it snows an inch or more, etc.? They are different frames of mind, and they are complementary.
Do you think that education-based advertising is better than Google advertising? Do you have a preference? Do you base it on the client, depending upon where they are and what they do?
I base it on the client. I base it on the product and the industry. Is it something that you are easily understood? In Google search, normally, because they are in the frame of mind, you do not need as much education. It is more of a direct conversion than in social media.
We are in the midst of a pandemic. A lot of things that we used to do offline are not feasible. Coming into the digital landscape and updating businesses in order to be able to be seen and found online is essential. What are some of the other variables that are essential to be discovered online? Whether you are choosing traditional advertising, Google, or social media or not, what are the other things I need to consider outside of my messaging in order to be able to be effective and to get those people to start the journey, whatever my funnel or my life cycle is per click? What else do I need to consider in that?
The first thing is, do you have a plan for after they click on your ad? That is the most overlooked part of advertising. Once you tell people what to do, are you letting them do it? Meaning, you are telling them to come to Learn More, but they go to a buy page. That is wrong. You turn them to Learn More, but you are telling them when they arrive to Buy Now without more information or the opposite. You are telling them to Buy Now, but then they arrive on a Learn More page.
Make sure that the promise you made and the actions you told them to do are what they end up seeing after they click and enable them. Let’s say you have a Learn More, let’s say you have a B2B business, and you want to get leads. You offer something, they give you their information, and you have a lead. Now what? What is the next step? They are not going to buy it right away. You have to have a plan to nurture that relationship. If it is a B2C consumer, they arrive on the landing page, but it is not the right time. How are you going to reach back to them? How are you going to retarget them?
Retargeted audiences are people that lifted their hands. They say, “I like this, but it is not the right time now.” Would you call them later? Would you establish that relationship? “We like each other at the beginning when we maybe are going to date, and then something happens. I will call you in a month. Keep in touch.”
The definition you gave for retargeting makes it so easy to get and understand, “I like this, but now is not the right time.” It’s being there when they need it. In your world, is there a general rule of thumb of how many times you should present yourself to a potential client through advertising? Are there 5 times, 8 times? Is there a specific number of times?
I found very good conversions anywhere from 4 to 7 times. That is how often. Depending on the product, if it is health-related or something that you eat, it may be longer because it takes more education. Whenever you talk to people about retargeting, they normally talk about it in a negative way as users, “I bought the coffee maker, and here they are advertising the coffee maker again.”
That is bad retargeting. The first thing that I want to say about retargeting is, from retargeting, take anybody that has already purchased. You do not want to annoy them. You do not want to propose to your wife again and again. You already got married. Why do we not work on those anniversaries? Why do we not work on something else?
Take them out. If after seven times of landing on your landing page, they have not converted, 7 or 10 times, depending on the product, give them a break. Maybe they are not interested. This is the secret to good retargeting and good nurturing of a relationship between a brand and an audience. Make sure you listen to them. Are they coming and doing something different? Are they still interested? If they are not, stop. Give them a break. If they are, but it is not the right time, continue gently. That is the key to real good marketing and advertising. It is thinking about it as a relationship. You do not want to be overwhelming. You want to be insistent. You want to be there for them, and you want to listen.
That’s good. You said, “You do not want to be overwhelming. You want to be present for them.”
You want to be present. You want to listen. You want to be insistent but not overwhelming. Segmenting the audience is where good marketing is applied.
Segmenting can only happen the more data you have. That is why we need that. Take us all the way back to the beginning. This is great. For those of you who are reading, I hope you got an amazing crash course in things that you need to be cognizant of if you want to scale your business. Can you get to the million-dollar mark organically? Technically, yes, you can. It is going to be a lot more work.
Do you have a plan for after people click on your ad? That is the most overlooked part of advertising.
You get to the point where when you are trying to volumize, and you have a decision to make, “Am I going to spend my time? Am I going to spend my money?” They will both get you there, but spending your time means you need lots of resource teams or face burnout in your business. You do not even have the time and energy to do what you do for your clients because you are so busy trying to find new clients.
You get to the point where spending the money makes more sense. Now you are allowing the algorithms and the data already been collected, whether it is Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. You are letting their data work with your targeting to present yourself consistently in front of the people you want to know about what it is that you bring to the table.
When you take Naira’s suggestions around retargeting, you make sure that you have a robust campaign in place to present yourself to them from 4 to 10 times in order to evaluate whether or not the time has now come for them to be interested in your product or service to solve the problem they cannot solve it on their own.
You do open up a viable relationship because it is all about relationships. I love that definition that Naira gave about marketing. Marketing is about the relationship. Your goal is not to overwhelm. It is to be present and insistent in your potential client’s life and the life cycle of whatever it is that your products and service solve for them. That is so phenomenal, Naira. Is there anything else we should tell people before we end our conversation about this amazing overview that you have offered to them?
It touches on what you said. At some point, you do have to pay for it because your organic reach is going to be limited. That is very common. All platforms are pay-to-play, and they are limiting their organic reach for many reasons, but one of them is they want you to pay. It is good to pay because whenever you pay to get to an audience, you get to decide who that audience is. Even if you are trying to grow your followers and all of a sudden, your followers are kept at a certain number, why not get more followers from the people you know would like your message?
When you pay, you get to decide who those people are, bring them to your house, and then invite them over for dinner and establish that relationship. Paying for advertising can be good with the right approach. The approach that you and I have established is a relationship. Whenever you look at it that way, it is a win-win situation for both parties.
Before I let you go, I have three questions that I will ask you as a way to round out our time together. My first question is, what is the last book you read?
The last book I read is a children’s book. It is a good book, but it is in Spanish. It is called El Chico de la Flecha. It means, “The boy of the arrow.” It goes back to when Spain was by the Romans. It is a historical book.
What would you say is your favorite quote?
My favorite quote is not as much of a quote as it is a speech given out at a university by an admiral. It was about you need to make your bed every day. Make your bed every day because when you start your day and make your bed, you have already accomplished something. Start your day in a positive way. If you have a bad day, you come back to a perfectly made bed that will comfort you.
My last question is, what is one tool you swear by to continue moving your business forward?
I like our reporting tool. It is called DashThis. If you are running in different channels in different campaigns, it puts it in a very simple way to understand. They do not know what I am saying, but I liked them. They have awesome customer service. We use it as our reporting tool.
I want to thank you so much for being here. This conversation was awesome. I know you guys got some great stuff from Naira. Thank you so much for being here, Naira.
Thank you for inviting me. It was a pleasure talking to you.
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You thought I was joking when I said that she gave you the tea on everything you need in digital marketing. It was phenomenal. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. There were so many things that Naira talked about that did it. I love the way she puts words together. There is this natural evolution in the way she describes the whole process. It’s the fact that marketing is like a relationship and that you do not want to be overwhelming. You want to be present and insistent. That was phenomenal.
It’s talking about going back to the basics and understanding the importance of knowing your customer. A lot of guests on this show talk about knowing yourself. Naira talked about knowing your customer and using that data and what that data tells you to be able to get in front of the clients you want to service.
I love the difference between why you might use Google versus social media for your advertising. Google, we know that people are looking for something. Social media is about education and brand awareness. That was powerful for me, and then the retargeting piece and breaking that down for you was phenomenal. If you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, you might want to connect directly to Naira. You can start your journey to leveraging the power of digital media to make your move to millions. I will see you guys next time.
