We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tianna Christiansen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tianna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Just like a cake marketing requires the perfect combination of ingredients in order to accomplish a desirable outcome. This also means one ingredient isn’t necessarily good on it’s own. Just like marketing. Great marketing often requires a multi pronged approach. It’s the combination of tactics that work together to make a whole. Most successful brands require multiple marketing efforts and they all have to be strong. One shouldn’t stand out more than the other. Such as great branding, messaging, attention grabbing content, website, marketing automation tools, and data. Also, similarly to cake, marketing is scientific. It often times requires experimentation with different data sources, content, etc until you find the best combination. The combination of ingredients can change depending on the desired audience and outcome. The same way you might order a cake in various flavors depending on who is eating it. Plus, everyone likes cake so naming your company after something that makes everyone feel good just makes sense.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My first real job in marketing was in 2005…17 years ago! I’ve been doing this a long time. After graduating with a BS in Communications from MTSU I started out in event marketing and promotional product sales. Then I got a job in the music industry marketing events and tours. This was during the onset of social media when businesses were not widely using social media as a marketing tool. Monetization, newsfeeds and algorithms weren’t yet a thing! I was the young 20 something and the only female on an all male team and I was tasked with figuring this out. I dove in head first studying digital marketing and haven’t looked back (or stopped learning) since! We were building widgets to collect email addresses in exchange for free song downloads and deploying those widgets on social media. The content game started to expand beyond that one content shoot a year to more frequent video and photo shoots to feed the growing demand for something fresh and unique. I made content happen and wore a lot of hats working with video and photo teams to concept ideas, organize shoots, and even did makeup and hair for them.

My boss and company CEO during that time was/is still one of my greatest mentors. I was encouraged to continue learning as much as I could and was regularly given business books to read. I devoured them and learned everything I could about business, messaging, people and what drives them to make decisions. I learned about the art of telling stories and how important storytelling can be.

My time with that company ended in 2011 and I was thrust into the unknown. After interviewing with several record labels I decided the music industry wasn’t for me and somehow found myself doing freelance marketing and social media management for non music industry related clients.

That freelance work grew and I became an accidental business owner and the social media marketing agency I started grew into a full service marketing agency. We are now a team of 5 and work with clients in a variety of industries.

I’ve been creating ads on Facebook (now Meta) since the day that was even a thing. I was also an early adopter of every technical roll out moving forward including Meta Business Manager, parent/child page setups, influencer whitelisting, etc. It’s amazing to have been a part of this technical progression since the very beginning. We are now a proud Meta Agency Partner.

Most clients come to us through word of mouth. Our oldest client has been with us for 9 years – we are VERY invested in our clients’ success. New clients are referred to us because they have a business problem. This means modern day marketing is now a broad term. It can be overwhelming for business owners, marketing directors, etc to understand what marketing effort to invest in. Because of this, our team specializes in forensic marketing. We start at the problem (disconnected technical tools, inconsistent messaging and content, limited or no CRM capabilities, confusion around ROI and ad spend, etc) and we basically tear it all apart and rebuild it. Our process includes a two hour discovery session where we ask a LOT of questions and then our team gets to work writing a marketing plan that is actionable and unique to the clients needs. Our team can then serve as the fractional marketing department and/or CMO. We can also supplement marketing needs alongside the client’s existing in house marketing team.

Although Social Media marketing is where we started and a sweet spot for our team, our marketing services are a laundry list of offerings that are truly adaptable to the client needs. That being said, we do have a heavy focus on the following:

– Fractional CMO
– Marketing Strategy
– Digital Ads (IP, Meta, Google)
– Data sourcing and purchasing
– Social Media Management
– Media Buying
– Content Creation (graphics, videos, photos)
– Copywriting
– Email Campaigns (Mailchimp, Klyvio)
– Influencer outreach, management, and partnerships
– Photoshoots + Videoshoots
– Management of various technology tools needed for marketing
– Reputation Management
– Website Management (WordPress, Shopify)

As a boutique agency we do offer a service that sets us apart from other agencies our size. IP targeting.

It is a powerful technology that allows us to go beyond the traditional cookie based behavioral targeting and go direct to device. With cookie based targeting (we still do this too) you are waiting for the behavior to happen such as someone to Google a target keyword or show an ad affinity to shopping for a specific product. The bait is on the hook and you are waiting for the fish to swim along and bite it. With IP targeting the behavior or data has already happened. This means if the data mining is done correctly all the fish are already swimming in the barrel and we can show ads directly to that very specific audience for the life of a campaign. This means our ads will follow our targets around the web, on their digital devices wherever they may go. We are not selecting specific networks assuming that is where our targets are spending time. These hyper targeted ads can be served as traditional display ads or OTT (over the top) video ads that play over the top of streaming platforms. The best part of this technology is the true ROI transparency. If we can gain access to a client’s POS or CRM we can match up sales data with IPs we’ve targeted to measure who converted or purchased after seeing an ad. This works great for online businesses or brick and mortar. It’s truly our secret weapon and we have the case studies to back it up.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Referrals. Relationships are everything and I can’t express how important and rewarding pouring into your network can be. Just like any relationship it does not happen overnight and requires genuine, meaningful, and mutually beneficial actions…and time. I’m so grateful for amazing clients who refer us to other businesses and a network of other marketing agency partners who recommend us for projects that aren’t a good fit for them. We do the same thing. If we can’t do it we likely know someone who can. We aren’t going to pretend to know something we don’t just to land a client. That wouldn’t end well for anyone.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Does bootstrapping count as capital? Because that is the story here. I’ve never taken out a business loan or borrowed money in any way to finance my business. I hope to keep it that way. The beginning days of the business were full of unknowns and financial insecurities. I didn’t have a family at the time so I didn’t have to provide for anyone else but me and I could go without new clothes, eating out, or the other luxuries in life. In fact, during those first years I would say yes to all kinds of freelance jobs and opportunities. Even if they weren’t a good fit. Sometimes I even made it a “game” to see how long I could go without grocery shopping and would get SUPER creative cooking with whatever food I had in the house. Today I’m proud to say we’ve been in business for 10+ years and are a multi six-figure agency. It took a lot of effort and sleepless nights to get here. Now it takes a great team of people who are smarter than me to keep us here.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.socialcake.co
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/socialcake
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialCakeCo
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiannachristiansen
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/socialcakeco

Image Credits
Kelsey Cherry