cavnessHR Podcast Show Notes

In the next few months, we will be devising the integrated marketing communications plan. It'll be a two-page guide that will be available for free on the website. If you are thinking about starting a new business, or even just reassessing the way your organization is positioned and marketed. Reach out to our website and click download PDF and check it out.

Jason: Hello and welcome to the cavnessHR podcast, I'm your host Jason Cavness. Our guest today is Natalie Michel. Natalie, are you ready to be great today?

Natalie: Yes, I am.

Jason: Natalie is the founder and CEO of Nouvel Age Media. A digital marketing agency that helps clients develop custom integrated digital marketing strategies for their brand effectively, and effectively target their audience. By generating valuable long term brand-customer relationships. The goal behind harvesting these types of relationships, you have to reach the goals, marketing objectives, and potential. While at the same time supporting the brand's mission. Nouvel Age Media's objective is to serve as a digital marketing guide for the client. So they can maximize their organization's goal in a unique way that solves their customer's problems by utilizing a social cause. The motive behind the social cause strategy is to help the clients devise and execute unique digital marketing strategies that aid the planet, people, past, and the profit. Natalie thank you for being here today, I really appreciate it.

Natalie: Yeah, no problem, thank you. Thank you for having me here as a guest.

Jason: My pleasure. What are you focusing on right now for your business and for yourself?

Natalie: At the moment I'm working on designing a two to three page PDF that will be available for free on my website for anyone to use. It mainly helps startups create their own integrated marketing communication strategy, and not just something they can do quarterly or somewhat annually. But basically it's gonna serve as a guide to help devise a plan on their own, and on their budget to effectively and efficiently meet their marketing objective. Using, of course, those social cause strategy.

Jason: Natalie, what exactly is a digital marketing agency? What does a digital marketing agency do?

Natalie: Well, digital marketing agencies ... well, they can be used for various things. They can be used to build custom strategies for organizations, from small businesses to medium sized organizations to large businesses. We also focus on mainly just the digital aspect of marketing. Sort of our niche. We manage a lot of social media accounts for example for clients. More digital email marketing as well. Yeah, basically that's sort of the gist of it.

Jason: So why should a small business owner bring on an agency like yourself? How come they just don't do it themselves, figure it out themselves, why should they outsource.

Natalie: I think it would be both to meet or at least network with an external marketing agency, and engage with them because they're going to be able to position your organization based on an analysis that it's conducted. For example, for my clients, I usually do an analysis. I dig into their data, how well they're doing. I research the economy, I research business regulations. I also research the consumers so that we can devise a plan that is going to actually talk to those consumers without additional noise so that we're able to better target and position that brand for them.

Jason: Now, and I'm sure you know there's so many people are doing what you do, literally hundreds of thousands of people. So how do you set yourself apart from those other competitors?

Natalie: My organization generally sets themselves apart by using a social call strategy, and by making sure that we're always telling the story through our marketing messages. We also put our consumers first. We want to make sure that the brand that we're representing is able to talk to their consumers one on one, versus just talking to them as if they're one group of consumers. They're all unique and they have many personas and needs that need to be satisfied.

Jason: Why is it that social causes are so important to your business? I mean, that's pretty niched down. Why did you come up with that for?

Natalie: So social cause strategies, and the motive behind my organization, because it is unique. It also has to do a little bit with ethics and I want to be able to help organizations that are going to be producing something for the community, not just the stakeholders and for themselves. I want them to be helping everyone around them.

Jason: Have you had to disqualify any potential customer because of this strategy?

Natalie: No, not at all. I think that the way that my brand is positioned we're able to attract other like-minded organizations as well that is sort of struggling with their strategies. So we're just there to guide them through the process to position their brand correctly.

Jason: You are based that out of Los Angeles, correct? For your business?

Natalie: Yes, that's correct.

Jason: Now are you just doing it based in LA or are you nationwide, worldwide?

Natalie: Yes, nationwide. I've worked with various organizations, for example, I've worked with OYA. They're a woman-owned business that seeks to empower women. Mainly women entrepreneurs, that is their niche. So what we did is they designed a social media platform and that was designed to market women and their businesses and anyone that identifies as a woman is allowed to create a social media account with them to essentially advertise their organization. To increase engagement within the women community.

Jason: So now, of course, your business will help other businesses increase their marketing. How do you for your own business market yourself to bring in new customers?

Natalie: I network a lot so I work with a lot of people, and a lot of networking events, for example that my clients have. Or that someone invites me to. I would say that networking is my number one customer retention asset.

Jason: As you know there are a lot of social media platforms, whether it's Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, on and on. Is there one platform that you recommend your customers use the most? Or it's actually equal across the board?

Natalie: I would say that it honestly depends on the business and the way that their audience engages with them. I think the best choice is to analyze your target audience and see what they use the most for them to decide, "Okay, moving forward I'm going to only use Twitter." Or, "I'm going to focus on marketing efforts on say Instagram and digital marketing." And the ones that will fall behind are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn because their audience isn't engaging at this level.

Jason: So Natalie, has this happened to you, you have a customer and you recommend what to do and they never do what you tell them to do? How do you deal with that situation?

Natalie: Yes, yes I have. But in that instance what I did was I went ahead and I did a lot of research, as much research as I could. I put together a PowerPoint that hit every single section the customers was unsure about. All the points that they made in their argument against their original suggestion. Then we usually work together and we compromise and we devise the strategy that they're going to agree upon and that makes sense.

Jason: Natalie, is there a certain industry or company size that you target, for example construction companies with people under 50 people? Or is it like you're taking on all customers?

Natalie: I take on all customers, but I would say that my main focus so far has been small business owners.

Jason: Natalie, moving on, can you tell me about a time you were successful in the past, what you learned from the success and what we can learn from this?

Natalie: Yes, so well there was a time that I was working with a client, I had devised a digital marketing strategy for them. I was really nervous to present to them, mainly because I had only been with them for a few months. We were just established in our relationship, our professional relationship. So I went ahead and I devised this plan I presented it to them and it turns out they loved it. One thing that I did learn is that you should never be afraid to be proactive about reaching your directives. I think that the only thing we should be afraid of is failing, and the only way you can fail is if you do not try. So if I never went ahead and created this project, or presentation and presented it to my client, I would've never received that outcome.

Jason: Natalie, next, talk about something you failed in the past. What you learned from this and what you can remember from the failures in your past.

Natalie: My most memorable failure that occurred in college. I was going to school full time, and I was working full time. I was overloaded with work. I did not schedule my weekly planner adequately. So of course, I was ... one day I had this huge project that was due, it was due the next day. I was working on it at night and I was in my mind freaking out. I mean, at the end of the day I got the project done. But in my mind I had failed because I felt like I did not give that project 100% potential or effort. Which could've affected my outcome. So what I learned from that is that no matter what project I'm working on, or anyone is working on for that matter. Big or small we should always make time for that, and some really focus on that so they give 100% effort. At the end of the day, they know that they tried their best and that the outcome's as good as it was gonna get for them.

Jason: So Natalie, right now you're actually running your own company and you're getting your master's degree at the same time, right?

Natalie: Yes, that's correct.

Jason: So how are you doing that? Most people can't even handle a nine to five job. But you're doing both. How do you handle that?

Natalie: Well, it's lots of planning. So calendars are my lifeline. So I have one for my homework and I have one for my clients. I also have one for my own business. Because I also have to make that is being taken care of. Managing that though, I've actually signed up for my MBA program at California State University at San Bernardino. I chose that college ... or that university because it is exclusively online which is awesome. That helps balance my life, and professional life as well.

Jason: So Natalie, what challenges have you had being a female entrepreneur?

Natalie: I would say that sometimes it can be difficult dealing with certain personas. For example, some people like to work differently, or they have different work ethics. I think it's mainly finding a balance between each other, gender-wise sometimes. But for the most part, I've had a lot of pleasant encounters, and I've never felt alienated. But I do notice that there are quite a bit of a difference in work ethic.

Jason: Natalie, can you tell us the process of how you decided to start your own business? The process of how you figured out, "You know what, I want to own my own business." How did that come about?

Natalie: Well, it started because I was actually working at a coffee shop, it was a little mom and pop shop. I knew the owners, I was actually the general manager, and I reported to them directly, so I saw them frequently. I guess I had sort of the backstage view on owning a business, and I thought, "Hey, if they can do it, why can't I?" Why don't I find a passion or something that I'm very passionate about and base my business around that. If it's something that I know and that I love, and that I have a lot of interest in?

Jason: Natalie, who were some of the marketing people that you follow that you would consider your mentors or if you follow for advice?

Natalie: Forbes Business, I definitely follow them. Another one is Alternative Media. They are another great digital marketing agency that has inspired me. Donald Miller, he's actually the founder and CEO of StoryBrand. It's an organization that helps align your marketing strategy through storytelling and social cause. He is my number one inspiration for sure as well. If anyone wants to read any book, I recommend reading StoryBrand by him.

Jason: Natalie, what's your longtime version for your company? Are you trying to be a national company, local, what's your long term vision for your company?

Natalie: My long term vision for my organization is to hopefully grow in the future, I want to expand my team. So far I am a team of one. But I hope to grow that in the future. I envision myself in the long term as a small to medium organization, that target a specific niche, which is digital marketing. So of course, as you probably know, is huge in the future. But I want to make the President, for sure.

Jason: Natalie, obviously you have something for our listeners.

Natalie: Yes, that is correct. So in the next few months, we will be devising the integrated marketing communications plan. It'll be a two-page guide that will be available for free on the website. If you are thinking about starting a new business or even just reassessing the way your organization is positioned and marketed. Reach out to our website and click download PDF and check it out.

Jason: So Natalie we talked earlier about how many digital marketing agencies are out there. Let's say that a small business owner ... how do you recommend they agency that's best for them? Suppose they get 20 emails from 20 different companies. You're like, I need to pick one of these people to help me out." How do you recommend they go about picking the right one for them? Any pointers on that?

Natalie: Yes. I definitely recommend listening to every single pitch. But most importantly, listening to the data that they have to support their strategy that they're pitching. If it was something that is aligned with your mission and it makes sense. Like it is logical. If there's evidence available to select this, I think you should go with the best one.

Jason: Now Natalie, I think a lot of small business owners don't realize it's a long term process. You don't just one day be number one on Google. How do you teach small business owners patience? Like, "Hey, it's gonna take three, four, maybe even six months maybe or longer?" How do you teach them that patience?

Natalie: I usually try to be very transparent with the process. So what I do is I create a schedule that our team is going to use in order to meet their objectives. To devise these plans for them, and then we walk through it together on conference calls and meetings. every so often to make sure they're all in the loop and that nothing has changed, we're still on the same route.

Jason: Natalie, can you share your social media links for yourself and your company so people can reach out to you?

Natalie: Yes, of course. So if you're interested in following us on Instagram, just go to @nouvelagemedia and follow us. Same with Twitter, and same with Facebook. For LinkedIn, just go to @nouvel_age_media.

Jason: Natalie, what is your personal favorite social media platform?

Natalie: My personal favorite is Instagram. I just love the fact that you can post stories. You can post to your feed. I's great, it's awesome. I think it's great, very efficient marketing and you can bring a lot of followers that way. Especially if you're organic marketing. It's a great way to establish your relationship that will last long term with your clients. Or your perspective target audiences.

Jason: Natalie, we're coming to the end of our talk, can you provide us any last minute advice or wisdom or any subject you want to talk about?

Natalie: Never be afraid to follow your dreams. If you have a passion and you want to turn that into a business, do it. Because I guarantee you if you don't, you're gonna regret it more than if you did and you failed.

Jason: Thanks, Natalie. Natalie, thank you for your time today, I really appreciate what you're doing, thank you very much.

Natalie: Thank you, bye.

Jason: To our listeners, thank you for your time as

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cavnessHR Podcast Show Notes

A talk with Natalie Michel of Nouvel Age Media

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