062 | The Marketing Playbook: Clear, Concise, and Client-Centered Strategies with Jenny Cross

Welcome to the Vital Wealth Strategies podcast. I’m your host Patrick Lonergan, and with the start of 2025, we’re diving headfirst into a topic every business owner needs to master, marketing. As you plan to scale your business this year, getting your marketing right is absolutely crucial, and today’s episode is here to help you do just that.
Joining me is Jenny Cross, founder and CEO of Two Tone Creative, a full service marketing firm. I’m Jenny has an incredible story of building her business from the ground up, overcoming challenges, and delivering real results for her clients. Jenny shares valuable insights on creating a cohesive marketing strategy, why servant leadership is key to understanding your client’s needs, and how to be clear and concise in communicating your services.
If you’ve ever wondered how to connect all the moving pieces in your marketing, without having to figure it out on your own, tell an effective story. Or take the leap to make your business stand out. You’re in the right place. Stick around to the end where Jenny reveals the one thing every business owner should focus on to ensure their marketing sets them apart in 2025.
You won’t want to miss it. Jenny Cross. Thank you so much for joining us here today. I am excited about our conversation. I’m really looking forward to digging into marketing as a business owner and not, not just marketing. Cause I think a lot of. Businesses do marketing, but, but having like one solution for marketing where you bring everything together.
And that’s, that’s really how, uh, we started working together on the marketing side is I had all these things going on, no, no consistent strategy, and, uh, you were like, Hey, let’s, let’s talk about fixing that. And, uh, it’s made my life infinitely easier and given us like direction with our marketing. So thank you so much for joining us here today.
Absolutely. I’m so glad to be here.
So I’m, I’m just interested in you as a, as a person. Can you give us a little bit of your background and how Two Tone came into being and how you got started in, uh, marketing in, in general?
Yeah, absolutely. So I started Two Tone 10 years ago and I was very young and had a degree in graphic design and wanted to essentially pay off my student loan debts.
So I was like, how can I? Make some extra income to get out of all of this debt and essentially decided to start two tone doing graphic design and The very first actual client that came to us said hey We also need you to do a lot of other things for us website design digital marketing copywriting And essentially I just said yes to all of those things.
I said, yep, I can do it. And I did not know what I was doing, but I learned how to do those things and it turned into being a full service agency over those next 10 years.
Yeah. I, I love it. Um, and, and I think that’s what a lot of business owners are looking for. They’re looking for the easy button when it comes to their, their marketing versus.
You know, I don’t, I don’t need another job managing all of my contractors. And so that’s, uh, um, that’s, that’s great. So tell me about some, some of the challenges that you’ve faced because I, I, I, you know, to some level necessity is the mother of invention and, and we’re very much operating in our business right on the front edge of what we know.
Right. And, but we’re. We, we figure out we’ve got a vast network and we’ve got sharp people on our team. So it’s like, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll find the answer. Even if we don’t know it right now, we can, we can come up with it. So, yeah, I’d love to hear about some of the challenges during that, uh, those last 10 years where you’ve been growing.
And I mean, the biggest challenge was that client that hired us to do all these things. It’s a client that I quit my full time job for to make two tone my, my full time gig. Um, we helped them grow. We were doing amazing things for all of, all of their clients. Um, and then they, after several years, came to me and said, Hey, we actually are selling our company to a design agency.
And I was like, Oh my goodness, that is what we offer to you all. Um, and they were 80 percent of our revenue at the time. Um, And so that was, you know, very scary. I was like, I’m just going to throw in the towel. This is a good few years. I’m going to go back to a nine to five. And essentially a couple of team members that I had just looked at me and they said, we’re not going anywhere.
You need to figure this out and we’ll get more clients. So I learned about sales and marketing for myself that I hadn’t done before. And essentially we did come back from that, um, within weeks. Um, it was not a long, long thing, but it was scary at first, but eventually we got a couple of good clients and ended up growing from that, but that was one of the first big hurdles that we had to overcome as a company.
Yeah, no, that’s, uh, that’s fantastic. It’s also really interesting how, when. As business owners, we see a dip in our revenue. We get really focused on, on fixing that. Right. You know, we’re, we’re calling all of our, you know, uh, contacts that we think could possibly be a potential client and, uh, trying to get them on the calendar to see how we can serve them.
So.
Well, and I also learned from that, that you shouldn’t have a client be 80 percent of your revenue. So, you know, there was a lot of business things. that I did not know when I started. Now we would never have a client even be over 20 percent of our revenue to kind of safeguard us from those things. So I’m thankful for that opportunity because it taught me some things.
But yeah, that’s probably our largest challenge. We also, you know, struggled through COVID of just changes. We were signing a new lease in March of 2020. So two days after everything got shut down, we were Literally signing the paper. And I said, should we even do this? Like, should we even have an office?
Should we just be remote? And we made the decision that we were better together and move forward. And so just little, there’s little bumps and challenges all along the 10 years, but, um, just persevering and not giving up has been huge.
Yeah. So can you tell me what the size of the team was when you lost that, that large client and where the team’s at now?
Yep. When we lost a large client, our team was three. Um, when we signed our lease in 2020, our team was five and now we are 30 people.
That’s fantastic. So you’ve not just replaced that income that you lost when there was three of you, right? Uh, you, you’ve continued to scale and grow the business and, and you, you touched on.
You know, I started practicing a little bit of what I preach in regards to, you know, marketing and sales and that type of thing. What can you, can you just talk us through what’s continued, what’s, what’s contributed to your, I’ll say, tremendous growth over those, those last, um, we’ll say four years, you know, it’s been really, uh, impressive in that, that time
frame.
I’ll talk about two things. I’ll talk about the marketing that we’ve done, but before that, even, I think what’s actually contributed to our growth, not from a marketing side, was just doing good work again and again, no matter how big or small the client was, just serving them to the very best of our ability, and I actually remember one time a client said he was giving me some business advice.
And you said, Jenny, every day you got to wake up and you should have to think about your own business. Like, the second you wake up, you got to think about what you should be doing. And I said, I’m not going to do that. I want to wake up every day and think about my clients businesses and what they need.
Um, he’s like, hey, you got to grow your own business. You got to stay focused on your own business. And, um, even today, I don’t think about my own business. I am thinking about our clients businesses and how we can help them grow. And that’s served us really well, um, because they’re the ones that actually help our business grow and they want to do more work together and they refer us to more business and things like that.
Um, obviously I do need to spend time, you know, actually focus on our business to some degree too, but I think a lot of people struggle because they lose sight of the core operational reason that they exist, which is serving their client. So I do think servant leadership is a huge part of why we’ve grown.
From a marketing standpoint, um, something that we have incorporated a lot is a lot of information from a couple different books. I’m a huge reader, I love reading, but one is Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, and that entire framework really positions a The business as the guide instead of the hero of the story.
Most websites, you go on a roofing company and they say, we’re the best roofing company in Des Moines. Um, but everybody is saying they’re the best roofing company in Des Moines. Why should they trust them or believe them? But putting themselves in the place of I’m going to help you get what you need, which is a new roof or, you know, whatever the, the, you know, business is trying to do is really important.
The other book that we use a lot is called They Ask, You Answer, and the entire framework of that book is just answering the questions that your audience is asking, the way that they’re asking them, and then just directly answering them, not adding a bunch of fluff and extra information, but just being clear and concise, um, can go a really long way.
I love that. So I want to circle back because there’s something impressive that’s happening. Uh, you focus on your. Your client’s businesses, but I know, and this isn’t something I, I believe you’d bring up, but you just won a bunch of awards, uh, recently for having great culture, um, and just great team in general.
And, and I don’t think that happens unless you’re, you’re, you’re paying attention to your people. And I think you mentioned servant leadership and, uh. I think that is showing through in both how you take care of your external clients, but also your, your internal team as well. Can you just talk a little bit about, uh, how you foster tremendous culture?
Yeah. Um, I didn’t know what culture even was when I started. Two tone. Um, I, you know, I didn’t study business. Um, I wasn’t even a great student. I was a graphic designer, but I knew I’d worked at a couple of places where it was somebody’s birthday and nobody acknowledged the fact that it was their birthday and Um, you know, somebody had a baby and nobody visited them or got them any gifts or just little things.
I was like, oh, that’s kind of weird. Um, like I think we should acknowledge each other. You know, we work together a lot. And so when I had Two Tone and the team was very small, I only, I had like three or four people working out of my basement actually. And we were close. We were working in my basement. We were taking our shoes off when we, when people came over and we were eating lunch together and it was just a different, it was started as a very different culture.
And people were organically loving each other and serving each other and getting, I was getting Christmas gifts for them and then they would get me Christmas gifts and it was really sweet. And um, just little things like that turned into, we kept doing those things. Now I think we got to be like eight people and people were like, I can’t buy Christmas gifts for all eight of these people anymore.
This is a lot, but we found ways to do other little things for each other throughout the years. Um, And even just this Christmas, I want a kind of example of culture, not that everything’s around gifts or anything like that, but, um, just the importance of caring about one another, you know, I gave every single one of my team members a word of the year, something I want them to embody and foster and cultivate over the next 12 months.
It was a handwritten note of why this word should be important to them. Um, we gave them each custom gifts. I read a book once, years and years ago, they said the worst thing you can do as a leader is to treat all of your employees exactly the same. Give them all a 50 Target gift card. You might as well give them nothing if it’s all going to be the same.
So we literally sat at the Christmas tree and everybody opened, somebody opened up a coach purse and somebody else opened fairy lights and somebody else opened tickets to an Iowa basketball game and it was just so fun because it’s like people want to be valued And unique, um, and I think once you realize that as a business owner, um, it’s one just fun.
It’s a very fun to run a business like that, but also makes people be a little bit more bought in.
I love it. I love it. So I, I think about, um, you know, some of the principles you’re, you’re talking about, I think we can probably point to some biblical principles there, right? Like if we just start off and, you know, Jesus said, Uh, when asked about the greatest commandment, you know, love the Lord God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself.
And you’re clearly loving your neighbor, right? Uh, your neighbor is your client. Your neighbor is your employee. And uh, I, I love to see that sort of, uh, ministry just shining through, right? Uh, just taking care of people, uh, not because it’s, it is good business, but it’s, it’s What we’re called to do. You’re like, Hey, look, I was in these places and people weren’t cared for.
Uh, that was annoying to me. I figured if I’m going to do it, I’m going to care for people. And so I know, so one, one thing we’re both in C12, uh, C12 is a. Christian business owner, uh, forum that, uh, you can come together with other CEOs that are, uh, just trying to navigate the challenges of bringing faith into the workplace and, uh, doing that in a way that, um, you know, we, we have influence.
It’s not like we’re trying to shove it down your throat. It’s just like, Hey, this is what we believe is true. So can you just talk a little bit about, um, maybe some of the challenges of, of how to do that? Cause when I first joined C12 and I’d started about a decade ago, it was like, This is a foreign concept.
These are two separate areas of my life and I really wasn’t sure how to, to make them overlap. So.
Yeah. Yeah. It definitely is a unique thing to try to do and it’s, it’s extra unique for us too, because we actually serve a lot of churches and Christian nonprofits. That’s a huge part of our client base, but it’s not all of it.
We have lots of secular clients as well. Um, and so when it comes to our team, some of them. Um, really enjoyed the face aspect of 2TOM and some of them are like very indifferent to, to that concept. Um, but honestly, C12 has been such a huge help in navigating how to talk about those things, um, how to incorporate them in, like, we’re giving, we’re giving little resources here and there, again, not shoving it down anyone’s throat, not making it mandatory.
But I think it’s actually been, um, kind of a missing link for a lot of people who don’t have somewhere to turn to. People are going through about some of the hardest things, even in this last week. I’ve talked to clients and team members who just really, really tough stuff. Um, and I think it’s nice to know, That somebody kind of cares at a deeper level and somebody who does love Jesus that maybe can give some information about these things when times are hard.
And so I think that’s been, that’s been good. And for us, it’s been very organically. Um, originally because it’s kind of just like oozes out of me. It’s what I’m passionate about and excited about, um, but I think a lot of it just translates to being kind, loving each other, like you said, um, which really isn’t all that off putting to a team who wants to be cared for and valued.
Right. I love it. Thank you. So moving on to marketing. Um, you know, I’m, I’m just thinking about, uh, two tone and, and everything you offer. Can you just talk a little bit about, uh, the problems that, that two tone solves for, for business owners?
Yes. The, the biggest reason that somebody would hire us is they know they need to be doing some marketing, they need their website to be maintained, they need it to be reaching the right audience, they need digital marketing, social media, email marketing, they need videos, they need photography, they need content, and then a bunch of technical stuff to connect all those things to each other that’s Um, that’s difficult and the issue that we see a lot of times the business starts growing like man, we need to get somebody in house to do this.
They’ll hire somebody in house. That person may be studied marketing. They only know how to do maybe three out of the 12 things that they need done. Um, so now they’re paying a full salary for somebody to do a couple things. And then they also need somebody else to do the other bits of it. Now, some of those people, um, will try and save some money and use lots of different contractors.
They’ll use, we’re going to hire this guy that knows how to work a drone or hire this email marketing person. And we’re going to hire a photographer. Um, and now they’re managing 10 to 20 vendors. To get their marketing, the biggest issue is one, that’s a pain, but two, those vendors aren’t talking to each other.
They don’t know each other, and they all have different systems and strategies on how to do marketing. Because there’s a million different ways to do marketing. There’s not just one good way to do it. Uh, but the goal is that it’s all consistent and moving in the same direction. And so that’s where a lot of people end up coming to us.
And a lot of times they actually come for one thing, they say, hey, can you help with this one thing? And over months and years, I slowly add everything, you know, now we’re doing all of their things, which works well. But more and more people are saying, hey, we just, we’re coming to you and we know this doesn’t work and we need you to do all of the facets of marketing and have it be streamlined and consistent for us.
And so that’s probably the biggest challenge. That we help clients overcome.
Yeah. Yeah, no. And, and I think one thing that was really valuable for me was, uh, I heard this saying once and it, it just, it’s so true strategy eats tactics for lunch. Right. Like, like we need a strategy before. We just need to go execute on all these random tactics, because again, how is all of my marketing driving business, um, in an organized way to effectively revenue, right?
Like that’s, that’s the whole goal is to turn it into a sale. And so, uh, I think I was guilty of like, Oh, Hey, I, I heard I need to have social media. So. I’ve got the social media thing going. And then I’m like, Oh, I like doing a podcast. Uh, that’s why we’re talking today. I think it’s just really good. I learn a lot.
I think the information, uh, is applicable to our clients. You know, our focus is. Minimize taxes, maximize and optimize our, our wealth and then live an optimal life, right? Like let’s, let’s take this wealth that we’ve generated and like, you know, turn it into a great life, not just have another zero in the bank account.
So. I’m, I’m, I’m excited about getting conversations together that, that aligns with all of that. And so, uh, but at the end of the day, I really want to drive more revenue into the business. So it’s like having all of these things. You know, disjointed doesn’t help me right where if we can take, all right, here’s our global strategy.
Here’s how all of these, you know, digital and physical properties can work together to, you know, drive revenue. It’s like, Oh, okay. Thank you. Cause I’m not an expert right on these things. I’m really good at solving a tax problem and managing cashflow. I’m not so great at going, all right, what’s going to turn somebody from.
You know, an outside observer to a paying client, uh, that’s, uh, that’s the part that I’ve just enjoyed working with two tone going, okay, uh, you guys do a great job, uh, helping me get clear on the direction that I’m going and, uh, help prioritize, right? Cause again, there’s so many different things we could be doing.
I don’t know if there’s anything to talk about there, but, uh, I, I just appreciate the, the strategy component and it takes it off my plate and I can let, uh, you know, a well qualified team handle those things.
Yeah. I think the other thing too, though, is a lot of times with marketing, people are so, um, nervous about it, because maybe they’ve been burned in the past or they have, you know, they’ve shelled out money that didn’t, you know, equal results.
And so they get nervous if like, Hey, I run this campaign and it doesn’t have a return on investment that makes sense, we’re going to stop everything. Um, and so. Something that we’ve seen, we kind of use this analogy of, like, you plant a seed and you water it and the next day you come out and you dig up the seed to see if it’s growing and you’re like, ugh, it didn’t grow and you stick it back in the ground and you water it again or you move it to a different spot in your yard and it’s like, you keep moving it around, you keep digging it up and you’re like, this thing’s not growing, marketing doesn’t work and marketing does take a little bit of time and it takes, same way you, like, nurture a plant and it needs different things and No, my aunt’s telling me I need to put marigolds around my strawberries.
And I’m like, what? I’m like, I didn’t know that, you know, and I’m doing all these things to help them grow well. Um, but I didn’t dig them up and start over. And I think that’s really important when it comes to marketing to find a trusted vendor, whoever that is, and then keep at it, um, and have clear ideas of what you want those results to be, and you’ll see, you’ll see the growth that you’re looking for.
Yeah.
I love it. And one thing that I see as a challenge just with the landscape, right? Like I just look at. Um, we’ll call it social media platforms that come and go, right? TikTok’s relatively new, uh, we can think back to when vines were a thing, right? And then all of a sudden those just go away. Uh, YouTube shorts pop up and it’s like, Oh, they’re, they’re driving all sorts of traffic there.
How do you, how do you keep up with. All of the things that are going on in the, the marketing landscape. And because there’s some level of like trial and error with marketing in general, right? Like what might work for one client may not work in this, this arena over here. This platform might be great for this thing.
Not so much for this thing. How, how do you. How do you, how do you manage all of that?
Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, the first thing is, is I have an amazing social media and digital marketing team. And they’re all very young, which helps because they actually are using all of these new platforms and know what’s going on.
And, um, they’re teaching, I, I feel like I know everything. They’re like, oh no, you, that’s kind of like old news, Jenny. You know, you’re kind of getting, you’re kind of getting up there. Um, but they, they’re very much on top of the trends, which I think is a big help. And then where I come in is looking at it from the client’s perspective of what does this, who is the target audience of this client and where are they going to be?
What are they using? Um, are they actually on TikTok? Because if they’re not, we don’t need to be putting this company on TikTok. And that’s another big mistake. People say, Hey, TikTok’s trending. Let’s get you on TikTok. And it’s like, well. If your audience is 60 year old women, maybe that’s not the best platform.
Maybe it should be Facebook or Instagram or whatever. We kind of, um, work on those things. The other issue I will say is that there’s two audiences. There’s The business owner is sort of an audience because they want everything to match what they want, but it’s really not about them. It’s about who their audience is.
I just got off a call with a client or a future client potentially today who said, Well, I don’t like the way this other competitor does all these things. It’s so feminine and it’s so all these things. I’m like, well, who’s your target audience? He’s like, well, women. And I’m like, right, like this isn’t supposed to be attractive to you, it’s supposed to be attractive to your audience.
And that’s why your competitor is doing, doing these things. And so when you lose sight of that, that’s where you can kind of get off. So target audience alignment and then just really knowing what the platforms are for and using them correctly is, is really key.
Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is great. So. We’ve touched on story brand a little bit.
I I’m, you know, I love the idea of it’s so tempting as a business owner to be like, look, I’m the hero. I’m great. I’m the best in, you know, the best roofer in Des Moines. Um, but what I really want as a buyer is I want my roof to stop leaking, right? Like I don’t, I don’t care about who you are. I care about the solution that I need to fix my, my problem.
So can you walk us through like how business owners like need to shift their mindset around? Uh, creating clear messaging around that and what it, what a, what an effective story looks like.
Yeah, I’m going to keep using this roofing analogy, um, because I think it’s one that anybody listening could understand because you most likely live somewhere that has a roof over your head at night, so this will be an easy one, but the idea is that, yes, they, They want a roofer to come and fix their roof.
What we found out is everybody understands you need to have a roof so that you don’t get rained on and your house doesn’t get ruined. Everybody understands that it’s not a tricky concept. But what we, when we dug a little deeper with what is the actual problem that the customer’s experiencing, is that they’re really confused about the insurance piece of it.
Who’s paying for it? Is this roofing company kind of Doing some underhand deal where they’re actually charging me more. Do I know my insurance is actually going to pull through and cover the cost of this? All of this is really, like, really scary. I don’t know who to trust. And so that’s actually something that we need to talk about and make really crystal clear for the audience to understand how insurance works, what key factors you need to know about.
And essentially that makes them the hero because when they go to their insurance agent, they know what they’re talking about. And when they’re calling different roofers, they know what they’re talking about because this roofing company taught them what all of this stuff means in really simple terms versus saying, no, no, no, you don’t need to know anything.
I’m the hero. We know everything. Just give me your money. It’s like, that doesn’t build trust. Um, so really kind of giving the keys of the castle and explaining things. You know, for Two Tone, we say, people say, how much does a website cost? So we have an article on our website that really goes through all the different factors that drive the price of a website up or down, and why those things matter, and the pros and cons of that.
Versus just saying, well, this is just market price for a website, so pay it or don’t, you know? Uh, people want to have more information. So that’s a big part of, of StoryBrand with the, the, they ask you answer marketing model.
Yeah, no, this is really interesting. So what I, what I heard you say is you’re giving people the opportunity to like, Oh, hey, if I, we’re going to go back to the roofing analogy, right?
If I, if I want a roof, you’re giving me an opportunity to like say, Hey, come give me a quote, I’m ready to pay for my roof. There’s also a, I’ll call it a transitional call to action where I can maybe watch some You know, videos on how to deal with my insurance company. I can, you know, uh, learn what type of roofs make the most sense, you know, for my area, you know, how the color impacts my heating bill.
I’m making these things up, but like,
they’re all very good. Yes.
Yeah. So, um, you know, there’s, so there’s, there’s a couple of different directions. And now when I interact with those Uh, transitional calls to action, you know, maybe I’m giving you my email address and because I’m, I’m clearly interested in buying if I’m, I’m looking into these, uh, these things.
And so now I can, uh, as the roofer engage in like a drip marketing campaign, like, Hey, you know, if you’re interested in roof, we can come out and give you a quote, you know, all these other things to, uh, to keep it going. And then hopefully, you know, we’ve got to spend a little time, uh, we’ll call it dating before we, we, before we go get married.
Um, And I, I feel like, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but the, the bigger ticket items need a longer, uh, sort of vetting process for the buyer, right? Like I just think about our business, right? We’re, um, you know, our offerings are fairly expensive. Somebody might be paying 7, 000 a month to, to work with us.
And it’s like, well, um, for somebody to commit, uh, 70, uh, a year to, Tax strategy. It’s like, they probably want to know a little bit more about who we are and how we think and, uh, how we provide value for those, uh, uh, those dollars that they’re spending. So, um, yeah, this is, this is great.
Yeah, and, you know, what the, so StoryBrand’s part of it, but the They Ask, You Answer part that I’m kind of throwing in here too, you know, the whole idea of that one is they’re, they’re trying to sell pools, which is a huge expense, you know, 100, 000 plus to get a pool installed in your house.
They’re definitely going to take the time to get more information. But the goal is that your website is so clear and so strong and answers those questions well that by the time they actually do pick up the phone, they’re ready to go. You don’t have to pay a bunch of salespeople to get them convinced. I mean, even with us working with you, it’s like, we’re ready to go.
Like we didn’t need a bunch of convincing because we had seen good things. We’d heard good things. We’d read good things. And that’s just the, the difference between good marketing and putting all the pressure on the sales team to really, Um, bring things to a close and then it’s kind of like that person’s word versus.
whatever else, whoever else they’re talking to. So that’s where marketing kind of gives that, that clarity and also that reputation that this is, this is what we’re selling to everybody and it’s good and it’s the same.
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And I think about just Donald Miller and Story Brand in general, and I’m, I’m going to buy, They Ask, You Answer, uh, cause I, I love books as well.
But, um, uh, I interacted with Donald Miller with his five minute marketing makeover video series. Uh, I listened to all of his podcasts. Uh, I think this was maybe before COVID I can’t, it was definitely before COVID, but I, I listened to, I went back and listened to every single podcast. Then COVID came around and he offered a, a virtual training.
I’m like, sweet. I don’t have to like travel and I’ve got time. So I just paid for the three day, you know, virtual training. And I’m like, this is great. But it was, it was probably two or three years of, you know, Interacting with Donald Miller and his stuff, reading his books and all these things before the time was right for me to pull the trigger and, you know, send some money to storybrand.
So. Yeah, this is uh,
I think the other thing with story brain too, I know we’re talking a lot about when somebody’s not ready to buy, but a lot of times, somebody comes on your website and they’re ready to buy, and they can’t figure out how. There’s not a clear, there’s not a clear way. It’s like, get a quote, schedule a call, email this email address, download this file, and they’re just like, well, which thing do I do?
And so to have the same call to action everywhere on your website, that’s great. Make it clear, make it consistent, that will get those people who are ready in the funnel a lot faster.
And I think one thing you just mentioned there is much harder than people think. Getting clear is is actually very challenging.
Having a simple call to action just sort of repeated over and over again is Is tricky. It’s tempting to just, again, put all of these different things. Like, no, no, no. I want to put every possible solution, every possible, you know, direction somebody could go. It’s like, no, answer the question. What is your website trying to do?
You know, and then just have, have people like, and have, have there be maybe one answer to that? Like, With a transitional call to action, right? Like I want somebody to buy now. And if not, I want them in my email marketing campaign, you know, so.
Yeah. And the, the thing that’s kind of funny with that too, is that everybody, when we first talked to them, the first time we’re getting them introduced to StoryBrand, if they haven’t read the book yet, like, well, we’re really unique.
We don’t have like one customer or one problem or one way to work with us. We’re so, you know, we have so many different things that we do. Um, and by the end, they’re like, oh, okay, we have this, you know, we’re going to do this, and I use us as an example, I’m like, we’re working with huge churches, tiny churches, you know, clinical clients, we’re working with the government, service providers, e commerce clients, and we have 10 different services we offer, but our messaging is clear on our homepage to every single one of those audiences, so when they come, it makes sense to them, uh, which it’s hard to do, to craft all of that and to make it work, and we don’t say, if you’re a, you know, Church or service provider or, uh, you know, all these things, um, but slimming it down.
Um, um, Donald Miller always says, if you confuse, you’ll lose. And that’s what we kind of preach here and remind our team of when we’re working on a work, but also our clients.
Love it. That’s great. So I guess one, one question I have is how do you, how do you measure success for your clients? Cause I think it could probably show up in, in different ways for, for different people.
And I, I guess I’m also curious as a business owner, how do you. Cause we can have that seed conversation. I think that was a brilliant example of like, you keep digging the thing up and looking at it and you’re like shocked that it won’t grow. Right. Um, so how do you, how do you set that expectation up front?
Like, Hey, this is, this is something we need to commit to the process on. And then how do we measure. Because still at the end of the day, there’s, you know, people are spending real money to, uh, get results. And, uh, so how do you, how do you measure all that?
Great question. So essentially every client has a different goal of what they’re wanting by the end of the year.
And we often start by saying, Hey, when we get to the end of 2025, what do you hope is true in your business? Um, from a marketing standpoint or just from growing your business as known, or what are, what are you hoping? And we hear from them and sometimes we’re like, that’s. Great. We can, we can do part of those things.
You know, if your goal is to quadruple your business and your budget’s, you know, 500 a month, you know, it’s like, okay, you’re probably gonna have to do a whole lot of work to make that happen. We can help a little bit. Uh, but setting those realistic expectations upfront is really important. Uh, but then the biggest thing is we’re huge fans of traction.
Do you know, Wickman, um, using the EOS model for, for business and for our clients is just setting key performance indicators, KPIs, and then you have to track them week over week. No excuses. Oh, it was the holidays. Oh, it was this. We were out of town. Just week over week tracking that number, and it should be something that’s a leading indicator, not a lagging indicator.
So, checking to see how much money you made a month later, that’s not going to help us make changes ahead of time. And so, figuring out what those things are could be really helpful to seeing, seeing how things are going. Sometimes what this will look like is, How many times is the phone ringing? How many proposals are being asked for?
How many are being sent out? How many leads are coming in from the website? How many of those forms are being filled out? How fast are we responding? This is actually interesting. A lot of times we’ll find out the marketing’s working, but the sales team’s dropping the ball and they’re not responding to the leads or the person answering the phone is grumpy.
Um, and we’re like, whoa, that’s maybe the issue that we need to solve. And so there’s so many moving parts. But if we’re, we got our hands in it, we’re all committed to getting that goal to the finish line, figuring out where those weaknesses are and then fixing them is, is how we do it. So, and then some clients too, they don’t want to even talk about ROI.
They’re like, I just have all these projects that need to be done. Can you guys get these projects off of my plate? And we’re like, yes. And that’s, so then the, the measurables are completely different, um, from, you know, regular marketing KPIs.
Yeah, I love it. And I’m, I’m sorry I asked two questions together there.
You did a great job answering the measuring success. So are you preemptively pointing out to people like this is, this is a process we’ve got to We’ve got to invest and it may be six, 12 months before we’re seeing the results that we’re looking for.
Yep, absolutely. We can kind of spot early on in the sales process, what a client’s expectations are, and if they’re unrealistic of, you know, Hey, we see everything do a 360 in 30 days.
And then we’re definitely going to be having those conversations. Most of our clients. Um, are great fits and they know, they know marketing takes time. Um, but it, it is part of it of just making sure everybody’s on the same page and setting those goals. The one kind of red flag that we’re always looking out for is somebody that comes to us, it’s like, my business isn’t making any money, everything’s wrong.
You guys have to come in and save the day. Um, and like the best marketing in the world is not going to save your business that’s not operating well, uh, which honestly I’ve spent a lot of time talking to business owners about how to change a lot of things in their business has nothing to do with marketing to try and help them out.
But I’ve realized we really need to try and stay in our lane as much as possible, um, to help them. So we’re kind of looking for that of, Hey, who’s got a company that’s doing well, but they need some help. They need to grow more or better, more steadily. Those are kind of the ideal clients for us to come in and help.
Yeah, I, I do think there’s two pieces to the equation. Like, I can have a great product, right? But if nobody knows about it, my business is going to struggle. Yeah. I can also have great marketing and a terrible product, and my business is going to struggle. It’s when I have a great product that people know about and it’s a need in the marketplace that, you know, we, we start to go up into the right from a, a revenue perspective, so.
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s great. And one thing that I’ve just found, you know, we work with business owners all over the United States that have, uh, personal incomes over a million dollars, and when I look at their profit and loss statements, one of the biggest expenses they have is marketing. It is so hard in my mind.
I we’re just not seeing it. We’re not seeing. Businesses grow and create tremendous revenue without which includes, you know, nice bottom line numbers without having significant dollars going into marketing. It just, um, you know, the build it and they will come does not really exist out there in the marketplace that, that we’ve seen.
I don’t know if you have any examples of that, uh, where you’ve had, you’ve seen somebody just killing it without, you know, because they’ve got this unicorn product, but, uh, from, from our point of view, it, it, it all starts with marketing with a great product.
Yeah, I haven’t seen, I haven’t seen that, you know, a business that’s not doing any marketing, that would be really hard.
And a lot of times, you know, I kind of make the recommendation like you should be spending about 5 percent of your revenue on marketing. Um, that’s kind of my general note that I, I tell people, people are like, some people are like, Oh, we kind of already doing that. And a lot are like, what? That’s not. And then I’m like, Hey, Nike spending a whole lot more than that, like a lot more than that.
And so for a small business to even start with 5 percent can really help them. And I actually just had our team audit, um, at the end of the, I was like, tell me how much money we’ve spent on our own marketing and what that looks like. And I’m like, yep. It was, it was like 5. 8 percent of our top line revenue on our marketing.
And that’s just what it takes to, to get all the platforms communicated with. And here’s the thing, I’m not diving into all the, did this email make me money? Did this social post make me money? Did this little thing make me money? I just know all together, these things, when I go, when I go to the chamber of commerce events, and it says, Oh my gosh, I saw that.
Instagram post where you were in the Christmas tree and goodness. And actually I need to talk to you about our marketing. You know, that’s where it’s like that actually, um, has results. You just can’t see it necessarily in the analytics of the social media post.
Yeah. No, that’s, that’s so good. And it’s so true.
Cause it’s, it’s funny and also a little frustrating at times, you know, where people will find us. Like I’ll go speak at an event. Uh, they’ll go sign up for our email lists. Uh, they’ll check out our website and then they’ll get an email about the podcast episode that came out. Respond back to that nine months later and say, Hey, we need to meet.
We’ve got this frustration with this, this, and this. And they’re like, okay, cool. You know, but like the path that it took them to get there was like. Okay, that’s, I can’t recreate that. I can’t make that the, the, the path that people take. And so I think you’re right. We, we just have to like, keep putting in the work, uh, getting the message out into different avenues that, uh, people are going to hear it and see it and go, Hey, I, I jive with that.
And. I think one thing that I want to touch base on too is I think there’s some level of people don’t want to stand out. They don’t want to stand for something, you know, I, I think my, I’ve, I’ve been thinking about this. You were talking about, uh, having a word for everybody. Uh, you know, I think my phrase for 25 is like, I’m planting a flag.
Like this is who we are. This is what we stand for. And I think about that in every area of my life, right? Like this is who we are as a family. You know, this is who I am as a husband. This is who I am as a father. This is who I am as a business owner. This is who we stand for as an organization. And, uh, And I think people are looking for that.
Like, I want somebody to look at me and go, that is exactly what I want. Or that is exactly what I don’t want. I don’t want somebody to be like, you know, I use the example of a beige Camry. Like nobody dislikes a beige Camry, but nobody’s excited about a beige Camry. Right. You know, it’s like, yeah, it’s a good car.
You know, it gets me around, but I’m not like, I’m not going to tell my friends that I bought a beige Camry. Um, where You know, red Ferrari, like people are going to have an opinion on a red Ferrari. Like that’s amazing. Or I can’t believe you’re ostentatious with your, you know, your, your taste. So I don’t know.
I’m, I’m, I’m wanting to lean more towards the yellow Lamborghini red Ferrari side of things versus the beige Camry and, uh, yeah. I would have to think that helps with marketing, right? Like people can go, I resonate with that.
Yep. I think too, this is another common mistake we see people make. They say, all my competitors are doing this.
Can we do the same thing? And like, actually here’s a weakness and what, why, what they’re doing maybe isn’t the best, you should do this, but they’re too nervous to look different or to try a different approach. Like, well, we just want to do the same thing that everybody else is doing. And you’re just adding more noise.
You know, you’re not, you’re not standing out like you said, and that’s really taking that leap of, We’re going to do something different and we’re going to see if it works. And now we’re not going to keep doing things that don’t work, but just trying to blend in or do what everybody else is doing typically isn’t a good, a good marketing model to follow.
Yeah, I love it. Cool. So two tone has got the flywheel moving, you know, I just look at your growth and it’s, uh, it’s, it’s growing nicely. So good for you. I guess my question is what’s, what’s next for you and two tone creative.
Yeah, goal is to keep on trucking, keep growing for sure. We just had our end of year planning, made a goal to grow by 32 percent um, for 2025.
And one thing we really want to focus on is, um, expanding our video department. We, we added that in about a year ago, kind of on a whim. We, it was the one service we didn’t offer. And I had a guy who I used to work with come to me and say, Hey. Have you ever thought about maybe starting video? Would you hire me?
I was like, yeah, I’ll hire you. Let’s go. And he’s like, wait, are you serious? I was like, yeah, we’ll, we’ll figure it out. We’ll, you know, sell some video. And now he is very, very busy. Um, and so expanding that department, growing will be a big part of the next year. Um, but yeah, just continuing to grow our whole reason for existing is to faithfully cultivate potential.
And the idea there is that when team members come here, whether they’re entry level, they’ve worked at an agency for 20 years, we want them to continue to grow personally and professionally, and just giving them opportunities to do that. And in order for us to do that, we need to serve more people and give them more opportunities to help other companies shine with their marketing.
So. That’s the plan. Just continue to grow. We’re at 30 people. We’re hoping to be close to 40 by end of 2025. So it should be good.
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I’m, uh, I’m excited. I’m glad I get a front row seat from a couple of different levels to, uh, to watch the business. You know, we get to enjoy the, the fruits of, uh, two tone and your, your growth and our, our marketing side.
And so, um, yeah, I’m, I’m excited about that. So, I’m just going to walk through what I believe the steps are. If somebody wants to reach out and engage with two tone. So first would be, I’ll say, go to the website and schedule a call, right? Like, let’s just, uh, get that two tone audit started, right? Like, let’s take a look at all of my.
My marketing properties, everything from my, my website to, uh, social media and everything in between. Uh, and then from there, you’re going to say, Hey, here’s some, here’s some gaps that we’re seeing in strategy. And then here’s tactics that align with that strategy. And then people get to decide like, yep, that all sounds good.
I want to engage and move forward. You know, they’ll keep reading your blog posts and, uh, email newsletter, and then they’ll get it eventually. So is that, did I, is that sound like a decent summary for, um,
That’s exactly it. It’s perfect.
Wonderful. Jenny, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. Do you have any last marketing nuggets or business nuggets or anything else before we, before we wrap up?
Or did we touch it all?
No, I think we’re all good. That was great.
All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I hope you found today’s conversation with Jenny Cross as insightful and inspiring as I did. Thank you for being a vital entrepreneur.
You’re vital because you’re the backbone of our economy, creating opportunities for your employees and driving growth. You’re vital to your family, fostering abundance and security in every area of life. You’re vital to me because you’re committed to building wealth, making an impact. And living a truly great life.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who are on their entrepreneurial journey together. We can help more people thrive in business and beyond until next time. I’m Patrick Lonergan reminding you to stay focused, stay inspired and keep building your vital wealth strategies.