05 Aug Guest: Gretchen Gleason & Marketing During Covid
My guest on today’s episode is Gretchen Gleason, a Senior Account Manager with Maennche Virtual CMO. Maennche Virtual CMO is a marketing strategy and business growth consulting firm. Gretchen spent 10 years in the I.T. Industry in continuing education training, course curriculum design, software upgrade implementation, and I.T. Recruiting. Gretchen is also a volunteer with SCORE in Tulsa, where she is the Chairperson of the Women’s Leadership Committee. She is committed to helping women business owners through mentoring, monthly breakfasts, and the annual Women’s Leadership Conference.
Key topics we cover:
✔️ This Covid time: to market or not to market, that is the question!
✔️ Top current marketing mistakes Gretchen sees.
✔️ Your clients still need you. If you shut the doors, they WILL go somewhere else for help.
✔️ If you’re thinking Maennche is hard to pronounce, you’re not alone LOL.
✔️ If you need mentorship, check out SCORE.
You can find Gretchen online at:
https://myvcmo.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gretchengleason/
Transcription by Otter.ai:
Hello, hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Causey Consulting podcast. I’m your host Sara Causey and I’m also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. Very happy to welcome my guest today, Gretchen Gleason. Gretchen is a senior account manager with Maenneche Virtual CMO, a marketing strategy and business growth consulting firm. Now, Gretchen spent 10 years in the IT industry and continuing education training course curriculum design, software upgrade implementation and it recruiting. She has a wife to the most loving and incredible man on the planet. A mom to three outstanding kids and one ordinary Bulldog and a defense Tennessee Vols fan. Gretchen is also a volunteer with score and Tulsa where she is the chairperson of the Women’s Leadership Committee. She is committed to helping women business owners through mentoree monthly breakfasts and the annual Women’s Leadership Conference. These are used to enhance awareness and education as well as encourage networking with other women in the community. Gretchen you’re a busy lady got a lot going on. I appreciate you taking some time out to be with us today. Oh, Sara, I very much appreciate you having me. Thank you so much. Yeah. So tell us about yourself. I mean, I’m in northeast Oklahoma. Full disclosure. You and I have met each other before this is not our first rodeo but for people listening to the broadcast, not in green country. Tell us about yourself and how you got into marketing work. Fantastic. Yeah. Well, I, as you said, spent many years doing developing training courses and doing continuing education and new hire, training and all kinds of different things. Matthew man, my boss and the owner of our company had been one of my clients when I was in staffing. And I helped him find really great people and, and his wife and, and himself and of course, myself and my husband were the four of us became really good friends. And when I was ready to make a transition, because of the way that he runs his company, my background in training and development has really come into play mixed with my business development background. So it’s been a whole lot of fun. That’s how I ended up in marketing. Nice. What are some of the top marketing mistakes that you see right now? Well, right now, of course, we’re in the era of COVID– Post COVID– however, people want to look at it, they just aren’t really sure. And so their uncertainty right now is causing some people and this is about a 5050 mix. It’s causing some people to completely cut out marketing Yeah. We are rallying against that as a company. Unfortunately, there are many businesses small and mid sized businesses that are not going to make it. Once the federal money, yes, done coming out, and those clients are going to need places to go. So this is just not the time to stop marketing altogether. Or those clients are going to think that everyone in this industry in their neighborhood, whatnot went out of business. So this is a really great time to pick up new clients. And that’s such a great point too, because you’re right, people who need whatever service or product that that company is providing, they still have the need for it. So they’re going to take their business and their dollars somewhere. And it doesn’t really make sense to just pull the plug and say, Oh, well, I give up. Right, right. Mm hmm. Yeah. And this also segues into a really good question. There’s such a difference. going on yeah me I see it a lot on social media to sell or not to sell during the pandemic like it is a lightning bolt going to hit me from out of the blue and curse me to into eternal damnation if I try to sell something right now, you’re in marketing you’re you’re sort of got a beat on the street every day as far as what’s happening in real time. What do you say to this great Hamlet s question of to sell or not to sell during COVID? That is the question. What say he? Well, I say you’re in business to do business. I, I understand when when all of this was new. It every one took a pause because we’re collectively gassed and said, What do we do now? Yeah. So if you’re going to keep your business in business and continue to keep your lights on, not all of us sell peepee and toilet paper. There are So businesses and services that are that have grown exponentially during the time of lockdowns, you know, h vac businesses are doing great business right now. plumbers are doing great business right now there are still people that need your goods and services and you are not going to the seventh circle of hell or for continuing to conduct your business, I promise. Mm hmm. Yes. That’s such a good point to your right. Yes. And you know, companies that hire for sanitizing and cleaning office cleaning age, HVAC, plumbing, that all of that is making so much sense to me right now. And it’s good to get, you know, a fresh perspective on not not only from a marketing perspective, but also from a hiring perspective. You know, some people are feeling really downtrodden like it Are there any jobs out there is anybody hiring you know if their job that they had been in has been temporary paused or maybe it went away altogether because of the pandemic. It’s easy, I think sometimes to get sucked into the gloom and doom news. And, you know, to watch all of these bleak reports, which they’re trained, you know, this is the breaking news banner down at the bottom of the screen. And yes, yes, in bright red scary letters, like, the whole world is ending. It’s like, okay, but no like, that we may not necessarily have to be in exactly the career that we want right now. Like, I like how Joyce Meyers calls it doing what the crisis demands, you know, there, we may be taking on new clients that we wouldn’t have thought about. Otherwise, we might be doing some work that we it may not be the sexiest job in the world, but if it keeps food on the table, you know, it’s there’s still opportunities out there. Exactly, exactly. There are so many clients that are standing up brand new pillars of business, and that’s the way that we look at it. This is just a new pillar of your business. And you can go Back to the main pillar anytime, you know anytime the climate is gonna allow for it, but for right now, you got to keep the lights on. Yes, I love it. I know that you’re active in an organization called score and I wanted to learn more about it if someone is not familiar with score and what they do, tell us about them. Well, everyone loves free write. Free expert advice. score was started after World War Two. So our organization’s been around for a super long time. We’ve got over 300 chapters across the US with over 12,000 volunteers. And when I say that volunteers, we don’t get paid a dime. What we have a vested vested interest in is making sure that businesses are in business, stay in business, get the resources and the help that they need. We act as mentors and if we don’t have out of the 40-50 volunteers that we have here in Tulsa. If we don’t have someone that has the expertise that someone needs, we’ll reach out to national and say, This is the expertise that we need. And someone will get on a zoom call with this, this client, and it’s for the life of your business. So if you need to buy a business, if you need to sell a business, if you need to expand, if you simply have an idea and no clue how to write a business plan, we can help you at any stage of your business. Very cool. Yeah, I think that’s awesome. It’s It’s a fantastic organization. So we have here in Tulsa, we have about half of our mentors that are retired so they can help, you know, pretty much any time that someone might be available. And the other half of us are working mentors, so we do still have a job. haven’t made it to retirement just yet, but we’re trying and, you know, we can be called in as subject matter experts anytime we’re needed. Mm hmm. Sweet. I’d also love to know more about manaphy. Now I will tell people that you know if you’re listening to this and you have not seen the name in print, Gretchen did help me this is sort of like the the episode I recorded with Brian McCann ski where he had to coach me for about five minutes on exactly how to say the name correctly and Gretchen’s like, no, it’s man, she Okay, so if you’re seeing it in print, you’re like, that doesn’t look like manushi. Sarah, I’m not crazy. So tell us more about that organization what they do. Super. Yeah. Basically, we typically work with business owners that feel like they know way less about their marketing than any other part of their business. Most of them are just frustrated because they’re not really sure what they’re getting for their money. Or sometimes worse, they’ve given money to someone and just never heard from them again. Yeah. So basically We work with these folks to help them determine based on their goals for their own business, a plan to reach their ideal client and most people will say, My ideal client is anybody with money. That’s not the truth. No, not the truth at all. So basically, I’m a consultant for companies where it doesn’t make sense for them to have a marketing officer. So we can do the work with that 10 teammates, or we can manage the relationship that they already have with their vendors and kind of pull it all together and act as a translator, if you will. Because marketing is meant to bring in conversations, and then it’s up to the business and their, you know, whoever’s doing the sales to translate those conversations into sales. So if they’re not getting the conversations that they’re right, that’s why their marketing would need to be tweaked. Cool. Well, I think that’s an excellent way of breaking it down to because that’s something That, you know, I see from time to time in the coaching and consulting work that I do is people say, I know I’ve got a great product or I know I’ve got a great service. I know I have a lot to offer. I’m just not getting in front of enough people to even pitch. Right? Yeah. And that’s, that’s what we like to say is that, you know, this is more of a laser focused kind of surgical precision. Instead of just a shotgun approach for your design. Yeah, well, I’m advertising on where you need to advertise, right, you know, based on your product or service, that may not even be the right platform for you. But just because you hear everybody talking about Facebook, doesn’t mean that’s where you need to spend your dollars. Yeah, it’s good to be intentional and strategic, rather than I’m going to throw all the pasta at the wall and pray that one of the noodles actually sticks. Exactly, exactly. So if someone is listening to this broadcast, and they want to get hold of you and see if man or she is potentially a good fit for them and their marketing. Where should they go online to do that? Well, they can definitely go to our website you can go to my ny the cmo.org that’s where we are located. Or you can email me at gretchen@maennche.com – that’s M A E N N C H E. So you can look me up on LinkedIn. And you can find us on through our website. And if all of that is too weird to spell, we did create a landing page that is literally no more suck. calm. Awesome. Yeah. As you were spelling out Maennche. I was like See? I told y’all. Yes, no more suck. So easy to remember. And that will get your right to us. Nice. Well, Gretchen I really appreciate you taking the time to be with me today and for offering your insights to the listeners. No, I, I appreciate it so much. This is a very important time for people to understand that, that they should not back away from marketing and if they are frustrated by it, I’m happy to have a conversation and even give them some pointers as to, you know, hey, try X, Y and Z. Sweet. Yay. Once again, my guest today was Gretchen Gleason of maennche virtual cmo. You can find them online at myvcmo.com Or you can always go to nomoresuck.com and request a consultation. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it. If you haven’t already. Please take a quick minute to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now.
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