Episode 312: The Evolution Of Better Marketing With Bella

I am coming to you today with a special, secret episode to spill all the secrets about Better Marketing With Bella.I know a lot of you struggle with doing social media on your teams. Whether you have done it yourself or sourced out to pay someone else to do it. My goal is to help you with your own marketing production and shine a little light on why this program is so successful. When Better Marketing With Bella began in 2017, it was very different. Mostly, because social media was different. I completely understand why you feel like you might be falling behind of the trends of social media that will help you obtain more clients and staff members. That is where Better Marketing With Bella comes in, and why we have changed it almost every single semester. Because as social media evolves, we must also. I am here to build you and your team up with the hopes of eventually graduating you from the program and leveraging all the social media trends there are. Listen in on some insight into how it all began and the evolution of Better Marketing With Bella. I'll tell you how and why this program is leading clients to their dream success and how it can for you too. I'm putting it all out there today, just for YOU! If you are wanting better marketing then this is the podcast for you. Biggest Takeaways: 2:55 How it started 6:30 Evolution 8:00 The process 12:40 New packages 16:30 The best you can ever get! Recommendations: If you are a doer, which by listening to this podcast, I know you are, then Better Marketing With Bella is for you. This program is designed to help business owners who are ready to succeed with their social media marketing. The doors are open for 2023 and I have changed the packages up with you in mind. Whether you are looking for it all or just need a little nudge to have better marking with your business, there is a right fit package for you. DM me and let me know you heard it on the podcast and I will have an extra surprise for you. Links: Better Marketing With Bella Bella Vasta Instagram Mastermind Group Transcript Ooh, shh, don't tell anyone. Welcome to the secret episode of Bella in Your Business. My gosh, you guys, what's going on? My name is Bella Vasta, your host and coach. It is October 2nd, and I actually just got done recording episode 312. I'm not sure when this one's going to come out, but my team doesn't even know I'm doing this. But I figured I know the boss, so I probably can get away with it, right? You guys, this episode, I want to tell you all of the secrets behind Better Marketing with Bella in hopes that it helps you with your own social media production. Now, the reason why Better Marketing with Bella started back in January of 2017 was for a few reasons. First of all, nobody in the industry was doing this for the pet sitting and dog walking industry. And many have tried to replicate it, but I’m not going to cast any judgment. I’m just going to say that we kind of—well, we kill it. We kill it. Our clients kill it. We have so many success stories. I don’t even have to tell you that we kill it—the success stories show that we kill it. But did you know that I started it because, after I sold my own pet sitting company that I had since 2002—I sold it in 2016—I sincerely missed doing marketing. I didn’t realize that not only am I an entrepreneur, but I also love marketing. I love it. I love the creativity of it. I love thinking ahead and just really impressing the pants off my community. I love planning for the holidays or just kind of being a journalist. I don’t necessarily like to write, but I definitely will personally. I really enjoyed seeing things or walking into people’s houses and being like, “Oh my God, there’s a bobcat on their back wall. Okay, let's talk about bobcats—like in a blog or make a graphic on it.” When I sold my business, I didn’t have anyone to do that for. And I was told at the time that I needed to figure out a way to do a “one-to-many” model, which is how a lot of Jump Consulting that I do works. If you guys have been with Jump Consulting for a while, you know we've got the Mastermind, which is one-to-many. We've got Better Marketing with Bella, which is one-to-many. The podcast, which is one-to-many. And then we do have those select things called intensives, either on Zoom or in person, for select people. But that’s not the majority of the way I spend my time because I want to impact the masses. When we first started, there were only seven to eight people in the program. We were still doing six-month contracts, just like we do now. But at the time, all we gave them was a Facebook cover, some graphics, emails, and blog outlines. That was it. As I started getting on the speaking circuit and speaking at some of the world’s largest social media conferences, like Social Media Marketing World, I became an expert on Facebook groups and got on some pretty big YouTube channels and started gaining a lot of notoriety. A lot of you guys don’t know that because I don’t talk about it a ton. If you follow me, you might’ve seen me at conferences or in interviews and podcasts where I’ve been brought on as an expert to help other people grow their business in many different verticals. It sounds so pretentious, so excuse me, but I am a social media expert. If you think about it, I’ve never had a storefront since 2002—20 years ago. I have built everything I have ever achieved online and on social media. So I know a thing or two about it. We had this program, Better Marketing with Bella, and I would sit there and personally create the graphics, write the blogs, and do everything myself. Then I had one VA at the time, Lauren. For those of you who have been with me for a long time, you might remember her. Her and I grew it together. I created everything from scratch, and she replicated it. And at the time, like I said, it was only seven or eight people. I would literally take blog titles, get a ton of them every single month, and divvy them up based on who I thought they would fit best. Everyone got a different blog title back then. That’s how unique it was. But it wasn’t sustainable for a long time. So the program has gone through many changes—and I want to tell you about those because I’m sure your own social media has gone through a lot of changes too. About three years ago, we added videos to the program because video was starting to perform better. This was before Reels. Stories weren’t much of a thing yet. I’ve always been adapting this program because my ear is to the ground. One of my very best friends is Jenn Herman—she wrote and rewrote all the editions of Instagram for Dummies. My other best friend, Kelly, was the former trainer for ManyChat. All of us girls are very heavily involved in social media. We used to be called the Queenies. For those of you who know us, we used to fly around the country, put our tiaras on, and go live to really help influence women in the social media space. COVID kind of stopped that, but still. That’s the thing about social media you have to remember—it’s always changing. Just because you learned something today or you think it works today doesn’t mean it’s going to work next month. Last month alone, Adam, the CEO of Instagram, had 15 changes—15 updates in one month. I bet you don’t even know one of them. And that’s okay—you don’t need to. You need to know how to run a pet sitting and dog walking business. I need to stay up to date on the latest changes and strategies on social media, and then be that expert who helps you and consults you. Over the years, the program has evolved. We’ve added videos, Reels, Reel outlines. Before that, we were doing Facebook cover videos—and then Facebook went away with that, so now we just do cover photos. There’s so much that has evolved with the program. We’ve taught social media managers in our group coaching calls, or office managers, where business owners have said, “Bella, this is too much for me. Can my assistant come?” Absolutely. I want to educate the whole world. We even took it a step further one semester, where we had members tell us how many times a week they were going to post organically. We held them accountable to it. My team checked in weekly, and two months later, gave the owner a report. Accountability in our social media marketing program? Yes, absolutely. Too many people are doing social media wrong—throwing spaghetti up and seeing what sticks. Now let me tell you what happens internally, because obviously I can’t produce all of this myself anymore—no way, no how. We have a huge team. Here’s our process (and maybe you can replicate this in your own company, but it’s not as easy as it sounds—it’s very intense). The very first thing we do is get out a spreadsheet. I create the buckets, and then we have a content creator come up with the concepts—10 graphic concepts, 4 video concepts, 2 Reel concepts, 2 blog concepts, and 2 emails. That’s a lot of content. Then, we added a content calendar. We told everyone when to post it. That wasn’t something we started with—we just said, “Here’s your material. Post whenever you want.” But we realized people wanted structure. So we gave them a calendar—“Post graphic number two on October 15.” Then they said, “What do we say when we post it?” So we started writing captions too. Now, we have someone create the concept, I approve it, then they write the copy and a blurb describing what the visual should look like. Then it goes to my visual team—they create the actual graphic or video. I approve it again. Then it goes to a copywriter for final review. Then to the replicators, who produce all the versions for clients. Finally, our customer service person handles deliveries, payments, support, and gifts—because we send a thank-you gift every semester. It’s an entire production—but the people behind it make it what it is.