Types of Content Marketing Videos People Will Want to Watch - pg. 14

getting a big-girl job in telecommunications, then working my way up the corporate ladder. I was doing amazing and thought I had my forever job, but life got in the way. When I got pregnant with my daughter, I was very sick and was hospitalized for eight out of the nine months that I was pregnant. The company decided it couldn’t hold my territory for me, and they replaced me.

I was devastated because I had been the family breadwinner and insurance carrier, and now I was the hospital sitter. When I worked for the telecommunications company, I spent a lot of time helping momand-pop companies learn about social media, teaching them how to market themselves even without a budget. Before I had done so, these small businesses had marketing plans that consisted of simply spraying flyers around the mall parking lot, shoving them underneath people’s windshield wipers. So even though the company had replaced me, I had developed relationships with these business owners and they still reached out to me with questions. I loved doing that because I love technology and psychology, and that mixed both worlds for me, so something just clicked. I was like, “I really enjoy doing this. And it comes naturally to me and I really don’t want to go back to corporate America because they just let me go when I was sick.” So I started NOW Marketing Group in 2010, and it’s been amazing ever since.

Dennis: What tools and lessons did you take from your time in corporate America?

Jessika: Systems. I value systems and having things repeatable. Because you can’t do everything. And you shouldn’t want to if you want to grow, because otherwise you’ll get stuck. So I loved the systems and having everything in its place. I also loved the things that I learned I didn’t like about corporate America, because then I was able to reinvent them. Like, my customers didn’t have to just be numbers but PEOPLE. And my employees are humans— they are more than the numbers that they’re producing this month. There’s a backstory to it.

You don’t have to be all business—there is another way. As small businesses or entrepreneurs, that’s the win. That’s why we’re winning today, because people get that. They have options. They want to be treated like a person who is valued, not a cog in the wheel.

Dennis: Tell me a little bit about what NOW Marketing Group offers.

Jessika: NOW is based on really caring for our customers. That’s the approach we use to serve everyone we come into contact with, from our team members and our community members to our clients. I firmly believe that’s the only way to build sustainable, long-term growth.

What we do is called relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is a new way of thinking about business in general. If we look at today, 90%

of all buying decisions start online and people choose one company over another based on how they feel the experience is going to be with that company. It’s not just word-of-mouth like it used to be, it’s WORLD of mouth. People are basing decisions on what other people say online. So when you see online reviews and comments, you get a sense of what it’s like to work with a select company or person. That is the shift happening now in marketing. It’s no longer about using a bullhorn to get your message out, but it’s about placing some magnets to draw in ideal people that we want to work with and getting them to stick with us.

Relationship marketing starts from the inside out. We think about how to develop a brand personality that allows people to understand what a business is about. Not what they do, but how they do it. We help our clients find their story, that thing that makes them stand out. Then we help them craft their story, we help them out-care the competition. We help them capture attention, articulate their message, build real relationships for repeat referral business and exceptional experiences. This makes the difference in how we attract our ideal people to us. Instead of having this old-school sales funnel, it’s a flywheel. It’s growing in momentum. Once you have that core, you’re going to keep growing in momentum and you’ll have this repeat residual, long-term, sustainable growth.