We recently connected with Anza Goodbar and have shared our conversation below.
Anza, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
My business has served online service-based business owners for the past 14 years. During that time, I have witnessed many changes in online marketing and advertising strategies. There have been changes in privacy laws that have resulted in online ads manager platforms reducing the amount of data available to define an audience of potential buyers.
There has also been an uptick of fake accounts and bots taking up space on platforms like Facebook despite their efforts to remove them. Recent reports indicate that up to 30% of all accounts on Facebook are fake, which means advertisers on their platform are throwing away 1/3 of their ad spend by serving ads to “people” who will never buy from them.
That, in and of itself, puts a damper on the results advertisers can expect to gain from their paid ad campaigns, but there is an additional monkey wrench to contend with…the algorithm that chooses who it believes should see an advertiser’s ad. With fewer tools to define an ideal audience inside of ads manager, the algorithm has limited access to data to make a proper determination resulting in fewer conversions.
After spending tens of thousands of dollars myself on ads that didn’t convert and watching my clients experience the same lackluster results, I knew there had to be a better way to get in front of my ideal client.
I made it my personal mission to meet with people who had the answers I sought. Truthfully, because I was a small business owner, most companies wouldn’t even speak to me, but that didn’t slow me down. I knew that persistence was the name of the game. So I kept knocking on doors until I found a company that was intrigued with my idea.
You see, up until now, most online businesses have focused on organic lead generation tactics because they were afraid of throwing away money on ads that might not reach the right audience. But, what if, they could go out and find the right people and upload their data to the ads manager?
I believed that would be a game-changer for small business owners because it would put them back in control of who sees their paid ads. Data mining is a proactive way to define the qualities your ideal avatar possesses on the front end of the process. Not only does it allow advertisers to control who sees their ads, but it also allows them to prequalify their audience at the beginning of the sales cycle, not at the end.
We are excited to be the first company to make this technology affordable for small business owners who are struggling to find their niche and generate consistent income.
Anza, 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 was a mortgage banker from 2004 to 2008. In 2008, the mortgage industry crashed and my small boutique company didn’t survive the implosion. Our business was focused on helping people with subprime credit realize the dream of homeownership. We had developed a credit repair program to help our clients get back on a good footing so they could refinance into a better long-term loan within three years.
We were poised to open regional offices in 2008, but the economy tanked and the lending instruments we used were eliminated. We were not at a shortage of clients, but we no longer had a product that fit their circumstances. Initially, we thought the crisis in our industry would self-correct, but it did not.
Sadly, we had to close the doors to our business. It was a heart-breaking time for us as we had 15 employees who depended on us. I felt like we had let them all down!
Needless to say, there was a flood of mortgage brokers and lenders who were unemployed at the same time making the prospect of finding a good-paying job limited. At that time, I had a friend who was an online business owner, and she encouraged me to take a leap of faith and start my own consulting business.
At the time, I thought I thought I’d be able to continue working in the lending industry as a consultant, but that was not how things unfolded. Women seeking to start or scale a business came to me to help them design and implement business strategies and create ultra-efficient work processes to help them transform the way they did business.
That opened the door for me to scale my business quickly by adding services that businesses needed to execute the plans they put into place. I became known as the one-stop-shop for small business owners who needed to build a team but weren’t ready to hire full-time employees. My team works remotely to provide coaching and consulting services, virtual business services, and most recently data-driven audience building to help service-based businesses work smarter as they manage and scale their businesses.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
When I started my online business, I thought it would be as simple as growing my mortgage company. I knew that if I sent out 10K postcards, I’d close 15+ loans. If I wanted to increase sales, all I had to do was to send out more postcards. It was a simple scalable formula.
Online marketing wasn’t as straightforward. When I started my online business, social media platforms were new and online ads weren’t yet a thing. I had to figure out a way to reach people who needed my services in a new way. When I had a brick-and-mortar office, friends and family were more than willing to refer business to me, but when I started working from a home office, all of the sudden, I was less credible. At that time, the idea of running a lucrative business from home was nearly unthinkable.
One of my first clients was a boutique PR company. I was keen to learn how she was helping her clients reach their target market. She did it all through content marketing. Her goal was to make her clients searchable on Google so when people were searching for their services, they’d be found.
I quickly adopted the idea of writing for magazines, being quoted by experts, and putting out a blog. For my business, these strategies have been the most fruitful way for people to find and connect with me. This one strategy helped me build my startup online company to six figures within six months.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Having come from an entrepreneurial family, I learned early how important referrals were. Referrals have been the main staple in growing all of my businesses. It’s so much easier to close a deal with someone who has been referred to you than started with a cold lead.
When I budget for marketing expenses, I have a line item for referral fees. These fees are paid to people who refer business that closes as a way of saying thank you. Referrals often come our way from past clients or people in my networking groups who know what types of results we provide.
We also use an affiliate program that pays a higher commission for influencers to help us promote our products and services to their audiences. We provide the marketing materials for them to share via email and social media with a special code that tracks their sales. It is an easy way to get in front of a warm audience and share the profits.
Joint ventures are another great way to partner with someone to create a product or service that will provide results to both audiences. This is where you team up with another expert and share in the costs and provides for a particular service like an online course or webinar.
The key is really knowing who you serve and the problem you solve for them. Most people stop at simple demographics when they define their audience, to be successful in creating messaging that resonates, you need to have a full picture that encompasses psychographic information. This helps you hone in on the things that make them tick. The more you know and understand about your market, the easier it will be to connect with them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.audientum.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/audientum/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AUDIENTUM
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/audientum-llc