Transcription – [Fully Managed] Tracy Petrucci Ep. 79 – Podcast Highlights and Transcript

Opening Game: Guess the Stat

Daniela: Okay, Tracy, let’s play, guess the stat. Actually, I’m gonna say that how many hours of video for the first stat is how many hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every day? How many do you think?

Tracy: Just thousands and thousands. I don’t think I could put a number on it.

Daniela: There is a number. It’s five hours a day.

Tracy: 500 hours. That’s it. Yeah, it’s not that much. Oh my gosh. I’m kind of shocked. No, I always thought the number was gonna be like 7,000 hours or something.

Daniela: Yeah. A stuff on YouTube, but apparently I’m actually kind of reassuring. Yeah, it’s not that bad I guess. So 500 hours of videos are posted every day on YouTube.

Tracy: It’s still a lot, but not as much as I thought. Not really. I don’t know. Yeah. When you think about the world, like the world of people, like I am actually surprised. Maybe TikTok is more, I didn’t like Google TikTok, but I’m inclined to think that maybe on TikTok there’s a lot more, cause I feel like people post more on TikTok. That’s just my favorite.

Daniela: Yeah. Yeah. You’re winging it on there, you know, you’re not, yeah. You’re being a little more intentional on YouTube.

Daniela: Okay. Next stat. What is the Guinness World Record for most cups of coffee consumed in one day? There is a Guinness World Record for this.

Tracy: I mean, I’m the worst guesser. 24. It’s probably too low.

Daniela: 82 cups.

Tracy: Oh, that’s terrible. Someone drank 82 cups of coffee in a 12 hour span or 24 hour span, and there’s a Guinness World record for that. Yeah. I don’t know how they did not have a heart attack. That is terrifying. I don’t approve.

Tracy: You know how in when you go to restaurants, they’ll give you like bottomless coffee sometimes. And the waiter will just like constantly come in like, you want more coffee and like try to refill your cup. I get anxious when they do that too much because then I walk out of the restaurant like, why am I shaking? Why am I so like this? And then it’s like, well yeah, because I have five cups of coffee. I didn’t even realize cause they kept refilling my cup.

Daniela: They’re just copping it off. Yeah, you lose track.

Tracy: Yeah, you lose track. And then I’m just like, you know, I can’t imagine drinking 82 cups of coffee.

Daniela: Yeah, for the last question, I would not be interested in that. No, me neither. No, I can’t. It’s terrifying. Last question. What’s the loudest animal on earth?

Tracy: Oh my gosh. I love this cause it’s not a number at least. Yes, the loudest animal on earth is some kind of bird, maybe like a parrot or something. I don’t know.

Daniela: Well, I would say you’re kind of close. It’s a bird of the ocean. The sperm whale.

Tracy: Huh? I fascinating. This is just fast, a fascinating start to the day here.

Daniela: Their cliques have, can reach 230 decibels, whatever that means. But apparently that’s the loudest animal on earth.

Tracy: They’re huge. I mean, from a volume perspective. That makes sense. Yeah.

Introduction to the Podcast

Daniela: So, the sperm whale guys, that was, guess the stat and welcome to fully managed. You guys know the drill. This is where we talk about marketing, we talk about business tips, and we assist you guys in your business journeys. I’m your host, Daniela, and I’m Penji’s partnership coordinator, and with me today is a very special guest. Tracy Petrucci from Petrucci Marketing. How are you, Tracy?

Tracy: Good. I’m much better now that I have those new stats in my back pocket. All of those random facts just ready for you to use them at a party. Can’t wait.

Daniela: Thank you Tracy, so much for being here. I’m so excited for our episode and to kind of get the ball rolling. We’ve obviously learned a little bit about you. We, I’ve gotten to talk to you for a little, playing a game, but let’s, you know, introduce yourself. Tell us everything that we gotta know about you, about Petrucci marketing, your favorite color, favorite food, whatever it is you wanna tell us. Floor’s yours.

About Tracy and Petrucci Marketing

Tracy: Okay. Well, one of my favorite stats back at you is I really don’t have any favorites so much. I don’t have a favorite color. I don’t have a favorite band. I don’t have favorite. I just don’t, it’s not that I don’t like things, I just have never really found that I have favorites of things that stand out. So I really fall short there on the interesting level, but about the business.

Tracy: Yeah, so my business started accidentally, I ran my first Facebook ad in 2007. And it was because I had just come out of school marketing, global business marketing, and everything that we learned was how to do a Super Bowl ad, how to do a billboard, like really big, giant, expensive campaigns that a lot of small business owners or just anybody that I knew really had no reason to, to do or need to do.

Tracy: So I saw an opportunity. I had, I was working at my mom’s store. I’m like, why are we not, what is this email marketing like? What did you think we would wanna email our clients and or the customers and get right in front of them? And what is this Facebook Leo? What is this Facebook ad and what is Pinterest? And I just started exploring all these things.

Tracy: And it was sort of an accident because then a store across the street, oh, I like what you’re doing. I need that. And two of the wholesalers that we had in the store were like, wait, oh, I need that. And so I started having these clients, you know, I didn’t call them back then. They referred. And they referred and they referred and, and literally to this day, all these years later, that was 2008. We’re still referral based.

Tracy: I have six people on payroll and you know, small, still small, but we like it that way. We specialize in social media management and strategy, content creation. So short form videos, photography, the meta ads of course, and email marketing. So the same things I did back then, we still do today. We do a lot of strategy, a lot of I do a lot of consulting and stuff like that too, but the team, you know, we’re pretty niche on trying to do a really, really good job in this one area that we, that we do.

Website Design Discussion

Daniela: Actually what, one of the things that I think I got most interested in you when we were kind of looking for guests for the podcast was your website. I really like your website.

Tracy: Yeah, shocker, shocker. I know a lot of people are very critical of their own websites and I, here’s the thing, I actually, I talk to a lot of agencies, and most of the time I will go into the websites and look at the website and kind of get, to get a feel of the, of the person and the, you know, the company that I’m working with. And I think a lot of times I see websites that are, and this is no shade to anyone. I’m not specifically calling anyone out, but, interesting.

Daniela: Yeah.

Tracy: I feel like I see so many websites that are just so, like you know, they make them so amazing and, you know, they add so many things that they’re hard to digest. Like, oh yeah, it, it’s like, yeah, they’re very aesthetically pleasing, but then the UX part of it is really lost. Yeah. And I feel like that’s kind of just happening with the world right now, where like people manage them, you know, they’re so focused on making everything so high tech that it’s almost not user friendly anymore. And it takes me a long time to even figure out what the specialty of these agencies are.

Tracy: Oh yeah. I have had that issue too. Yeah. Like I’m like, what do you do?

Daniela: Yeah. I need, like, you know, if I’m going to a website, I need your information to be there front and center. Clear.

Tracy: Yeah. So that I understand it and I think that’s what most, most people are looking for. And I think I really like that your website had that. That you guys had very clear branding and I like the simplicity of it. Cause like, I think the first thing that I read was like, boutique agency and video creation, something like that. Yeah. And, and it really just like said to me, okay, this is what they do and I really like that about, you know, what you guys were doing.

Tracy: No, thank you. I, I’ve actually been really annoyed at my website lately. Because I made it, excuse me, you know, years ago and I needed a photo and I’m like, here’s a pretty picture of a cactus. And you know, lately I’ve been like, what is that? Why is there a picture of a cactus? But the thing is, is I can’t stand stock photography. I can’t stand like I’m a, in a blazer and in a, in a corporate office.

Tracy: Yeah. And that, I’m gonna put that on my homepage. No, again, no offense to anybody else, but it’s like, we can do better. And so even back then, I thought, I think a picture of the ocean or a cactus is still gonna be more in line with me than a stock, you know, a conference center photo or something. But it is, it is, I am actually wanting to refresh it really bad.

Tracy: So hopefully when I do a little homepage refresh. Another thing that I hate about it, and it was so cute back when we did it, is on the homepage there’s numbers that roll and they have like anime. It’s like 7,000 Facebook ads made. Okay. I haven’t updated that since 2018. Like you don’t know how many more Facebook ads we’ve made? You don’t, you don’t how many videos we’ve made and I can’t be bothered to update that.

Tracy: And I actually, I’m so honest. I am such a honest person that when we first made those numbers, I really tried to estimate, like with accuracy, like I’m not just gonna put a number up there. How many ads have we made? Like I really tried to nail it. Yeah, you do the math. Yeah. It bothers me to this day that those numbers are so outdated, so I’m probably gonna get rid of that, but that’s not gonna take away, at least from the the straightforwardness. So that’s great feedback.

Daniela: Yeah. No, I like the straightforwardness. Like I definitely think to anybody listening that’s like wanting to do agency work or like, I even think any business put your like the forefront of what you do. Yeah. You know, like I think unless you’re a business like Coca-Cola that doesn’t need to disclose what they do because everybody knows what Coca-Cola sells. You should put that like, you know, just keeping it simple. Cause I think it really helps someone kind of understand, what it might be too, is there’s this idea, and I’ve actually been toying around with this, and this is just such a timely conversation before I changed my website, is there is this idea that, and I’m not saying that this is wrong, but what you said.

Tracy: It needs to be a combination. A lot of people say that the, that your website has to state the problem that you’re solving, which I really believe in. But if somebody states the problem they’re solving, they’re still not technically saying what they do to solve it or what the services are. So in a perfect world, you would have the problem that you’re solving and right underneath that, the services in which solve the problem. That way you’re like hitting both.

Daniela: I think, at least for me, it’s like, well, you need to put the service first. Sorry, I, I was sick last week and I feel like, and I went to a concert and like my voice is so weird. It takes a while. Yeah. I think you need to put the service and then I would probably, I’m not like an a website design expert, so like bear with me, but I’m like the type of person that, I think the first thing that that makes sense to me to see is like, okay, we are a marketing agency. And then, and then after that you can go into like, we’re solving the problem of video content for people. You know? Like that’s the type of agency that we are, because then that makes more sense to me.

Daniela: I don’t know though. So like you said, there needs to be like a, a perfect world where like both of these things are balanced. But yeah. I dunno. I liked your website. I liked the straightforwardness of it. I feel like I see so many websites that are just so high tech. Yeah. And, and they’re not user friendly at all.

Tracy: Well noted. Noted. I love that. Yeah, and I think what that really actually brings a really interesting point of the conversation, just kind of just like I think when you get into this world of marketing, I think when you get really in like into deep to anything I.

The Communication Problem in Marketing

Daniela: You forget, you kind of become so high level that I think people forget the simplicity of things. Cause I, I sometimes feel like what I see is just kind of these people that are all very professional, they’re all very experienced, they’re all very, um, you know, they know a lot. But then they forget that the people that they are appealing to, that they’re speaking to, they don’t know about website design, they don’t understand any of those things.

Daniela: And I think it’s sort of happening more and more where like there’s a communication problem, where I think people kind of lose touch because you get, so it’s like an engineer trying to explain to me in engineer words how a machine works. And I’m just there like, yeah.

Tracy: Yeah. Is something that I think about a lot is the formalness of people. And I may have been in business a really long time. I may be an expert at some things. I, I think I know that I am, I know that I’m not an expert at everything, but I know that I’m an expert at some things. I still am quite down to earth and I’m not super formal. And the thing is, some people don’t maybe they don’t like that.

Tracy: Like if you, if you and I have some clients that are a little bit more on the formal front, a little fancier, a little bigger, and they’re more in the corporate world. And you know, I, I really bypassed the whole corporate world thing. I went to college, I started my own business. I didn’t mean to, but here I am. So while I know a lot of corporate-y things, I have health insurance. I cover a hundred percent health insurance for my team. We have a 401k and matching.

Tracy: You know, I can talk to you with some fancy jargon here and there if I really want to, but I don’t like to. I have a really great example of this. It’s so funny because this has been coming up a lot this week. So I remember years and years ago, somebody, I was on a call with a potential client and they said, we need omnichannel marketing. And now, you know, I, I’m embarrassed.

Tracy: Always gonna be honest and tell stories, even if they’re embarrassing. I remember I go, I had to Google it and you know this, this woman, I don’t think she even knew what she was talking about, but she heard it on a podcast or she heard it somewhere. You know, I heard we should be doing this. And she’s like, I want omnichannel marketing.

Tracy: I’m over here like, shoot, can we do that? I’m Googling and I’m like, oh. Basic, it’s just having a, a, a cohesive strategy across all platforms. Like your emails are gonna be timely with your ads and you’re, I’m like, yeah, wouldn’t a basic expectation of you’re having an omnichannel strategy.

Tracy: So, you know, it’s, it’s, there are a lot of, formal things and formal jargon and oh my gosh, you know, a terrible one are all the acronyms. You know, obviously most people know the basic ones. You know, ROI, CT kpi, but there’s so many,

Daniela: Yeah, there’s so many.

Tracy: In data ana, so many data analytics, acronyms that I literally still don’t know them all. And, and again, once I like Google, I’m like, oh yeah, that I can tell you what that is, then I can pull it up. And here it is. But it is, there’s a lot of, fancy jargon.

Tracy: Yeah. And I don’t think it evolves on purpose to feel unattainable or, you know, inhuman. I think it just evolves. Cause when you use the words a lot, you’re gonna shorten them. You know? It does happen naturally. But, but yeah, I understand what you mean. Sometimes it, there’s such an easier way to say the same thing.

Daniela: I think there’s just like a lack of, I mean, like you said, I think acronyms, a lot of them come from just cause saying search engine engine optimization and typing, search engine optimization is like, you know, yeah, that’s gonna take a long time. And the words search engine optimization sound very like, wow, what is that?

Daniela: And I think, you know, like it, it obviously is easier to just say SEO and to just type SEO. But even with like the acronyms, like, yeah, they evolve, like you said there, there’s like an over simp, like I guess the oversimplification at the same time has had kind of made it more complex. Which is like, I don’t know.

Daniela: I guess I’ve felt that when I’m scouting for people to work with, with the pod for the podcast, I’m always feeling like I, I’m always kind of prioritizing agencies that I feel like I don’t feel that disconnect with, because I definitely feel like that that happens, especially with B2B I, I don’t know if that’s your experience, but I think it, in B2C I think we see people prioritizing the, the, the client, the end user a lot more because they know that it’s a, it’s, it’s the random person walking that’s just gonna buy you toothbrush. Right?

Tracy: Yeah.

Daniela: And so they’re trying to do something that’s more general appealing to the general public. But when you’re working with people like marketing agencies who are very niche and tend to have very niche audiences, I think it makes a very interesting kind of conversation because a lot of them are talking to you with the expectancy that you are also just as knowledgeable about marketing as they are.

Daniela: And I mean, I work in marketing, so obviously I know, but I think I always want to work with people that are able to navigate that cause I, I believe that, I don’t know, you can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. I would, I’m, I’m more inclined to believe that every single client that you have, there is a percentage of people that are working with you because they have no idea what they’re doing in terms of their marketing.

Client Relationships and Trust

Tracy: Well, I only work with those folk though when they, at least they trust me. And what’s unfortunate is there are a lot of people in the industry of specifically the one I landed in, which is social media. Yeah. Where they really don’t know. They just know how to post on Instagram.

Tracy: Yeah. So because you’re young and savvy and you know how to post on Instagram, now you have a degree in marketing and you can get someone results and I will be the first to say social media management should be done in house when possible. If you’ve got a niece who’s like, I can do that for you, and you have no budget, go at it. Like have at it.

Tracy: You know, if somebody can’t afford everything that we do and I have to take something off, I always say social media management, because you can get by doing your random ad hoc posts, like you can totally get by doing that, especially if there’s a budget issue. You know, there are harder things in marketing that you would, you could start with outsourcing to somebody other than your social media management.

Tracy: If you’re super concerned with community engagement and growth and how it looks and how it reflects on your company, how it reflects, from a credibility standpoint, then you have to take it more seriously and you have to say, okay, does this, is this strategy working? How do I put out a strategy that actually like meets my goals?

Tracy: But if you don’t have to do it or you don’t need to do it, you’re not looking to grow. I I’m pretty loose about that kind of stuff, you know, and, and we do, we work in both B2B and B2C. I’ve never chose an industry niche. I’ve never chose a service sector. I have fun doing that.

Tracy: I think that, in fact, whenever I’m, I’m hiring too, or like maybe we’re gonna have an intern or I’m interviewing somebody to work with us. I always bring this up because I do, and this is completely getting off topic, but in the marketing agency space. You are not going all in on one company.

Tracy: You know, we have a quite a small client to team member ratio, so we can be pretty all in, but you’re, you’re not, if you, there’s two types of people, the ones who like the challenge of, okay, now we have this client and they’re in this industry and this is the problem they need to solve. Versus the person who’s like, oh, I’m a one brand kind of gal or guy and I like to go in and just immerse fully and be the marketing person at x, Y, Z golf company, and I know there are the, I have been in this industry long enough to know you’re gonna fall into one of those two camps where the, there, it’s too confusing or overwhelming to be switching gears and talking to this company and then talking to that company and then doing a strategy for this and the strategy for that.

Tracy: Some people wanna be all in on one company. Some people get bored all in on one company, and they do really well in an agency because you’re jumping around and you’re working in B2B and then B two, and then this.

Social Media Management Discussion

Daniela: I think what you said about social media management kind of being the easiest thing to get rid of is so true. I think, with kind of, I think you don’t even need like necessarily the 15-year-old, but I think anybody under the age of, I think everybody under the age of 40 maybe, maybe actually I’m go higher under the age of 50 because I feel like I’ve been pretty, pretty tech savvy Gen Xers.

Tracy: They’re gonna know. Yeah. I’m, I’m almost 42, so hold on, hold on.

Daniela: But I dunno, I feel like, I feel like there’s plenty of millennials, and there’s plenty of like yourself, you know, like there’s plenty of people that are, are savvy on social media. Yeah. And I know that like right now, you see a lot of people clowning, like millennial stuff on social media. But even so, like I feel like it’s easy for a millennial to adapt to what’s trendy with, with the younger audiences, if that’s what you’re trying to do on social media or understand kind of intricacies that happen on Instagram and TikTok and stuff or something.

Daniela: And it’s easier to find someone that’s not necessarily in marketing to do that for you, like you said. I mean, that’s what’s true is these platforms did not start as business tools.

Tracy: Yeah. These platforms started for regular people to communicate to their friends have fun. And they evolved.

Daniela: Yeah, they evolved.

Tracy: Cause businesses are smart. I remember when Pinterest was invented. And I remember looking at it and being like, this is so huge. Like this can be huge for businesses. And then of course it blew up for businesses like they all do. Right.

Tracy: I remember te So I’ve taught at a lot of adult schools over the last 15 years. So we’re in San Diego, so Coronado, Poway in Sanitas, I taught a full college course at Mariosa College for years. I remember having to convince people, oh, Instagram is the next one. And everyone’s like, no, we we’re gonna be here on Facebook. I’m like, okay. You know, and I’m like, but we gotta, I promise you we gotta look at Instagram. And I would have to debate this with people.

Tracy: And you know, then Instagram pages where, like the thing before Instagram. To to this point of then it evolved a lot. So businesses were, businesses will always go where the people are. Right. That’s why like when all there was was tv, that’s like commercials were a big deal or you know, so there’s places, there’s more, more places now to reach the people. So of course businesses are gonna follow suit and go where the people are going and they’re on these social media platforms.

Tracy: And then, you know, there was a time, I’m sure you’ll remember when Instagram was very polished, you know, and it was like, it was so easy to put together a month of post for someone. Cause it was photos only. You could go through all their photos and arrange them all artistically, and it could be green and then pink, and then this, and then that, or you know, whatever. Just some cohesiveness. And it was almost like an extension of your website. It was almost like, a catalog. That worked for a long time until it didn’t. You know, now I’m.

Tracy: We, ours was very chaotic looking. Cause we do short form video for so many people and we love to showcase them. And it was looking like a hot mess on and I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t handle it. I’m like, we had to put some some pattern on, on our Instagram cause it’s killing me right now and it looks a lot better now, but nobody really cares.

Tracy: You know? And if they do, I mean, then that’s kind of on them. That’s not on you. So. The point being that it, yeah, it’s always evolving and social and social media didn’t start as a backend business platform, so anybody can get on Instagram and post again doesn’t mean there’s necessarily a lot of knowledge behind why they’re doing it or how they’re doing it, or what they expect from it. That’s the gap I find, but in tough times. Yeah. On your social media, it’s not the end of the world.

Youth and Marketing Skills

Daniela: I think what’s really interesting, is that we see a lot of young people, like very young, like I think like it’s, it a baffling to me how I’ve the amount of teens, children and, you know, young adults who probably, I mean, they probably don’t know, like on like a technical level that what they’re doing is marketing strategies, but they are, cause I think, like I, I’m surprised by the amount of people that I see that know, like if I wanna cancel someone on social media I need to put it in big block letters.

Daniela: You know, like, I’m like you knowing that and you being able to conceptualize that in your head means that you understand a little bit about, you know, appealing to an audience and marketing strategies and like, you know, like it’s a little more on the pop culture side.

Tracy: That’s a little more, because I have a 14-year-old and she is really good at video editing already. And she’ll be like, look at, I did a Day in the Life. And I’m like, what? And it’s because they’re watching and emulating and I have very strict social limit, social media limits. Yeah. She doesn’t have Instagram, she doesn’t have Facebook. She has like 15 minutes of YouTube shorts and 15 minutes of Pinterest and think this is where she gets it, you know?

Tracy: But, so she’s looking at these influencers creating stuff and you know, they obviously are older. They know what they’re doing, so she’s emulating them. So yeah, it is sort of just being indoctrinated in if you’ll from, from a, from a pop culture standpoint anyway.

Daniela: Yeah. From I think, yeah, like you said, like from a pop, because you’re just seeing all these other people doing, like the amount of 15 year olds that I’ve also seen that do like stop motion videos. It’s so cool. Yeah. How, I mean, stock motion was like a how do, do they even know how to do that?

Tracy: That’s time consuming too.

Daniela: Yeah consuming. Like why of all things did you choose to do stop motion?

Tracy: Yeah. No, it takes so long. I’ve seen, like I, I, I remember cause I saw like a girl who made like a day in her life, I think where like a Get ready with me and then she did it in a stop motion version. And that’s crazy. Like the video looked gorgeous and then she made it tutorial of how she filmed it and it was like a whole day of filming it.

Tracy: Well, they have the time. They have the time. What to me is insane is that, you know, like you said, like we’re seeing all of these young people who are becoming really good at video editing, who know all of these things and like, yeah, you don’t understand that this was before, it was like a cinematography thing that people like had to sit down and learn. And nowadays it’s like with all these social media things, it’s kind of become like a part of, of almost things I think.

Daniela: Just the evolvement of softwares too. Cause I think, you know, like we’ve seen how in app editing has really just become so much better. You don’t need to have like a, a fancy editing service to do a lot of like video editing or like.

Tracy: Yeah. Well, and one thing, I don’t know how many questions you prepared that we’re not getting to, so I’m sorry we keep winding into our own thing. One thing that you know, I do still reflect on though, is the short, short form social media video is completely different than a very thoughtful commercial or something where you do kind of need a storyboard. You do kind of need to understand, this is where I said there’s a gap between.

Tracy: The basic things that are acceptable now that work, which are amazing by the way. We live in an amazing time as a business to communicate directly with people and just pop up a camera. Like we both just rolled into this right now, like no preparation. You know, we, we didn’t need makeup and wardrobe, like we’re just gonna chat and it’ll resonate with some people. Ray, you can do that now. It’s amazing.

Tracy: But some of the other things, they are more, they’re still the psychological parts of marketing. That was like, what was most interesting to me when I studied marketing is I was kind of going into sociology in junior college and I’m like, this is fascinating. And then after you get it through a couple classes, you’re like, okay, now we’re just putting fancy names on common sense things. And I, I kind of lost its luster, but I, but the, but the, I was like, I don’t need to take a whole degree of this. I changed my mind.

Tracy: But applying that to, people, I think what, what’s cool and where it’s all going is you don’t have to necessarily convince someone to buy something they don’t need anymore. Like now people are finding things that they need, like the, like, we’re not like, Ooh, we’re gonna make this really deep ad and convince you you need this thing. You don’t need.

Tracy: I’m not into that. That goes against my philosophies in life. What’s cool now though, is it’s like, okay, you know, you need something. You’re recognizing a need in your life. There’s some problem that you need solved, and now we need, we do need to compete with the other companies that do it.

Tracy: So there’s still subconscious messaging, the way you choose to show something, the colors you use, the, the things you say. If you’re talking about competing with others who do the same thing and you do wanna, you know, grow your business, gain market share, find new customers, all the things that, that why we exist as marketing agencies to help you do.

Tracy: I, I’m happy knowing we get to pop up in front of people that actually need what you’re selling, that feels good. That feels right, but you still need to do a better job than your competitor, which is crazy.

Daniela: I just think like also with the amount of content that is posted, online nowadays, it’s, you know, you need a little bit more to stand out nowadays. Yeah. Because like, yeah, the basic marketing is just not gonna cut it anymore.

Tracy: Quality over quantity. I just feel like that still stands true. Maybe now more than ever. I do, I do.

Daniela: I think quality over quantity is still, important. I think I think we’re also living in a sort of dichotomy where human connection has become much more craved and at the same, and like I, I feel like I see a lot of people and businesses trying to create that sort of human connection aspect. And at the same time we’re kind of steering further away from it. It’s like a push and pull. It’s like, yes, we’re trying very much hard to like kind of strive for that authenticity aspect, but at the same time we’re not, it’s like a,

Quality vs. Authenticity in Content

Tracy: Well, I love this, but lemme expand on that because when I say quality, I’m not saying make a commercial like quality like that. I’m saying use a Bluetooth microphone. Cut, cut a, the most interesting part about what you’re, it’s in the editing, it’s in the final product. 

You can still just pop up something and talk, be authentic. But it is true that there is an art to editing it, presenting it, adding content.

Daniela: I hate when people post videos without closed captions. I can never have the sound on half the time I’m watching a video. That’s the kind of thing where I’m saying, yes, you could still do anything and it’s better than nothing. Just put out a video.

Tracy: In fact, I have to talk to my clients about this when they don’t believe me that people care what they have to say. Like they don’t believe me that people are gonna be interested in what they have to say. I’m like, there are videos that go viral every day of someone just walking with their headphones and the wind is blowing and they sound like crap. But what they say is valuable to someone, right?

Business Goals vs. Personal Content

Tracy: But again, if you’re trying to achieve actual business goals, these are just people too. That’s why I’m saying this is so complicated – both businesses and people are coexisting and mingling on these platforms. So there’s a lot of gray area, and there’s no wrong or right way to do it.

But if you’re a business, if someone’s paying me money to make these videos, I’m definitely gonna be like, “Okay, how is it gonna be the most quality piece of content that you can put out there instead of just swapping it out.”

But again, if you’re just a person doing it yourself, swap it out all day long. It’s always better than nothing to put something out there, even if it’s static, even if there’s reverb, even if the wind is blowing. That’s still good practice.

Practice Makes Perfect

Tracy: It really does kind of – I think practice makes perfect because those videos with the reverb and the wind blowing, you know, like the bad ones usually tend to – I at least believe that they’re the ones that help you with getting over that fear of putting yourself out there.

Daniela: Hundred percent on the camera.

Tracy: I agree. I agree. I do. It is better. I hundred percent believe it’s better than nothing.

Different Comfort Levels with Video

Tracy: If you can’t talk – and again, we are specifically thinking about the people who are poised and can sustain a stream of consciousness. There are people that can’t do that. Like we have many clients who cannot do that. They can’t put the camera up, they stumble.

If they’re willing to practice and try, then they should. There will always be a subgroup of people that that just doesn’t come naturally to, or they don’t want their face on the camera. Again, that’s why companies like us exist – we’ll still find a way to get the message out in a video. Even if it’s someone who’s like, “Well, I don’t wanna be on camera. I don’t wanna be the face of the brand.” Sometimes they just can’t do it.

Daniela: No, and I think just kind of getting that out there is really gonna help you. I’ve also realized that story times are very popular with people talking about experiences and something. And I’ve noticed that the most popular ones on social media tend to be the ones where the person who’s telling the story is good at making it engaging, making it exciting.

The Art of Storytelling

Daniela: And most of all, who kind of knows how to not yap too long and get people distracted, you know? Because like people as humans, we tend to talk around in circles a lot. I do that for sure.

And I think I really noticed like, oh yeah, there’s an art to this because you’re not just turning on your camera and start talking. I mean, you kind of did, but also you know how to make your words inviting, enticing, kind of keeping people interested in wanting to hear your three-minute long version of whatever happens.

And I think mastering that skill is actually pretty impressive. Obviously not everyone can do that. And I think it’s pretty commendable to those people who can.

The Magic of Editing

Tracy: And a lot of the magic happens in the editing. One of our favorite things to do is prove to someone who’s nervous that the video of them is gonna suck, when they see the final one: “Oh wow, you did a really good job.” It’s like, “Yeah, we moved this around and that really interesting thing you said at the end, we actually put that at the beginning.” A lot of the magic happens after the fact.

Daniela: Yeah, that’s totally true. And I think Tracy, that’s a great note to end this podcast on because we are running over time. But it’s been so great to have you on the podcast. I actually did not ask you any of the questions that I had prepared because we were talking about such interesting stuff.

Closing Remarks

Daniela: We’ll have to have a follow-up and I’ll stay on track this time.

Tracy: We have to have a follow-up. Yeah, for sure.

Daniela: Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. But before we end it, I do wanna give you the space to promote anything. If anything that we spoke about resonated with any of our viewers, the floor is yours.

Tracy: No, I don’t have anything to promote. You can follow us on Instagram. We show little case studies and examples of said videos that we’re talking about and ad results, but nothing really specific to promote would be great to have you. It’s just at Petrucci Marketing. And send a DM if you did find us from this podcast, we’ll be curious and that’s really about it.

Daniela: Awesome. Yeah. I will put the links to your Instagram and your website in the description in case anybody would like to work with you. Tracy, thank you so much for being here. Guys, subscribe, follow us, listen to us, anything that you can engage with our content. Thank you so much, Tracy, for being here.

Tracy: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Daniela: Alright, bye everybody.

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