We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alicia Piazza. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alicia below.
Alicia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
We are a Social Media first marketing agency. This means we strive to help businesses grow with social media marketing that is authentic, creative, and effective. We combine social media with other digital marketing tactics for powerful results.
Alicia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I did not go to school for marketing, and when I was in college, digital marketing was really in its infancy. In college, I wanted to become a writer and journalist. However, I took a position after college at a large newspaper, and the only opening was in their advertising department. It was during an economic downturn and job searches for recent grads were not promising. Even though it was not the newsroom, I was happy to be in the right building at least!
During my time at this newspaper, having a website as a local business was still not viewed as a necessity. Amazon and Shopify stores did not exist like they do today.
While in this position I worked with local businesses, helping them with their traditional marketing such as print and direct mail. I found ways to make creative ads and campaigns that got results. It quickly became something I really enjoyed, seeing the results from marketing efforts and working with business owners.
When Google Ads, websites, and other digital options became available, I transitioned to selling digital solutions for local businesses.
While I loved learning digital advertising and creating campaigns, working for a large corporation selling digital solutions was not fulfilling for me. The question I was always asked by management was “How much did you sell?”.
I get it. Sales are important, but it was flooring to me that no one in management ever asked me or seemed to care, “Are your clients and accounts seeing results?”.
Ultimately unfulfilling. The company did little to support its staff. It was clear that the bottom line was ALL that mattered.
Inside these large companies, I knew there would always be an agenda of selling digital with a sales goal to meet, and not a true intent of helping businesses grow.
I left to start my own digital marketing company and consulting firm 5 and a half years after graduating college and trying two different ‘corporate life positions. I wanted a position where I could offer custom digital solutions and truly help local businesses. I hade no experience running a business, no client list, and not a lot of backup savings. I kind of just went for it!
Fast forward almost 7 years later from the day I left my job, my small digital consulting business has become an agency with team members and a business partner, on our way to hitting 7 figures in our 5-year startup phase, with no loans, and 0 investors/
It remains important to us to serve local businesses and small brands with ethical and custom solutions, but now that we have a team, we also are able to give careers and it is important to us to pay well and train and grow with them. We are committed to doing good socially across the board.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
Starting solo and then having a business partner was our initial setup at The Spark Social. Our first hire was part-time and entry-level but even then, the commitment to providing someone with a paycheck weekly was a huge responsibility and slightly terrifying.
Now we have a team of 7 Full time, 2 part-time, and a virtual assistant. Looking back 3 years ago, our first hire seems like it was a decade ago.
The most important lesson for managing a team is to invest in them and help them grow. To hire with the intent to help them grow and give them opportunities to do so. Even if they are growing beyond your organization (like how awesome is it that one of our team members went on to work on super bowl ads? I couldn’t be more thrilled).
to let them know they are valued and to constantly be focused on a mutually beneficial relationship.
At The Spark, if we make money, the team does. Not only do they have review sessions where we can look at the work they have done, but we also have career development sessions where we focus on what they want to grow professionally. They also get to review us as leaders.
We believe in growing together to keep morale high.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
How I met my business partner is not a particularly exciting story, but what is exciting is that we are aligned on all aspects of starting and running a business. From being women in business to how we wanted to cultivate a team of passionate marketers and provide them meaningful jobs, to working with clients that we could truly help, to giving back to the community.
Plus, There was a definite ‘Spark’ when we started talking about our passion for social media marketing. Nicole came from a social media background in LinkedIn Marketing and organic strategy and I focused on Facebook marketing and paid strategy. It was all around a great combo and 3 years later that partnership continues to grow!
Contact Info:
- Website: TheSpark.social
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesparksocialco/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSparkSocialCo
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/35592739/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpn_JNbmeWHh0-MIMHPis-Q
Image Credits
https://www.instagram.com/brittanny.taylor/ @BrittannyTaylorPhotography