Life Conversations with a Twist
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Life Conversations with a Twist
The Art of Getting Noticed: Marketing Secrets for Small Businesses with Jensen Savage
"Business is so much more than an idea. You have to know metrics and all the external factors that are coming into play when it comes to establishing a business." —Jensen Savage
Ever feel like you're shouting into the void of endless online noise? What if your marketing could actually cut through the clutter and connect with real customers? Imagine transforming your business from invisible to irresistible, without breaking the bank!
Jensen Savage is a marketing expert who has navigated the complex world of business growth across multiple industries. As the founder of Savage Growth Partners, she specializes in helping service-based businesses unlock their marketing potential through strategic storytelling and authentic connection.
Tune in as Heather and Jensen reveal game-changing strategies for networking, building client relationships, leveraging social media, mastering the power of referrals, and creating content that truly resonates.
Connect with Heather:
Episode Highlights:
01:19 Meet Jensen: Helping Businesses Grow
10:04 Client Demographics and Marketing Trends
17:04 Choosing the Right Marketing Platforms
21:06 The Role of Newsletters and Email Marketing
26:37 Website Optimization and SEO
28:54 The Importance of Staying Up-to-Date with Marketing Trends
Connect with Jensen:
Jensen Savage is the founder of Savage Growth Partners, a marketing agency specializing in supporting service-based businesses. With extensive experience across multiple industries, including software, e-commerce, and service sectors, Jensen has held marketing leadership positions and now helps businesses develop strategic marketing approaches. She focuses on storytelling, authentic brand building, and helping clients maximize their existing customer relationships. Based in the Chicago suburbs, Jensen brings a comprehensive approach to marketing that emphasizes differentiation, strategic networking, and creating meaningful connections with target audiences.
Heather Nelson: Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's Life Conversations with a Twist, I have the honor of having Jensen on. And again, Jensen and I just met about a few minutes ago. We were connected in this beautiful community of podcasting and entrepreneurship. You reached out and wanted to be on the podcast and I'm like, yes, bring on. I love listening to what women are doing all over the world. You have a really cool background and where your business is today, so I can't wait to dive in.
So welcome.
Jensen Savage: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Heather Nelson: So tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, maybe where you live, and then a little bit about what you're doing in business right now.
Jensen Savage: So I live in the suburbs of Chicago. A little bit of background on me. Personally, I have four dogs. I'm a big nature lover. I love to make music and really do anything outside. But professionally, I have a background in marketing. I've done marketing for a huge range of businesses, been a marketing director for businesses, from fitness to finance. But then I spun off, created my own business, Savage Growth Partners, where we help service based businesses grow. So we work with a huge range of businesses, kind of similar to my background working with a wide range of businesses. I love having all the different challenges of scaling different business types and meeting different business owners and stuff. So I kind of built my business around that idea.
Heather Nelson: I love that because our world is so amazing now that we can work remotely. Where are your clients? Are they all over the world? Are they in the Chicago area? Where do they kind of resonate?
Jensen Savage: Yeah. So primarily the United States, but I also have some in Canada as well.
Heather Nelson: And with businesses now, this could be a huge conversation because I think marketing is, obviously, probably the biggest part of a business. That's how you put your world, put your name out your business, out into the world. How do you show up in your website, social media and all of those things? Where are you seeing a lot of your businesses putting a lot more focus these days?
Jensen Savage: That's a great question. I would say a huge focus has been storytelling. Because with the rise of AI and just the internet in general becoming more and more prevalent, and your competition is on the internet just as much as you are, and there's more and more competition, there's more and more noise. There's more things pulling people's attention in all different kinds of directions, and so it's really important to differentiate yourself as a business. And a huge part of that is building that story so that people have some connection to your business outside of just enjoying your products or services. So that's definitely a trend that's changed in recent years. B businesses definitely lean more into storytelling.
Heather Nelson: I think showing up authentically, especially like, and we'll dive into social media, but that's like the number one thing I say. If you're going to show up on social media, show up authentically. People want to know the behind the scenes. They want to know the good, the bad, the ugly. They want to experience and learn about what you're doing. Are you seeing that through your clients that you're working with?
Jensen Savage: A lot of the clients that we work with are more locally based businesses as well. And so that works doubly so because people that authentic feel people to support small, locally owned businesses that are maybe owned by families, or they're showing the behind the scenes doing a Tiktok with the team and saying, what's your favorite food? You see those funny or relatable TikToks, Reels or Instagram posts that just create that organic connection, rather than just a faceless brand on social media that looks just like every other competitor out there. So yeah, I definitely see that more.
Heather Nelson: What do you think the biggest miss that businesses are doing around marketing? Things that they should be focusing on. Maybe they're focusing on one area, but they really should be focusing on this. And what is that they should really focus on to make the biggest impact?
Jensen Savage: I think as a whole, a big mistake that I see businesses make is trying to get more leads, rather than capitalizing on the leads, the clients and customers that they already have. That's a problem across industries, across business sizes. I think business owners sometimes get stars in their eyes thinking about more, more, more. And you should be generating new leads, new business all the time. So oftentimes, I'll see businesses have the problem of a lead coming in and they're not properly nurtured. So maybe they don't actually get closed, or maybe their lifetime value to the business is a lot less than it could be. If you just maximize that relationship and focus on all of this that you already have right here, instead of looking at shiny new things, let's get more and more customers. So that's a really big issue that I see across the board.
Heather Nelson: I always think of myself as a business development strategist. But a lot of what I do is marketing, and that literally fits in the bucket. And this is what I tell people all the time. If you're not nurturing the current clients that you have, if you're not checking in with them on a daily basis, if you're not asking them how you can do better, be better, if you're not asking for that referral, if you're not building those relationships, how are you going to continue to grow? Because like you were saying, you can't just have more, But if you actually give your time and effort into the ones you already have, that is where the impact happens.
Jensen Savage: Yeah, 100%. One of the biggest marketing channels, that's the most that you'll get. The highest conversions and the best leads and clients out is word of mouth and referrals. So it's funny that that being the case statistically, it's one of the strategies that business owners don't really have a strategy around other than just hoping that their clients refer them, instead of providing stellar service, and really going above and beyond to make it almost silly to not be referred. They have no method of collecting reviews and asking for referrals, like you said. So I think that's definitely low hanging fruit that people don't take advantage of enough.
Heather Nelson: I even see it in my podcast. I love my podcast, and I have guests on and all these great things are happening. But I'm like, I'm not asking people to share it. I'm not asking for reviews. And those are the things that I'm like, that should be easy. Every guest who's been on my show should be able to do a review. Or those people who I get emails from people or texts and they're like, oh, my god, that podcast was so inspiring. I'm always so bad about being, well, can you go over and review it? Like, thank you for that sweet feedback. But can you put that message somewhere out there?
Jensen Savage: Yeah. It's definitely a hard thing to overcome mentally sometimes, because I've gotten from a lot of business owners that they feel like they're bugging people too. So it's one of those things that you have to be very intentional about doing. Overcome that fear or obstacle in your brain of like, oh, I don't want to bug people. I always say the worst case scenario is that they just don't want to do it. And if not, then whatever.
Heather Nelson: I always tell people to like, I think people don't ask certain things, or they feel weird reaching out to check in. They feel salesy or annoying. But I'm like, if you approach it in a way that's approachable and friendly, it doesn't come off as salesy. I believe that people want to support each other. And if you're asking for support and a review, supporting my small business, I don't think it's hard to ask to do those things.
Jensen Savage: 100% how you frame it. I actually gave a speech at a conference for home service franchise owners, and that was one of the things that I highlighted is how to frame asking for a review. So it's not just like, hey, leave us a five star review. Because you'll get reviews that way, but it's not compelling. That does come off as kind of just salesy like, this is just going to benefit me. Just do this really quick where, like you said, people do want to support other people, especially if you do good work for them. So it's really how you approach it. If you approach it salesy, it will be salesy. But if you approach it in a genuine way, then you'll probably get a review, and it won't come off bad.
Heather Nelson: Are more of your clients businesses already established that need help with marketing? Or are you supporting a lot of new businesses that are coming, starting a business and needing support with marketing?
Jensen Savage: A little bit of both. There's a pretty good mix. A lot of the businesses we work with are somewhat established and are kind of hitting a ceiling with their revenue, and need new things to kind of spice it up and hit that next level. So that's a good amount of the people that we work with. But there are people that are just starting out and need that first strategy, that first bit of execution to get off the ground.
Heather Nelson: I have questions around both of those. So for the client who you've come in contact with, they have an established business. And before we started recording, our world was different. Now, I think the way people do business is a lot different. I think a lot of that has to do with the pandemic and so many shifts in their businesses. I'm here in Sonoma County, which is primarily a wine country. People aren't drinking wine as much anymore, and it's a very saturated market with wineries. And so a lot of my clients were working on strategies on how to change what we're doing or put money in different buckets. What do you think as a business like that who is looking at trying to change their marketing strategy, but doesn't really have the budget for it. What elements of marketing do you think that they should put their money or focus on, or again, to make the biggest impact?
Jensen Savage: Yeah. I think if you're low on budget, there's a lot of things that you can do that pretty much only require your time. One big one, especially if you're a smaller business owner and it makes sense for your business, is networking. Just getting involved in your community, joining groups. I've seen that ridiculously successful especially businesses that are smaller and haven't tapped into that yet. Like you said earlier, people like to help other people. People love connection. So sometimes, it's just a matter of getting your name out there in front of people. And so when somebody thinks, oh, this person needs help with this. Oh, yeah, I just met John who owns this business that does this. So send people your way automatically. That's a great tactic that is pretty cheap or free, and it just requires maybe getting under your comfort zone and spending some time. But other than that, I think content is a huge, huge one. Obviously, content is also pretty time intensive. But if you are low on budget, it's a great thing to do. And by content, I really mean anything along the lines of posting valuable blog content on your website. Maybe try to get some of that search engine presence. You could also have helpful or relatable social media posts. That's another big one, especially if you're a local business. I would definitely say to lean more into the content angle, rather than doing paid ads. But yeah, I would definitely say lean more into that stuff.
Heather Nelson: And then as a new business comes on, and I'm going to relate myself to this. Because two years ago, I started my business. And to start a business, everyone thinks that you need to do all these things. You need to have a logo, you need to have a website, you need to have social media. What are the key things that as you're starting a business, or maybe some advice you have for someone that is starting a business, some takeaways of where to start?
Jensen Savage: That's a really good question. Because honestly, starting is the hardest part. I would think it's a lot easier to get from 100 to 500,000, than 0 to 100,000. It's so much. There's just so much you have to do to start a business. But I think a lot of it doesn't have to be overly complicated. You should establish your social media presence online. Get some likes on there. If you have a Google business profile, get some family and friends to leave reviews and do some, first, examples of your work for them. Get some case studies. Get some before and afters, or whatever it is that's relevant to your business. But I think another really important thing is also to set the groundwork as far as what it is that you do, and what makes you different as well instead of just setting up all your social media and thinking that you're just going to get a bunch of leads that way. It's important to differentiate yourself in the marketplace and think about how you are going to position yourself as different because chances are, even if you do offer something that other people in your area offer, you have some sort of competitive advantage. So you kind of have to figure out what that is and lean into it. And that kind of plays into your future marketing initiatives, your future sales initiatives. When you go to the Network, how do you introduce yourself? So that's another kind of mental and tactical thing to hit the ground running as well.
Heather Nelson: I think it becomes overwhelming, everyone, especially as a small business. It's very overwhelming to do all the things and then, oh, you're a bookkeeper, and you're the salesperson, and you're the HR and you're having to do all that. But I agree. Sometimes, just those simple things. It's interesting because some of the clients that I've worked with, and again, more on this strategy. I asked them, what are your values? Have you done market research? Who is your competitor? And a lot of people don't even know. They're like, we just have this idea, and we want to start the business. And you're like, well, do you know how many event planners there are in Sonoma County? There's over 200. So now you're putting yourself in a market where there's a lot. I'm not saying to not do that. But I think a lot of times, people have this Grand Ole idea, but they don't do the research behind it, or both, before they started.
Jensen Savage: To that end, you've got to figure out how you're planning on running your business too. What is your monetization model? What are you going to charge? Who are you going to charge it to? Who are you going to target? Because business is so much more than an idea. You have to know metrics and all the external factors that are coming into play when it comes to establishing a business. Like you said, there might be 200 other event planners in a given area. That doesn't mean you can't succeed, but it does mean you need to figure out how you're gonna differentiate yourself in a market like that.
Heather Nelson: I see people missing that boat all the time. The other thing too that I'm seeing a lot of people are not doing, and again, this is a free thing that you do. Have meetings with other people who can support your business. So again, asking for referrals. But what are you doing? Who are you talking to in the community that can support and refer to you? How are you building those relationships? And it's not always about like, well, this ex person isn't going to send me business. They're not going to be a top client for me. But you never know who they know that could be your top client. And so I think being strategic about who you're connecting with in the community?
Jensen Savage: Yeah, 100%. That's a really good point. It almost reminds me of Pretty Woman where she's being treated poorly because the worker thinks that she won't be a customer, and then she comes back. She's big mistake. That's kind of what it reminds me of when people are just hyper focused on, I only want to network with people that can buy my things today, or they're going to immediately refer to me today. But to your point, I've had referrals from the most random people that have absolutely no relation to what I do or who I serve. And they just meet somebody someday and they're like, wow, yeah, Jensen could actually really help you. I think just being open minded and not putting yourself in a box as far as I can only talk to these people, or these people only are the only people that are valuable to me. But I also think strategic partnerships are huge, because that is something that's really helpful when it comes to differentiating yourself as well. If you see a lot of wedding companies out there, they'll have strategic partners where maybe they sell wedding photography, but they'll have a DJ on deck that they'll do a discount when you bundle both services. So things like that where you have something that a billion other people in your market are selling, but you're doing something a little bit different that adds value to the people you're selling it to that's beyond just, we do photography.
Heather Nelson: I want to switch gears and talk about all the different platforms there to market right now. You have YouTube, you have LinkedIn, you have Facebook, you have Instagram, you have Tiktok and Pinterest. How do you work with clients to figure out the best one for them? Then two, as a small business owner who, again, has so many things going at them, where can you learn the best one for you? What are the trends? How do you keep up on all the things, all the different features, and especially the algorithms and all these things? How do you keep up on that?
Jensen Savage: Yeah. A big way that I keep up on is I'm part of a lot of different marketing groups, whether it's on Facebook, LinkedIn where people are just talking about things that they're seeing, doing and things like that. But typically, when new features are released, the platform will kind of say, oh, we're rolling this out and whatnot. And when something does get released, we'll test it out to see what works. Because sometimes, they'll release features that are kind of a nothing burger. But then sometimes, they'll release things that are super helpful. So yeah, those are two of the big things. Just by being on the platform so much, you notice even the smallest changes too. But as far as finding the right channels, that's a really good question. Because I think a big mistake a lot of business owners want to make is you get so overwhelmed when you build your business and you're coming out the gate. You want to do everything and a little bit of everything. And I would rather do two or three things really well than do nine things. I'm not really putting enough effort into any of them. But there's a couple of different ways to figure out what will work for a client.
One is kind of, if they've done anything in the past, look at what has already worked for them. That's a big one. Because if we already have data and feedback to make a decision like, oh, yeah, this has been great. Why don't we just double down on that? Well, then we kind of already have some direction there. But there's also empirical data on who's using different channels and whatnot. So maybe if you're running a residential HVAC company, you probably aren't going to be investing all your ad dollars into LinkedIn ads, for example, because you can kind of see, okay, primarily, the demographics here make more sense for us to target based on our business type. So it's kind of partially just taking people on a given platform and just using your common sense to figure out what works. But if you're completely at a loss and you don't know what would make sense, you can always allocate a small budget to just test a couple of different channels and see what works. Because usually, you can have a good idea of, if we are doing something like residential painting. Maybe we could run a deal on Facebook, Instagram and Google ads. Those would probably be good places to target given the thing that we're offering, and we can have pretty high certainty. So those would be good channels. But like I said, if you're just completely lost, you could just test it. Just allocate a small budget, test it, see what your results are. The numbers don't lie. That's always the best way to have real data to tell you something.
Heather Nelson: Some people might say, oh, I'm on social media, but I don't get any business from it, which probably is true. But I think it's also just knowing that you're bringing awareness around your business. And when somebody does ask, I also own a labor company, an event labor company as well. I had just posted something the other day, and people like, oh, well, what about Heather? You know what I mean? I think sometimes just saying, hi, we're here. And here's what we do. When somebody asks when they need something, you're kind of like first top of mind. And I say that when I'm building, when I'm working with clients on building relationships, I'm like, great, you're on a vendor list. But are you engaging with that venue frequently so they remember who you are? When they're doing a site visit, they're most likely going to recommend you because you just emailed them today, or you just sent them a text, or they saw you in a social media feed. Stay top of mind, especially in a saturated market when there's so many people. So again, I think people always get lost in like, I'm not making all this money from this platform. But again, it's all about showing that you're there.
Jensen Savage: That's a great point, because it really is. It's a system rather than everything in its own silo. And to that end, that's why I was talking about content creation earlier. It's an owned channel. So if you're creating content, you have control over what you're posting when you're posting it. You have a little bit of control over the narrative with who you're getting in front of. But also, I always suggest posting because people, I can't think of the stat off the top of my head, but a large majority of people will check out a company's social media before buying from them. So if you don't have a post since like 2021, they're going to be like, is this company even still open? Whereas there are some local businesses that have an amazing social media presence. And because they continuously invest in that, they start to build this brand and this awareness in their given area, even though people might not be calling them directly off their Facebook page where they can say, oh, I made $1,000 off my Facebook post today. It's like you're building this entire brand. So it's about so much more than just, oh, I didn't make money off this post today, so I just shouldn't post ever again. It all plays into each other.
Heather Nelson: What are your thoughts around newsletters? I do listen to podcasts, and it's usually around business. Because when I get a certain amount of time to be able to absorb information, it's always about business. And I listen to a lot of marketing podcasts, and a lot of them say that WE as business owners should drive more business to getting their emails, keeping them in our own funnel and doing newsletters. But then I also think as a consumer, I get so many emails all the time that I'm like, delete, delete, delete, delete. So what are your thoughts around newsletters?
Jensen Savage: Yeah, that's a great question. So I think it really depends on what you're including in it, because I'm a big fan of email marketing. But a lot of companies will use newsletters more as just a promotional piece, rather than thinking that this is actually going to a consumer that gave me their email for the specific reason. And instead, they're just saying, like, hey, we sell this. And like you said, especially when you get a thousand emails a day, there's nothing compelling or engaging about that. But let's say I had somebody give me their email because they're interested in my marketing agency. Well, email marketing wise. It's probably a great idea to send out emails that are valuable for them. If they've signed up because they're interested in my marketing agency, they're probably interested in growing their business. So what if I give them a newsletter where it's like, hey, here are five growth tips that we learned in the first quarter of 2025 that's actually valuable. It's engaging. It's going to solidify the value that we bring to the table, and help to build our brand in their minds. So to that end, yes, sending out regular emails is great. But I also think to consider what you're including in those newsletters. And if it really benefits the end user, or if you're just trying to be overly salesy.
Heather Nelson: That's actually a really great reminder. I wrote down some notes just for myself. I do a newsletter for my business. It is for my business, but it's also more like I promote my podcast, or if I do a women's retreat. I'm doing that. I forget that not everybody's on social media. I think people think that everybody's on social media. Well, I know a lot of people who are like, I don't want to be on social media anymore, or they're heavy on Instagram and not on Facebook, or vice versa. But for me, getting them in the inbox and being like, here are my podcasts that I just released. Here's stuff that I've been promoting on social media. And we all know that not everybody sees everything that they post. So for me, it's a great way to remind them of, like that you said, like, here's what I do, here's some takeaways, and those kinds of things. So that's a really great reminder.
Jensen Savage: Yeah, yeah. And a lot of the time, you can also repurpose things that you've done as well. So I see a lot of businesses think that, well, if I'm going to send out emails, I have to create things from scratch. But it's like, well, if you posted a YouTube video that maybe explained five mistakes that homeowners make when it comes to their HVAC or whatever,you could literally take that and plug it into an AI software. It can pull out all the big takeaways and format it into an email, and you can send it out in like 10 minutes. So that's another thing to kind of highlight there. With the new technology that's coming out, you can so easily repurpose things from one channel to another too. So it makes kind of following up and staying top of mind on different channels a lot easier than it ever has been.
Heather Nelson: Are there any other pillars in marketing that we didn't talk about? I guess the last one would probably be a website. I know I hear all kinds of opinions about websites. Some people put too much content. People are like, you don't put enough. What are your thoughts around websites?
Jensen Savage: That's a loaded question. Websites and SEO are some of the most complicated things to stay on top of when it comes to online marketing, because things are constantly changing. A great example of something that really changed the space was now on Google. If you search any question, you're going to have that little AI overview. And in addition to that with different AI models, giving recommendations to sites and things, having your site pop up in AI recommendations is like another thing that people are thinking about now.
Heather Nelson: Do you do that? I'm like, oh, yeah, that does pop up. And how do you get on that?
Jensen Savage: I'm not an expert on that. There's so many tools out there when it comes to SEO, and there's a whole bunch of considerations from the content that you're posting, because that's a huge part of it. But also all the technical aspects of your website to how it's formatted, how easily search engines can digest it? So it's a tough one, because you really have to have somebody that has the bandwidth to be able to take all that information in and make the changes that need to be changed to be optimized for search engines. But yeah, it's a pretty hefty undertaking.
Heather Nelson: I know it's so funny because people think, oh, business development strategy or marketing strategist or whatever, these worlds that you and I probably sit in very often, sometimes I get to a client and I'm like, I can help you with the strategy. But if you need a deeper dive into something very specific, I will refer you out. Because obviously, you need someone that's really focused on that. I can dive into some good stuff. But if you need SEO help, I'm gonna give you to an SEO person. If you need someone to develop a website, I'm going to give you to that person because there's people out there that literally are just specific on that.
Jensen Savage: Oh yeah, absolutely. And that's definitely one of those things that you've got to have a deep understanding of. It's not something you surface level do. And it's ongoing too. You have to constantly be staying on top of that and taking care of these issues and things. Definitely a technical undertaking.
Heather Nelson: Is there anything else in the marketing world that we didn't talk about? Trends or things that you're seeing in businesses that you would love to share with everybody?
Jensen Savage: I will say a trend that I think is very helpful for business owners to know about right now is with paid ads over, like the past 10 years on paid ad platforms like meta, for example. Targeting options have become more and more limited, and it's become more and more difficult to specifically say, hey, I want to target this person that likes this thing. The algorithm actually is more leaning toward broader audiences. And so now, it's more important than ever to call out your audience. And we're really seeing a shift towards quality ads being rewarded more. You can't really rely on the algorithm to push you in front of the right person anymore. Now, you kind of have to rely on actually having really good ads that naturally go into, or go in front of the right audience. So that's definitely a big change in the marketing world.
Heather Nelson: It's a lot to keep up, but that's why they hire people like us who do the research to be able to help them, right? Well, is there anything else that we didn't talk about, or anything that you want to discuss? I know we'll put in the show notes how they can find, follow, and hire you, and do all the things. But is there anything you want to leave our listeners with?
Jensen Savage: I will say the big takeaway that I would like to impart is for people to just do the thing that they've been thinking about doing, but they've been putting off. And that's a reminder to myself as well, because I always find myself kind of thinking about, yeah, I'll do that this time, or I'll do that once I get there. But that's a reminder for myself, and also a reminder for everybody listening that whatever you're thinking about, whatever comes to mind when you just say that, just do it.
Heather Nelson: I totally believe in that. I love that message so much. I'm so glad we connected. I would love to stay connected, watch your journey and support each other, because I think our work is similar but also different. And how we can refer different clients to each other. I'm in a total revamp of what I want my world to be, my working world. I want to work less, and I'm trying to figure out how to do that and do more podcasting stuff. But I would love to stay connected. Thank you so much for being here.
Jensen Savage: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Heather Nelson: Thanks, Jensen.