E16: Dorien Morin-van Dam

Richard Hill:
Okay. Hi, and welcome to another episode of eComOne, the eCommerce podcast. Today, I've got Dorien Morin- van Dam all the way from Pittsburgh in Vermont, in the USA, who is an organic social media and community specialist. How are you doing Dorien?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Good. How are you this morning?
Richard Hill:
I'm really good. I'm really good. We've got quite a time different. Same way, I think.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah, I guess it's morning for me and afternoon for you. So five hours. Not that bad. It could be worse.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting ready to wrap up the day. You're just getting going.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure.
Richard Hill:
Dorien, I know a few of our colleagues have been listening to some of your content online and the different summits that you're doing, but could you give us a bit of a sort of career story to date really what you've been doing?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Sure. I'm going to totally date myself when I do that, but I was a stay at home mom for many, many years. I have four children who three of them now are young adults and one is still in high school. But when my youngest, who now is in high school, started kindergarten I was kind of lost. I had been a mom and prior to that, a nanny for other people's children.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And so it was right around 2010, about 10 years ago. And Twitter was really picking up and Facebook and my husband has had his own business forever and he said, "Ever since I've been out of school, marketing has changed. Can you just help me do some research?" So not only did I do some research, I started helping him. I took an online course on how to become a social media manager, just thinking that would be a cool thing to do.
Richard Hill:
This is 10 years ago.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
10 years ago. And started working. I didn't know anything, didn't know anything about the business world, never works in a business world, and just went and did it. I became the social media director of a local non-profit, got a title, pluck that title and put it on LinkedIn, and opened my shop. And I've evolved. I started out with a lot of local marketing and local businesses.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
I still have several local businesses that I help. It's a different kind of marketing. I do everything for them, including the blogging and the community outreach and the PR even some pieces for them. And then I'm also working with international customers, clients. I am doing strategy with somebody in Shanghai right now, and I'm working on a big national brand and I still have some non-profits.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So it really has changed. I did a couple of years in between that are really focused on B2B, which was really cool as well, like plumber and heating and HVAC, and security because they also take a special kind of strategy. So I've kind of evolved. And then the last few years I've really concentrated and kind of found that niche of being that organic specialist. And I know I've seen the questions that you're going to ask me, so we'll go back to that and why, but it's really where my love is for organic social media.
Richard Hill:
I think it's quite rare now. A lot of people in the space I've gone more paid and I know I'm really looking forward to obviously digging into this organic side, which we'll come to. Obviously most of our listeners ... So obviously you've lots of experience now, all different niches, sort of worn a lot of different hats over the years and different like I say, HVAC, air con, but yeah, there's not much of that going on here to be fair.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But heating would, heating would. HVAC means heating, ventilation. So yeah.
Richard Hill:
So obviously a lot of different niches. And obviously the podcast, most of our lessons are eCommerce. They're eCommerce stores. Most of our listeners are on Shopify and the gentile or the different platforms, eCommerce, et cetera. What are sort of some of the best channels do you think or best things that you've seen for eCommerce stores?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Well, I thought about that question and I've had several customers that I have advice and did strategy with. And I think one of the big ones that people don't always think about, especially in Europe, I think, because they might be a little bit more behind is Pinterest. I'm from the Netherlands. I was born and raised there. And so I have some colleagues there who have been trying to promote Pinterest for many years.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And they would kind of be the platform was behind promoted pins was a couple of years behind, but now you can advertise on Pinterest. It gives huge value, every pin. It has a value for up to four months that people will see it that's active. Whereas a tweet might be two minutes and a Facebook post might be a few hours, Pinterest pin will actually really drive traffic for a much longer time.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And so I think with an eCommerce store, it's something that's overlooked a lot. And if a lot of your audiences in the UK, I would highly encourage them to start looking at that platform, if that's not something they are doing.
Richard Hill:
What would be a good place to start? Let's say I'm a UK business, I'm selling, I'm trying to think of something, I'm selling, let's say a nice range of men's clothing.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah. Yeah.
Richard Hill:
Well, purple shirt range of men's clothing. My favourite colour. Where would I start with Pinterest? I'm trying to get the name now from Pinterest.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
I would say educate yourself first. Don't just start a Pinterest account and not know what you're doing. There are some incredible experts out there. I am not an affiliate or anything, but I use a tool called Tailwind. They're based of Oklahoma. I've visited them before. They're my friends over there. But they had a scheduling tool. They are Pinterest partner.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
They have an incredible library of videos and teaching education about Pinterest. They had a live show every week. You can learn a lot from them and I would highly recommend, they often have Pinterest staff that come to their live shows. I would recommend following them to get started, and then really diving deep into both the organic side when you can do a lot. And now the paid side.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So you marry the two and you really drive, of course, traffic to your pins to what you're selling is great. Part of that is that I would highly recommend if you have an eCommerce store to also blog. I'm a content manager. So I always recommend that you blog with the seasons. You talk about what's going on. If you're selling purple men's shirts, talk about the color purple and talk about shirts and buying and Father's Day gifts and all of those things on your blog because people will click through and then find your shirt. So blogging and Pinterest together are a beautiful combo.
Richard Hill:
Massaging in the pay when you've probably got some traction established the pins, the page. And then the paid Pinterest is not something I have ... We have an ad agency obviously. And again, we haven't really looked at Pinterest complete honesty, not looked at that. So that's definitely something that I know I'm going to go away and have a look at obviously.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah, definitely. And one of the things we just had, I'm working with a client. We just had a consult with a Pinterest paid ad manager. So they can help. If you're ready to spend money, they'll give you a dedicated ad manager. And one of the things to remember is you create these ads and let them run for a couple of weeks. It takes a little bit of time, but they're not like, "Hey, this is an ad campaign and I need to watch it every day."
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Facebook ad's very different than Pinterest ads. So you really need to look at the longterm goals. And if you have specific items that are seasonal, you've got to have to plan out ahead, but they can yield big results. So definitely for eCommerce Pinterest.
Richard Hill:
A conversation I've had about Pinterest whether it's organic or paid. So very excited, very excited to have a look.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Cool. Cool.
Richard Hill:
And what advice would you give to businesses wanting to increase their social media following or eCommerce stores that are looking to increase their overall following brand?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
I always recommend having conversations. So one of the things that is really being pushed big by Facebook is Facebook Groups. So even if you're an eCommerce brand, say you are selling men's clothing, you could have ... I always and this is kind of my strategy, two groups. The big one is kind of like top of the funnel where you have men who like nice clothes, could be your group or fashion advice for men, fashion advice for businessman.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Something pretty general, but that would kind of get your target audience in that group. And if you're the brand and you own that group, you can do research in there, you can do polls, you can do surveys, you can find influencers, all of those things in that group. You can get people talking to each other. That's your big funnel. And then within the group, when you place the content and you have the conversations, which a lot more people will see the conversations, and if you were having them on a Facebook page, then you can also create a VIP group.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
You can put brand ambassadors influences in there. People who've bought from you. You give them special coupons and you kind of move them over there. Maybe they're on your email list. And so now you have two different audiences. You have that wide funnel, you have that small funnel, and you can get them to help you become that brand ambassador for you, even unpaid just by giving them access to special coupons and codes and offers and things.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So Facebook Groups are really big, but you have to have conversations and you have to have somebody dedicated in your company that can have that conversation with your customers that understand your brand, understands your products, loves your products, lives the products, wears the products. So it's a genuine conversation. And that works well for almost every business model.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Think about a pizzeria in London. If they had a Facebook Group, London loves pizza, anybody that puts in London and pizza in Facebook would come to the group, would find the group. And then you can talk about pizza and why do we love pizza. And what are the best pizza places. But if you're one of the places in London that owns pizzeria, you're going to force steer people there. So, that's kind of the strategy behind that.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And it works really well. I've seen it worked for realtors, restaurants, event planners, banks. I've seen it work for a lot of different industry. So I would think that it would work for eCommerce as well.
Richard Hill:
And then do you find that the people that are in the group, so people that are very passionate about that topic, they obviously contribute a lot. And then you could almost step back a little bit on some friends because they're obviously doing the work.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yes, yes. For sure. You cannot have a group without community manager and somebody in charge, but for sure, they are very passionate because they're in that group. And I don't know if you guys have an Aldi in the UK, do you guys have Aldi stores?
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah. So that is kind of a new thing in the US. In the last five years, we finally got Aldi from Europe to come over. Those groups are nuts. There are crazy. And there's all kinds of Aldis for vegans, Aldi lovers, Aldi deals, but the people in there are so passionate. So the people that own an Aldi store don't have to do anything, they're in there talking, you've got to go into this store and here's what you find these products.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So that's really what you want. You want other people to have conversation about you, but you want to be present and to listen and to get the information. What are the words they use? What do they use to describe you? What did they say about your product? You can do research in your groups if you're the group owner. Those are supper powerful.
Richard Hill:
Love it, love it. So you've got your group and you're filtering subgroups. Is there any sort of technology you would recommend and things you would recommend to sort of take? So somebody you go to Facebook, you say you want to be part of a group and you've got the questions come up, then you're just like, "Are you a man just selling purple shirts? Are you a vegan?"
Richard Hill:
But then my understanding is then you can then once they submit, there's different tools that also push the email, interrupt an email list away from Facebook. Is that right?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah. Yeah. We as a community manager for one of the groups, we're testing a tool right now, don't love it. I'm not going to mention it. We're looking at some other options. But in a matter of six weeks, we've collected over, it's a big group, 3000 email addresses. People are given it to us. So the other thing we've done previous to that is where we had one of the questions was please click the link in rule number one.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And that was a click to go to our Messenger chat box. So by them clicking, we would have a conversation with them in the chat box. So those are two different things that you can do for sure. You want to capture as much information as you can about the people coming into your group. And that's kind of a new thing because they used to not have those questions there, but use them to get data on your group.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
We ask like how did you find us? And we find articles about our group because we're mentioned, because people say, "I read about you in Forbes. Or I read about you in this article or this influencer mentioned you." So then we can go find those articles, say, "Hey, thanks for mentioning our group." So definitely use those questions to get that. It's all about data. What can you know about your target audience? It's super, super important. So use those questions wisely.
Richard Hill:
I love it. Obviously, you are an improv product creator, those questions are going to help you create content, create course, create the section, the index of the course, the whole content piece and hoping you know what they want because they're asking or telling you either in those ends of questions or in the group, when you're posting polls, you're posting questions.
Richard Hill:
Or you'll use the posting questions the whole community are jumping in and giving advice. It's raw data, but it's the right data. Isn't it? It's your exact, the people that you are targeting that are in your group.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Exactly.
Richard Hill:
... know what they want. You can ask them anything else that what else do you want? That type of thing. Yes. Right.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah. It's very powerful. And Facebook, I don't know, in the UK, but in the US Facebook is actually advertising on national TV during big shows and promoting their groups. That's what they're doing. It's a big push for groups.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. But obviously it will be. Joy. Yeah. They will be. Okay. So I'm loving Facebook Groups and it's siphoning off some groups. I love the idea. So, maybe talk a bit more about some of the best campaigns or the best campaign you've worked on social for our listeners. Give us a bit of pointers. Maybe.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yes. There's a small brand that I've been part of for five years. I finally said goodbye to them because I found somebody local. I moved from South Carolina to Vermont and I have been with this company for as one of my long term clients that I'd had for five and a half years, but they found somebody local to take pictures for their eCommerce store, but it's a small retail store. That is all. And it's really funny when I say it's all about purple. Everything. It's called the Purpleologist.
Richard Hill:
Is that right?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yes.
Richard Hill:
What's it called again?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
It's called Purpleologist. And I have been part of that brand for a while. It's a small retail store, but they have an eCommerce side. What we've done there, they're ready now. I think they're finally ready to maybe start running ads and doing more, but they've been really busy just with what they had in the store and the eCommerce side has kind of been a side thought to them, even though I was selling them they're ready, but we've built up an incredible audience of purple loving people.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And they are the most engaged group audience I've ever worked with. I could post a picture of a purple mushroom or purple hat or anything. I would have thousands of people sharing and liking. So we hit it right with the audience. We build it organically. She has sold online, but they are loyal. They're from everywhere. And they went on Pinterest and they actually had people come into their store and say, "I saw you on Pinterest.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
I'm from Australia and I'm visiting the US and I wanted to come to your store." Mind blowing things. And again their budget was small, so we didn't do all of the things, but I find that very successful because we've really honed in on their audience. So it's now ready to whoever takes over and whatever budget they decide to go and rip the benefits of that.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So that is one and then another local one that I've been part of for a long time is a security company. And in South Carolina, we have hurricanes, lived through a couple of hurricanes. And so it wasn't very active for a couple of years, but the last five years we've basically had evacuations and we call them hurrications, if you've never heard that word, kind of fun.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Not really when you have four dogs, you evacuate. But we call them hurrications. And so we started putting out to South Carolina hurricane guide for homeowners as a security company. So what do you need to do to plan in June when the hurricane season starts? What do you need to do in July and August? When should you get your supplies ready? What should you do when the storm comes? How should you protect your home?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And it's been a very successful campaign. So we put it out in 2018, we renewed in 2019, and we just put out the next one, 2020, adding a whole chapter on how to evacuate or go to a shelter with COVID-19 going. So how do we do? The local people aren't even sure what's going to happen, but we're providing the service, like at least think about it.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
That we're going to be short in supplies. We're already short in supplies right now with toilet paper. So think about hurricane season and cleaning supplies, buy extra a little bit now, think ahead to where you might want to evacuate to when that hits because where you would normally go might not be available. So getting that out there, but that's been a very successful campaign because it drives a lot of traffic.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And we just started a Facebook Group for them, a hurricane prep group for that same company. And we have not that many people in it yet, but we know as soon as the first hurricanes on the horizon and the Atlantic people will go, because there'll be looking to Facebook and this group's ready. We have lots of information in it and they'll come and then that community will grow, but that's a company that owns that group. So I think that's a very successful campaign as well.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. So with something like that then, so that's a great Facebook Group. Yeah. So honestly Facebook announced, I think probably about three weeks ago, their sort of partnership with Shopify and other platforms, I believe, where you can set up Facebook shops within a specific product. Is that something you ... I know it's quite a new and it's sort of new territory, but is there anything you can tell us about that?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
No, I haven't looked at it. I'm in the group that I'm in, I've had lots of people ask questions and actually interesting question came up yesterday and I'm waiting to see if anybody has the answer. But she said that, this a social media manager who was running Facebook ads, who's owner of the company set up Shopify ads or adds to the Shopify. And she's like, I think they're competing.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So has anybody else dealt with this? I'm waiting to hear. I think a lot of people are collecting data. I haven't had anybody say, this is what happened. A lot of people are asking about it. So I think it's a little bit too early. I haven't really seen anything come out. And so I-
Richard Hill:
Here in the UK, Shopify, something we follow quite closely. Obviously we're a eCommerce agency, but Shopify, they seem to be in the news all the time at the moment with different partnerships. I think it was announced a couple of days ago, a partnership with Walmart in the UK, in the US as well, where I think my understanding is that if you are a Shopify merchant and so many merchants with the new partnership with Walmart will be able to list their products on the Walmart website.
Richard Hill:
So Walmart will then have an inventory of millions of skews on their website rather than just the Walmart product to try and ride. Now it's a bit extra-
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Amazon, right?
Richard Hill:
Yeah. So that's an interesting play. But then Shopify, of all seven of them on Facebook and with Walmart. So yeah, they really-
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
It'll be interesting how that goes. This is a huge, vast wide country. And having just moved to a rural area, I can tell you, even though we love Amazon Prime, Walmart delivers faster. I can order something today by noon. And tomorrow I get Walmart on my front porch, on my front deck. And if I order something from Amazon, it's two days and I'm rural, I don't even get mail delivered, but I can get Walmart delivered the next day.
Richard Hill:
That's interesting. Isn't it? So certain states and certain areas, like you say, whereas more built up city type, it's going to be a lot quick. Yeah.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah. We have so many different demographics in so many different areas in the US, and that must've been a big need for this. So I do think it's something to watch. I don't usually rush into things when new things come up. I'm kind of like putting my ear to the ground and listening to it. And since I don't do much on the paid side, it's on my radar, but I don't have any experience with it.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Follow Shopify share value. And I knew their shares I think since launch, they've got 10 bolts on 1000% since lockdown. So 23rd of March in the UK was locked. Around that day, the stock market crashed if you like, and Shopify shares have doubled since that day, more than doubled now. So that's quite an interesting one.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Well, it makes sense. People don't want to go anywhere. They want things delivered.
Richard Hill:
They're giving away six months worth of service for free. So if you want to start a store as a retail, you want to start an eCommerce store, you've got six month free on Shopify. So that's about three, four months into that or three months into that. So in three months time, the less people will be paying, which will be probably another million, I don't know the numbers exactly. But thousands.
Richard Hill:
And obviously all these partnerships, definitely one to keep an eye on. So organic social media, paid social media. We've got the two sort of ... and I could think quite often what I see and a lot of other people I speak to, so one or the other a little bit, or maybe a little bit of work combining the two. But what would you say, you've got to choose one or the other, what's your sort of theory on that or sort of-
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
I definitely don't choose one or the other. They actually work so-
Richard Hill:
So you're not having-
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
No, no, I'm not having it. They work really well together. Your Facebook ads are going to work better if you have organic social media. And organic social media is going to give you the social proof that you're actually a real brand that cares for people. If I see an ad and it's what a lot of people do, they click through to page. Because we've been served ads for products that are coming out of different countries.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And we want to make sure that this is a reputable company. And if I go to a page and all I see is the ad and there's nothing there, I'm not going to buy anything from them. So the organic social shows what you're doing, who you are as a company that you sell, that you have products, that you are located somewhere. People can contact you for customer service because that's important when you're ready to order something.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And your ads just work better. So I actually, that's kind of how I became the organic specialist. I started working with an ad agency year and a half ago because they needed an organic person for three of their accounts. And they're like, "We don't have anybody that does this. You talk about doing social media and your posting and you're organically posting, can you do this for these businesses?"
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And I started doing it and their ad spend was less, they did better. Now I've taken on the title because it really enhances what they do and what I do and the brands love it. So I'm having the conversations. I'm having the conversations even with the people in the ads. Sometimes they ask things, I monitor DMs, I put posts up there. It's more than just a product post or a buy my stuff post.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Father's Day is coming up. We have a lovely picture of a father and a son. And there's nothing to sell right there, but those are needed to show that this is a real brand. So if you're just doing paid, you're doing yourself a disservice. And if you're just doing organic, but you need to push products and services and you want to sell a webinar or a product, you need to have the paid. So, they work so well together.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think that ties into sort of the next topic, really. I think as an agency, we don't manage organic social media all the time. We don't do it. We'll run paid ads and we will then only run some organic, but only if you're running paid. You've got to be running paid with those as we won't manage your organic or 95% of our time into paid.
Richard Hill:
So question is, how can we really make money from the organic side? When you're spending two grand a month or 2000, $5,000 a month on paid ads in Facebook ads, for example. And then the platform is telling you the row ads is five times, five times five is 25. So you've got your 25 payback story. It's very transparent from an agency point of view. I've got my 25 payback. So it's working, whereas on organic, I think this is what yeah, so-
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
It is much harder to prove that. But one of the things that I wanted to mention there is that the customer service part, the being there to have conversations, to listen, to see what your customers are doing, because don't we all know that it's much cheaper to keep a customer an upsell than it is to get new customers constantly. Retention marketing, that's really what this is all about.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And that's what organic social media is about. So you're spending all this money on selling one product or getting one new customer, but what are you doing to keep that customer and being able to then upsell to them, because that's where your value is. I think it's like five times as expensive to get a new customer than sell something to a current customer. So, that's where your organic comes in to-
Richard Hill:
How's the conversion rates helps the ... If you're running paid a lot, yeah, you are a lot more return because they see the organic activity and go, "Yeah, this is a real company that's-
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Authenticity.
Richard Hill:
... interested, real, authentic, honest. They're responding very quickly, they're consistent." Yeah. Yeah.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah, yeah. So that's where it's that brand awareness. It's having the conversations. It's the authenticity, it's the caring for your audience. It's recognizing that they're humans, what they need. You have to read between the lines. I can give you all kinds of examples of people that complain about a sink being broken, but they're really complaining about their wife being in the hospital.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Sometimes you have to read between the lines and as a manager, as organics person that is on Facebook and is listening to the DMs and the comments, that's what I find. And having a human being there, having that organic listening and engagement is allowing you to get to get to know your customer better, serve them better. Ultimately get better products, offer things better, and really understand that language.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Because you want to talk to a customer and how they talk about your product. I always liken that to taking retention marketing, having that baby customer, that first touch, maybe they bought something small for you and creating them into a super fan, like a brand ambassador, a loyal person that you don't even have to pay. I'm not wearing a shirt today that says something, but my child has a shirt that says Nike. I paid them money for him to go advertise.
Richard Hill:
That's the aim, isn't it?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
That is the aim to be t-shirt worthy. I always use this. I have a talk about retention marketing.
Richard Hill:
That's right. That's right.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
You need to be t-shirt worthy. I have t-shirts that I got for free at trade shows. I've got t-shirts that I earned from running. I'm a marathon runner. But then I have t-shirts that I went to a conference and paid $1,500 for the conference. And then I paid $20 to buy the shirt to wear. I'm crazy. But if you're t-shirt worthy, then you've made it. So, that's really your goal. And you can not be t-shirt worthy if you're not having those conversation, having that organic social media.
Richard Hill:
So conference, while we're touching on conference. I know you're sort of involved with a lot of conferences. What conferences would you recommend we get point of view?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Well, depends on who you are, where you are, what you wanting to learn. I'm in the social media marketing's fair. So every year I go to Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. And actually this year it happened, it was right at the end of February, early March. I left San Diego and basically after that, the whole country and the whole world shut down.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
But that was one of the last big ones, 5,000 people, I think maybe 6,000. That was big one. There's some other ones in the US that I know, like Inbound's really big. I spoke there in 2018. Has something like 24,000 people maybe.
Richard Hill:
I saw a friend. We have obviously got several mutual friends on LinkedIn, but Dan Tide, we've got mutual friend, Dan Tide.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yes.
Richard Hill:
I met Dan. Yeah.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah. I met him at Inbound, 24,000 people. And that's how I met Dan. It is a funny story. So last day. And I was talking to a new friend and I'm leaning on something in like the trade show area and he's just standing there, he's watching our conversation. And I finally was like ... He goes, "You're leading on something. And underneath there is my briefcase."
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So we ended up talking. I had no idea he works for HubSpot, but of course we ended up talking, connecting on LinkedIn. It was really nice conversation. So yeah. Met him in person. It was really, really cool.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. They do a HubSpot, do a sales training. They go various different sales training. Myself and one of my colleagues here, we went on a training course with Dan about two years ago. A fantastic guy. Yeah, yeah.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Yeah. Yeah. He's great. So Inbound is great, especially if you are eCommerce, there's content marketing world, which is in Cleveland, Ohio. That's a big one. I know there's a big web summit in Portugal every year. That's a big one. Depending on what type of marketing you want to-
Richard Hill:
I keep every year, through a personal point view as well as our listeners, but I try and go somewhere most years. It doesn't always happen, but I didn't go anywhere last year. Year before I went to Tennessee and I flew out to Tennessee and went to Click Funnels live; it was in Brunson. Yeah. So I had sort of five days, six days, I think that six days, seven days in Tennessee. So tie in with a couple of extra days and it's a lot more.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
That's fun.
Richard Hill:
San Diego has been on my list for a long time. There's a lot of digital marketing events there. There's a-
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
There are. Yeah. It's kind of the hub. And Social Media Marketing World is like that we call it like summer camp for marketers. We go there and have, yes, we're learning. I barely go to any sessions. I go there to meet up with my business partners. I go there to go whale watching or dancing. There's a nightclub party there. It's like summer camp.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
You get to have fun for like five days with all your friends that you normally only see online, but there's incredible learning. And the speakers are very approachable. It's just a fantastic event. And then the city of San Diego, I've been there five times now, it's just incredible. So I go back every year. I love it.
Richard Hill:
The molest. So any conversation in this day and age about social media, we need to touch on influencer marketing, the sort of rise of influencer marketing. It's not a recent thing really. I've seen it quite a few years, it's pretty much very much in the forefront now. How do you say about influencer marketing?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Well, this is the book where I was going to tell you about, The Age of Influence that I'm reading. Actually it's by Neal Schaffer. He sent it to me. He asked me to read it, so I kind of started it. It's super interesting. I think it's very powerful because here's the thing. I can tell everybody in the world that the purple shirt I'm wearing is awesome and what it does and how it makes me look and how it makes me feel when I wear it. And it's all great.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
But I'm the one who's trying to sell it. If you tell me about my purple shirt or you tell your friends, it's way more powerful. When other people talk about you, it's powerful. Now there's a difference between brand ambassadors and influencers. And so that's something that people have to understand and influence usually it's a onetime commitment to a brand.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
They get paid, they do a campaign, then they move away and they go support a different brand. The brand ambassador is somebody who usually comes to the brand because they love and use the product or service. And then they come into that fold maybe through that funnel, through that Facebook funnel. And they become the brand ambassador. They're usually an affiliate if there's an affiliate program.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And they just tell their circle of friends, their clients, their clientele, their audience about this brand. And it's a very natural conversation. Every once in a while, there might be a campaign, but most of the time, it's just, "Hey, you want to be on our live show, hey do you want to be on a podcast? Hey, we're going to be at this event, do you want to come and have dinner with us?" And just really having a relationship with the people that run the brand.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So those are two different things. They're both doing influencer marketing, so to speak, but they feel different to me. And I'm just starting to work with a brand that has current influencers. So I'm super excited to be able to start learning more about what they've implemented, their contracts, how they find them. So this is a big national brand.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So I'm looking forward to learning more. Because I work with small local companies, the brand ambassadorships, I've set up several. Those have worked really well for local small companies. So that's kind of my experience there, but I think they're brilliant. I think it makes a lot of sense.
Richard Hill:
I think it's, yeah, what I see here in the UK to be similar, it's just on the rise more and more and more, I think it's going to be a whole ... it already is. But when you look at say agency live and the different verticals within an agency that paid ads, social media, SEO, I think the whole influencer marketing brand, working with brands to find influencer system in the long term, it's a whole sort of strand in our age, in our industry that they just absolutely fly.
Richard Hill:
Something that's in my mind, we're quite strict on what we do and don't do, and I have to try and keep it quite blinkered as you know. So, many things we can go off and we do this, but hang on a minute, we obviously can't be completely shuts off to new opportunities. So I think influencer marketing from my point of view, I think it's one that we will keep quite close in the background just to keep an eye on. And we might introduce as a service person. Well, yeah.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Right. Yeah. I definitely think that, but again, you need a dedicated person on your team because it takes lots of effort and time to set it up correctly. You want to make sure you vet everybody, you have contracts, you follow up, you understand what they can offer. You make sure that their audience is in line with your audience and all of those things.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So I think that just saying, "I'm going to work with this influencer," which is what I've seen a lot. Doesn't really provide. If you can't measure what they're doing for you, then you're just throwing money at the wall. That's just not a good idea. So yeah. To have a dedicated program to do that and a budget and all of those things, that's really great.
Richard Hill:
Great. So I think a couple of final questions. So I think my exposure to social media is that a lot of brands, a lot of people that are managing accounts, they will open an account, they'll post a bit, post a bit more, and then they sort of get a bit fed up with posting daily. So just sort of how important is consistency when it comes to posting on social media and what sort of things, and then maybe what sort of insight can you give to our listeners on the importance of posting consistently, and how often to post and that kind of thing?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
It's going to depend on your audience and what platforms you choose to be active on. For example, if you have an audience over 60, you definitely need to be on Facebook. If you have an audience between 25 and 15, you might want to be on Instagram. So obviously you want to know where they are. You really want to know their habits. It all starts with your persona, your target audience, your avatar, as we call it, who they are and how well you know them.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And I have an example that I use all the time. I was asked to be a strategist for a local soccer club to help them get started on social media. And the soccer club was run by dads. And a lot of the stuff that they had set up and the way they were speaking on social media was about soccer talk and all that stuff. But really when we-
Richard Hill:
Dads.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Right. It makes sense. Except that when I dug into the strategy who made them the most money and what they needed was the young children, because the wider the base was if they have 300 children at age four or 900 children at age four, that's going to make a difference three years down the road when they have these elite teams. So now you can choose from 900 children, set it from 300 children, and pick your best and build your teams.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So when we figured out that that's what they needed, they needed to build a bigger base and rec, who did we need to talk to? The moms, not the dads. The moms are the ones who bring the little ones to soccer, who pay the checks or pay the credit card bill, who signed them up, who invite their friends. "My little Johnny is going to be on this team." So it completely changed everything we did.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
And we grew that from 250 kids to like almost 1000 in the fall and in the spring over a course of a couple of years. But we built that program because we figured out who the target audience is. So when we talk on social media to that audience in that state where that soccer club was, school let out at 2:30. So what do we know? Either parents sit in the up line to pick up their children, or they're waiting at the bus.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So when do we post on social media? When we know they're sitting in their car on their phone. The other habits those moms have is they have a two screen dual screen at night. I'm one of those moms. I was one of those soccer moms. So at nine o'clock, homework's done, kids are in bed. I'm watching Survivor at nine o'clock at night in the US and I'm putting my feet up and I have my phone in my hand.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
But that's when you want to post, you don't want to post between nine and five. You want to post when you know your target audience is online. And this is the biggest mistake that businesses make. When they have somebody that doesn't understand the target audience or doesn't understand social media, they post between nine and five, because that's when they're in the office.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
One of the big diaper brands figured out that the best conversations they were having was it 2:00 AM because that's when very lonely, scared new moms where nursing or bottle feeding their babies, changing their diapers, sitting there crying their eyes out, being all feeling lonely, feeling upset. They started posting having conversations. And they had a huge successful campaign that they posted at 2:00 AM. And it had a dedicated community manager.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
So the essence of social media is that you have to understand who you're targeting, what their pain points are, what emotion, what they're going to react to, because the purpose, the sole purpose of posting on social media is to get an emotion. You want a like, a share, or comment. If you post something that doesn't get any of that, then you didn't do it right.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
You have to have people to like, share, or comment on your stuff. That's when you know you're doing it right. So you have to provoke, you have to poke, you have to do different things. But if you're not getting any of that, then you're just not doing it right. And then being consistent, looking at your data, what worked this week? What worked last week? Do more of what worked, do less of what didn't.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
If your videos work well, do more videos. If controversial memes did well, do another meme, even though you might not like it, but that gets a conversation going. And then if they see that, they might see your next post that's about your product. So really being consistent and working that in. So really getting deep into the psychology and who your avatar is, is really important.
Richard Hill:
Really digging into those personas, really digging into the pain points, the specifics of those people, testing things, finding out what works. When those moms are standing in the queue at half past two, three o'clock at school or at night at 2:00 AM when the young mums are struggling or whatever it may be. Yeah, absolutely. That's a fantastic point to finish on.
Richard Hill:
So final question, Dorien, we always like to end the podcast with a book recommendation. So what book would you recommend to our readers?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Well, I am reading right now and I'll recommend this book. It's called the Age of Influence by Neal Schaffer. It's about influencer marketing. So he sent this book to me. I opened it up a couple of days ago. It's interesting, talking about how influencer marketing came about, kind of how it works. How to set it up. There's lots of data in there, global trends, what's to come, the art and science of influencer identification.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
There's some cool chapters in there and tools and influencer discovery tool. So if you're thinking about working or starting an influencer division of your business, or working with influencers as an eCommerce business, that might be a good one to pick up.
Richard Hill:
Definitely one I'm going to order and hopefully our listeners do too. Well, thank you so much Dorien for being on the podcast. For the guys that are listening in that want to find out more about you after the podcast, what's the best place to connect with you and find out more?
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Connect with me on LinkedIn. That's been my new favorite platform for about the last year. And that's, I think how your team connected with me as well. I have a pretty unique name Dorien Moreen Van Damme. The Dutch put their maiden name behind their married name. So it's kind of funny, but it makes it unique. And you'll see somebody with orange glasses.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
I wear orange glasses to honor my Dutch roots. Because orange is a Dutch national color. And so you'll recognize me. I also have the same name on Facebook. So feel free to send me a Facebook friend request or follow me or connect with me there as well. But LinkedIn is really the best place.
Richard Hill:
It's the best place. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. And I look forward to catching up with you again soon.
Dorien Morin-van Dam:
Thank you for having me. That was really fun.
Richard Hill:
Thank you.