Transcription – [Fully Managed] Lisa Mazzuca Ep. 104 – Podcast Highlights and Transcript

Shannon: All righty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Lisa Mazzuca, from On Your Mark Designs.

Thank you so much for coming on with me today. It’s so exciting to see you again.

Lisa: Thank you so much, Shannon. I’m happy to be here.

Conference Experience

Shannon: So first, I just want to – we were just talking about this before the podcast, but I really want you to get into this a little bit. Could you talk about the conference that you went to and just what you think was like your favorite parts of going? Because I think this was something that was super interesting and I know we just kind of talked about how agencies haven’t talked as much as they’re kind of doing now, and it’s really exciting and just, you know, it’s a great site to behold.

Lisa: Yes, absolutely. So, my agency is very small, we’re a family business ourselves, so we’re a very small agency. I do the web design myself. I am the web master for approximately 50 small business clients. We’re based here in New Jersey and I’ve been doing this for 20 years now.

So in the past, you’re right, we’ve kind of haven’t had as much in-person collaboration. Of course, there are meetups all over the world for different specialties. But I have never been to a more general search marketing and SEO conference. The way that I went to this past month in November, I went to Brighton SEO. My husband and I, because he works with me, with our clients. So Brighton SEO out in San Diego. This is only the second time they’ve done this conference in the United States, it’s been going on for a while overseas in Brighton.

But now they’ve brought it to us. They actually combined the organic SEO with Hero Conf conference, so that was focused on paid search. That all kind of happened in the same space, and we had different presentations and tracks we could follow throughout the two-day conference. It was incredible. All the presentations, there were two keynote speakers, one each day, and there was just such a collaboration and sharing of ideas and actionable things that you could take back and apply immediately. Really good information in like these 20-minute talk chunks.

Some of the presenters, you know, they’ve presented, they were so comfortable up on stage. It was fantastic to see them, but they were taking these big decks and condensing them down into 20 minutes. It was like, how much? Three hours to talk about this. But wow, really so terrific. I took so many notes. I have so many ideas and I’ve already started implementing a lot of the strategy that I saw with the clients that I’m working with now.

Some of it about link building tips and local link building. Some of it about really creating unique content that stands out in front of a lot of the AI noise that’s out there on the internet now. A lot of it talking about conversions and content that will help your clients to increase their revenue and not simply providing educational information, but rather providing content that’s further down the funnel for people who are ready to buy.

That all was really cool and helpful for me. I loved it. And in doing that, in going there and participating in that, I was also introduced, reintroduced to the Women in Tech SEO community. So I came home and immediately joined some of those spaces on social and things. So I’m just thrilled and now I want to find all the stuff that’s on so that I can start going to these consistently. It’s so inspiring and motivating.

Shannon: Yeah. I’m so happy that they have these events because it does – I’ve learned so much from this podcast and having different guests on it, and there’s so many different perspectives and ways of doing things that all are educated and work. And it’s just really interesting to get all these different perspectives. And I’m sure that the conference is very similar, but everything all at once and it’s probably overwhelming, but also awesome at the same time. And I think that’s such an incredible event to have. So I’m really happy that you were able to participate in that.

Lisa: Yes. And being from the Jersey Shore where I am based and have all and am a Jersey Shore local, I’d never even been to the West coast before. So that was the first time in California, first time to San Diego obviously. So that was very cool too. It was a great experience all around.

About On Your Mark Designs

Shannon: I’m so happy. So I want to transition because I want you to be able to talk about you. This is the event that you went to, but could you just talk about On Your Mark Designs, kind of what inspired you to start it and kind of anything relevant to getting to this point in your career and kind of your vision for the future.

Lisa: Oh, absolutely. So I know that’s a lot. It is a lot there and a lot has happened that got me here. Right. So I went to school for visual design and communication. So I did a double major over at Rutgers here in New Jersey, and I always wanted to be a Disney animator when I was growing up, so that was when I put all my eggs in that basket.

I worked for Disney down in Orlando on the Disney College program, and I was a tour guide for the animation studio. Then for a while, I worked for Disney in Manhattan in the Broadway offices. And I got exposed to creative in that space. And that Department of Disney is also run by the leaders of the feature animation department.

So after my experience there, I decided to go back to Parsons, which is also in New York, and get those digital and graphic design skills that I knew that I needed to really be marketable because I was very attracted to marketing. My goals kind of shifted and changed after my time at Disney there.

And so I left Parsons after that certification program as a graphic designer and almost immediately started freelancing in 2001. I became a coupon magazine designer and started publishing my own local coupon magazine at the Jersey Shore to help promote small businesses. My dad was a small business owner and I just really always connected to local businesses, so I was a magazine designer, as a coupon magazine designer for another publisher for a while.

As a freelancer, I realized that that was a really effective way for local businesses to market, to put out these offers and have them come in and be able to actually see and track that they were getting customers from that. So I started my own. Really high overhead. I had no idea what I was doing as a salesperson, so I was trying to fill a book, buy a deadline every other month in order to mail it to 50,000 homes locally. And it was a lot to do on my own, but my clients liked working with me and they liked the creative that I was producing for them and could see how effective that was when we had the chance to work together.

So when I decided to move away from publishing physical magazines, we moved over to where they really needed the most help, which at the time was a digital presence. They needed help online. And along with my physical magazine that I was mailing, I had also designed a website as a sister to that physical magazine.

Shannon: That’s really cool.

Lisa: Very interested in SEO. So I was starting to compete for important terms, like New Jersey coupons, New Jersey restaurant coupons, things like that, that were very competitive at the time. So when I got to know how to implement those strategies, I started applying them to my clients. We moved away from that regular print publication and I started transitioning everybody over to the web who needed me.

It grew from there. For a long stint, for about eight and a half years, I worked for a larger firm as their primary webmaster and designer in Belmar. And I learned a lot about the business model and how to structure my packages and my offerings for clients. So collaborating with other people in the industry is super helpful in that way too. You may think you know what you need to know to deliver great service, but there’s always somebody else who’s got an idea that could take you to the next level. And that worked that way for me.

So I no longer am working with that firm. But when we parted ways, it allowed me to take those strategies that I learned from them and apply it to my own business and grow. And since 2021, I’m pretty sure we’ve grown about four times. So we’re really, it’s exciting. It’s been an exciting time, and 2024 was a big year for us because I do a lot of face-to-face, in-person networking within my community.

Like I said, I’m very interested in small business and the Jersey shore’s my home. And so local, small businesses, I know a lot about the geography and the area, what people are looking for, what people need based on our local needs. And that really speaks to people. So the more in-person networking that I can do, the more I can communicate with potential clients and kind of build that trust, I really love doing it.

My local Chamber of commerce, the greater Toms River Chamber of Commerce, gave me an award of Distinguished Citizen of the year in November.

Shannon: Congratulations.

Lisa: Thank you so much. It was delightful. I’m so honored by that. And then our local media publication, the Asbury Park Press, they do a community choice award every year and we were voted number one advertising and marketing agency in Ocean County.

Shannon: Oh my goodness. All good things. This is such a great year. I’m so excited for you, the Asbury Press too. That’s incredible.

Lisa: Thank you. Thank you. So yeah, all good things. And now with all that I gleaned from this trip out to San Diego, we’re working with a really diverse roster of different industries and clients from one man service-based very hyperlocal businesses to e-commerce stores with what is becoming a national brand. We’ve got a really wide range and now I have even more tools that I can apply to what we’re doing for them and help them grow.

Print Experience and Web Design

Shannon: That is an incredible process and I really like the fact that you had the experience in print before getting into web design, I think is something that’s really crucial sometimes, because web design demands that balance between aesthetic appeal and user functionality and having the print kind of goes into that. Like I feel like it teaches you different ways of – let me put this in a better way. Like there’s user functionality for something that’s printed that’s different than a website, of course. So I guess I have a question for you for that is how do you kind of balance that when you have that experience with print as well? Do you think that helps, or do you think that it’s not something that really…

Lisa: Without a doubt it helps because when you’re dealing with print, especially in an ad space, you have a certain amount of real estate. And you have to really be able to communicate with a hierarchy of information. So the most important information needs to be upfront. You need to communicate right away that the person looking at it is in the right place at the right time.

When you think about signage design, even beyond a coupon space, when you think about signage design, you have to communicate that message, say on a billboard within seconds because people are driving by. That’s the same thing that happens on the web. The web is like driving by a billboard. So you need to be able to communicate quickly and effectively, and that goes beyond knowing how to put a website together.

Shannon: Yeah. I really didn’t even think about it that way, but you’re definitely right because the timing even is almost the equivalent of going by a billboard because people are on a website for long. If they’re interested in something, they might check it out for a little bit longer. But if it’s something that they kind of like accidentally got to, or they just got a cold email outreach for and they clicked, if they’re not interested in it, within 10 to 30 seconds, they’re going to leave and not look at it ever again. And that’s similar to a billboard?

Lisa: Yes, absolutely. And when you think about an ad space, you also think about a website above the fold. There are so many websites that kind of make me sad when I see them at first times. It’s wasted an opportunity to communicate in that first very important bit of space. They’re not thinking about the information that needs to come across in that very valuable real estate above the fold.

Shannon: Yeah, I think people definitely don’t. I think it’s also a lot of people sacrifice content for design, and obviously design is always important. Like you want a website to grab your attention and be beautiful and not look like a child made it, or someone who doesn’t understand the internet. But you also, you know, a website can be beautiful but not convey enough content that makes you understand what they’re doing. I think that is like the most frustrating thing to me is when a website is absolutely gorgeous, but it conveys nothing to me or it conveys something very vague and I’m glad.

Lisa: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Shannon: And most people aren’t gonna ask questions. No one’s gonna, and most people, unless they really, really want a service, are not going to go in that info box and ask that question. And a lot of those info boxes don’t really get answered anyway, depending on the business. So that is like a very interesting thing that people have to balance.

SEO Strategies and Adaptation

Shannon: So then moving on to kind of SEO more, that’s something that you’re you’ve gotten more interested over time, which is really, really cool. Okay. So this is something that’s constantly evolving, obviously. I think that’s marketing in general. Something that is constantly moving every single day. One, do you think that kind of adapting to those changes, do you think that these conferences and different things like that are very helpful in learning more about the adapting space and kind of what strategies do you think have been the most helpful in helping you adapt to the ever moving, ever changing space of SEO?

Lisa: Yes. So in this conference, quite a few presenters talked about or touched on the search engine results pages and how they’re changing over time and how it’s harder to get that click through from Google search results, especially in the organic positions. So that is something where we’re seeing less traffic come through from organic searches, but not no traffic.

Local businesses still have the advantage over just those very general educational kind of terms that are now being answered often in the AI overviews and things like that. So when it comes to the high buyer intent and purchase intent or local searches specific about geography that will show up in the Google business profile and local search results. Those tend to be where I’m focusing on in the first place. So we’re not really being hit as hard as those bloggers who were very ad driven and making a living that way, and they got really hit hard by Google’s helpful content update.

When it comes to how those conferences are helpful in that, number one, they show, they remind us and show us what the search results pages look like for different searches if you’re not on top of it for every single client that you’re working with. So they remind you that that’s super important to keep revisiting that, to see what those search pages look like.

It really reminded me that I need to consult very closely with the clients about the content that’s being created for them. So many people now with access to AI are able to create content in mass at scale, and it’s very noisy out there, so having those unique insights from the professionals and experts who are delivering the service, have worked in this business for 40 years, are in it every single day and are getting those questions from their potential customers, how they would react to them. That has much more of a chance to stand out. So that’s what I’m really focusing on.

And working closely with clients. Clients are running their business. They don’t have time to sit down and write themselves, nor would they typically in a way that’s friendly for search engines. So they definitely still need our help in order to contribute that, but I want to make it easy, as easy for them as possible.

I tell clients sometimes, listen, this is an upcoming topic that I see as an opportunity for us that we need to add to your site and publish on your blog. Content marketing is a big part of what we do. We blog for most clients. But I’ll tell them, even if you do a voice recording on your phone, talk about this topic and the most important things you have to say about this topic and send me that voice recording. I’ll transcribe it. I’ll take the highlights. I’ll take your key insights and integrate them into the content. I want to make it as easy for them as possible so that they don’t have to spend a whole lot of time or feel overwhelmed.

Creating Unique Content

Shannon: Okay, so how do you recommend that? How can you have someone guarantee that their content is going to be unique if they’re in a loud space? Like if it’s something that a bunch of different people do, especially like maybe locally, I don’t know, maybe it’s like say a plumber or something like that. How do you make sure that they have unique insight, like they’re not kind of having the same thing, same information out there as other people in that field?

Lisa: Case studies and real world examples and testimonials are huge. So when their reviews come in, if the review mentions this particular service or product, we can embed the review as well on that page of content that may not necessarily sound super unique until those specific case studies are included, and I ask them to make sure when they’re sending me that information, to tell stories, to talk about specific things that they encountered regarding that topic.

But knowing what topics to even talk about, that comes from data. So we use Google Analytics and Google Search Console on all our clients’ sites. Google Search Console insights are super helpful and AI makes it even more helpful. So we can take the queries that they’ve been coming up for – the first 250 queries from the last three months. We can take all those queries that in search console are not grouped together and we can copy that and throw it into AI and say, please group these by topical relevant authority by relevance.

And then that will give you those bigger umbrellas of how you’re already being found, the context that Google already sees you for. Now you choose new topics that fall under those umbrellas to expand and build that topical authority even more, and integrate those unique insights and winning.

Shannon: No, I think that’s actually really great because I think that a lot of people will, you know, it’s very difficult to have a unique opinion at this point in time, especially when you’re in such a loud space or a very, you know, even the agency space. I think have a difficulty having a unique opinion on certain things, especially related to SEO because there’s so much information out there, and everyone does have different opinions on how to do things, but I think a lot of them end up in agreement with each other.

Like I’ve even found that on the podcast where there is a lot of ways of putting things, but a lot of them kind of narrow down to the same idea. And I think it comes up to how you’re putting that information out there, like what specifically is like, what format you’re putting in, what evidence you’re providing. And I think that does, like, that will convince someone to use a service or become a customer depending on what you’re selling.

Lisa: And video podcasts themselves help you to stand out from the noise, having an opinion about things where you are communicating your thoughts and feelings, even if it is in agreement with somebody else, if it’s coming from you in a video, you’re not just selling your skills. You’re not just selling what you can do for this other client. You’re also selling yourself.

People mostly work with me because they like me and they want to work with me and I happen to be fairly good at what I do and I am easy to work with and communicate with. They appreciate the fact that I’m the one doing the work and I’m not taking their message and saying, okay, I’ll get back to you. I have to go talk to the team. And then something is lost in translation.

So that’s kind of a unique aspect for me that sometimes I’m making changes while I’m on the phone with them. And they haven’t experienced that from other agencies locally or otherwise. So that’s kind of a unique selling point. And then that’s part of the reason why that in-person face-to-face networking is so important to my business because I’m actually getting to know people and it’s not a comment on a Reddit thread that they’re that I hope that connects with them, you know?

Business Owner Perspective

Shannon: Yeah, no, completely. Well, do you think that being an agency owner helps you understand the perspective of a business owner? Because you are also technically a small business in just a different space.

Lisa: Without a doubt, no doubt. Yes. There are so many times where we’re kind of both crying in our beer on the phone kind of thing, because we’re dealing with a lot of the same issues. And a lot of times we have, I have the opportunity to barter with people that I know because I need a service. So I say, okay, let’s get started, we can find a way to work together.

Yes, as a business owner, I definitely share a lot of the same issues and the local issues of owning a business, whether it’s licensing or taxes or municipal issues or anything that has to do with being in this area of New Jersey and owning a business. So that’s definitely an important point that we would share that would help to break that ice.

Shannon: Yeah, I really understand that. And I like that level of understanding that you can have between an agency and a business, because I think that that kind of is like the puzzle pieces fitting together and knowing that you’re working with the right person is something that, you know, I think that a lot of people will kind of get burned by an agency, and it might not be because they’re doing bad work necessarily, but it just isn’t the right fit.

And it’s really nice to work with someone that understands your area locally, so you understand like, what’s going on. Like, I don’t know, for example, like maybe like Hurricane Sandy, how that’s affected like businesses and different things like that. Like you yourself would’ve been affected by this exact same thing. And it’s like a unique perspective that you have to be able to market certain things. Like it’s just something that is really valuable and not something that people usually have access to.

Lisa: Yes, I do work with some people and companies who are outside of New Jersey, but the far majority of my clients are pretty hyperlocal to me actually. And most of them I actually physically see in person on a fairly regular basis. Though I do have a few clients who are very local, who I have never actually shaken their hand, and that just seems like a very strange thing to me.

One of my clients is out in Oklahoma and we had been working together for three or four years before we met in person. And he had a conference himself for his industry down in Philly and said, Lisa, come down for dinner. We’re gonna have dinner together. So we did and it was a terrific time. Those are fun things about working with such a wide variety of people and getting to know a little bit about a lot of things.

Community Engagement

Shannon: Yeah. I really like those opportunities actually. Speaking of, what are some ways that you specifically like to engage with your community? Like what kind of different things do you like to do with potential clients or clients that you already have or work with?

Lisa: Sure, yeah. I always invite clients, especially if they’re local to join the Chamber of Commerce that I’m involved with. I’m on the board of the chamber and they, it’s just a fantastic and really active and supportive group of people locally. So I go to those in-person chamber events that I find really valuable.

I just want to help people by telling them what I know will move the needle. And it’s not always that it has to be a B2B kind of a situation because the people in the community who own businesses are also customers. They need services and products themselves. So it’s always a good way to kind of build that support system and potentially find customers, even if you’re not B2B.

And then I’m also involved with some local charities. So I’m on the board of a charity called A Need We Feed and they have volunteers who deliver meals that we get from local restaurants. Some of them we purchase, some of them are donated by these fantastic local restaurant partners, and we deliver them every week to hungry people, elderly vets, some homeless, some families who are in need, throughout Ocean County.

So we have fundraisers locally and with sponsorship opportunities, which is a great local link for local SEO. So clients to help out these charities and to sponsor and I help them out by providing a local link that will increase their local SEO and community trust. That’s super important too.

Shannon: If you have, if you know any nonprofits like A Need We Feed, or any others in the area that need design help, that like, maybe you don’t have time or space to do. We have a program called Penji for Good, where we provide our services for a dollar a month.

Lisa: Wow.

Shannon: You can nominate them and we would love that. Like, I’m trying to tell as many people about it as possible. But yeah, if you just send me an email. I would love to help.

Lisa: That would definitely be deserving of these services. Thank you.

Shannon: Yeah, of course. Please let me know and I think that’s a wonderful way to network while also helping out these organizations. I think that’s such a great way of being able to meet clients. It’s also like kind of shared comradery as well, being able to help an organization together, and I really love that strategy. I think that’s really beautiful.

Lisa: Thank you. Yeah, I agree.

Shannon: So thank you for sharing with that because I constantly, I do see more and more people in the agency space helping out and doing good. And I really love to see it, but I know it’s not as common as I’d like to see. And so hearing stuff like that makes me very happy.

Lisa: Yes, I do provide them with their web services and help to promote them in the digital space as much as I can, but being able to make those physical connections between them and other local businesses and get that community corporate business support is so important to have that kind of dependable financial support influx of funds that help them to continue to do good and reach the people who need them.

Shannon: Yeah, it’s an incredible face-to-face situation. It’s much better than just providing services. Like, I mean, providing physical services that help an organization is always helpful for organizations. I know they’re so overloaded. That’s why we even started the Penji for good thing was because it’s so understandable that marketing coordinators in general and agencies are overloaded and wearing many hats, but in organizations it’s like, I’ve seen it, I’ve worked with them as well. So like outside of this company, but I can see how overwhelmed people can be and so being able to help in any way is always wonderful.

Lisa: I agree. Definitely.

Conclusion

Shannon: Well, I think this is a perfect wholesome note to end on because unfortunately we are a little over time, but I’m so happy to get to talk to you today. Thank you so much for joining me. I really think I learned a lot and I hope that our audience did as well. So thank you so much.

Lisa: Thank you for the invitation, Shannon. I’m so glad I had a chance to talk to you today and I look forward to tuning in to see some of your other guests and continue watching your show.

Shannon: Thank you so much. It’s just like the conference, just in a really little bundle. It’s exactly like the 20 minute bundle, but it’s like 10 more minutes. So I hope that you enjoy and thank you again for joining me today. It was lovely speaking with you. And thank you everyone for watching and listening. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe to also watch more and learn more like I get to do. Thank you so much.

Lisa: Thank you, Shannon.

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