Speakers: Lexie Smith, Hannah Nieves

 

Lexie Smith 

Hannah and I met when we were both invited to speak on a panel for North Easterns women entrepreneurship initiative on mastering social media and PR for entrepreneurs. And I personally had one of those art This girl needs to be my friend moments slash how are we not already connected? Because it was obvious there were so many complimentary synergies, and not only what we do, but how we approach the world of marketing and PR. So Hannah, I’m so glad to have you on the show. Let’s kick it off with where his home base and what do you like to do for fun?

 

Hannah Nieves 

Well, first off, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I’m excited. I’m so I’m actually based in New York. I’m East Coast based in the Hudson Valley born and raised. And in terms of what I like to do for fun, I am a homebody at heart. So design, cooking all those types of things actually is very therapeutic for me. It’s, that’s that’s where you can find me in my free time. I get that I’m I am, I would say a 95%. homebody? Who does need that 5% of social, but sometimes, especially with a pandemic world, it’ll be, you know, a good month, and I’ll realize I haven’t done anything.

 

Lexie Smith 

So I understand that fully.

 

Hannah Nieves 

I love it. I love it.

 

Lexie Smith 

So you are a true what we call triple threat. You work in PR, marketing and branding. I want to know, how did you go about developing such a well rounded skill set? So Baucus back us up and talk us through your career before today?

 

Hannah Nieves 

Yeah, so I’ll try to keep this short. But um, in terms of where I came from, I actually didn’t come from the agency side prior to this world. I started my career in commercial real estate, which I always loved design just wasn’t just one component of that. So came from the world of underwriting, marketing, commercial real estate assets in the city, which if you can think of Wolf of Wall Street, that’s exactly how it was. And then from there transitioned into a national home interiors brand, where I was director of marketing and trade development, I still consult for them to this day. And I love it. So really come from a very holistic background where and then you know, my previous experience, was really taking a few million dollar budget and spending that and allocating it in a way where we were going to get the most ROI. And that really wasn’t compass through our brand positioning, the messaging, the marketing strategy, and then also the PR as well. So I kind of packaged up all of that and brought it into the online world where people don’t have millions of dollars to spend, they can still get the same impact.

 

Lexie Smith 

So how did you Go from working for large companies to a wanting to be your own boss and an entrepreneur and specifically take this route.

 

Hannah Nieves 

Great question. And it’s so interesting because I feel like everyone has their own story of like, why they got into this space. You know, I always suffered from burnout, whether I’d like to say it or not. And it actually wasn’t until two years ago, I went to the hospital for it. And that was like the catalyst point where I had to decide, you know, Hey, am I gonna stay here doing the same thing for 40 years? Or am I gonna go do something else? And that’s what we did. And it definitely was a big transition, you know, and I will say, I’ll never go back in the sense of I love what I do. And there’s, you know, obviously, there’s pros and cons to everything in life, but just the ability to have that freedom is is everything. You know, I didn’t know that about your story. My I landed in the hospital as well. So I Oh, yeah. And the more I’ve shared my story over the years, specifically within the female entrepreneur category, there seems to be a lot of large dramatic health moments that inspire us to make that that shift. So I feel you fully. Now we’ve hinted but what is today, what do you do today? Yes, so we basically have a few different arms of our business, we have the done for you agency on the consulting side. And that’s where we work with brands for establish, we’re really looking to elevate, refine, and expand, that could be products that can be service. And then we have our education platform, which again, takes this whole concept of marketing, branding, and PR, and brings it into two different containers that are primarily geared towards other agency owners and consultants as well. So that’s kind of like the gist of it. And then we also have a new business that’ll be opening up in March. So Oh, when do we get to find that out? So I will just say that the new company that we’ll be launching is definitely an immersive experience. So I’m just going to leave it at that, but it’s gonna be really, really exciting. So you guys are going to be on pins and needles because this will be dropping pre March.

 

Lexie Smith 

So make sure to follow Hannah will have all the links in the show notes. So you can find what she’s birthing in March, right as I’m birthing my baby, so that’ll be an exciting month, all around. Um, okay, so one of the main topics I want to focus on today, was brought up on the panel that I mentioned top of show, and that is omni channel marketing. So let’s start with what the heck does that word mean? If some people are unfamiliar?

 

Hannah Nieves 

Yeah, great question. And omni channel is honestly one of my favorite topics to talk about. Because, you know, you can be a new entrepreneur all the way up to a large scale brand. And they’re still adopting omni channel marketing, so across the board, but when you think about omni channel, I want you to think of I’m gonna break it down really simple. It’s multiple channels that your ICA, your ideal client is experiencing your brand on. And within those different channels, the messaging is still the same, right? So whether you’re marketing your services, or your brand on Instagram, or on email, or through PR, right, there’s still this ecosystem that’s working together to really illustrate and amplify your message. And that’s the power of omni channel.

 

Lexie Smith 

So to summarize, if someone’s developing an omni channel marketing strategy, it’s making sure they have a cohesive message and brand across multiple platforms.

 

Hannah Nieves 

Yes, correct.

 

Lexie Smith 

Perfect. Okay, so how does one even well, actually, let’s start here? Why is it important? Or why do you think people should develop or adopt an omni channel marketing strategy?

 

Hannah Nieves 

Yeah, I think it’s really important because number one, you don’t want all your eggs in one basket either, you know, in general, and I think we’ve more so within the past few weeks, we’ve seen people who’ve been hacked on their Instagram accounts, they’ve lost access. And if you’re relying solely on one platform to drive revenue for your business, and that platform goes away, you’re Sol. So I always like to say, it’s really good to have, you know, multi streams of traffic coming in. But really want us to before we even get to that point number one is like where are your where’s your audience hanging out on? Because you might have different segments of your audience. And they might be on LinkedIn, for example. Or they might be you know, listening to a podcast, for example. So it’s really identifying who that person is, and what their buying behavior look like.

 

Lexie Smith 

Now, some of the advice newer entrepreneurs here is, you know, start one place, start one place, don’t spread yourself too thin. So what would you say to that advice? Is it contradictory to omni channel? Is there room for both talking through that?

 

Hannah Nieves 

Absolutely. And if you’re in the newer phases, I definitely agree with starting salt, starting small and really simplifying your process. So that’s picking up that form and growing your email list, cool, own that dominate that. And then from there, then you can expand it to other things. So maybe you launch a blog, or maybe you start pitching yourself to the media, whatever that looks like for you. But I always say start small, and then build it out in phases. So you don’t get overwhelmed. You don’t have to be in every single platform for it to be effective. You could be on two or three, and it still be extremely effective for your business. So someone comes to you, and they’re like, Alright, I’m onboard, I want to do this whole omni channel marketing thing I’m sold, where would you start with them? So I like to start from the future and work our way backwards. So I always like to ask the question of what’s the five to 10 year plan? What does this look like for you? Because I want you to think past the year a year is too quick, right? So I want to think five to 10 years out, what does that look like? And you’d be surprised what comes up when you ask that question? Because some people might change their entire trajectory, right? Like they might be in a consulting done for you or coaching role, but they might say, You know what, I actually want to launch you know, a physical product, or I want to launch a brick and mortar. So I’m always thinking of like, what’s the long term and work backwards from there? I think that’s the biggest thing. And then from there, just really identifying like, who that target audience is for you communicating to, what do they consume, how do they consume, and really getting clear on the message because you essentially want to point your person, your ideal client from point A to point B. And then once you’ve really identified that, that’s when it gets easy and fun to pick the platforms and see how you’re going to communicate that narrative.

 

Lexie Smith 

So let’s do best tips or like top do’s and then we’ll flip into top don’ts.

 

Hannah Nieves 

Okay, so top do’s for omni channel marketing, and keep it simplified, you don’t have to regurgitate or create new content and all these platforms, you can regurgitate and simplify what you already have existing on one platform and streamlined and repurpose for others. So keep that in mind as well. Um, I would also recommend to don’t get caught up in what’s trending. Tick tock is a trending platform right now, which maybe it could work for your business, but maybe it doesn’t work. So really sit on it before I know, as an entrepreneur, it’s easy to be very impulsive with ideas that we have, we just have an idea we need to run with it. But really sit with that first, because it’s one of those things I always recommend, before you go and commit to pumping out endless content, for example, like every single week, start with a consistent rhythm first, and then add from there.

 

Lexie Smith 

Okay, great. Now, don’t,

 

Hannah Nieves 

don’t don’t just follow with whatever one’s doing. I think that’s another one as well. And you probably can agree on that. I think again, it’s so easy to see, you know, this person doing XYZ. So if I emulate that it’s going to work for me. And the short answer is that every business is different. Every client tells different and you really need to know you and your message. I think that’s really key.

 

Lexie Smith 

Hey,

 

Lexie Smith 

But two things that especially come to mind are the terms luxury and white glove. We’re going to get to white glove in a second. But I want to talk about I’m going to talk about the combination of luxury and omni channel marketing when we’re talking about developing a omni channel marketing strat egy for someone in a luxury space.

 

Hannah Nieves 

for example, like fermez Lu baton, he’s iconic brands that come up when people think of luxury, but I always like to say to you that luxury is so much more than that, right? Like there’s other brands like for example like Patagonia, right like that’s still an elevated brand but they have a very laid back environment right but it’s still you could spend $400 on a sweatshirt so um, you know the term luxury is really broken down into the experience that you create within your brand and products. So I always like to use the example of sensory branding and sensory experiences because that truly creates these iconic brands. So in terms of luxury marketing, or luxury brands and omni channel marketing, I think the same process still can be true, but you just want to make sure this is across the board for anyone that your brand it’s verbals and its visuals are consistent across different platforms. So whether you You know, you’re doing PR and you’re doing an influencer campaign or you’re writing a contributor article or you know, you’re writing a blog post, you just want to make sure that message is still consistent and the voice is consistent.

 

Lexie Smith 

Okay, you probably have no idea. But you literally highlighted the one large company that the city that I live in half. So I live in Ventura, California, and that is headquarters for Patagonia. So I love that you said that. And we have nothing else.

 

Hannah Nieves 

I love Patagonia.

 

Lexie Smith 

Okay, really smart. One thing I want to call out, because I think it’s a mistake. You know, people can want to do short cuts, when you’re thinking about multiple platforms and posting across multiple platforms, it can be overwhelming, because that can be. So you know, people might go to a scheduling app and say, here’s one caption, let’s push it across Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. What would you say to that? Is that a mistake? Do we need to defer it per platform?

 

Hannah Nieves 

I agree with you 100%. Because if you go and take the same caption that you put on Instagram, and don’t change it and say, put it on, like your Facebook posts, right? Well, first off, the audience could be different. So that’s number one. And then two, if it’s like, for example, if you push it to Facebook, and it shows that this was originated on Instagram, and now it’s on Facebook, um, you know, they’re kind of missing out in a way, right by seeing another platform. So I always like to adapt the content. Like, for example, if it’s a podcast episode, and you create, really, in detail shownotes in a blog post, you can extract different snippets of that and break that down into an Instagram post. But I agree with you 100%, you want to make sure that yes, it’s consistent, but it’s not copied and pasted across all these different platforms. Yeah, and you just highlight it, I think, a time saving hack, because then one goes, Oh, that sounds like so much work, right. And that’s using one piece. And repurposing it in a multitude of ways.

 

Lexie Smith 

are smart, any other quick hacks or tips so that this doesn’t become overwhelming for an entrepreneur?

 

Hannah Nieves 

I would just start with a piece of anchor content first. So whether you like to write cool, if you don’t like to write, that’s fine, too, if you have a podcast, so whether it’s your blog, your Instagram, your podcast, for example, or a YouTube channel, let that piece of content, be the anchor content, and then from there, then you can break down your secondary platforms that you can distribute to. So I always like to start there. And there’s so many ways of doing this, right? You can have a piece of anchor content for the entire month for the week, and allow you to really kind of take that and then cross promote that on different platforms. I think that’s that’s the biggest thing. And I’ll definitely recommend just trial and error. Right? I mean, you’ll see what sorts of perform well by just testing. And that’s everything you do in marketing. Beautiful. So now I’m going to resurface a word I mentioned a little bit ago, white glove service. Okay, so I know I think I know but pregnancy brain here, I believe you hosted a workshop this year on cable on white glove service. And it’s a topic we haven’t covered at all in this show. So first, again, let’s define what the heck that even means. What is white glove service. So when you think of white glove service, right? Primarily, the thing that comes up are, you know, home interiors, brands, or moving companies, right, we have white glove service in our installation, right? And it’s really this extra level of care if you look at the definition. But the reason why I started talking about this is because when I came into the online world of online businesses, there was a heavy emphasis on sales, lead gen getting more in quantity and volume. And no one was really talking about retention, and no one was talking about how can we really deliver this high level experience to keep our clients to refer clients. So when I, when I came into the space, I kind of took that same principle of white glove service from the home exterior home interiors brands, and brought that into the space. And really what I like to do is, it’s not just your dubsado or HoneyBook workflow, by the way, it’s this whole experience. So I mentioned before the sensory branding, and the sensory experience, that’s the same process of building out you know, an exceptional customer experience as well. So you want to start off with really analyzing the customer journey from before their customers to after they offered with you. What are all the different touch points? And how can you illustrate or how can you add in unique touch points that your brand only does that you can incorporate within that container? This could look like for example, unique welcome gifts, right? This could look like you know, Midway feedback forms to your clients, right? They’re not expecting it or milestone gifts or things like that recognition. So there’s a lot of things that you can do on a client experience standpoint, and this can lead to increase in referrals, sales and just happy customers.

 

Lexie Smith 

So piggybacking off that my next question is, Who or what type of company or brand could benefit from developing a white glove service strategy or just executing upon such?

 

Hannah Nieves 

Yeah, I think it really is for everyone to be quite honest product or service base, I took all the experience to from working in a brand that really embody that white glove service and the same principles of like, for example, like, never asking your client to repeat the same information twice, you know, little things like that, and like having like an initial touch base point as soon as they sign on, right, and really illustrating that communication. So I think it’s across the board, it’s really for anyone that really wants to, like position their brand in a way that’s unique, and stands out within the market. So you gave a great overview on breaking down all the different possible or potential client touch points.

 

Lexie Smith 

And you gave us some examples too, such as welcome gifts and milestone gifts for someone who’s listening to this podcast today. And they’re like, I’m going to sit down, and I’m going to do that. Any other tips on how they can go about developing a white glove service? How can they make their time to?

 

Hannah Nieves 

So I would say the biggest areas I hone in on are number one, your onboarding and your onboarding experience. This is where I see people fall short, right? And I’m constantly always poking holes in my systems and seeing like, okay, like, Where can we do better? How can we streamline this more? How can we elevate what we’re doing. But that’s like the initial touch base point, like little tips like this, you want to just take into consideration if someone were to, you know, put a deposit down to work with you, for example, right? Like, we’re all online businesses here, like we have never met each other in person. And if it takes you a week to send an onboarding email afterwards, that’s probably a problem, right? So you really want to like, understand what the time delays are from like, once someone gives you their money to getting them on boarded, what does it look like? And then for example, with the offering experience, this is a huge opportunity. I can’t tell you how many times even myself I’ve invested before I’ve had zero offboarding, it was kind of like, here’s the last call, or here’s the last so and so. And then that was it never heard anything again. So really just taking an audit of like, what are you doing when a client’s awkward and this is a beautiful opportunity for you to illustrate your referral program if you do have one? So little little touch points like that, I would say start with onboarding and off boarding, and then you can build in the other milestones as well.

 

Lexie Smith 

Beautiful. So can we let’s talk through? Or can we talk through some examples of maybe your product based business to some of these principles still apply?

 

Hannah Nieves 

Absolutely. So if your product based business, a big thing that I’ll recommend is as soon as a person purchases that item, right? Like you can put them down a beautiful nurture sequence. And this is also a misconception as well as a lot of people think that in order to have a white glove experience, you have to have a high touch or high ticket service, right. And you don’t need to this can be a physical product, you know, like my pair of glasses right now, I’m so wonderful in purchases, the email sequence that gets put out, that’s a beautiful opportunity for them to really get to know your brand, what you stand for, why the products different. And then from there, I would make sure that you have time delays within that sequence. So once they actually get the product, it’s delivered, you’re asking them for feedback, you’re asking them for reviews, I find that to be really, really powerful. Because again, it allows that person to say, hey, you know what, I love this product so much, I want to leave a review. And maybe there’s an area to improve, right? And that allows them to give them that voice and that microphone.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yeah, and it can be so it I agree it’s a huge missed opportunity if you aren’t paying attention to this, even if you aren’t high tech, or luxury priced products, because inevitably, you probably want a return customer. And one of the best ways to attract a returning customer will a deliver a fabulous product, but also remind them that you exist and have them feeling you know, like there was a positive overall buying experience. And then you can turn one customer into one customer buys 10 plus times. And I know I do that I have a few products and clients of mine that I honestly and unbiasedly returned to time and time again because they have such a fantastic experience from every touch point. So I just want to echo everything that Hannah is saying. So so important.

 

Lexie Smith 

I want to do now a little bit of trend forecasting. So we’re in 2022.

 

Lexie Smith 

It’s January and depending on when you’re listening, it could be February heck, you could be listening two years from now. So sorry, we’re a little behind. But I’d love to know what you think should be on people’s radars for 2022 in the realm of PR marketing and branding.

 

Hannah Nieves 

There’s so many, loaded questions

 

Hannah Nieves 

I will definitely say I mean, the metaverse is a big one. I mean, we’re already starting to see a lot of information coming out about it. Um, I think that’s, that’s a huge trend that we’re gonna see across the board from large brands partnering within the NFT space, but also from a PR standpoint as well. So I think that’s really fascinating and just even helpful to understand. So yeah, Metaverse and crypto blockchain are two huge ones as well. I also see this shift happening even from a large scale standpoint, immunity into their branding and into their marketing. Even you know, half a billion dollar brands like the one I consult for. It’s so interesting to see the shift go from, you know, we’re just selling a product and that’s it to know we’re cultivating a community. Millenials are the fastest growing demographic out there. And all these big corporate companies are starting to shift their focus to Gen Z and millennials because their buying decisions are completely different. So I definitely see that being really really big, especially if your product or even service. Sure we touch on briefly, in case there are new words for I’m sure many of our listeners, Metaverse and NF T’s. So first, what are you talking about when we’re talking about the metaverse or we’re thinking about Metaverse, or we’re calling it web three, right? So it’s really this ecosystem of not just you know, your Facebook and Instagram, right? I don’t know if you’re familiar with like augmented reality, or virtual reality, like communicate with other people on the metaverse, right? There’s probably different like, you know, different types of technology and AI that’s available on the metaverse but allows you to connect in different ways. So definitely over the next 10 years, I see that being something really fascinating and kind of scary, as well to kind of dive into but the metaverse and then as it relates to cryptocurrency, and again, I should also forewarn, I am not an expert here. And it’s really fascinating what people can do with NF T’s with changing basically digital art, like digital monkeys, and giraffes are sitting on, you know, this platform where people are treating them for hundreds of 1000s of dollars. So it’s a very interesting way of investing. And I definitely foresee and you’re already starting to see this with brands partnering on these projects for NF T’s.

 

Lexie Smith 

What is an NFT?

 

Hannah Nieves 

So NFT, and I’m not an expert, yours needs to be like another I probably should recommend someone who’s an expert in this. So I have someone I can give recommend to you. But basically, it’s this token or this piece of art, right? So this graphic, that people are trading in a way. So it’s basically this data that’s just that’s stored on a blockchain. And this is where it gets really interesting, because it’s not like your normal investing like in the stock market where it’s tracked. And it’s regulated. It’s really like a non regulated industry right now. But what’s really interesting about that is that it allows, you know, the average consumer to really kind of dictate that market there. So Google NF Ts, you will probably find a lot of, you know, digital monkeys and giraffes just hanging out on Google images. But it’s really, really, really helpful. And you know, just informative within the industry just to understand what it is. So even for us, like I’ve had my team and I, we’ve just started getting into different master classes and things like that learning more about crypto, and FTS, because it’s a feature.

 

Lexie Smith 

So it’s your it’s so fascinating to me, because if you’re rewind my life, circa 2014, Lexie just moved to LA working for Anna Monica, one of our first one of the first client accounts I worked on was a convenience store who had the first ever Bitcoin ATM installed. And I’m in 2014. Like this is now this is now and to some extent, I know I actually I have a prior coworker who just bought an entire house based off my I don’t know, the language mining with some sort of crypto.

 

Hannah Nieves 

Yeah, it’s like still beyond me. But it’s fascinating though, because even I just heard of someone in the coaching space, who just took their first payment. And I don’t know the exact currencies, specifically, I can’t remember. But they took it through crypto, which was so interesting. So it’ll be really interesting to see how it gets impacted. And especially with the way that it works from a tax standpoint, and just, you know, again, just the opportunity that’s available. I mean, 2014 That was that was the beginning.

 

Lexie Smith 

I know. And so I mean, I just have to give you kudos for being so on top of these.

 

Hannah Nieves 

Not even treating these futuristic. I mean, they’re happening now. But they’re also features and who you are and what industry you’re in. And I love that you’re having your team go through learning. Where do you go about learning yourself, Hannah? Because you’re so on top of things. Yeah. So I actually also give you a recommendation afterwards with my good friend Hans. He has great resources for crypto. I’ll send this to you afterwards, if you want to include it in the show notes. He’s fantastic. So I’ll send it over as well. But for me, I mean, honestly, I like to put Google Alerts and out sounds

 

Hannah Nieves 

I’m kind of old school, but I’ll put Google alerts for different keywords or things like that. So I can just say up on like what’s coming out within the media specifically. I love Harvard Business Review. That’s another one as well. I love getting my information there. So those are just a few different places, but Google Alerts is my jam. Yeah, great. Thank you for sharing those resources.

 

Lexie Smith 

We have covered so many different topics in such a short amount of time and there’s been so many actionable tips. The one thing I really need to ask you which is of utmost importance to the show since we’ve talked all things pitching is what can we find you sipping so what is your favorite beverage non alcoholic or alcoholic?

 

 

Who

 

Hannah Nieves 

you know what I’m a good full bodied red that is my go to if I’m having a drink.

 

Lexie Smith 

Okay specific varietal?

 

Hannah Nieves 

So I love our low looking Anwar also like a good Malbec as well. My husband’s name is Josh so I love the brand Josh. So basic but a good bottle of Josh

 

Lexie Smith 

Oh, Josh is that’s my mother in law’s favorite so it’s an easy birthday or Christmas gift out on for us always good. She’s super busy. I’m a Josh fan too amazing. And I really look forward to two months from now when I can rejoin having Josh at my dinner but yes, oh that.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yes. For me.

 

Lexie Smith 

I have for you Hannah. It’s just how can people connect with you? Where can they go to learn more about you and all your services and all the amazing things you offer?

 

Hannah Nieves 

So you can go to my website and any of us CO on Instagram Hannah me avez I put a lot of free content on there as well. So head to the highlights and if you ever have any questions just send me a DM I’ll usually send you a voice memo back.

 

Lexie Smith 

Perfect. So we will put links on links and links guys in the show notes. You know the drill. Hanna, thank you so much for your time for your knowledge this has been absolutely amazing. And I can’t wait to force myself to learn more about crypto after this.

 

Hannah Nieves 

I know it’s intense I will say and I am not an expert at all there are so many amazing people that teach on this but it’s really is powerful just to even understand yes, well cheers to the fact that we’re always forever going to be learning and why love this podcast and with that said thank you everyone for listening and thank you for your time and cheers.