Jon Katinsky and Javier Santana - Marketing for small businesses

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the Creator Space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.

On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like, how can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don't burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey. These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

Today, we're kicking off a three episode series where we take a deep dive into a topic alongside seasoned professionals. In this episode, we're focusing on marketing strategies for small businesses. We're joined by Jon Katinsky, the president of Hothouse, a branding content and design house. And Javier Santana, the Chief Experience Officer of Chemistry Agency. Guys, welcome to the show.

[00:01:09] Javier Santana: Glad to be here. Glad to be here.

[00:01:10] Jon Katinsky: Thank you for having us.

[00:01:11] Sanjay Parekh: Before we kick into the real meaty questions, I'd love for you guys to both give us kind of a couple of minutes on your background and what got you to where you are today. Jon, if you wouldn't mind, let's start with you.

[00:01:22] Jon Katinsky: Happy to do it. I come from an entrepreneurial family, so it was probably a destiny that I was going to own my own agency someday, but I took a circuitous route to doing it, after college, I got my first marketing job and worked for American Express travel services. So I became, a brand manager for American Express.

I had the tough first real job of moving to Hawaii for a year and launching American Express's Hawaii vacation line. From that point forward, I think my career was all downhill. I worked for American Express in marketing for about five years. I started what would be a pattern in my life, which is shifting between working for agencies and working client side.

So after American Express, I worked for a public relations agency, running their hotel business for Courtyard by Marriott and flipped back to another agency where I did sports marketing and brand activation. And that led me to a fantastic job at Nike. I helped Nike launch their regional marketing practice, out of Atlanta.

We started a marketing office in the Southeast. We had to basically activate all of our sponsorship deals with professional teams, college teams. It was a trial that worked really well. And I moved out to Beaverton, Oregon to run that program for the US so did that, had a wonderful time doing it.

My wife is from the South and missed the sunshine, living in Portland, Oregon. So came back here. I worked for Turner sports. I ran sports marketing for TNT and TBS, for a number of years. And, from there I used that, as a launching pad to start Hot House. So I wanted to own my own marketing agency and I was lucky enough that Turner sports and Nike were my very first clients.

[00:03:13] Sanjay Parekh: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we are all crying for you for your first job being in Hawaii.

[00:03:19] Jon Katinsky: It's never been the same since.

[00:03:22] Sanjay Parekh: That's awesome. Javier, what about you? Give us your background.

[00:03:24] Javier Santana: Wow. So yeah, very similar to Jon. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. And it's one of those things that I've always wanted to work for myself or at least be a part of something really big where I had a lot of decision, power, I started this business as a graffiti artist.

And, illustrator. And eventually that led me to be hired by graphic designers and those graphic designers pushed me to become a graphic designer. Then I became an art director of photography, did that whole stunt, in Miami and then, windows 95 changed the world, right? I became obsessed with the web.

I became like truly obsessed. I started, I went back to school and actually dropped out because what they were teaching was moving a lot slower than the technology boom that we were seeing. I, became immersed into everything that was Cisco, Microsoft, back in those days, the MCSC certification. And I was off, I was in Miami at the time and I was offered a job in Atlanta by a company named Convergence.com. I dug in my locker and I found it. And, I worked with them for a while running a network ops, support desk, all kinds of stuff. And then I just went for probably about three years where I was working on the data over cable. Side of the business, and, which incredible journey, because at the time the transformation was insane, like the speed that technology was moving was just really exciting.

And eventually I had to eject from it because it was making my brain hurt. That's not how I naturally think I'm a creative. And, my left brain was, hurting a lot. But we went, eventually went back, started working on the agency side. I started a small shop, closed that down, went to work for another agency, eventually being my way to home depot.com back in 2008, and this was right around the time where e-commerce was in a big boom, right? Like people were starting to take it seriously. So I did that for about three and a half years and, helped work with their teams on the, dot com side, but also became the head of their, their more immersive experiences.

So I helped launch the first mobile e-commerce app. Which at the time, 2010 was a really big deal. In store kiosk experiences and all these things that got maybe really excited, to the point where I wanted to do it more and more, but not for just one client, I wanted many clients. So I started at my own agency and I started servicing some really fun, incredible clients and working with companies like Salesforce, Mitsubishi Electric, Honeywell Aerospace, and to be able to do the work with these folks and you become this, almost like polyglot of industry. Because you're learning so many different little party tricks, right? Because I could talk about how to change alternative fuels for, turbines in, a power plant because of the work that we did with GE Electric, right?

So like little things like that is for me was the most exciting thing. I've been a career student all my life. I love learning and specifically understanding the consumer behavior and what changes it. So that is my obsession. This is what I, why I do what I do at chemistry. Just looking at the landscape and what are the opportunities not only really thinking about how to create a digital experience, but how to create experience that crosses the line between digital and physical because of course, we're walking around with a personal computer in our pockets. There's all these different ways that you can connect with consumers and just constantly looking for ways to create an almost like an atom where the, consumer is the nucleus of that ecosystem. So that's, where, I live in, at least in my own head. And that's, and that's the kind of stuff, that we do and how I got here.

[00:06:51] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. That story there is, it's very quintessential founder, where, we just love learning about things and your point about colleges and education not being, it was definitely like that when we were in college, I think it's gotten better now, but it's still not, at that point, it's still, behind. It's great that we have vehicles like this, to be able to talk to experts and be able to, understand what is the state of art and how should we be running our businesses.

With that as a jumping off point, let's talk about, both of you work with very large companies and I assume there's small companies too. So when you're dealing with these small companies that have maybe never had any kind of marketing strategy around them, how do you think about that in terms of advising them and understanding, how to put this, structure into place?

Jon, do you want to kick us off first?

[00:07:44] Jon Katinsky: Yeah, happy to. We're, in an interesting situation as, I guess we're, we're an agency that solves for problems of the attention economy. We're trying to generate and earn the right kind of attention and convert that into business results.

We do a lot of content work for very, large brands, fortune 500, Fortune 1000 brands. But we also work with a lot of what we call mid-market brands, brands that people haven't heard of before, but they have aspirations, they have budgets, they have smart people, they have good products and services.

And so when we think about those brands, it's our job to help them, start with a great strategy, make sure they understand their consumer, Javier, I'm sure I can talk about this all day. The consumer rules, everything. And if it's B2B, your customer, they are setting the rules for how they want to be engaged.

So we start there. I think with, small brands and midsize brands, it's about helping them make hard choices. You're never going to be able to do everything you want or need to do. And if your strategy is good and your expectations are realistic and, we really start by defining what success looks like.

And you really have to be prepared to, depending on your budgets and your resources, stair step your way to success in many cases.

[00:09:02] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah.

[00:09:02] Javier Santana: And Jon, you said something really, really important there, right? Because priority is everything, right? If you try to do everything at you're never going to be able to accomplish anything.

But it's really interesting because I think that for specifically for small businesses and in some cases, medium sized businesses, they tend to talk to each other rather than to the consumer. That's just a very common thing. Using buzzwords and lingo that really only makes sense to you and it's really difficult.

For people to resonate with what you actually do as a business. So helping them really get buttoned up first is really how we look at it. For some of my former clients that I have worked with that were like, like mid, small, mid market, we would do a lot of audits for their content or whatever it is that they're trying to push out into the world.

And then we would dissect it. And then we would test it with their supposed consumer and get real raw feedback about what meant what and what people resonated with. And that was really important, but I think getting buttoned up is so important. A lot of businesses are moving so fast that, their web properties are not saying the same thing as their collateral is.

And to be able to bring all that together to have one unified voice is so important. And I think that's a foundationally something that needs to happen really early on and that a lot of people don't invest the time into doing it because they're immediately want to go make money. Hey, we got to go to market. We got to get, we got to pay ourselves. But if you don't take the time, even if you're- I think Jon, you said it yesterday, fixing the plane while you're flying or something along those lines. Somebody said that to me yesterday, stuck. You have to really take a moment to while you're out there hustling, while you're out there, selling and creating products, whatever it is to really dedicate some time in between to solve your own internal problems or before you know it, it'll be a very difficult thing to recover from.

[00:10:49] Jon Katinsky: Could not agree more. And one of the things I think you just mentioned it, the leaner your resources are, the more important it is that you're buttoned up and you're ready to optimize the opportunities that come your way. If you've got a small advertising budget and you're trying to drive e-commerce, you better be sure that your landing pages are ready to go, that everything is optimized because you are going to spend your money trying to drive traffic and you want to be able to optimize that traffic.

So a lot of businesses, I think there are things they can do to be better ready for the opportunities that are going to come their way and a lot of times if you're spending your money and you're not ready to optimize, then you're, throwing some money away.

[00:11:34] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So I think you guys, have hit upon a really important kind of, piece there.

So for most small businesses, they've got this sea of opportunities that they're, trying to hit, right? Obviously there's a website and then there's collateral, the physical collateral. But then there's LinkedIn and then there's TikTok and there's Twitter or X and blue sky and threads.

And there's all of these things and a lot of them, and there's Facebook, of course, there's so many things and they start some of these things and they can't keep up with keeping them all up to date. So, what should somebody like that do? How should they think about this and how should they organize their efforts when they know they don't have enough manpower?

They don't have enough money to be able to execute all of these things. How should they think about the things that they do on a day to day, week to week basis?

[00:12:28] Javier Santana: So I'll start here, Jon, and this goes back to exactly what Jon said earlier, prioritize, right? You don't belong on every channel.

I've, had clients are in industrial manufacturing and they're considering, going to ted talk, like your audience is not there. You know what I mean? So I think that you have to really understand, your consumer, understand where they are, meet them where they are.

And then prioritize and focus on those specific channels. Everybody wants to have a lovely website and a big website. But, to Jon's point, if you're not ready and you're dumping money into media, it's going to flop, right? So you have to be, you can't have the same conversation everywhere.

You have to have the same voice and tone, but you have to be in the case of X, you have to be short and brief, right? In the case of Facebook, right? Are people really doing business there? No, but you want to have presence. That's a different conversation that you're having. So I think that it's really thinking about the channels that where your consumers are.

What is important to the consumer and to you as a business and then focus and don't go on TikTok if you're an investor in manufacturing, right? And I think it's just, like one of those things where, there's just an audience, that just does not live everywhere.

And I think that's just something that investing into understanding that. And where people are consuming content is so important in the very beginning.

[00:13:44] Jon Katinsky: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's always this sort of balancing act, between performance and branding and they don't have to be mutually exclusive, but depending on what someone's, objectives are, depending on where they are in their brand, brand lifespan.

Sometimes you need to try to do both and it's a tricky balancing act, but it does not do much good to be transactional and drive business growth if you're not going to be remembered. And if you spend all your time trying to be remembered, but you're not getting conversions, you're not going to be in business very long.

I think for all the right reasons, it again starts with the consumer and I think brands need to figure out, what does success look like and focus on that success. And sometimes that success is going to be, getting traction with a specific consumer segment. Because you can prove to yourself that it works and you can expand it.

But small businesses never have enough money. They never have enough resources and these are all hard decisions, but the brands that embrace those hard decisions and have a clarity about what success looks like, they're going to do better.

[00:14:53] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1990.

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[00:15:08] Sanjay Parekh: So let's drill into that a little bit of what does success look like? How do you measure success? You do things and okay, for some people, it's like, oh, this TikTok video went viral, but does that really matter at the end of the day? So how do both of you think about this for your clients in terms of how do you measure what is working and what needs to stop?

[00:15:31] Jon Katinsky: It's funny. It really depends on the brand and where they are. We've had clients that are selling it, retail their e-commerce. They're trying to expand into retail and they've got both opportunities. And if you're going to be measured by how well did your product move off the shelves at Walmart or at Target.

And you've also got an e-commerce business and you've got to split the baby and choose between them. If you spread your efforts too thin, you're not going to be successful anywhere. And so in many cases, if you're trying to grow your business at retail, that is a very specific strategy to make that work.

And you want to look like you're supporting the brand and supporting the retailer. You want to look like you're driving traffic. You're going to be relying on retailer data to decide if you're succeeding or not, that's a very different approach than if you are an e-com company and you're literally going to see how effective your advertising is day in and day out by traffic and conversions.

It really depends on the nature of the business. And if you're a B2B company, that's a whole different sort of way of going to market. So I think, How do you and I have both had experience working with B2B and B2C companies of all shapes and sizes and everyone, there are lessons you can take from one to the other, but everyone's problem is somewhat unique and you really have to look at it that way.

[00:16:58] Javier Santana: Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I think it's interesting because, yeah, how do you measure success? I think, yes, obviously there's the metrics of it all right. And what does, the uptick in conversion, but market and the current times that we live in may affect that, right? But I think that the way to, it's not only measure success in, a small way, like we got a big win on a project, but overall success, I think is important that we'll, let's start with the fact that digital properties are living and breathing thing.

These things are not like a one and done. It's not like back in the day when we do an ad, put it in a magazine and see how it, how it performed. This is really like a, something that you have to continuously, measure, test, shift or pivot very quickly, based on how people are interacting with your campaign, your ad, whatever that may be in order to almost manufacture a win, because if you throw it all out there and you wait to see the metrics and the metrics are not good, then you're back to the drawing board.

But if you're paying attention while it's actually in action and we have that luxury in digital, then you can actually shift and pivot while the campaign is alive. And that really helps us. Like almost tailor a successful mission. So I always tell my client partners that, when you're out there and you put, some media out, some paid media that's pointing back somewhere, don't measure it on a monthly basis.

Measure it on a weekly, like start paying attention to that. How quickly, because if something's not performing, let's replace it quick. Let's not wait till the end of the month. And let's try to start seeing, what's going to get us to success. And I also push people to do a lot of AB testing and to speak to their customers.

You'd be shocked that 9 of your customers, if you ask them, can you please provide some, some guidance here based on how we're speaking to you and based on how we're presenting these things. They're going to give you feedback, right? Because they're your loyal customers and you're a good partner.

They're going to give you feedback. So I think that's really important for us to talk to our customers on a regular basis, create those partnerships if they don't, if they don't exist. and make sure that you're constantly just again, tailoring to the consumer and that's going to get you success, right?

[00:19:04] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I'd love to drill into kind of, how we do, these campaigns and which way both of you think about them. Obviously there's one way of like storytelling and that's probably more brand building and telling the story of the business and then the other is customer testimonials and having other people that social proof, tell that, with word of mouth being the holy grail of it, but word of mouth is different than a customer testimony coming across as content from the brand. So how do you both think about these things, in terms of the brands that you work for and specifically thinking about it for small businesses and how they should leverage these things?

[00:19:46] Jon Katinsky: It's interesting, one of the most useful things that we see is just really strong, competitive audits and competitive analysis.

That can be a double edged sword because people could get into the me too game, my competitors are doing this, so we have to do the same thing, but there's a lot you can learn. You can find inspiration. You can find do's and don'ts. And, Sanjay, you mentioned testimonials. There's a whole sort of gray area of influencer marketing now and quasi-influencer marketing people that kind of pretend to be influencers or they're, spokespersons and they seem very authentic, but they're, just, people who have maybe some experience in a vertical, but they're not famous and they don't have a lot of followers. And so separating the, what's authentic from what's not and what's a real testimonial from what's not is always a challenge, but I do think having a goes back to who is my customer? Who are my competitors? How are customers responding to what competitors are doing and how am I going to be different? Because doing what your competitors do is not going to necessarily guarantee your brand success, right?

[00:20:58] Javier Santana: Yeah, and I agree with that. Testimonials to me are really hard. Unless you have some, somebody who is just a known person that has provided a testimonial from, give it an industry, we had some testimonials from our friends at Salesforce, and these people are known in the organization, very proud to be able to put that on our website, and to say that, but we've actually seen with some industries, that people are just manufacturing those things. It's a testimonial. Yeah, five stars all day long, but, I think that when it comes to even like things like Yelp reviews for hospitality or whatever, those things can very easily be manipulated.

Because I could call my friend, Jon and tell him to give me five star review on my restaurant because I just got a two star from someone else. And I think that's really, it's really hard to get the consumer to trust you. And I think that you have to be very transparent. I'm not a believer in fake it till you make it like, I think that's just not the way to operate a business. You will paint yourself into the corner and you will, eventually it's going to come through. So I think that definitely just, transparency with the audience. But also just making sure that, if you have done something incorrectly, if you have had a failure, expose it.

Say, if you have a customer service issue, Delta is notorious for this and they do an incredible job. They will address it publicly. If somebody says on Twitter, oh my God, these lines are horrible. Delta will immediately respond. We're so sorry. What airport are you at? Let me figure out how I can, connect with that consumer in that moment in real time, that to me is just like customer service magic.

So I think that there's a lot of people out there that are doing these things that, are really instilling trust with their consumer. and it's, and it doesn't only happen by testimonials, it happens by you having conversations with them and in many cases directly.

[00:22:48] Sanjay Parekh: I want to circle back to that in, in a minute, customer services as a marketing angle.

But before we do that, Jon, you mentioned, influencers and I want to drill into that a little bit because, we've heard of micro influencers not too long ago. I heard about nano influencers, which are people that have even smaller, followings. They want to aspire to be micro influencers, which I guess aspire to be regular influencers.

But, what do both of you think about that as a, marketing strategy for a small business? Does it make sense? Does it not make sense?

[00:23:18] Jon Katinsky: It really depends on the business. We work with a brand in the nutrition supplement, industry and they've got a wonderful product, but that competitive set is so broad and there's some amazing things you've got celebrities who are respected, who are owners of companies that are doing fantastic content, and you've got people you've never heard of that feel like they're selling snake oil and everything in between. I think that, with influencers and content creators, and sometimes they are one in the same, but there's, there are people that are just authentic to their, to their vertical, if they're in sports or, outdoor activities, or they fix trucks that they may not have big followings, but they are great storytellers and they're authentic storytellers and they can produce content that feels so authentic. It resonates with people and they may only have 5,000 followers.

You also have people that have hundreds of thousands of followers and you're essentially buying eyeballs, but not necessarily all great storytellers. And they might not come off as an, they, will sell anybody's brand that's willing to pay them. And so I think the, general sort of as, a creative agency, we really think that the story and the authenticity of the story is paramount and, you can decide.

You're going to, buy somebody to get their followers and pay a lot of money to do that. But you can also use influencers and micro influencers to help you tell really rich, authentic stories. And sometimes you make your own decisions to amplify that with your own paid media. And there's not one way to do it properly.

But I really think it comes down to storytelling. Consumers can sniff out inauthenticity a mile away now. And I think that's the one thing you want to make sure you always avoid.

[00:25:14] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Have you heard different experience, same experience?

[00:25:17] Javier Santana: No, it's very similar. And I think that, the influencer thing is really interesting to me, right?

Because, I don't want to be like the get off my lawn old guy, but I think that there's a, lot of folks that I think do it right. And there's a lot of folks that are just like at Jon's point, you're just like trying to sell anything that they could get their hands on. and, I was watching the boxing match just this past, this past week.

And it was really interesting. The very first time I ever noticed this, that as they were introducing the boxers or the people that were a part of this, they would immediately say, oh, here's a Jon Katinsky, and Jon has 1.5 million followers on this platform almost like to elevate their social media status as if that was like clout.

And I, even made an observation when I said it to the people that I was watching fight with. And I said, this is really interesting because people really are now that is like a measurement of clout, right? So when you start thinking about that, the influencer market, I think it could, definitely help, but it can also hurt you depending on where you are.

For example, if I'm give it a name, a plumbing company. I don't want to listen to, a young guy that dances around doing TikTok videos about, the product. I want to listen to Bob, the plumber, Bob, the plumber, to me, that may have a thousand followers that, content is more authentic than somebody else.

So I think it's just knowing the audience and knowing obviously, where your business needs to, elevate itself to or your products. And then, if you're trying to sell to an audience, that is say majority, 25 to 32 young male. And yeah, of course you can go target a, Jake Paul or somebody like that to really go, after that specific audience.

But it's, going back to what we were talking about earlier, with TikTok and industrial manufacturing, it's not, for everyone, right? I think that there's, you get a lot of, you get a lot of folks that want to chase the shiny object. They want to, go and say, well, let me hang that feather on my hat and say that I took our company to the influencer and the influencer is going to do X, Y, Z.

Almost as a way to say we're trying everything. But I think that, really doesn't, have a lot of focus, like it becomes really broad and, inconsistent and it get really tricky. So my very long winded way of saying yes to, I think that the, the nano and the micro influencers, or do they work, are they relevant?

Absolutely. But it is 100 percent in the industry and product dependent.

[00:27:38] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Well, great advice from both of you. Let's circle back to, customer service as a method of doing great marketing, What advice? I've seen this play out on both different ways, right? There's some that and you've seen it on Yelp.

Well, the reply back to every response, positive and negative and be kind and helpful. And then there's other business owners that are don't take that approach, exactly. And they take the, the aggressive approach, confrontational approach. And, if I'm thinking about it, it's, hard when you're a business owner, because this is your baby and somebody is attacking your baby.

So what advice would, either or both of you give to a small business owner and thinking about how do you do customer service in a way that actually uplifts your brand and expands your market instead of, destroying it?

[00:28:31] Jon Katinsky: Honestly, customer experience is, it's the hidden superpower that I just don't think enough brands think about big or small.

And, these are, people that have purchase through your company. They are your first line of, evangelism. If, you convert them, the word of mouth, the referrals, that costs you nothing but a little bit of time and effort and thoughtfulness to cultivate compared to the paid media to replace those people if they don't stay.

So, I think there's so many good ways to do it. Starting with just removing the friction from the transaction experience. On the front end, it should be as easy as possible to purchase and as intuitive as possible to purchase. I bought a, a nutritional supplement, I don't know, last year. And it was a small company that was very highly rated and I would get these shipments in the mail and they were literally handwritten notes from the team with kind of motivational sayings on a card and it was so different and so small and so thoughtful and for all I know they're circulating the same notes multiple times.

But, it was unexpected and it was a little touch of humanity that you don't get to see in brands and it stood out. I think the notion of, following up with customers to make sure that they appreciated their purchase, those types of things go such a long way. And, I think too many brands want to, they want to take your time and they want you to do surveys after purchase, what they really should be doing is.

Thanking you for that purchase and figuring out how they're going to reward you and make the experience better. But it is just one of those things that, typically you're not going to ask your marketing agency to do that for you, but I think marketing agencies would love to play in that space all day long because I think there's so much opportunity there.

[00:30:33] Javier Santana: Yeah, no, I agree. Jon, can I just, I'm just going to. Not talking, just agree with everything you say. I think that just works.

[00:30:40] Jon Katinsky: We can tag team.

[00:30:41] Javier Santana: No, it's, yeah, It's really interesting. I think that, I can only speak to myself, for myself here, but, I think about every customer I'm building a partnership.

This is not a one and done ever, right? And I want to make sure that I am building those relationships, fostering them and making sure that I am there for them every step of the way. I've had situations where I've had to stop everything that I'm doing and participate in a project because I got wind that somebody wasn't happy with something and I will stick with that project until the very end.

I have, I don't have boundaries when it comes to my clients contacting me. Like I have clients that will contact me on a Sunday at 6 PM. I'll get a text message and they say, Hey, do you have time tomorrow? Absolutely. What time would you like? I'll schedule the meeting right now. That's how I operate, right?

When building those long term partnerships, when you really think about it. Regardless of the business that you're in, the customer journey starts with the discovery, right? And it ends with you go through the, pre-engagement, post engagement. And then there's this massive bubble called advocacy, right?

And if you can really treat a customer, like Jon just told that story. That was very memorable moment for him. He's going to tell that story. He's going to name that brand to someone, right? You created such a great customer experience that Jon has just become an advocate. And you're not paying him anything for that.

He's a nano, nano influencer, but, it's a micro, micro nano microscopic, a pico influencer. But, but it is, I think that those moments, that are, that you feel like, somebody treated you special, somebody treated you right. Those are very memorable. and then there's other moments, and I had a situation recently where I was extremely disappointed with a brand that I'm very loyal to. I rented a car, which I normally do every time I travel from the same company. And, after I turned in the rental a day later, I got an email that was obviously like a robotic email, that said that there was damage to the vehicle. And I was like, wait a second, there's no damage to the vehicle.

And when I looked at the photos, they basically scan the cars now through a light, machine. And there was apparently like a little ding, when I tell you a little ding wasn't even the size of my pinky nail, a little ding that was not visible with the human eye, but through this, x ray machine, they were able to see a little warp in the light.

And when I started to zoom in, I was like, this is like smaller than half of a keyhole. I'm like, are these people crazy? Like, why would you ever do something like that without having somebody? Look through it. First of all, is this real damage? Am I about to upset my customer?

Let me send a personalized message, or make a decision. Hey, this is regular wear and tear. I'm not even going to bother contacting this customer who's loyal and has been with us for 15 years. so I think that there's certain things that, sometimes make you feel like you're just the number, telephony companies were notorious for this.

Back in the day during, Sunday, you remember this because as the mobile market started to explode, you really did just become a number and, customer service was just non existent. There was a lot of, times that I, really thought to myself, they probably have a script on every single thing to say.

If you're upset to point the blame back on yourself and it's just, and it's just such a horrible customer experience. And they think that they have you locked in because they're monopolizing the system, but people will leave. They'll find a way.

[00:34:06] Sanjay Parekh: It's funny you mentioned that and we're talking about customer experience. There was a time, this is now probably well over a decade ago, that I called my, mobile carrier because I had a problem with my phone and something wasn't working right. And, it ended up being that I was talking to somebody out of England. And I could recognize because of the accent.

And then I asked, Hey, where are you based out of? And they told me, and we started going down the path and, I had to reboot the phone and do a bunch of things. It was going to take a while. And I told him, I was like, well, I can just do this stuff. And then I can call back. If it doesn't work, he was like, no, I'll stay on the phone with you. I want to make sure you get taken care of. I was on the phone probably no less than half an hour, and that stood out to me and that actually that carrier is actually still my carrier today. And that's probably part of it, right? It's I know if I call. They're going to make sure I get taken care of.

They're not in a rush to get me off the phone to improve their, your customer service metrics of, we answered calls and got them off in two minutes or whatever it is. It makes you not feel like a number. It makes you feel like you're actually cared for, even though I know I'm a number, I'm one of, millions upon millions of customers, but, now I'm also an advocate.

S o let's talk about Kind of the times where things have gone wrong for you guys in terms of marketing campaigns I think you can learn a lot for when things go wrong. Both of you have undoubtedly executed on marketing campaigns for clients that have gone horribly wrong.

What did you learn from those experiences? How did that change you in terms of moving forward and dealing with clients moving forward after that? Javier, you want to start us off?

[00:35:43] Jon Katinsky: Thank you for that.

[00:35:45] Javier Santana: So I won't go as far as, I don't have a lot of major failures in actual campaigns, but I've had some pretty significant ones in product.

And I think that, well, I'll give a, I'll give a really good example. This one's actually really funny. I worked for a company, which I will not name that, they sent a bunch of, signage to get translated for their Hispanic audience, it was supposed to be, in Spanish. And when the signs came back after they invested this major amount of dollars into it, it was all lorem ipsum.

It was Greek, but because nobody was there, they didn't have any quality assurance. Nobody that spoke Spanish looked at it. And they wasted all this money. So the reason I even tell that story is because I think that when we are creating campaigns and experience and go, essentially everything I talk about always goes back to audience.

It's always going to go back. And I think that if you are, marketing to a Hispanic audience and you have a room full of white male executives that don't know how to speak to that young Hispanic audience. It's destined to fail, right? It's, you just have, you need somebody in the room that is part of that conversation.

And I think that we've had campaigns, not campaigns, sorry, we've had products in the past that very similarly, you are targeting a very specific audience. And if you do it incorrectly, it's going to fail. I'll give you a really quick example. I'll try to make it quick. We created a, this is back in like 2010, I'm lying probably about 2012.

We created a prototype, a tablet experience for an audience. This was a brand that was selling shoes online, and they were transitioning their audience was using more tablets to have these great stats. And we built what we thought was a best in class experience. We had the quick buy, the big chunky buttons.

It was just beautifully done. We were patting ourselves on the back and we thought it was incredible. We tested it with the audience and it failed miserably. It failed terrible. The reason it failed is because this was an audience that was a little older. Remember this is 2012. You have a boomer audience that really wasn't so sure that they wanted to give the credit card into the computer, right? They wanted to make sure that they ordered it correctly. So they wanted we, removed a lot of things to make the, the add to cart and the checkout process more streamlined. And it terrified them. They were like, you're asking me for all my information. I don't know you.

And I don't think this is a good idea. So they were abandoning right in the testing. And man, I got to tell you, I was so ashamed. I was so ashamed because the biggest mistake, the one, the mistake that you never, ever make, do not ever make an assumption about your audience.

[00:38:25] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah.

[00:38:26] Javier Santana: We were looking at it as a product.

We're creating a best in class product for an audience that didn't want that best in class product. They actually wanted to, check everything three times. That happened one time and one time only for me. I'll never make an assumption again in my whole entire life about what an audience is thinking.

No matter what I think, I know I am going to test it. I'm going to research it. I am going to ask everybody and their mothers, I am going to make sure. That we are so, 100 percent positive that this is going to test positively with an audience. But yeah, so that was a major failure. It was an incredible lesson that I learned and, it helped me specifically and the people around me, think differently about when we're creating products, digital or physical, right? Make sure that you are testing with the exact audience that you're marketing to.

[00:39:15] Sanjay Parekh: Great advice. Jon, what about you?

[00:39:17] Jon Katinsky: Okay, true confessions. Years ago, we, we had an entertainment client, that used to do an annual holiday promotion, and that promotion happened on air in hundreds of, cable television markets, and it also happened in hundreds of retailers.

We had a name for this promotion that came out every year, and one year, the domain had expired. And by the time we realized it had expired, someone had bought it. A internet, a squatter had bought it. And as the deadline for the holidays kept coming up, we were having to try to negotiate to buy this name without letting this squatter realize just how desperate we were because, we had shipped point of sale materials out with the URL.

And it was, it was definitely a touch and go negotiation. We ended up getting it without breaking the bank. But yeah, I thought someone was going to lose their job and lose their agency over this. What we learned from it other than the fact that I have no hair left from that experience is, you can not plan enough, everything needs to be double check, triple check and details matter. And there's, we talked about how fast you need to move in the world today. You have to be able to test and optimize and change and do all these things on the fly, but you have to have processes for quality control. You have to train young people who are coming up to ask the right questions and, question and details matter.

And I think, that was- It was a right experience for us at the right time in our agency life cycle. And I think just as we, as the world keeps moving faster and as clients have to make faster decisions, sometimes you just need to take a minute and breathe and say, have I thought of everything, what can go wrong and try to make sure you're planning for what could go wrong, not just hoping for what could go right.

[00:41:14] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. And for our listeners out there. Make sure you have auto renew turned on for your domains and the email address that those notices go to are a good email address and your credit card doesn't put it on your calendar. When your credit card expires, like all these places that you need to update your credit card so that you don't lose your domain.

That's like a, it's a silly expense for no reason to do that. So yeah.

[00:41:40] Javier Santana: And make sure it's not going to your AOL account.

[00:41:44] Sanjay Parekh: Make sure it's not going to an old email address. Make sure it's your current active email address. And when you change email addresses, make sure you have a list of all those places that you can update that at.

Last question for both of you. Marketing and all of this stuff is changing so quickly and so fast. What's the new stuff that's coming up that you're super excited about, that could be meaningful to somebody that's starting a business, that's and something that they should think about, leveraging, about how they market, things coming up in the future?

Jon, do you want to kick us off?

[00:42:17] Jon Katinsky: Yeah. I'm really tempted to say AI, but I'm going to go in a different direction.

[00:42:22] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, good. Everybody says AI.

[00:42:24] Jon Katinsky: Exactly. We're, a creative agency, we're storytellers, and, especially since we're talking about small business, the emergence of NIL, opportunities, name, image, and endorsements with college athletes is really, no pun intended.

It's a game changer for, I think, small businesses. There's right ways to do it and wrong ways to do it. But, these are, athletes that have amazing stories. They have amazing opportunities for brand affinities and connections. it's still a relatively new space. But there are partners you can use to find these athletes, pay them.

And we're not talking about, people that have millions of dollars and are driving Lamborghinis to school. We're talking about, athletes that in the past have not been able to work part time jobs. Their sport that they play is their part time job. And when you can find the right athlete and your brand, to tell your story, and it's authentic, and there's a connection there, it can be great, cost effective advertising and social storytelling.

And we've seen opportunities where brands have done it really well, especially in the small business space. So just something to keep your eyes open for.

[00:43:41] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. Javier, what about you?

[00:43:43] Javier Santana: Man, I, obsess over AI, so I'm not going to talk too much about it, but conversational search is really interesting to me.

Because I think that now there's, we're going to have to start thinking about how to create content a little bit differently, where it's a mix of storytelling and mix of Q&A, because when you're speaking into your device or, Google or whatever, voice assistant you want to, or GPT, you're asking a question that it's trying to respond to very quickly.

And the way that you structure your content is going to start to help elevate you. And, can I plug a podcast?

[00:44:18] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, sure.

[00:44:19] Javier Santana: Yeah. Okay. So I listened to a hard fork and we were talking about this as a, from the New York Times, that's where I get all my, nerdy technology news and they do a really incredible job, but, the two hosts there had one episode where they talked a lot about conversational search.

What does that mean for SEO? What does that mean for, SEM? And it was really, very interesting. I found that extremely interesting and I've been trying to think about how to help my partners with some of that, to get them prepared for how they should structure content for the future of how we search without a screen.

[00:44:51] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Both of those are fascinating. I hadn't thought about NIL, as something that small business owners, as well as structuring your content. You're absolutely right. If we can make it easier for these things to answer those questions for us. it's only going to help us, in the long run.

Javier, Jon, this has been fantastic. I hope it was a lot of great advice for our listeners, but thank you so much for being on today.

[00:45:12] Javier Santana: Enjoyed it. Oh, thank you. This was, a lot of fun. I appreciate it. We'll do it again, Sanjay, whenever you're ready.

[00:45:16] Sanjay Parekh: Absolutely.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.