If there’s one thing Mr. Rodgers taught us is that there’s only ONE of you. The same goes in business. Sometimes it’s better to ignore the algorithm and focus on awesome content that makes your company stand out from the crowd. But how do you implement a marketing strategy that will speak to the modern consumer? Join Verse CEO David Tal and Volume Nine CEO Natalie Henley as they sip cocktails and chat about how brands can stay hip while also staying true to who they are.
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David Tal: Hello, everybody in Viva Las Vegas. I am here with Natalie Henley, CEO and founder, owner of Volume Nine, Natalie. Welcome.
Natalie Henley: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
David Tal: Thank you for being with us. A little cheers to you. Cheers. We’re in Las Vegas after all, so that’s right. It’s 7:00 AM.
Natalie Henley: Woo!
David Tal: But you know what, when we gotta work, we gotta work and we got some learning to do. And I’m excited to have Natalie here to share a lot about what she does and what she’s seeing in the industry. And hopefully stuff that every one of our viewers can take with them and learn from and evolve with. Themselves and with their businesses. Yeah. So before we dive in too deep here let’s start off on the shallow end. Tell us a little bit about Volume Nine.
Natalie Henley: I dunno. That doesn’t feel very shallow. I’m just kidding. So we are a digital marketing agency. We are technically based in Denver but post COVID we’ve gone full remote. So we kinda got team members all over the U.S. We are a pretty unique agency, so I would say most people think of the service line. So service line wise, we do a lot of SEO, a lot of content, a lot of social media, a little bit of ads and direct response. But in general as an agency, we’re just a little bit different. So a lot of agencies, I think, come at it from, well, “we wanna be best in class in SEO” so they learn four or five tactics in SEO that work really well. They figure out how to create templates, how to scale it. Maybe they’ll figure out the six or seven templates that a specific industry might need, and they punch out these packages. And that can be really interesting and that can be really helpful for something like a dentist office, where a lot of them are substantially the same and they need the same marketing set of tactics. We tend to work with more unique brands where that type of cookie cutter approach just doesn’t work that well. So we focus a lot with our clients. That’s the whole thing with Volume Nine, about how do you really find your audience online and get above all the noise and just create a steady roar, but connecting specifically you with your customers and not worrying about all the other jumps that’s out there online. So as an agency, we do a lot with organic traffic, organic messaging, really understanding the personas behind who’s coming to these websites and to these brands online and just really helping our clients sort of solve that puzzle of what is the right mix of tactics and strategies to really connect with their audience appropriately.
David Tal: Awesome. And I love what you said about that constant roar.
Natalie Henley: Yeah.
David Tal: So how do you go about that?
Natalie Henley: Well, that’s a really big question.
David Tal: We’re now getting outta the shallow end.
Natalie Henley: That’s not very shallow.
David Tal: We’re getting in deeper. We’re not all the way there.
Natalie Henley: But yeah. I would say it almost always, certainly starts with who are you trying to reach? And I think any good marketer starts there, who is that persona? Who is your customer? Who do we care about and then digging into? What do they care about? I think it’s really interesting as tactics evolve and different strategies, marketing at the basic level, is a lot of the same way that it’s always been. You got a brand, you got their customer and these are all tactics to connect to them. So it’s really about what are the most effective tactics that connect you to that customer? So really helping our clients understand that customer and then really building it out from there. How is that person searching for them? How are they, finding them at the top of the funnel? You know what I mean? Are you on social media? Are you building an interesting, authentic brand? Do you have social channels worth following? And then starting to drill down. Okay. When someone’s searching online, how are they connecting with you? And then once they’ve hit your marketing, how are you bringing them back to this website? And how are you continually fueling that customer journey? So for us, we know that the customer journey isn’t perfect and linear, but it’s really important that every step in that customer journey is very consistent. When you’re doing a really good job of connecting to that customer outside of what every other brand is doing. So what you don’t want is like this, me too marketing mix, where you’re just doing the same garbage that everybody else is. How can you be authentic and be you and really connect with them meaningfully.
David Tal: And stand out?
Natalie Henley: Correct.
David Tal: Cause it’s a noisy world.
Natalie Henley: It is. And as an SEO agency, I can tell you there’s a lot of SEOs that have put a lot of garbage on the internet.
David Tal: Yeah. And everyone’s going after the same keywords.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: If they’re competing with each other.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: So how does one stand out from the other.
Natalie Henley: Well, and I think part of it is that yes, everybody’s going after the same keywords, but moreover people are sort of going at it in an inappropriate way. That’s where it’s really interesting in SEO right now, I think historically you’ve seen SEO be like, oh man, I got. 10 keywords. And we’re gonna be number one for those 10 keywords. That’s not really how SEO works. There’s no such thing as a perfect number one ranking, right? Even just with Google personalization, it’s all just a custom deck of cards. What you’re gonna search and what I’m gonna search are slightly different. But even if we are sitting here and we search the exact same things, we might see different search engine result pages. Sure. So it really doesn’t come down to, what’s the number one keyword, and I must have it. But then once you understand, okay, what is my audience searching and where do I wanna connect? It’s really Google’s all these algorithm updates and all these things that are happening. It’s really about who has the best damn page on the internet for that search query. And what a lot of businesses aren’t doing is investing the time and the energy to really do that. What they’re doing is going, man, historically, I punch a keyword in a page title. I punch it in the mated data. Let me optimize some H twos, boom. That site is optimized. Let’s move on. And I think a lot of brands are stuck in those older tactics, because, again, a lot of agencies have built up around packages and a lot of people are just like, oh yeah, I know SEO. I installed rank math. I fill it in and I’m optimized, time to do the next thing. They’re not actually thinking about how to appropriately optimize. And they’re really missing out on a lot of potential traffic organically.
David Tal: We’re officially in the deep end now.
Natalie Henley: Yeah.
David Tal: And so what, what’s interesting about what you said is that as these companies evolve or try all these different things, the one thing that keeps changing is those algorithms.
Natalie Henley: Yeah.
David Tal: And so when people rely too much on a specific, like you said, packing keywords and things like that. And then the algorithm changes. I see people freaking out all the time. Their sites go from, they cheated the system a bit or manipulated it a bit. Yeah. Small violin, even smaller than that.
Natalie Henley: Yeah. Here we go.
David Tal: And it’s because they’re not looking at the holistic entirety of their brand, of their company. And of the content, they’re putting too many eggs in one basket, but Google owns that basket and can move it.
Natalie Henley: So I would say that the biggest, most impactful thing we did as an agency was about 10 years ago, we stopped chasing algorithms. Cause that’s when Google started unleashing like the really ugly ones, right? Yeah. Like all the ones we named after animals, penguin. Yeah. Penguin, Panda, hummingbird.
David Tal: I don’t like penguins anymore. I used to love them.
Natalie Henley: Right? I still love penguins. They’re wonderful. But yeah. In context.
David Tal: I have my issues.
Natalie Henley: Yep. That’s fair. Don’t we all?
David Tal: We could agree to disagree.
Natalie Henley: That’s fair.
David Tal: Sorry, penguins.
Natalie Henley: And at that point we went, you know what I mean? We understand what Google’s doing here. And more importantly, who gives a flying flip about, am I number one for this?
David Tal: Can she say flip? Can she say flip?
Natalie Henley: Shut the front door? Who cares about if you’re number one for the keyword? Are you driving relevant traffic? And then is that traffic having a meaningful experience with your brand and then are you CLO bringing them through that customer journey? Is your messaging on point? Is it pulling them in? Are you communicating with them in a successful way? And if you’re doing that, what you’ll find is that organically you’re gonna earn more and more traffic. Like even if you look in your search console report, I cannot tell you the brands who tend to ignore keywords, but just focus on high quality content. Do so much better from SEO than the companies that are chasing SEO, keyword words, and tactics and algorithms. And that’s what we did as an agency is we just made this huge shift of we’re gonna stop figuring out links. We’re gonna stop focusing on over optimizing content. What we’re gonna focus on instead is. What is this user? What’s the content they need, and yes, can we use some tools to really dig into what that is? And then can we make sure that journey’s consistent? So if they’re signing up for an email, is the email messaging on point, if they’re getting into your text program, is that messaging on point? Are we doing a really good job of connecting with them and pulling them closer and closer to an ideal conversion for us?
David Tal: I think it’s super important what you just said because so many companies, I think fragment that experience.
Natalie Henley: A hundred percent.
David Tal: They hire this person to do this piece, this company, to do this piece, this company, to do this. And the journey is this old sweater, sweater, what’s the word the quills made up of a bunch of different things, and you don’t even know where it started, where it ends and it’s confusing. And at the end of the day, the moment you leave that page or website, you don’t remember anything. And nothing connected to you at a deeper level because that journey wasn’t succinct and seamless. So I think what you’re doing with Volume Nine is really tying that entire experience from end to end. Is the most valuable thing you could do for the company and the consumer. Cause as a consumer, I click on an ad and it’s got these words, types of messages, even colors, branding, and you click on a page, it looks totally different half the time. And all of a sudden you’re like, did I accidentally click on the wrong thing?
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: And what actually what’s interesting is what markers sometimes don’t understand is, well, what attracted them here? Why wouldn’t you carry that over? Why are you taking a risk every time? You know that deck of cards of, well, I hope they like this too. I hope they like this too. You already caught them here. Keep the energy.
Natalie Henley: That’s exactly it. Well, and even more too. And this is where, even like Google analytics 4 which there’s a whole lot of grumbling about Google analytics 4. One of the things that tool is really helping us understand is that repeat visitor. And I think that even when you’re looking at analytics, I think what customers and clients don’t typically understand is that you really have to understand that it’s almost impossible that someone’s going to come to your site and they’re gonna take the action you want immediately. It’s possible, but like stacks show us that even an eCommerce brand and an impulse buy, they’re gonna wanna touch your brand in about six different ways. Yeah. Before they’re ready to make that decision. Absolutely having a landing page is an important first step, man. What about when they come back tomorrow or when they come back next week or when they’re in your SMS program and what they are getting? Because you might have. A really authentic social media channel. And you hold someone in the sign. They’re like, oh my God, these people are down to earth. They’re really friendly. They care about the environment. And then all of a sudden you start texting the snot out ’em and now you’ve turned someone who is excited about your brandage, just someone who’s annoyed with your brand.
David Tal: Exactly.
Natalie Henley: And it’s really about no, like what does that feeling? That old adage is people buy from who they know and trust.
David Tal: Yeah.
Natalie Henley: And it’s really important that your marketing and your messaging and those touch points continue to build that. So you have to understand who’s my brand persona? What is it that’s attracting people to my brand? Is it that I’m a big enterprise client and I’m not gonna get them in trouble? Is it I’m cool and authentic, and I’m the cool kid at the party? What is it that is your brand attributes and is that really consistent throughout? And they’re like, okay, I understand this is the cool hip brand and I’m gonna expect that in their messaging. I’m gonna expect that when they touch out with me and I’m gonna expect that when they’re communicating with me, that they’re gonna have cool, innovative ways they’re communicating. I wanna be expecting them to be on TikTok and text message. I’m not gonna expect a bunch of email blasts from them.
David Tal: Yeah.
Natalie Henley: And really. Having a lot of thought going between what is that marketing stack and strategy.
David Tal: That’s refreshing to hear. And I’m one of those modern consumers that appreciates that and yeah and want to be, I wanna be communicated with efficiently and in more modern ways, I don’t want people cold calling me. I don’t want people endlessly emailing me. I also don’t want people endlessly texting, right? The text is just an authentic, easy way to start a conversation. But one of the things that I think people make the mistake of doing in any channel is kind of overkill.
Natalie Henley: Yeah.
David Tal: Sometimes I sign up for something or I download a white paper and then I get an email every day. And that marketing team’s probably thinking, well, we’re gonna send 30 emails over 30 days and it’s gonna work.
Natalie Henley: Yep. Our open rate’s gonna blah, blah, blah.
David Tal: Yeah. The open rate quickly drops people, unsubscribe. They never come back because you annoyed them. And it went from someone that was interested to someone you just annoyed. You went on a date with somebody, but then the next day you don’t stop texting them. Yep. They’re annoyed.
Natalie Henley: They are.
David Tal: You wanna so I, I think the future of customer engagement is a multichannel approach that caters to what people prefer.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: But also has to be respectful and has to be authentic.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: And traditional marketing isn’t any of those things? No, it’s not authentic. It’s just like content. It’s one way.
Natalie Henley: It’s abrasive.
David Tal: It’s abrasive. It’s so repetitive. And I don’t care about your 80 different blogs. No. I just want what I’m interested in and, I wanna be able to dive in on my time and guess what, you’re not the only company I’ve ever looked at. So you’re respectful of my inbox.
Natalie Henley: That’s it.
David Tal: Because otherwise you just turn ’em off so quickly.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: How going back to content, which is obviously extremely important in building trust and educating the customer base. Starting to build that underlying loyalty, that will lead to the relationships and win the business. I, on let’s take LinkedIn.
Natalie Henley: Sure.
David Tal: Or any channel, but let’s just assume LinkedIn.
Natalie Henley: Heard of it.
David Tal: Yeah, I have as well. Okay, so you’re a brand and you wanna put content out, but one of the things I find, and as a consumer I experience as well is, okay. Brands are putting out content. And a lot of times I click on it and I see it and a top of mind and it’s important. I don’t always like it if it’s a brand I’m not connected with.
Natalie Henley: Not on LinkedIn.
David Tal: You friend, you like friends’ posts, but you don’t like companies’ posts very often. And when you go to a company’s post and it has 20 likes, I know this because when we do this, it’s all the employees.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: So how does a company make sense of that and how do you actually leverage other parts of that company to amplify that content or that message? Because usually, it’s just in the hands of that marketing team.
Natalie Henley: Yep. So something like LinkedIn, so this is back to, okay. I know who my person is. I know what my message is. I know I don’t wanna come across. So now as you get into platform execution, whether it’s direct response, it’s TikTok, it’s LinkedIn. You really have to understand the platforms you’re now playing. So this is why, like in SMS, you can’t just send a text every five minutes. Yeah. That’s not an effective strategy. In email you can’t do the same thing. So LinkedIn specifically, when you’re looking at what’s resonating on LinkedIn and what’s working, people do not interact with brands on LinkedIn. There are platforms where they do and it’s appropriate to have something like a Facebook strategy that’s on behalf of a brand or an Instagram strategy on behalf of a brand or a tech TikTok strategy on behalf of a brand, because people are responding to those on LinkedIn, they wanna connect with people. It’s very person to person. So if you want a successful LinkedIn deployment strategy, you really have to think through how are people actually using LinkedIn and why are we on LinkedIn? Gosh, if you’re a B2C I don’t know that I would recommend LinkedIn be like the core part of your execution, but if you’re B2B and let’s say you’ve got a sales team, then that’s really your core fleet of how are they using LinkedIn? Is it consistent? Do they have an account based marketing strategy running? How are they leveraging it? And then also like on LinkedIn, we’re seeing a lot of impact on taking something like the main stakeholder. So a CEO, a CFO, whoever kind your lead spokespeople are. And if they’re gonna write a piece of content, let’s say on the blog, get it on to LinkedIn articles. That stuff is resonating, engaging, driving traffic back to sites better than a lot of blog posts. Yeah. And just really understanding how the platform works and LinkedIn is very much meant to be a B2B networking, authentic platform. I would not recommend just taking whatever your company’s doing on Instagram and taking whatever your company’s doing on Facebook, which a lot of companies do, and just throwing it up on LinkedIn, just in case. You really wanna be thoughtful about doing that. And my recommendation would be if LinkedIn’s a core part of your strategy is to really understand who is your main deployment team, who are your main faces of the company and build a strategy around them. Try not to build it around your brand page.
David Tal: How does the company that’s a little more traditionally serious, more enterprisey, more grown up. How do they leverage a TikTok?
Natalie Henley: Well, they might not so…
David Tal: Here’s but then don’t you fear they may lose out on the next wave. It’s still in its infancy and people may have said the same of Instagram. You. Years ago.
Natalie Henley: I’m sorry. I don’t mean to roll my eyes. So the big thing with TikTok is that, so no, there’s always gonna be the next thing, the next innovation, right? So there’s one. What is your company’s threshold for innovation and things you’re trying. And it’s, with TikTok, are you willing to do the things that work on TikTok? If it’s against your brand guidelines, if it’s not how your brand operates? No, I would be much more concerned about doing TikTok inappropriately. And all of a sudden being like, oh, we’re gonna just do what we do reels on TikTok and people are gonna love it. And then just have it fall flat because that’s what’s happening on TikTok. When brands try to do that. No, I wouldn’t be worried. We’re gonna lose the next big thing because we didn’t put our boring content on TikTok. If it’s against our brand guidelines, to be funny, to do dances, to do trends, if that’s not in our brand guidelines and we just wanna give tips and be serious. That’s fine. And a lot of people expect that from large enterprise clients and reels are totally appropriate for that. And they’re getting great engagement on that. And people are seeing them as being innovative, cuz they’re doing reels in a lot of their competitive sets aren’t so no, I wouldn’t worry about it, but I would worry about deploying TikTok inappropriately. If you’re like, oh we gotta jump on the wave and you jump on it in a bad form. So don’t just do it. You don’t see Mark Benioff dancing on TikTok. So don’t just do it because it’s the thing. If it makes sense, like if you have this fun, cool brand, you’re like, oh man, our whole brand’s about innovation and we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do cool challenges and yeah. We’re gonna plank at the O like if you’re that brand then heck yeah.
David Tal: I wanna plank.
Natalie Henley: I mean, yeah. There’s some cool things you can do on TikTok, but if that’s not in your brand guidelines, don’t worry about it cuz it’s gonna fall flat and it’s gonna, it’s gonna make a big splash in a bad way. If you do that.
David Tal: I think that’s really powerful advice. Don’t be everything to everybody. Gotta focus on what works best for you and where your audience is and what they expect from you. Because it can come off and also rub people the wrong way.
Natalie Henley: There is so much garbage right now in terms of content on social and messaging that if you can just focus on who is my core and maybe even just pick one or two social media platforms, you wanna focus on pick a few core pages of the site that are really your primary and just focus on having really amazing content and being worth reading, worth following. You’re gonna stand out in such a positive way, even on what you might view as an older or more traditional platform. B2Bs who do LinkedIn, run circles around other B2Bs. You just have to know where your people are and where they want to be communicated to.
David Tal: That’s refreshing here because I’m not on TikTok. And I have a resistance to it.
Natalie Henley: That’s fair.
David Tal: But I’m always wondering, am I missing out on something? Am I supposed to be there because I’m the CEO and I need to be evangelizing.
Natalie Henley: Why aren’t you doing it?
David Tal: Absolutely. Everywhere.
Natalie Henley: You know what? Now you have to be a TikTok.
David Tal: Yeah, I am. I am a good dancer too. So I don’t know. We gotta find a creative approach. And we’ll see. Yeah. See, I’ll let you know when I’m on TikTok. Yeah.
Natalie Henley: You know what? I’ll follow you.
David Tal: Yeah.
Natalie Henley: Once you decide to make the wave.
David Tal: But for us link, LinkedIn has been probably the most powerful channel.
Natalie Henley: Yeah.
David Tal: Because we’re selling to other businesses. Yeah. And what we have found is that by giving the content. To all of our sales people and letting them post it, they get far more engagement than any company post we’ll ever get a hundred percent and it’s amplified. And you’re feeding your team the content to help amplify everything for you. So they become your wide marketing team, evangelists. Yep. An ambassador. So I think it’s a powerful approach.
Natalie Henley: It totally is.
David Tal: So as we look to the future, what is, let’s do a visionary look.
Natalie Henley: Yeah. To the future.
David Tal: Hold it steady. And I think we got it. I think we got it.
Natalie Henley: It was there. I saw it.
David Tal: It was a twinkle in the eye.
Natalie Henley: It was, yeah.
David Tal: Yeah. So visionary.
Natalie Henley: There it is.
David Tal: As we look there.
Natalie Henley: At Harrah’s.
David Tal: At Harrah’s across the street that will get knocked down some year. What does the future hold for this industry? What’s the future of customer engagement? What’s the future of attracting new customers through content? Is it always gonna be blogs? What are some of the innovative strategies or approaches that you see that are just in their infancy today that five years from now, we’ll be talking about it like it’s LinkedIn or anything else.
Natalie Henley: So there’s a couple of things when you’re thinking about the future that are just important data points. One we’re moving to a quick and ulous world. So the ways you’ve been tracking data, collecting data, in you know, in the wake of antitrust and things like GDPR, we gotta be really careful about marketers, about how creepy we’re being. Yeah. And not building our strategies on like Uber collecting data and then slicing people down and creepily stalking them around the internet. So I think that’s gonna be a big element. I think security’s another big one. A lot of brands aren’t spending time. Is your data secure? Is your website secure? Is your marketing secure? Because that’s gonna continue to rise and be really big factors. So I think those two big things are gonna have strong impacts in marketing in the coming years. On top of that, no, blogs, no. Articles, of course. I think there’s always gonna be a place for really good informational content. I think where you’re really gonna see the world move and where we’re seeing the best brands do things now is really making their content stand out in a unique way. So don’t blog like everybody else, as soon as it’s like everybody else. It’s an old tactic and it’s going to eventually die. It’s about, in your blog post, what does your imagery look like? And can you make your content really unique or really interesting? What are you doing on social media? Are you just, is it just a picture at a link to the blog post or are you doing something interesting with it? And I think as part of that, in that whole conversation, video is going to explode. And I think we’ve only just barely touched the surface of what brands are going to need to start doing with video in terms of what they’re doing in their ads, on their content in their social media. I’ve seen predictions that in two years, Instagram will be totally videos. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But it’s definitely moving that way. And brands are really struggling because video content is really hard to create and really hard to scale.
David Tal: You know, of all the people I interviewed from different marketing agencies today, specifically.
Natalie Henley: I’m the best? Right?
David Tal: Of course. Yeah, of course. But no one mentioned video and it’s one of the things that I also believe in the most. And I think you’re right about Instagram and Zuckerberg has said that before.
Natalie Henley: He has.
David Tal: And it’s probably the weakest superpower every company has because it’s a little harder to create.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: People don’t have amazing people like I do over here. Off camera. Off camera. And it’s so much easier, almost to a lazy perspective, to just throw up words. Yep. And you can outsource that. And there’s so many things you could do, but something that connects directly to the heart is a video that gets your attention, that talks to you. And there’s something about speaking. For example, if this was all just transcribed, far less interesting than hearing your emotion and your energy. And that’s the same thing with the video with any kind of content you’re trying to put out. The same blog post read in a nice chair with a scotch is interesting to watch and more likely to get attention.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: And so I agree with you and I think that it’s just all about continuing to evolve and being open to new channels and engagement strategies.
Natalie Henley: Yep.
David Tal: Testing. But video is gonna be, I think the number one biggest thing over the next 10 years.
Natalie Henley: It is.
David Tal: Where I, if you’re not doing video more than you’re doing just photos and blogs.
Natalie Henley: Static content.
David Tal: It’s too static. It’ll just blend in a noisy world and doesn’t send out anymore. And the algorithms on we’re not chasing ’em, but we know that they’re gonna favor that. Yeah, always. You already do.
Natalie Henley: They do.
David Tal: Awesome. Well, do you have a quote that’s close to your heart or a saying or anything that resonates with you or your team?
Natalie Henley: Oh my gosh. Thanks for putting me on the spot for that. I would’ve researched really cool quotes ahead of time. I have a couple of mottos that I really liked, but I think one of my very favorite mottos is a Latin motto. And it is to be rather than to see. And when I think about that a lot, when we do our marketing and our strategies that this isn’t about throwing lipstick on a pig, it’s about helping really great companies, get a really authentic message and really help their customers. And when we think about marketers, that’s what we strive to do, is help really great brands do more than just come across cool, but help them really get their core message and their authenticity across.
David Tal: Awesome. I love that. We gotta be real.
Natalie Henley: That’s it.
David Tal: Natalie. Thank you so much for talking to us today and informing our viewers with your amazing wisdom.
Natalie Henley: Yeah, of course.
David Tal: Thank you. Hope to have you on again.
Natalie Henley: Thanks. Appreciate it.
David Tal: Thank you everyone. Check out Volume Nine, Natalie Henley. Thank you so much. Of course. Cheers. Cheers. All right. Look at that.