[Fully Managed] Urina Harell from Vox Pop Branding  Ep. 162

Daniella: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the First to One Hundred podcast. This is where we discuss and explore the journey of entrepreneurs, business owners, agency leaders, as they share with us the strategies and the challenges or triumphs that have led them to secure those First to One Hundred followers, First to One Hundred customers. Today, I am joined with a very special guest. Her name is Yurina Harrell. Hi, Yurina. How are you?

Urina: Hi, everyone. So great to be on today.

Daniella: Very excited to have you on the show today. So before we get started, just so that people know who you are, you know, whoever’s listening that’s not familiar, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

About Vox Pop Branding

Urina: Yeah, so my name is Uwena Harrell. I own a company called Vox Pop Branding, LLC. We are a full service digital marketing agency. We have a traditional arm and then we also have a more subscription based arm for our small business folks who can’t quite afford traditional agency services yet. And then what makes us really interesting and different is that every single one of our campaigns is either positive impact messaging focus or social impact messaging focus. So people get really confused. They’re like, what type of marketing do you do? What industry are you in? I’m like, well, we don’t segment by industry or vertical. We segment by your willingness to do social impact or positive impact messaging. So whether you sell perfume or you’re a foundation, we can work with you if you make that commitment with us.

Daniella: That’s very interesting. I think I haven’t heard from that kind of like social awareness type of spin. I’ve heard a lot of like, you know, we talked to a lot of digital marketing agencies specifically, but we haven’t spoken to someone with this twist.

Urina: Yeah. It’s, I mean, one of the best pieces of advice my mother ever gave me was that you don’t have to figure out what you want to do first. I mean, figure out what you want to do forever. You figure out what you want to do first. And the other thing is to create the world you want to live in. And when I looked at the marketing space, I’ve always been a person who lives in the plurals, so I want to do the ands. I don’t like to pick and choose. And I didn’t like the categories that were available. And I was like, well, what if I only want to work with people who want to make this type of impact, whether they’re selling jeans or if they’re a nonprofit? And I said, I can just create it. And eleven years later, it’s still going. So we’re here.

Client Acquisition Strategy

Daniella: Yeah, so I’m curious as to how that sort of started because it is a very sort of segmented part of the marketing space, right? So you probably have to filter a lot of people in order to get the right clients. How were you able to secure that, you know, at the beginning to get the right kind of customer that you were trying to get?

Urina: I said a lot of no’s to really great opportunities. I think you kind of, when you first start, you kind of have the same funnel as everybody else, right? The same way that an agency who maybe doesn’t want to work with small businesses or nonprofits with less than ten employees, they come in through that lead gen system, they talk to you, and you’re asking them questions just as much as they’re asking you questions, and they’re realizing, oh, you don’t have at least ten employees, you’re probably not a good fit for us. We do the same thing, right? So when we get those leads come in and we’re talking, we mentioned, you know, we can be really effective and we have some strategies to do so, but our approach is very particular. Would you be willing to, as far as any engagements you do with us, I don’t know if you’re going to work with another agency for other stuff. This is the commitment we make, and this is the type of standard we like, and here’s why. Here’s the long-term reasons why, which could be profitability. It could be reducing the amount of poor or terrible PR instances that the company has to bounce back from. It could be the fact that when a company does really good work or they’re more social impact or positive impact focused, their customers feel better about them. They want to stay longer and they may choose to keep that loyalty over maybe a competitor just because, yeah, that’s two dollars cheaper. but this brand has this level of integrity and I identify with that. So we kind of make the business case to do it, even if they weren’t initially thinking about it. And they say yes or no. And we go from there. So it’s the same thing. It’s just, I think, instead of the category being these hard demographic numbers or attributes, it’s more about ethically what they’re willing to do and tolerate.

Lead Generation and Sales Funnel

Daniella: Yeah. So when it comes to like, lead gen in and of itself, what do you think has been the tool that has helped you most with this? Or what sales funnel do you think you’ve been able to hone in that has helped you with it? Or do you think it’s just anything and then you filter from there?

Urina: Yeah. I will say once we got started, word of mouth, and it’s still word of mouth, is just our strongest system. I think when you talk about certain industries, it’s the difference between if you go into a store right and you’re thinking about buying a tv and the salesperson is saying buy this tv and you’re like yeah I don’t know I’m still thinking about it versus if somebody you happen to run into in the store says oh I have that tv and they’re like oh you do do you like it and they’re asking questions because you have that trust and rapport with that person, they’re just more likely to convert faster. And I found that, you know, we treat our clients really amazing and they are our best marketers. And truthfully, we just spend so much more time on our clients’ marketing that we don’t spend a lot on our own. I do think that vehicles like word of mouth, podcasts are like… are actually really phenomenal as well. We’ve gotten some leads from here. And I say the other channel that is more of a LinkedIn we get some business from. But what I’ll say is the way we use it is there’s a lot of amplifying our clients’ wins, which then people get curious about why these clients keep winning and they want to talk to us. So I think it’s still kind of creating our own word of mouth, but more through celebrating the folks in our ecosystem.

The Power of Word of Mouth and Community

Daniella: That’s interesting. Yeah. So I think word of mouth is sort of a very overlooked form of marketing because people are always trying to do the modern thing with paid ads and SEO and all of these cool things that are coming out, but they forget what it’s like to actually just be present in a community.

Urina: And community is so powerful. I think we don’t give it credit. I think that’s why social media is powerful, right? Social media created so many more channels for folks to give their own word of mouth. That’s why influencers got popular. That’s why micro influencers are actually even more impactful than sometimes the bigger influencers because they have that really trusted community. And when they say something, it has more of a word of mouth. at the same time. Bless you. Listen, it’s the season. It’s the season, no stress. But a hundred percent, I think word of mouth is so incredibly important. And then from a content perspective, things like tools, like video, et cetera, make it really easy to upscale what word of mouth is now. I think now that we have digital and tech age, word of mouth used to be that scenario in the story that we just talked about. Where you come across and you, you know, communicate directly to somebody. But now Word of Mouth can be a recorded video that’s sitting on the website and they see somebody that’s familiar to them, that they trust their expertise or their business sense. And that’s what actually converts them, even if they don’t have to personally stop and do it.

Daniella: Well, you know, I do that when it comes to like purchasing products and using services, whatever kind of thing that I’m going to do online. Like my first sort of my knee jerk reaction is to like look for reviews and look for reviews from someone that I think is giving me a review that I’m going to trust. Right. And then from that point forward, I choose to purchase this product or this service when I’m doing like online shopping.

The Power of Reviews

Urina: So fun fact, this is really random, and I guess it relates to how I got here. While I was building my agency, I was headhunted by a big retailer. I won’t give them free advertising, but it’s a very big retailer. Everybody knows this retailer. Every neighborhood corner, I promise. And they asked me to be a buyer for them. I was like, you know what? I have some small e-commerce brands. I would love to learn more about what this looks like. So I kept my agency, hired somebody to help take care of about ninety percent of my roles. And then I went and worked full time as a buyer for this big retailer. Reviews, the power of reviews, to your point. One review can increase conversion rate by ten percent. That doesn’t seem like a lot. It’s a lot. Ten reviews, that bumps up to thirty or forty percent. So that means that if you have a hundred people coming to your page, and not buying putting one review up means ten of those folks could buy putting ten reviews up means thirty to forty percent of those thirty to forty of people landing on that page are now buying right and then once you get into the hundreds and thousands it doesn’t increase as much but you get like forty two percent forty three percent up until like sixty or seventy percent just based on having nothing else is changing just reviews. So we spent so much time trying to get reviews, which is kind of a, you know, a version of word of mouth to get people to convert. And I just was like, wow, people are so powerful. Like, what we have to say is so powerful. A brand can say it a million times, but another person says it and you’re like, yep, that’s it.

Daniella: Yeah, it’s true. Because I guess like, you know, a brand is trying to sell themselves, you know, like obviously, and it’s not a bad thing because that’s what brands do. But as a customer, you’re more concerned with like, okay, well, what you’re saying, is it actually true? Or is it just like you, you know, decorating words to make it seem like it’s cool.

The Power of Saying No

Urina: Another phenomenon that I think what you’ll find interesting is we have actually won clients because we told them no. So we asked them like, hey, are you willing to do like this type of messaging? This is what the standard we have. That doesn’t mean you won’t be profitable. We’ll track you, have your metrics, but like you have to commit to this. They’ll say no. And then we’ll say no. Okay, well, thank you so much for your time. I don’t think this is going to work out. And they’re like, wait, what? Did you just say no to… A client, right? And then they in turn will say, well, we’ll try it. And it’s because we stood our ground and was like, no, we’re not going to do this. We have one client with that no from us. And what I realized is that sometimes like, even people don’t want to miss out and then they get more curious so even standing your ground and saying no or or being truthful to your point about like a business wants to sell sometimes telling folks that you’re not a good fit is actually the thing that makes them want to work with you more because they now see honesty and integrity in whatever you’re presenting.

Daniella: Yeah and I feel like nowadays it’s even more demanded than before. Like I think before customers were a lot less, I don’t want to say they were not smart, but I kind of am, I guess. But I just feel like people were less aware of marketing strategies and things like that. So now you have like potential clients who are a lot more aware of of you trying to sell them something, which makes in turn a business like demands for them to also be smarter about how they are approaching customers or potential clients, right?

Urina: I think a good reframe of that is customers are now more educated and not saying they weren’t smart before, but they’re more educated as to their power.

Daniella: You’re saying it a lot better than me.

Urina: No, but they now know that they have more power. I think because of technology, we now know that, yeah, like before it was we were stricken to our geographic location. So there is only so much like there’s only so many nail shops in this specific town that I could choose from. So I can only demand so much because we’re going to run out of options soon. But now it’s like. well, there’s about a hundred thousand nail shops that I can choose from if I don’t like what’s going on here. And I now know I have more power and more options and I can be more demanding. I can be more honest about what I actually want versus like what I’m taking just because it’s what seems available.

Daniella: Yeah, that’s true. Technology, man. It’s incredible.

Biggest Challenges in the Business

Host: Which also, I wanted to ask you this question, because I think your business is very interesting with this social venture. What has been the biggest challenge that you think you’ve had to face in this whole journey? And how have you been able to work on it? Or do you think that’s still a work in progress of trying to figure it out?

Urina: Yeah, so I feel like marketing is one of those industries that everybody feels like they either can do or they feel like they have the expertise. But that also means that a lot of my clients or potential customers come across really shady folks. They come across people who over promise and under deliver. They come across people who don’t actually know what they’re doing, or they relied on personal experiences for growth, but have never tried that out for somebody else, right? So maybe you’ve acquired over three hundred thousand followers, but And you think that you can, because you’ve done it yourself, that you can do it for anybody, but you realize that the experience is different when it’s a really boring business or something that’s not as attractive as you may be. And that has been, I think, the challenge is coming across those folks and then having to say, no, you still need this help. we can kind of get you across the finish line, but they’ve had that experiences. So it’s almost building trust when you didn’t trust is extremely challenging, right? Like you’re paying for other people’s mistakes. It’s like dating someone with commitment issues. It’s literally dating somebody with commitment issues and trust issues. you’re like but I didn’t do it and it’s funny because I heard I was watching like a dating episode whatever like on social and somebody was like let me mess up right like let me but we don’t want like if you had your heart broken I know this is a very like relationship specific version example but I think it’s applicable and people can understand it it relates yeah If you had, sorry for the drop, if you had your heart broken, you don’t want to wait and allow it just to open up so the next person can break your heart. In a different way. In a different way. So same thing in business. You don’t want to like, if you have this terrible experience, you’re not going to just open back up and be like, now you can make the mistake too. So to answer your question, that has been our biggest struggle. And that also affects everything else, right? That affects conversion rates. It affects our own ROI because we spend so much time building trust back. And then, you know, a lot of, unsavory things are so easily accessible so it’s like you make an ounce of progress and they go try out some freebie course and then you’re back to zero again.

Daniella: Yeah I know it’s insane and and I do think that it relates so much to like the relationship stuff because I was listening to that and I feel like it’s my friend giving me advice about dating you know it’s like the same concept of trying to trust someone and being worried that you know that you’re going to have the same experience or even worse. And anybody, whether it’s a business or if it’s a personal experience, doesn’t want to deal with the backlash or whatever consequences are going to come from the bad experience if you’ve already had one prior.

Urina: A hundred percent. And then let’s think about it in a more futuristic sense, right? So you’ve had this bad experience. Now you’re closed off. I know we’re still using the relationship metaphor, but it’s perfect, right? But your closed off tendencies means that you’re also missing out on how beautiful certain things can be, how great that potential relationship could be because you’re so like, So a lot of times businesses are actually capping their progress because they’re afraid of going backwards. But now they’re not also able to experience all the big opportunities that exist in their growth and a little bit of like taking the risk. So it’s just, you know, on both ends. So challenging.

Daniella: Yeah, yeah, no, I completely get it. I think like it’s just a journey. I’ve talked to a lot of business owners who struggle with a lot with clients. Like they always tell me like, you know, like having customers, having clients is difficult because you have to build a relationship. And, you know, you have to like build a relationship that is mutually beneficial for them and yourself. And a lot of times sort of finding that middle ground can be really complicated because of like different issues. So like it totally makes sense. And I think it’s one of the biggest misconceptions that a lot of people have when they start to, you know, entrepreneurship, I guess.

Common Entrepreneurship Misconceptions

Daniella: What do you think are some of those misconceptions that you’ve noticed whenever it’s like a sort of like a startup or like a smaller business that’s just kind of trying to grow and are clearly very new?

Urina: Yeah, one of them is, and this is like almost a marketing pitch at the same time, but it’s just true. People think build it and they will come. So people focus just on the product, just on the service, which I think that’s incredibly important. I’m not saying to have a terrible product or service, but they focus so much on it and then nobody knows about it. They’re the best kept secret. So they spent all this energy on it, having this amazing thing, That nobody ever hears about. And then they get upset when they see something that’s not, that doesn’t have the same quality. And everybody has it. It’s literally everywhere, right? Because somebody spent the time and investment to tell folks about this thing, even if it was like half-baked. And then they’re complaining. They’re like, well, my product is so much better. And I don’t get the play. I don’t get the exposure. I’m not growing that fast. Well, people don’t know about you and nobody can buy something they don’t know about. You can’t support a cause you don’t know exists. Even with the best artists in the world, like I know some of the best singers are underground, right? They’re not popular. They’re not mainstream. But the difference in between the super high quality, and I don’t want to say high quality singer, but the singer who’s kind of like, they’re okay in talent versus someone who you’re just blown away in a cafe and since pulled out of the city is how many people know about them. Yeah. That’s the first thing.

Building with Scale in Mind

Urina: I think another thing is, yeah, building with scale in mind I think sometimes we dream too small and it actually cost us I when I first started my agency I’ll give you an example I picked a accounting software that well I mean it really was just made for somebody who was like a self-employed freelancer and within eight months I had outgrown that software and I literally could not transfer all the things that I had in this version of the software over to what I needed as it was growing. And it cost me a lot of time and energy and confusion because then I’m putting it off. Cause I’m like, I don’t know how to migrate this stuff. I just have to keep chugging along. And then there was taxes and things I had to address later because I never integrated right. That example, that was specific to like accounting, but it’s the same thing when a business is thinking about their marketing or thinking about this or thinking about that. We get so scared when we finally take the leap that we look and dream a little too small. Dream big and just know I need to scale it back for now, but I know that in two years I might grow to this. So I need to, as I’m considering softwares or opportunities or who I’m working with, I’m considering what it looks like to grow up. Right. I think that’s one of the biggest things that handicaps are our entrepreneurs and it handicaps them with funding opportunities. It handicaps them with growth. It actually starts to mess up their customer experience because they didn’t anticipate, you know, having a hundred customers within the first year. And now they are breaking their own system and customers are having a bad experience because they didn’t figure out that one day I might get this big or bigger.

Daniella: Well, I guess people are scared of losing money or like going bankrupt. There’s so many horror stories of people starting businesses and then they’re just like failures. So I guess like everyone’s always trying to tread lightly going on the careful side and then they don’t realize that it’s inadvertently turning into self-sabotage, right?

Urina: And here’s the thing I think people should know about. You don’t have to start. The price point doesn’t have to be that you’re already there. It needs to be like, okay, as I’m exploring certain softwares or certain people who I want to work with, what are the opportunities for growth, right? What does it look like? Do I have opportunities to move up with this vendor as I grow to this level, this level, and this level? Or can they really only handle up to twenty people? If they can only handle up to twenty people, then maybe I need to look for somebody who has a lower offering for me, but has room to scale. And I think that is what people need to negotiate earlier and don’t overspend for sure. But definitely like consider if I were if something big happened in the next six months, what would I do? Can I work with these people or who’s my backup plan if I can’t? Like what’s the transition then? think that needs to be kind of considered.

Daniella: Yeah, definitely. And I guess when you’re starting, you don’t know a lot of these things. So people are just kind of blindly doing it.

Choosing Growth-Oriented Partners

Urina: I would also say, if you think about working with a vendor or somebody, and I’m just saying vendor, software, whatever, who doesn’t have growth built into their model for their customers or clients, what does that say about the brand’s mission or target, right? So for example, we have tiers where if you’re really small and you don’t have a big budget, we start really low with you. But then we have these, as you grow, you go here, here, here. And that’s because our goal with our clients is for them to grow and they’re gonna need more stuff because they’re growing, right? So then the tiers or the pricing should graduate with them. And our goal is to take the customer through This customer journey of like you started with us here or maybe you started with us at level B, but we’re trying to get you to where you’re like enterprise. That’s our goal for you. If you’re working with businesses who don’t have that range to me, I’m kind of like, does the business not have that target of growth or help or support? for their own clients, right? Or are they just on a burn and churn model and get what they can while they can, which is not a sustainable model because the Pareto principle says it’s cheaper to keep customers, like, eighty percent of your revenue comes from twenty percent of your customers, right? And those are the ones who you’re keeping, nurturing through. So if you’re not having some type of focus on that, what are we doing, right? Are we really helping that customer in whatever you’re doing? Or is it, like I said, a burn and churn and you’re not worried about the customer relationship that we just talked about a little bit ago?

Daniella: In theory, the customer should also be able to reach that place where they can afford higher pricing because they’re also making more money, right? Because they’re growing.

Urina: Yeah. Their needs should grow as they grow, right?

Daniella: Yeah. So it’s not like you’re like, oh, I’m just going to take all of your money. It’s like, oh, no.

Urina: It’s kind of like when you have a low salary and you’re living in an ugly place. And then the more money you make, you’re obviously not going to want to live in the dingy apartment that you were at before. But what they need, it should be an ecosystem of growth. And if you’re not working with people who are facilitating or nurturing your ecosystem of growth, then something’s not right. I think these are the little things that over time, after a decade of business, you’re looking and you’re like, even if that’s not my thing right if I don’t necessarily need that if I’m recommending my customer or client to go support you I want to see that they’re taking care of them like I want to see that there’s these opportunities for improvement because I I don’t have any kids and it’s a joke that my mom has but she’s like your business is your baby And it is like I care for it like a baby and it’s really important to me. But as a business owner, I understand that every other business owner kind of has the same like this is my baby. This is my child and I need to be cared for. So why would you not? The way we vet like daycare systems and growth and what are they learning? What’s going to be? Are they going to be better after they leave this or is it just going to be like leveled out and maintained? Should be considered for other avenues.

Daniella: Yeah, for sure. No, it is always something that needs to be considered. I think people just overlook it.

Closing and Contact Information

Daniella: Urina, it’s been great having you today on the show. We’ve had a great conversation. You know, I think I’ve never really spoken to someone that prioritizes social media. awareness into their own marketing strategies and the clients that they work with. Obviously, a lot of business do, but yours is kind of like at the forefront. So I think that was very interesting. And it’s been great talking to you. Thank you so much for doing this.

Urina: This was amazing. Thank you so much. And I’m excited to see more folks and listen as you do more first one hundred interviews.

Daniella: Yes, I wanted to actually give you the space to give us your info for anybody that is interested in working with you, learning more about you or who just wants, you know, awareness. I force yours to, you know, shamelessly promote yourself.

Urina: Thank you so much. So we are Vox Pop Branding. That’s www.voxpopbranding.com. And if you visit there, you can find us on all our socials. We’re on LinkedIn, Instagram. We’re starting to integrate with TikTok more. That’s not my favorite platform. But yeah, feel free to reach out to us if you have questions or want to learn more. You can reach out at info at foxpopbranding.com. And if you email us and you say PNG or DM us and say PNG, we’ll give you a special free consultation and also a free offering for your first few months. So hopefully you reach out to us and I would love to learn more about more folks who integrate with PNG and do work.

Daniella: Awesome. Yeah, very exciting. I will be adding those links to the description of the video for the people that are watching and for those listening. Go to the video to get the links so that anybody who’s interested in working with you can go ahead and find you and talk to you. Thank you so much for doing this. It was great having you and everybody else. I will see you on the next episode.

Urina: Thank you, Daniella. Thank you. Goodbye.

Apple

Amazon Music

Spotify