Jessica Embree | Tulip Media Group
How did Tulip Media Group lower its customer acquisition cost (CAC) by 10X, from $40,000 to $4,000, in a matter of weeks?
As a Storybrand certified agency, it was all about taking their own medicine. They started by interviewing their customers to determine their ideal customer profile, along with their pain points and the keywords that they would need to focus on to reach them.
What they uncovered in those interviews led to a shift in the company’s messaging away from what they do and instead, towards the problems they solve, and away from a strategy focused on events and SEO to one heavily focused on pay per click advertising.
They rolled the new messaging out on their website and in their Google ads and within a week, saw a massive improvement in inbound lead flow at a much lower cost. And they have since applied that same framework to get similar results for clients.
Want to learn more about how they did it?
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Resources from this episode:
Visit the Tulip Media website to learn more about Tulip Media, book a call with Jessica, or download a free chapter of their book
Jessica and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:02):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Jessica Embree, who is the creative director of Tulip Media group. Welcome to the podcast, Jessica.
Jessica (00:23):
Thanks for having me, Kathleen
Kathleen (00:25):
Psyched to talk to you cuz you have some really impressive results in terms of lowering customer acquisition costs, which I think all of us as marketers are interested in doing. And I wanna talk about that, but I would love to start with your story and if you could tell my audience a bit about you and about what Tulip media group is and how you got there.
Jessica (00:49):
Absolutely. So Tulip Media group. We help businesses all over north America with custom digital and marketing strategies. We realize how frustrating marketing can be. We realize it's time consuming. It can be a headache. There's a lot of things that you need to know. And so we create these custom programs for you. So you can start to generate those leads. You can start to grow your business with results that you're looking to get and grow
Kathleen (01:13):
Awesome. And okay. CAC. Customer acquisition cost. We, I feel like just about every marketer. I know talks about this a lot and I'm assuming everybody on who's listening here knows what it is. <Laugh> because it's kind of marketing 1 0 1. When I talked to you, what really stuck out to me was that you said you were able to lower CAC by like 10 X. And my immediate question was okay, I really wanna know how you did that. <Laugh> so let's, let's, let's talk about this. Maybe you could do some table setting and give us the background on that.
Jessica (01:53):
Absolutely. So back in 2019, we realized we had a huge problem. We were sending packages upon packages, cold calling, doing trade shows. And our cost of acquisition was $40,000. Our marketing and sales weren't working together and we realized that we have to stop doing this. This is ridiculous it's it was a headache at the end of the day. And we, we hated spending that much money on things that weren't working out. So overnight we switched gears, we stopped doing trade shows. We stopped doing cold callings. And we started talking to people who were raising their hand, people who actually had the problem that we were looking to solve. The cold calling and trade shows was a push strategy and it was falling on deaf ears and where we switched gears with digital marketing, using PPC content marketing we do magazines. We started to talk to people who saw the value in our content and the value in our programs. And overnight it just shifted everything and shifted our mindset and it shifted our results. And within three to six months we lowered that cost of acquisition to $4,000.
Kathleen (02:59):
Wow.
Jessica (03:00):
Yeah, just that different perspective on let's stop, wasting time on people who aren't interested in our problems and start targeting people who are searching for custom digital marketing programs. People are searching for how to make a magazine, how to do PPC advertising. Those are the people we wanna draw in and those are the people we wanna talk to at the end of the day.
Kathleen (03:20):
Okay. So, so let's get super specific. Can you just describe what exactly it is you guys are selling? Cause you talked about magazines and PPC. <Affirmative> like what's your standard service offering?
Jessica (03:30):
Our standard service offerings. We have two parts of our business. We have the magazine portion where we help businesses all over north America create custom business magazines so they can be more credible
Kathleen (03:40):
Like print or digital?
Jessica (03:41):
Print magazines.
Kathleen (03:42):
Oh wow.
Jessica (03:44):
Yeah. And so we help them build credibility, brand awareness, create that longevity and create that customer retention that they might be looking for. So it's very popular with realtors, insurance agencies. We worked with everything from private jets to speakers. So really magazines can work for anybody as long as you have the right content and the right target audience. The other side of our business is digital marketing. What we dove marketing in our book. So it's the integration of sales and marketing where we help you, not only in the back end of your marketing, making sure that everything's running right in your SEL, but also creating messaging. That's gonna work using things like Storybrand. We're a Storybrand certified agency. So we craft messaging. That's really gonna resonate with your core customer at the end of the day. But then we tie that with a pull strategy with PPC advertising, with content creation and everything. So we have a very integrated approach at tool that's really worked for us because we realize that not everybody consumes content same way, so that different format really works well for us.
Kathleen (04:51):
That's interesting. So who is, who's your ideal customer profile?
Jessica (04:57):
Small to medium businesses see very, really good results with us. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> we work with people in the insurance agencies who have our independent or insurance agencies. We have some that aren't independent. So really it's all sizes that we work with and they all see varied results. But at the end of the day, it's the results that they're looking for.
Kathleen (05:19):
And who's the buyer within those small to medium size businesses.
Jessica (05:23):
Sometimes it's the marketing director or manager that raised their hands other times it's the CEO that raised their hands.
Kathleen (05:30):
Okay. So you had this situation, your CAC was high and you said you went and you spoke to the hand raisers. So that were, those were those customers that had come in through inbound channels in the past?
Jessica (05:43):
No. So in the past they, we were cold calling these people.
Kathleen (05:47):
Oh wow.
Jessica (05:48):
They would say, hey, would you like to do some PPC advertising? They're like, no, I'm not really interested. <Laugh> where now when they come in, they're actually qualified leads. They've gone through our automated system of booking a Calendly. So actually when we wake up in the morning, we have some calls with some potential customers.
Kathleen (06:05):
So how did you, so sorry, how did you identify who you were gonna talk to when you first did that research?
Jessica (06:11):
<Affirmative> so we went through what we call the Storybrand methodology to identify who our core customer is. So what problem does our customer have? They're really frustrated and tired spending money on marketing. That's not working how, what solutions are we gonna provide to them? And so we combine that with actually a keyword analysis as well. Cuz we firm believers on having nice messaging. But if you have nice messaging and don't tie that with keywords, then no one's gonna be finding your page at the end of the day. So we do a competitive and keyword analysis for not only ourselves, but all of our client partners too, because we wanna know what those phrases are. If someone's looking up inbound success, we want Kathleen Booth to pop up first, not someone else. So we wanna know what those phrases are so we can tie that into your messaging, but also into your blogging, your PPC, your emails, newsletters as well.
Kathleen (07:01):
Okay. So you having done that research and like understood the customer pain and the keyword research. When you said you talked to the customers to identify exactly like what the pain was like, who were you talking to? Was it people that were already working with you or was it others? Like, I'm just trying to narrow in on like, if somebody wanted to do this for themselves, how do they figure out who to talk to, to do that research?
Jessica (07:28):
So the Storybrand methodology that we use and we're certified in providing to our clients as well. It's actually an exercise you go through with yourself of you ask yourself a series of questions to identify who your core customer is, what your pain point is at the end of the day. For your example, some of your listeners might be their pain point is they're having trouble getting the inbound marketing that ROI that they're looking for. So how can we help them? And this is how we do it with X, Y, Z. So it's really, you're kind of interviewing yourself and trying to pin down what you've seen in the past FAQs you've gotten in the past. You can talk to clients that you've worked with as well. That's definitely something you can do, but it's an exercise you do with yourself. And it can be hard because I call it the curse of knowledge. You you've been in the industry so long. You think, you know what the answer is, but in reality it might be something different that why people are coming to you at the end of the day.
Kathleen (08:20):
So how do you figure that out though? Because I was gonna say like, I feel as though that I feel like don't, we all have inherent biases. And so if we're looking to ourselves for the answers, how do you like have any faith that what you're coming up with is actually correct?
Jessica (08:37):
Yeah. You really do need sometimes that outside perspective cuz that I know the hardest marketing that I do is not for my clients. It's for ourselves because I've been in this industry for so long. I've been with Tulip Media for so long. So sometimes I will ask someone who's an outside perspective, say, Hey, if you were having this problem, would this make sense to you? Or why do you think someone came to us asking past client partners works well asking current clients works well too. So don't be afraid to draw in that third perspective if you really need it.
Kathleen (09:10):
So you underwent that process. How did it change how you thought about the problem that you guys were solving? Like what was the before and after on that?
Jessica (09:22):
So before we were selling what we did now, we're selling why and how it can help businesses. And that's a big perspective change. And I think that's what we do. A lot of businesses. Do they say, this is what I'm selling. This is how much it is. It's not the why going back to <inaudible> why do people need this? Or why is this important to them? We really emphasize on that. Why in our marketing. So that's really shifted how we've the results we've gotten at the end of the day. And we do the same thing with our client partners.
Kathleen (09:51):
Okay. So you, you shifted over to focusing, excuse me, more on the why. And then what, like what did you do with that, with that new perspective? How did you roll that out into your marketing?
Jessica (10:03):
So the first thing we always do when we're rolling out new messaging is of course on the website, cuz that's your storefront at the end of the day, doesn't make sense to do all these campaigns. If people are going from that campaign to your website and things aren't making sense or aligning. So we always make sure that the website is up to date with this messaging. And then we tailor this messaging into your Google ads. So showing that not only what you do, but why people need it, the value of it, the value proposition and the call to action too. I think a lot of us forget that some people need the reminder of they need to contact you. They need to hit that book, a call with you or schedule a free consultation. So there, there's a few things that you need to do to trickle that down into all the marketing you do. And that's the nice thing about Storybrand. It affects everything that you, you do.
Kathleen (10:52):
I think that listening to this, if somebody, you know, if somebody's thinking, oh, I like the idea of, of undergoing this process. Like the question is when you told the story, you were doing trade shows, you were doing outbound. A lot of listeners do those things. And what's scary about thinking about turning off those spigots, like stopping investing in trade shows and stopping, investing in outbound is like that notion that, okay, what's gonna fill the void and how soon are we gonna be able to fill the void? So I would, I would love to dig in a little bit to your experience, like when you were doing all this outbound stuff, you shifted this, your efforts over, I mean, I'm guessing like you didn't, you, you, you had to somewhat build up your website, traffic and your inbound. Like was, was there a lag time there? What did that look like?
Jessica (11:51):
It happened all within a week. So we made the changes to our website after reading the Storybrand book, we were big fans and then we were like, let's get certified. So it happened within a week. We did the website and we already had an established blog that we contributed to on a monthly basis. So we did have a good SEO game going on, but we weren't doing any PPC advertising. So we immediately started to get those results as soon as we turned on that engine and yeah, we
Kathleen (12:19):
So it was the, it was the advertising because my question then was gonna be like, did you instantly within a week see a website traffic increase. And then from where did that come? So it sounds like what you're saying is that perhaps organic traffic may have stayed the same, but the emphasis on paid ads and maybe even doing them differently, is that where the, the real flow came in?
Jessica (12:41):
Yeah. If you're looking for that quick flow, if you're turning off your current engine, PPC was a way for us to fill that void to your point. We had, we have a client who's a fire truck manufacturer. And I know that sounds really, <laugh> not a lot of people are looking for fire trucks on the web to buy half a million dollar fire trucks. And when COVID hit their trade shows turned off. They had nothing, they had nothing going in their pipeline. So they immediately switched to doing this, the new messaging on their site and they went to PPC advertising and now they get one to two leads per week. And again, that doesn't sound like much, but,
Kathleen (13:18):
But for a $40 million truck, that's actually a lot.
Jessica (13:21):
Exactly. So they don't need to go to trade shows anymore. They have an email campaigns that they do every month with us blogging for long term SEO and for content building, they do PPC to get those instant results and secure their place on Google. So it's a very integrated and well rounded approach that they've taken, but they saw those results instantly because of turning on that PPC engine that filled that void in the meantime.
Kathleen (13:48):
So can you give me some like specific examples of how this might play out in ad copy? Like what before and after mm-hmm <affirmative> what, what I would love to hear in your case? Like what did your ad copy sound like that worked so well?
Jessica (14:05):
So I'll, I'll use a print one, just for example. First header is maybe create a magazine build brand awareness is the second. And then book a consultation is the third. That's just an example where before we were just like publish your own magazine 16 to 24 pages start today. So again, we are just a bit more showing a bit more value in the first one where we're showing a little bit of that value proposition of building credibility, brand awareness. And again, we're giving that, that direct call to action. So it's one thing to have a nice call, nice ad. But it's another thing you have to fuel that with the keywords. So people need to be using how to make a magazine or how to build credibility for my business. And that's when that ad pops up and they go, oh, okay. Because not every business except morning going, I need to create a magazine. So we need to have that right in front of them as a reminder.
Kathleen (15:04):
So did, had you been doing ads before you made this switch?
Jessica (15:08):
No, we were completely old fashioned in our marketing and we just, we had a wake up call one day and we're like, we can't continue to do this. And we were so thankful that we redid this sales engine before COVID hit, or we wouldn't be here where we are today. We wouldn't have tool media because we were reliant on things that weren't possible during COVID. So this switch allowed us to not only sustain our business, but we've just finished our biggest quarter ever. And again, all we're doing is this inbound marketing strategy that has worked not only for us, but for a lot of our client partners as well.
Kathleen (15:50):
And are you just advertising on Google or what, what does your ad strategy look like?
Jessica (15:56):
So we have Google ads. Of course we do blogging every month. We're firm believers as invaluable in consistent content. We do email marketing. We do print marketing as well because we wanna retain the clients. We have we have social media strategies too. So again, it's very integrated approach. And it comes in different ways for every client, but our biggest probably return on investment is the Google ads, like you said.
Kathleen (16:24):
Yeah. So you're, are you doing like Facebook ads or LinkedIn or Twitter or is it just Google?
Jessica (16:31):
Just Google right now we did have Facebook and Twitter turned on, but one thing we found with social media advertising is it's a little bit of an interruption marketing. So you're scrolling through everybody does this scrolling through your Facebook, looking at videos and all of a sudden an ad pops up and you're kind of just like, okay. And then you just keep scrolling. Now social media marketing does work for a lot of businesses, but for us we find that Google is just a better return on the investment.
Kathleen (16:58):
Okay. And are you doing just, are you doing Google display or Google search ads?
Jessica (17:05):
Yep. Display and search. We see the best results with search, cuz again, we're doing that competitive keyword analysis before we start anything, just to say, what's working for some of our competitors peeking behind the curtain, looking at these keywords and what people are typing into Google and then putting that into our strategy as well.
Kathleen (17:23):
Got it. And talk to me a little bit about like what that flow that inbound flow looks like. So you said it turned around in a week.
Jessica (17:33):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>
Kathleen (17:34):
Describe that. Could you get into a little bit more detail in terms of what, what it looked like and how, how that played out for the business?
Jessica (17:40):
Yeah. So one thing we realized too with, with turning and shifting this is we have to make sure that our engine is ready to get all these leads too. So we really wanted to automate the process for us as well. So we get about one to five leads a day. It varies just depending on the day. And all of these come in through call leads. So again, we don't have to worry about trying to book a call with someone who came through a contact form and our Calendlys have questions in them too, that help us identify who this customer is, what business they're in or industry. So when we have that quick intro call for 10 minutes, we kind of are establishing if they're qualified or not. And usually they are. And then from there we just go to a demo if they need it or we can go right to here's a proposal based off what we've talked about in that intro call and we'll close the sale from there.
Kathleen (18:34):
Hmm. So let's go back to StoryBrand for a minute. Cuz you talked about how pivotal that's been for you and that's what you really do when you work with your clients. Can you, I think a lot of people listening might be broadly familiar or have heard of it, but can you sort of just break down at the top level? Like what are the components of that process or that methodology?
Jessica (18:55):
Yeah. So the Storybrand methodology is a seven part framework and it's where you identify the customer, the problem, you showcase the plan, how you're the guide, the call to action. So it really helps you think of your core customer in a different way because there's there's questions for each of those sections that you have to ask yourself, who is your core customer, who is your character at the end of the day, our character is a marketing manager or CEO. What do they want? Better marketing. What's the problem that they're having. They're spending way too much on their marketing right now. And then you kind of get into that, the internal problem that they're having, what's making them feel, how you are the guides. So why would they go with you at the end of the day? There's thousands of marketing agencies out there. Why would they go with you? So that's where you have to show your credibility. So it's a really great way for you to kind of take that shift on who your customer is. And it helps you start to craft that messaging that you need to have on your website at the end of the day.
Kathleen (19:55):
Okay. So can, can, I mean, if, can anybody go and do this? Like I know there's a book Donald Miller has this book building a Storybrand you know, can you, can you self implement?
Jessica (20:08):
Absolutely. You could, you could go to Don's website and there's some resources there. You can talk to a guide or an agency like our ourselves. You can read the book. We first started out just reading the book, saying we really like this. Let's try to implement this ourselves. And then a year later we said, let's get certified. Cause we think we can help our clients with this as well.
Kathleen (20:29):
Got it. And who do you see? Like when you look out there into the world, are there certain companies that you think are really like have embraced this methodology and are, and are good examples for somebody to look at if they wanna see it in practice?
Jessica (20:44):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so all of Don's websites are Storybranded. Of course we are Storybranded. All of our pretty much all of our clients are. I'm trying to think of another resource that someone else can go to. But yeah, there's, you'd be surprised about how many websites are Storybranded. Now you start to see everybody, oh look, they have a three part plan for somebody to take part of. So first book a call with Tulip media. Second, get a custom plan, third, start growing your business. So it is a really big framework tthat's taken off quite a bit, but yeah, it's, it's rolling out fast and Don's done a great job getting his message out to everybody.
Kathleen (21:28):
So going back, you said you implemented this in like within literally a week or two, you saw your CAC drop from 40,000 to $4,000. When you guys have done this for other companies, what kind of results have you seen?
Jessica (21:42):
We had another insurance agency actually implement just Storybrand messaging. They didn't change anything else in their digital marketing. They didn't start PPC or blogging. And they went from like one lead a week to getting one to two a day. And this was just in messaging. So it just doing the Storybrand itself can help your business substantially. We had another one, the another insurance agency in BC. Again, they switched their, they switched their Storybrand their messaging on their website. And I think within a few weeks we also helped them with their, their PPC as well. They went from 30 leads a month to 30 leads a week. So again, it's, it's just shifting. Sometimes everybody's website just needs a little bit of tweak. There's just a puzzle piece missing other times. It, it is a little bit of a overhaul, but just getting that storefront ready and ready for visitors and putting the clear call to action on there can make a huge difference in your ROI.
Kathleen (22:44):
How long does that process take? Cause I know once you do it, you've said the results are pretty quick, but how long does the actual like turning the ship around? Take <laugh>
Jessica (22:54):
It varies for everybody. So ours was in a week or two. We started seeing those results. Other clients we
Kathleen (22:59):
No, no, no, sorry, not the results. I apologize. Okay. From when you're like, okay, we wanna do this to going through the process of like the Storybrand framework to the point where you have updated your website and you're like, you're executing it. How long does that process take?
Jessica (23:14):
About a week or two for most on average.
Kathleen (23:16):
Really?
Jessica (23:17):
Yeah. Our clients, usually we have a kickoff call, what we call. So we start to pick their brain and fill in that seven part framework. Then we'll provide them with that messaging. And then sometimes our clients will have that messaging implemented on their site within a week or two. So it can be a fast process. It's just dependent on how quickly you wanna implement this in your business.
Kathleen (23:38):
Wow. That's that's good to hear that. That it's that fast. All right. So I always ask my guests two questions. I'd love to hear what you have to say. The first is most marketers. I know, feel a little bit like they're drowning because there's so much changing in the world of digital marketing. How do you personally stay up to date on all of it?
Jessica (23:57):
I never stop learning and that's, that's a something I always tell others is never stop learning. So pick up a book. If you don't have time for a book, listen to a podcast. Do an audio book while you're working. Biggest resource is probably HubSpot. I know HubSpot's probably a very popular one. They are very generous with what they're giving out. Another big resource we pull and look at is Donald Miller from StoryBrand. He's got a nice resource library as well. And I know there's free stuff that anybody could go on his site and download it too. So yeah, my biggest, my biggest thing that I would say to people is don't stop learning cuz you'll, you'd be amazed about what you find out and it's not just marketing that you should learn about. You should learn about sales. You should learn about HR because you'd be surprised about what you learn about different parts of the business too.
Kathleen (24:48):
Got it. All right. And we kind of talked about the second question, but I'm gonna see if you can come up with a different answer, which is you know, the podcast is all about inbound marketing and I always define that as anything that naturally attracts the right customer to your business. Is there a particular company or individual out there that you think is really kind of exemplifying what it means to be a great inbound marketer today? And you cannot say HubSpot <laugh>
Jessica (25:13):
Can I say Donald Miller? <Laugh>
Kathleen (25:17):
I want you to pick a different one.
Jessica (25:19):
Mike Michalowicz is a really good one as well. Profit First, if anybody's read him, he's got the get different. That's a really great book on trying to figure out what is your differentiating factor? What sets you apart from everybody else? So I, we love Mike Michalowicz here too.
Kathleen (25:34):
That's a great one. I wasn't familiar with that one. So I have to check that out. Yeah. yeah. Sorry to give you like guardrails on your, what your answer can be, but it's funny cuz HubSpot comes up a lot and I'm like, ah, I need a new one. <Laugh> so alright. Well, if somebody is listening and has a question or wants to learn more about either you or tool media group, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jessica (25:57):
So listeners can go to tm.media/doublesales in there. You can find about information about Tulip Media, but also our book that we put out about a year ago is now that just outlines our journey from how we went from 40,000 to 4,000 in cost of acquisition. And the process that we took just a bit more detail than what we talked about today. They can download a free chapter there. They can buy the book or if they do wanna talk to someone, they can schedule a call with me on Calendly.
Kathleen (26:26):
Okay, great. And I will put all those links as always in the show notes, which are available at kathleen-booth.com. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, I would love it. If you would head to apple podcast and leave the show a review. And of course, if you know someone else doing great inbound marketing work, tweet me at @Kathleenlbooth, and I'd love to have them as my next guest. That is it for this week. Thanks Jessica. This was really interesting.
Jessica (26:51):
Thank you.
