We recently connected with Grace Ascione and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Grace thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

I still remember the night she died. Her family was gathered at her side and they were in agreement to take her off life support. It had been a heartbreaking journey to arrive there and I had been present as their critical care nurse; helping to comfort, answer their questions, and care for their loved one. There was a sense of peace in the room as she took her last breath and I was able to help the family arrive at that point.
My time as a critical care nurse shaped the rest of my career as I took care of patients and families at some of their most terrible, raw, and emotional times. There were moments of success and moments of heartbreak but that time helped me see who I was as a person and built a foundation of principles and skills as an entrepreneur and I am forever grateful for that time I spent as a nurse.
I found that everyone has different journeys, experiences, and perspectives that form their life journey. Each story is valuable and powerful when shared. As my career blossomed, I found a passion in empowering business owners, specifically in healthcare, create and share that story through digital platforms.

Fast forward many years of my career, where I got my MBA at University of Denver, managed global product lines for medical devices worth over $100M, and then decided to launch my own digital marketing company. It was scary to make that leap from a high paced product manager job to managing my own business, but several items came together to put my business together.
I started out by managing part time digital marketing for several small local clients within healthcare all passed to me through referrals. I enjoyed the process and began to discover all the online software available to assist in creating online campaigns, SEO, and the ability to generate quality leads. Then the COVID pandemic hit and we all began to work online, conduct meetings online, and a shift occurred as society began to primarily look up businesses online as their first contact. I observed those trends, as did Google, and began to optimize my programs to grow on those trends. As my clients had successes, my referrals began to grow and I gained a reputation on several social media group platforms.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Marketing has always been my passion as it tells a story to connect customers with business services. My niche comes from my nurse clinical background and combining that knowledge with marketing concepts. Many of my clients who run small healthcare businesses have experienced challenges with Digital Marketing through AI, Google, and Social Media with the restrictions imposed on healthcare marketing. I am able to successfully help my clients craft their messaging for digital marketing and successfully run campaigns to attract quality leads.
I focus on keywords to optimize SEO with my clients and then build a campaign on specific services they offer. For example, I have a pain clinic that I work with for SEO and Marketing. We don’t focus on medication relief but spend our marketing time on procedures that provide a longer term and more effective pain management. But this takes time to educate the consumer as most will try and stick with medications. We’ve seen success with a right mix of PPC, Landing Page Blog, and customer follow up.
Once I started Socorro Marketing, I mainly received clients through Facebook groups, network groups such as SheLeads, and referrals from my clients. I prefer to keep my team and client group small so I can maintain the quality of service we provide my clients.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had worked as a digital marketing entrepreneur for 5 years and found some aspects of owning my business to be challenging. One example of that was staying educated on the latest trends and marketing trends within the field. So an opportunity came up with a large medical company and I thought that it would be a good time to work within the company to assist in professional growth. I had hoped to gain additional certifications and take courses to improve my marketing skills. But what surprised me was that I was more updated on the digital trends than my management team. Some of the information we were utilizing was over 10 years old. In comparison, digital marketing for entrepreneurs and small business owners is continually updating their trends and marketing campaigns. I ended up staying for a year but recognized quickly my professional strength was as an entrepreneur digital marketing specialist.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

I have found that many small business owners want to try the shiny new marketing tools or are constantly changing their marketing campaigns. One of the keys to success is determining a strategic campaign and running it consistently for 6-12 months. If changes are made frequently, as in every week or monthly, this can create confusion within the software programs for optimizing the campaigns and for analyzing the results. I had a customer who had 2 very successful PPC ad campaigns that were bringing in a good number of leads a month. He decided that he wanted to change direction and only invest in SEO so he stopped the PPC ads and put effort into SEO. Almost instantly, his leads slowed down and after 2 months, I received a desperate call asking me to restart the ads. My recommendation was to restart the PPC ads that we had run successfully because the analytics and AI performance were already established. It took about a month, but we were able to fill up his schedule again with consults.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.socorromarketing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socorro_marketing.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/socorrodigitalmarketing
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/76656055

Image Credits

Sparrow Photography