Author Susan Merlo On How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Flexibility is essential to have a successful career as a digital marketer. When it comes to digital, you must plan for things to go wrong because a lot can go wrong with every aspect of this job. When technology is involved, things can often take longer than expected. One tiny piece of data in the wrong place can throw off a massive project.
Marketing a product or service today is easier than ever before in history. Using platforms like Facebook ads or Google ads, a company can market their product directly to people who perfectly fit the ideal client demographic, at a very low cost. Digital Marketing tools, Pay per Click ads, and email marketing can help a company dramatically increase sales. At the same time, many companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools often see disappointing results.
In this interview series called “How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales”, we are talking to marketers, advertisers, brand consultants, & digital marketing gurus who can share practical ideas from their experience about how to effectively leverage the power of digital marketing, PPC, & email.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Susan Merlo.
Susan Merlo, author of the forthcoming book The Digital Distributor and owner of Next Level iMedia and The Digital Distributor Program, is a digital sales and marketing strategist. She helps distributors digitally communicate their value to generate, then qualify, leads so that they can have businesses that are working for them in a way that their buyers prefer. As a consultant, Susan walks hand-in-hand with distributors as they integrate digital marketing solutions into their digital sales systems.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Sure. I started my work career on a very traditional corporate path. I started as a secretary, taking night courses in college. Once I graduated, I worked in human resources for about 15 years.
In 2002, I went on maternity leave, which was right around when sites like eBay and Amazon were catching fire. At that time, Amazon was well-known for selling used books and CDs and eBay was known for selling everything else. So I started selling everything I could get my hands on via eBay or Amazon. I quickly discovered there’s nothing I like better than waking up to unexpected money in my bank account. From there, I built my first eCommerce store and sold small kitchen appliances.
I ran that business for about three or four years, and in doing so, I learned how to build websites. After that, the eCommerce business evolved into selling websites. And that was my first step into marketing, which, at the time, I knew nothing about.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Oh my gosh, yes! During my time selling websites, there were various platforms available (this was before WordPress was around.) The platform I worked with allowed the site owners to add various elements for the site such as the title and subtitle of the website, the content for the about page, contact information, etc. One of the fields where you could contribute were the keywords. When my clients asked me what they were supposed to write in the keyword section, I would tell them it didn’t matter. Because I had never heard of a keyword before, I just assumed that if keywords were necessary, I would have heard of them. I know that today this sounds ludicrous, but back then, there wasn’t much published about search engine optimization or keywords.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Yes, I have a few people to thank for helping me get to where I am today. But, the one who stands out the most is John Assaraf. In 2009 he created a program called “Having it All,” a program meant to improve every aspect of one’s life. The members of the program met with John every week. Some weekly guests brought knowledge that I never even knew existed. Friendships and connections were formed during that program, which are still invaluable. It was life-changing.
Then coming out of that program, I enrolled in John’s business coaching program, which taught me a lot of what I know about marketing today. I worked with John’s coaching group in one way or another for what turned out to be some very formative years for me. Between the Having it All program and the business coaching, it was a time that significantly shaped my future.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
For the past eight or so years, I’ve worked as a marketing consultant exclusively in the wholesale distribution industry. The wholesale distribution industry is unique because they’ve depended solely on face-to-face sales and traditional marketing for many years — until COVID. Digital was simply not in their DNA.
Needless to say, before COVID, serving this industry was an uphill battle. But I was determined because I knew what they didn’t know, and it was my mission to help my clients utilize digital marketing strategies. So what makes me stand out? Well, two things. The first is that I think I’m probably the only nut that stuck it out and continued to fight that good fight. Today, of course, there are a few others. The second is that I am a woman in a male-dominated industry, which added to my uphill battle.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
The first character trait would be my ability to form lasting relationships with my colleagues, whether employees, clients, or mentors. I have a few of each that have stuck with me for close to 10 years.
The second character trait I would point to would be my resilience. When I started building my business, I had a newborn, and a few months before my son was born, my son’s father, my boyfriend, was diagnosed with cancer. So, suddenly, I was a full-time caretaker to both for three years until Ken passed away. After that, I was a single mom with no support whatsoever. But, because of the program I mentioned earlier, John Assaraf’s “Having it All,” I was able to bounce back from a very dark time in my life.
The third character trait I would say is resourcefulness. Building this business was tough but extremely necessary to keep a roof over our heads. Because I had a baby and a very sick man in my life, I needed to be able to control my time and my income, which was incredibly difficult at times. There were many “borrowing from Peter to pay Paul” situations. I could barely put food on our table at times, and my mortgage has been leveraged so much through these past years that it won’t be paid off until I’m 95! Nevertheless, I kept the business running, my clients happy, and my employees always got paid.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Yes, very exciting, in fact. I’m having a new book published next month by a very well-known publisher in the wholesale distribution industry. The fact that they are publishing it gives it a lot of credibility. I wrote the book to help distributors understand why and how they must implement digital sales and marketing strategies.
As I mentioned above, this is an industry built on face-to-face sales. But, because of COVID, customers no longer want to do face-to-face meetings, and they have learned that turning to the Internet for answers is a lot quicker than speaking to a salesperson.
Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. As we mentioned in the beginning, sometimes companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools like PPC campaigns often see disappointing results. In your opinion, what are a few of the biggest mistakes companies make when they first start out with digital marketing? If you can, please share an example for each.
A big mistake I see is a person’s lack of setting goals and measuring success. If you don’t measure something, you will never know whether or not it’s working. The nice thing about digital is that everything is measurable. People must take advantage of that to understand what’s working and what isn’t. This way, they can do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t. It used to be that people would say, “I know half of my marketing is working … I just don’t know which half!” That shouldn’t be the case any longer.
Another mistake I see is a lack of patience and poor budgeting. It can take a while to realize or recognize a good ROI on your marketing investment. New campaigns will always need to be tweaked. Again, because everything is measurable, if a campaign is not working or performing, you must isolate different aspects of the campaign to see what’s off. And this could take a lot of time. Companies need to budget for the time it takes to correct a campaign that’s not performing. It could take anywhere from 30 to 60 to 90 to 120 days. And when it comes to pay-per-click, that can get very expensive. So the best rule of thumb is to start slowly and test everything before diving into the deep end.
If you could break down a very successful digital marketing campaign into a “blueprint”, what would that blueprint look like? Please share some stories or examples of your ideas.
The first step of a successful digital marketing campaign begins with knowing who the target audience is. You’ve got to know their demographics, their pain points, their goals, the obstacles they’re facing, and what your company or your customer’s company can do to help. Helping your audience achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle should be the key focus of any campaign.
The next step would be to plan and create content to communicate to your audience that your mission is to do just that, help them overcome pain points and obstacles, and meet goals. But it’s more than it sounds.
When you’re face to face with your audience, it’s easy, but from a digital standpoint, you must use fairly sophisticated marketing automation to ensure your target audience sees those messages that convey that information. So a vital part of that blueprint is understanding the buyer’s journey, creating content that will appeal to a customer or target audience throughout their journey, drawing them closer to the bottom of the sales funnel.
The next critical item would be to ensure your marketing automation system supports the buyer’s journey you’d like to lay out. You’ll need a keen ability to recognize the difference between a sales-qualified lead and a marketing-qualified lead, ensuring a sales-qualified lead is passed to a salesperson at the right time. All of this falls under the umbrella of marketing automation.
The blueprint would include two other essential elements. The first would be a solid alignment between the marketing and sales teams, and the other would be the ability to measure the success of every step in that sales cycle. I don’t think any of these items I’ve named can be skipped, although I’ve seen many companies try to cut corners and ignore many of these steps. But, of course, these are the same companies that will say things like “marketing automation doesn’t work,” or “their CRM doesn’t work,” etc.
Let’s talk about Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) for a bit. In your opinion which PPC platform produces the best results to increase sales?
My thought is that it’s a tie between Facebook and Google when it comes to effective PPC campaigns.
Google has perfected its ability to have users laser target market their audiences. Google provides the tools, KPIs, training, and everything someone would need to know to run a successful PPC campaign. Plus, Google has a tremendously far reach. We rarely see websites that host advertising but don’t run Google ads on their page. So when you combine all of that with Google algorithms, it’s a home run.
I’m also a big fan of what advertisers can do using Meta (formerly Facebook and Instagram). Especially with the ability to zero in on and re-market to an audience. Meta’s demographic data is gold for a B2C advertising campaign. I believe it can also be beneficial in B2B business because although people aren’t using Facebook or Instagram for business resources, they still go on it and see the ads.
Can you please share 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful PPC campaign?
Those three things would be:
- A clear understanding of who your audience is.
- A good keyword strategy.
- An understanding of the platform on which you’re advertising. For example, while Meta is incredibly data-rich, they keep changing their platform, which wastes precious time if you’re not keeping up with the changes.
Let’s now talk about email marketing for a bit. In your opinion, what are the 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful email marketing campaign that increases sales?
I sound like a broken record but knowing your audience is critical for email marketing. There’s nothing more annoying than receiving and opening an irrelevant email. It wastes time when you send people things that don’t pertain to them.
The second thing I would say is to have a segmented list that is up to date. If your email list is outdated or stale, there’s a good chance that your email client, the company you used to send your email, will not send to your entire list because those outdated or stale emails will bounce. In other words, if you have too many undeliverable email addresses on your list, you will get penalized, affecting your ability to land in someone’s inbox.
The third key I will point to is to have a good copywriter. When your salesperson can’t get in front of a prospect, you may need your email to do the selling for you. With that in mind, you’ll want to have compelling email messaging with a strong call to action. It’s also worth mentioning that your customers are looking for value from you, so don’t send many sales emails. Instead, send them email that will help them with their business or a problem that you can solve for them, but don’t make it salesy. Use the 80/20 rule where you send 80% helpful information and 20% sales-related. Better yet, go for 90/10, and your email recipients will love you for it!
What are the other digital marketing tools that you are passionate about? If you can, can you share with our readers what they are and how to best leverage them?
Well, I’m incredibly passionate about marketing automation. Marketing automation can mean a few things, but in a nutshell, anything you can automate while still having your messaging personalized, such as email marketing or live chat on a website, is incredibly valuable to your marketing capabilities. It adds efficiency, saving time and money, and in many cases, extending your reach in your market.
Good marketing automation tools can personalize communications and track prospects throughout their sales journey, alerting the sales team when that prospect is ripe for a purchase.
A CRM is an essential digital marketing tool because that is where all of the data that your marketing automation system acquires is going to be stored and accessed by a salesperson. A salesperson’s job must be as frictionless as possible. Without sales, there is no business. So the more data collected about a prospect, the better prepared the salesperson will be.
Here is the main question of our series. Can you please tell us the 5 things you need to create a highly successful career as a digital marketer? Can you please share a story or example for each?
The first thing would be a plan. Your plan should dictate the direction you want to take your career and the path to get there. For example, digital marketers come in many different shapes and sizes. Some digital marketers only do social media, or perhaps they only do pay-per-click advertising for customers, or maybe they only do search engine optimization tasks or copywriting. Of course, many digital marketers will do all of the above. Still, in my opinion, when you specialize in one area or another, it’s easier to build your platform as an authority.
The second thing would be a passion for the industry. There are a lot of digital marketers out there, and it can be competitive and it can be frustrating. You can also have customers who make your job tricky. However, having that passion and love for doing your work will get you through difficult times. Remember that regardless of how many digital marketers are out there, there will always be plenty of work. A digital marketer’s job is never done.
The third thing I will say is knowledge. Digital tools, how they work, and what they can do, change constantly. You must stay updated and familiar with any changes that affect your customers or the work you perform. Knowing the value of the various digital tools is important as well. Try to find the tools from which you get the best ROI. Tools like Canva, WordPress, HootSuite and other social posting tools — there are so many that are free or require a small investment on which you can build an entire business. Choose wisely and stay up to date with all of them.
The fourth thing someone would need to create a highly successful career in digital marketing is confidence. While I said above that it’s important to stay knowledgeable, it’s impossible to know everything. Sometimes, a customer or a prospect will ask you a question, and you won’t know the answer. How you respond in this situation can be the difference between whether or not you land them or keep them as a client. So always be confident, be honest about what you know or might not know, and answer with a promise to get the information requested. Remember, when it comes to digital marketing, if you stay up to date as best you can, chances are you’ll always be the most competent person in the room.
The last thing I would say is flexibility is essential to have a successful career as a digital marketer. When it comes to digital, you must plan for things to go wrong because a lot can go wrong with every aspect of this job. When technology is involved, things can often take longer than expected. One tiny piece of data in the wrong place can throw off a massive project.
Digital marketing is not a nine-to-five job, but when you plan your time well, it’s a business that can give you a lot of freedom. For example, when I started, I would jokingly say all I needed was a phone and a computer. But, of course, you need a lot more than that. But once you do have the five things I mentioned above, you really only need a computer and a phone. And in many cases, in fact, you just need the phone!
What books, podcasts, videos or other resources do you use to sharpen your marketing skills?
My most valuable resource regarding what I do for a living is Google. I use Google for everything. Everything I wonder about or might have a question about, I go to Google. And I learn a lot from other marketers by doing so. I use Google to look up words, find synonyms, find shortcuts for different software or operating systems, check facts, find images, get ideas, and the list goes on.
To sharpen my marketing skills, I listen to podcasts and watch videos from David Meltzer, Roland Fraser, Joe Polish, and anything from Strategic Coach I can get my hands on. In addition, I read books that keep my mind sharp and organized, like Atomic Habits by James Clear and Limitless by Jim Kwik. I will also go onto the Clubhouse app to see what other marketers are up to. Some very forward-thinking marketers there share tremendously valuable information for free. It’s an outstanding resource for sharpening one’s marketing skills.
Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I think the world today lacks kindness, so I would love to start a movement that would catalyze kindness in every human being, myself included. I could never understand why kindness is not an automatic go-to in our society. I think we all work too hard, we’ve become too materialistic and competitive, and I imagine the pressure that brings affects how we treat others. So with that, I would say my movement would be toward a mandatory four-day work week.
How can our readers further follow your work?
The best way to follow me would be via LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanmerlo/ . I have a newsletter there and share a lot of articles and tips about digital marketing. Please reach out and connect with me! I’d love to meet all of the readers here at Authority Magazine.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
Author Susan Merlo On How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
