Jackie Comacho Ruiz is the self-professed “Make It Happen Director” at JJR Marketing, her marketing and PR firm.
Jackie not only helps entrepreneurs, but she is an entrepreneur herself, several times over. So when she gives advice, she knows what she is talking about!
She joins me on The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show to share marketing tips, and specifically, her “5 Types of Marketing” framework.
The 5 Types are: Foundational Marketing are (1) Foundational Marketing (2) Executional Marketing (3) Time-Bound Marketing (4) Innovative Marketing and (5) Cause Marketing.
She talks about why each type is important and gives examples. She also talks about common marketing mistakes small businesses make, and offers some suggestions on how to balance each of the types.
Our interview is chock-full of free, practical marketing tips — there’s something in her interview for everyone!
What follows is a transcript of the show interview. If you’d prefer to listen to the interview & get a better sense of Jackie’s infectious enthusiasm and boundless energy, go here.
Doris Nagel 0:42
Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show!
If you’re an entrepreneur or a small businessperson, or you’re thinking about becoming one, listen up, because this show is for you.
I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour. I’ve counseled lots of startups, I have many friends who are entrepreneurs, and I myself have either started or helped start a number of businesses, and I have made and seen so many mistakes.
So the first goal of the show is to provide information and resources. If I can help just one of you out there not to make some of the mistakes I’ve made or seen, then I’ve been successful.
The second goal is to inspire. Because I found being an entrepreneur, confusing and lonely. You have no idea if you’re on the right track sometimes, or to where to turn for good advice.
So to help with both goals, every week on the show, I have guests who are willing to share their stories and advice.
This week’s guest is Jackie Camacho Ruiz. She is the owner and founder of JJR marketing. And she’s also an author, and has some very interesting approaches and ideas and thoughts and suggestions for those of you out there on marketing and public relations.
Jackie, welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show. Thanks so much for being with me today.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 2:24
Thank you. I’m really excited about being here. Number one and two, speaking about one of my favorite subjects in the whole wide world.
Doris Nagel
And that would be ….?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz
Marketing.
Doris Nagel
Marketing! Oh my goodness, for lack of marketing, so many businesses have ended up in the dustbin, right?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz
Absolutely. Yes.
Doris Nagel
So what does your company do? Talk about JJR Marketing: why did you found it? Who’s it designed to help? And who are your key customers, demographically?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 3:02
JJR Marketing was established in 2006 with the idea of becoming the outsourced marketing department for companies in need of thought leadership positioning, media placements, content creation, design, and overall branding and positioning.
We primarily have focused on helping companies in manufacturing, IT, professional services, and nonprofit organizations. And as I mentioned, we have become the right hand for so many of those businesses that need content, creative execution, deployment, outreach to the media, that you will typically find ourselves working with 35 to 65 Caucasian CEOs leading at the helm of companies, but lately, we’ve diversified more into other spaces, mostly B2B. But we do work with a lot of B2C entities as well.
Doris Nagel
Your website also says you do public relations. What’s the difference between public relations and marketing?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 4:18
Marketing is a kind of a combination between science and art that allows the marketer or whoever’s employing the marketer and the marketing, to create an ecosystem where people would be inspired to take an action.
Whereas PR is the ability to persuade, communicate with media outlets about trends that are going on in order to position someone as a thought leader, or to persuade them on a specific topic of conversation that will be valuable to their audience.
So in essence, PR is the ability to secure third party endorsements in order for us to create an ecosystem of people raising their hands and saying, “I want to work with that company.”
So marketing is definitely more direct than PR, but the weight of PR and the weight of that magic is absolutely amazing. Somebody reputable media source saying You are amazing. is 10 times more powerful than you saying you’re amazing.
Doris Nagel
I can understand that entirely.
How did you get into this? How did it become your passion?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 5:33
You know, I actually started in the sales realm. I was working with Marriott.
Doris Nagel
Really? Sales?? I thought sales and marketing never talked to each other.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 5:33
We hate each other for the most part.
But I figured out a way. And this is actually what led me to PR.
So it was fascinating doing sales. I realized that in order for you to have a sale, you need to have somebody autograph a piece of paper, right? That constitutes a sale.
But then I figured out “What if I just create the context where that same individual could be inspired to autograph that paper, to sign it to give approval, right?”.
And that’s what I thought marketing was. I really loved the idea of understanding what they needed, what they were going through, in order for them to be inspired by that call to action.
And then I found PR. [I realized], “Wow, I don’t even need to talk to them. I could just talk to somebody else and say how amazing they are and secure a third party endorsement, so they could be inspired to sign that piece of paper.”
So it was a progressive thing. And of course, I still do all of the above, as a CEO of the helm of a marketing agency and a publishing company. I still do a lot of sales.
Doris Nagel
You still have to sell to clients.
A lot of people who are in service businesses — and I think I was guilty of this when I first started out offering consulting services think this: that if I demonstrated my expertise, people would flock and that’s what you need to be a salesperson to in order to close business with companies. But you won’t have any clients if you can’t sell to them, and close deals.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 7:23
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that we as entrepreneurs, as you were talking about, I wrote a book called “The Little Book of Business Secrets of Work.” That was my first book, back in 2010. And those were the business secrets that actually work, right?
Imagine if I would have written a book about the ones that didn’t work. It would have been like a never ending Bible or encyclopedia.
And it’s kind of the same thing for entrepreneurs. We have to do everything, from sales to janitorial services in our office. It’s the ability for us to think extemporaneously, to think outside the box. To go from sales, marketing, PR, management, administration, hiring, firing, strategy, accounting, finance.
But that’s what makes it so exciting to be an entrepreneur.
Doris Nagel
It is. And your point is spot on about it, although it might be kind of a funny book. The problem would be would be a very long book of the book of business mistakes are so the little book of business mistakes would probably turn into a big book of business mistakes pretty fast.
Because if you look at the statistics, the vast majority of small businesses don’t make it past, say, five years. So there’s a lot of us out there making a lot of mistakes.
You’re passionate about five types of marketing. So how did you come up with this system of organizing the types of marketing? First, talk about what are those five types of marketing, from the way that you and your company look at marketing?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 9:14
Well, I have been on a quest, Doris, to answer the most important questions in the marketing field. And I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years, and almost 17 years as an entrepreneur at the helm of one of the top agencies here in Chicago, as deemed by 3/3 party research firms.
So, I have come in touch with so many different problems that I have to solve with various industries. And the question had always been, you know, oh, marketing is created equal, [and] people take the approach of spraying and praying or throwing spaghetti on the wall.
Doris Nagel
I’ve done that. You can spend your entire days and weeks doing nothing but flinging stuff out there on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 10:08
Yes. But it does not give us the answers that we’re looking for. And oftentimes –most of the time– those businesses are frustrated, overwhelmed, disappointed at the results with marketing, spending 1000s upon 1000s of dollars, but not getting the results they want.
So I went on a quest about a decade ago. I said, “You know what, there’s got to be a solution.” And my mission is always to make it easy, right? I’m not asking people to understand what I do, but my mission is to help them [reach] their goals and objectives.
And like I said earlier, it’s a science, and it’s an art. And if you can combine the two and intersect those two worlds to produce results for the client, that’s what I always aim for.
So in that quest, I started realizing that if I did a website for a client, and they were expecting 1000s of leads to come in, that was a completely out-of-touch-with-reality expectation, right? Because building a website does not mean that people are going to flock to you and you’re going to have 1000s of people coming your way.
[All that] basically means is that now you’ve established a presence. So I call that foundational marketing. If you say, “I’m going to be in business,” then you have certain requirements, certain touch points, certain vehicles that have to be in place, without a doubt, for you to be recognized as someone that exists in a business sense.
So for companies that already established, foundational marketing could be revamping logos, revamping content to adjust to the future state of the company, or where they they’re going, or a new audience they want to tap into.
That’s foundational marketing. It’s establishing the ground rules, establishing literally the foundation of where they are, where they want to go, and looking at their marketing and all their touch points from that lens.
And that’s something that everyone should consider, whether a new startup company, or an established business. Always go back and zoom out. Look at your foundational marketing and what needs to be changed so that you can continue to constantly evolve.
Doris Nagel
How often do you think people should go back and relook at their foundational marketing to make sure it’s still consistent and still tells the story that they want to tell?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 12:34
I would recommend they do it every three to five years. That is long enough and short enough at the same time to be able to ask those questions: Are we still on track, from the overall perspective –yes, things are coming up and we are extemporaneously making decisions. But overall as a brand, you should go back and look at every touchpoint, the inventory of all of the things that have your logo on [to make sure it’s current and consistent]. I would say every 3-5 years you should do this.
That actually leads us to the next type of marketing, which is executional marketing. [It} is one of my favorites, because really, this is where the rubber meets the road.
This is almost like the carpet in a house. It’s the constant, ongoing, regular interval communication that allows us to say, “I am alive, I am present, I have a commitment with my audience, and I communicate with and I value them.”
So this could be a combination of communications that include blogs maybe that happen on a monthly basis, or social media posts that happen three times a week, an email blast that goes out to the clients once a month.
I’ll give you an example. I’ve been sending out a newsletter/email blast for the last 87 months.
Doris Nagel
Oh my goodness, that is insanely consistent! I know a lot of people say that the important thing is quality and consistency. I’m sure the quality is very good too. But the consistency is obviously there.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 14:10
Yes. And that is my commitment to that.
Sometimes you start executional marketing – maybe you’re starting a blog, for example, right? And you do it for three months, and then stop it. Well, that is worse than not starting a blog at all.
In other words, with executional marketing, if I commit to this monthly email blast social media, the audience should begin to feel a sense of expectation, a sense of excitement.
That’s what executional marketing does. Usually communications are 85%, educational, and 15%. promotional, and it allows people to raise their hand and say, “I am ready to work with you, I love the value that you’re bringing me, I love your monthly communications, I am ready to do this”.
And, you know, over the years, I have seen, I mean, I have a client, for example, that has come back to us three times, because she was part of our communications, and she’s come back three times with three of her businesses, so that we can rebrand it, create it, relaunch it, make it come to, because of i 88, communications, you know, for my company,
Doris Nagel
You raise an interesting point, which is that if you’re starting to blog, or you’re posting on LinkedIn, or whatever you’ve chosen, you need to be consistent.
But at some point, you may find that it just isn’t the right method of communication, or you’re not hitting the right tone. So at the other end of the spectrum, you could just continue to blog and blog and blog, and you continue to get nothing.
So at what point should you re-look at what you’re doing if it’s not delivering results?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 15:54
The virtue of a marketer is to take the pulse on the results and the KPIs.
So from the very beginning, when it comes to execution of marketing, you should very be very specific. Again, it’s as much as an art as a science.
[You need to ask]: “Why am I doing this? Why is this deployment important to me? What are my expectations? Am I looking to grow followers? Am I looking to generate leads? Am I looking to create ambassadors for my brand out of this initiative? Do I want to get more engagement?”
So you need to [look at the design of your executional marketing] and look forward to where you want to go. And then, you need to take a step back to ask, “What are my key performance indicators that connect to the ‘why’ of this initiative?”
[For example], you might say, “My key performance indicators are increasing my following by 30% and closing two leads a month doing XYZ.”
[If you do that], then you will always have a vision and a pulse of where you’re going. So if something is not giving you the results that you’re looking for, but some other thing is, then focus on those things for your audience, that give you that kind of results.
So it’s constantly looking at it every month, looking at the numbers and saying, “How are we measuring against those numbers? Are we getting closer? Are we getting farther away?”
One of the biggest things that I see happening with executional marketing is the lack of commitment, right? Because in the first two, three months, everybody’s excited: “Wow, we have a new email, blah,
and then month four rolls around, and nothing happens. So what happened in that process? And how can you counteract that?
The best way is planning. Brian Tracy said that, for every one minute you plan, you will save 10 minutes for every one minute in the execution of that plan. So plan ahead, create an editorial calendar that lays out the next three month. Then you prepare three months at a time, and you’ll always be ahead of the game, you’ll always be on top of it. That way, it creates a vision for your team, and it gives you the opportunity to look back and strategize.
Doris Nagel 18:53
Just thinking aloud here: one of the challenges for you, in working with your clients, is carefully managing their expectations. Because, as you say, people write the check and they have this website or they have this nice new newsletter and they get all excited but then …
So I’m sure it’s very important to really manage their expectations so that when month three rolls around, and they still don’t have maybe what they hoped, that are they being realistic.
As you say, developing those KPIs, and then and then managing to them is critical. But I personally have seen and I probably have been guilty of this, thinking you’re gonna get results sooner than you are.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 19:10
Yes, and that’s exactly why I created this methodology.
Because as I encounter conversations, like you’re talking about, where clients say they’re doing a website, and we expect XY&Z. And I needed to come up with something that would explain to them that the things that they’re doing to create that foundation are not the things that are going to help them get to where they want to be.
I also created an assessment where at the onset of any relationship with a client, especially when we become the outsourced marketing department, they fill out a questionnaire that allows them to see where they rank in the five types of marketing methodology assessment. And they get a score our of 100.
A couple of days ago, we had a prospect, take a one of the assessments, and he came back with a score of 38. That means that we have all of the opportunity of 62% of an amazing opportunity to get him where he needs to be.
Doris Nagel
Well, I took the assessment just for fun, and I scored lower than that. So I have a LOT of opportunity! [laughing]
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 20:19
But is gives us a benchmark, right? Again, it’s a science and it’s an art.
So, the third type of marketing is time bound. It’s a type of marketing that you layer on top of the execution of marketing, in order to provoke in order to create a context of immediate response.
So time bound marketing allows us to gauge the interest of an audience based on their participation in something up in a place and in a specific time. It could be online, or it could be in person.
Here, you need to determine what you do to prepare for a time bound marketing initiative. what do you do in the meantime, and what do you do to close it?
Doris Nagel
So is time bound marketing related to events? Or that only one kind of time bound marketing?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 21:19
Time bound marketing is anything that happens at a place in time.
So: events, webinars, workshops, presentations — all of those are kinds of time bound marketing, because we know that it has to happen on a Tuesday at this particular time, right?
Many people do quarterly events on top of their execution of marketing, and that’s their strategy.
Sometimes people do one big event a year, sometimes they do monthly webinars or monthly events. It depends on the commitment at the company, and the manpower and the resources and their budget and all of that stuff.
But time bound marketing is important for every of business, because it allows you to get in front of an audience and in front of that connection.
Doris Nagel
Why do you need to have time bound marketing, in addition to executional marketing?
I think about executional marketing is kind of like putting a mousetrap with the cheese out there. Eventually, some mice will come along. But why do you need time bound marketing in addition to that?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 22:26
Time bound marketing is a very pragmatic way to gauge the interest of an audience. It’s the ultimate way to gauge engagement.
When you are posting on a regular time interval basis, you’re not necessarily asking much of the audience, right? They might like it, they might click on it, they might share it. But when you when you talk about time bound marketing, you allow an opportunity for people to come together and make the deepest connection to your company, in that space and time.
And it’s probably the type of marketing that requires the most action on the audience part. Imagine an event a live event. Those connections cannot be replaced with a monthly email blast or with a monthly social media post.
They can only happen in that live kind of environment, right? The impersonal events where you’re adding value, you’re connecting with your audience. So every company should always consider doing time bound marketing to really gauge the interest and make deeper connections with the audience.
Doris Nagel
Okay, so we have found foundational marketing, executional marketing, and time bound marketing. What’s the fourth kind of marketing?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 23:50
Innovative marketing. It’s probably my favorite because it’s the type of marketing that requires the most planning and the most budget and the most creativity and innovation.
I’ll give you an idea. You’ve heard of that ice bucket challenge. The ALS Association created that – there was probably a group of people in a boardroom with sticky notes and big whiteboards and colored markers, putting together a marketing campaign.
They had no idea that it was going to go viral. But it certainly had all the ingredients of doing that. They had the challenge component, they had the call to action, it had the emotional connection, and it activated an entire world challenging each other with that ice bucket. And in the meantime, educating the audience about ALS and sharing personal stories. And helping people have a lot of fun.
So innovative marketing is something that is indirectly related to the company, but something that has the ability to become viral. For example, your company that is in roofing decides to create the Roofing Rockstar Award to bring attention to up and coming talent in that industry – something that is completely off the radar.
Or maybe you’re doing a campaign honoring local teachers, and you’re bringing the community together. It’s not to sell roofs, but it’s to really generally honor teachers, and it creates innovation.
Or maybe you love butterflies, and you partner with a city to create these metal butterflies that businesses can decorate and put throughout the city during the month of April. That’s innovation.
I did something similar with the City of Berwyn. We picked 12 young ladies to get up on stage. We trained them, we coached them to share a message to the world. They had 12 minutes on stage, just like a TED Talk.
It was called Young Latina Talks. And I partnered up with the city so that for the first time it’s ever happened in the city of Berwyn, right in front of City Hall, we had big posters of the 12 young ladies that were chosen to participate in this program.
Now, that was completely innovative, completely different, and it created the emotional connection, a call to action, magic, and all of that in the community.
And those types of initiatives are the ones that make people look again, that make people feel inspired and say, “Wow!”
Doris Nagel
So something quite memorable, and maybe even unexpected.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz
And usually they are very visual.
Doris Nagel
What’s the fifth kind of marketing?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 26:40
The fifth one is cause marketing. This is one of my most treasured types of marketing, because many companies that give back to the community oftentimes do not know how to toot their horn in a very graceful way.
You give to a nonprofit organization, and you’re thinking, “This is the best kept secret.” But guess what, there are beautiful, amazing ways to strategically and intentionally partner up with a nonprofit organization or with a local cause to say, ”I want to make a difference.” And you’re doing this in a very graceful way that allows you to raise more money for the cause and build you more connections.
And as a byproduct of that, people know that these are your core values, that these are the things that make our company the company that it is, and it really solidifies a relationship with your clients. It puts you in the spotlight in a very graceful way, so prospects will say, “Wow, I love their core values.”
Anytime that you partner up with a nonprofit organization that is willing to share the feel good story in the community, it can not only produce media placements and photo ops, but it can also solidify the emotional connection you have with your prospects and your clients by letting them know what you believe in, and by letting them know that you’re going out of your way, in a very indirect way, to impact the community. So indirectly, you’re also elevating the message of your company and who you are.
Doris Nagel
You’ve developed five these different types of marketing — there’s foundational, executional, time based, innovative and costs, integrative and innovative and cost based. So we were spending some time talking about what each of those are.
I’m curious why you’ve come up with this framework? How do you find that this has helped businesses?
I would say most traditional marketing firms talk about electronic marketing and print marketing. And I don’t know, they divided up in different ways, but I find your work your organization to be quite different than most.
Talk about how you came to that, and why you think the way you’ve divided up really helps clients.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 29:04
Again, this is my perspective based on 20 years of marketing, and really aligning expectations from clients.
I know that there are a lot of different marketing deliverables. But I think this framework allows us to design a variety of marketing tools so that we’re not spraying and praying, and that is really aligned with the expectations of those marketing vehicles, so that you’re putting the money in the right place, where that the expectation is aligned, and there’s no mismatch.
And that’s the biggest issue with businesses. There’s so much to do in marketing. There’s trends that come in and go, there are fads and things that clients believe that they need to be doing because everybody’s doing it. QR codes, for example. All of a sudden, businesses think they need to have QR codes everywhere.
Doris Nagel
I need to be on Instagram, I need to be on TikTok, right? Everybody’s on TikTok, so I have to be, too!
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 30:02
But the question is: “Why do you need to be there?”
[Each of] these types of marketing are created to elicit different responses, to create different things.
Truthfully, I think if every business would consider incorporating these different types of marketing, I think they would feel that their budget goals are invested in the right places, and most importantly, create that clarity, that pathway of expectations.
To me, that’s the biggest thing. And that’s the reason why my five types of marketing is an answer to the never ending questions I get about “Why does my marketing suck? Why?” It’s an explanation of “why.”
Doris Nagel
I’m thinking back to small businesses that I’ve worked with– ones that I’ve started myself or that I’ve had with colleagues. And I think about all the challenges that we had with marketing. We did a LOT of marketing.
But there are so many different ways to market your business. How do you help clients decide where to focus, given the very limited time and money that lots of small businesses have?
And a related question, I guess, is whether there are certain types of marketing or steps that every small business should really focus on?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 31”31
Absolutely. When time is limited, the very first thing you do is an assessment. See where you stand in the relation to the different types of marketing. Because that automatically gives you benchmark of where you are, and it gives us a clear pathway of where people need to focus now.
I always tell people, if you have limited budget, limited time, limited resources, my biggest recommendation is that you always look at your foundational marketing. And if you don’t do anything else, executional marketing. Those are the two things that I would highly recommend.
You need to assess where you are with your foundation. And second, you need to have that ongoing deployment of communication at regular intervals, because you are in business and that is your commitment in the way that you funnel amazing opportunities to come back to your business. And in really land those opportunities with execution marketing,
Doris Nagel
I’m envisioning almost like a pyramid where the, the base platform is the foundational just like you said, and then maybe there’s another layer on top, the executional.
So you have to get those in place and nailed down first, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but that’s kind of what I’m hearing. And then, you know, as you solidify those, then you can start sprinkling in some of the other layers. Is that, is that a fair way to describe it?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 33:05
Yes, that could be a way to do it. But it also depends on their goals and objectives.
Remember, it goes back to the “why.” “Why am I doing this? Why is this important? What is the change circumstance that is leading me to believe that I need to make this happen? That I need to lead with this type of initiative?”
Because many times, in order to activate an audience, you might want to do some time bound marketing very early on. If you’re opening up a place, you might want to have a ribbon cutting ceremony to have gather content and photos, and new connections.
So it really just depends. My biggest mission is to help businesses to know that not all marketing is created equal. And that there are ways to create marketing vehicles that will lead you to where you’re expecting it to lead you to, and eliminate that frustration.
Doris Nagel
One of the things I love about your approach to marketing is not only you have this innovative five types of marketing, which is a very different way of breaking down and looking at marketing, but you’ve also developed a series of cards to help clients improve their marketing.
How did that come about? And can you talk a little bit about how that works?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 39:34
The never ending question of what type of marketing vehicle should I deploy? Should I do social media? Should I do email blasts? Should I do blogs? Should I do something else?
Doris Nagel
Or should I do direct mail? I’ve been reading that everybody’s getting back to direct mail. I don’t know if that’s true or not?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 34:39
It is very true. Because everybody used to do direct mail everyone, right? And you get piles and piles and piles of mail. Then people started then going to the digital world.
And now that everything is part of the digital world, not a lot of people are doing direct mail. So now it’s sort of coming back as a wave.
But again, it’s part of this never ending question, Doris. Why should I do direct mail instead of this?
So I took my years and years of experience, and I basically simplified the marketing deliverables. I identified what they were, what frequency is required in order to make that successful? And what is the correlation between the investment and the effectiveness of that vehicle, and how when you make 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 levels of marketing, you get exponentially more results.
So this became an amazing guide that was shared in a lot of the Small Business Development Centers for small businesses.
And they say, “Wow!, I didn’t know there were all these vehicles. I had no idea that this vehicle is more powerful and less expensive than the other vehicle. I really didn’t know that I can combine various different vehicles.”
I even ended up creating a board game called “The Chief Marketing Officer.” It came about because one of the innovation officers at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy came up to me and said, “Jackie, [these cards are] absolutely brilliant. I want to build a board game with you.”
So we did case studies upon case studies with student entrepreneur, and we came back with the algorithms and metrics in order for you to deploy a marketing strategy based on different scenarios. And the algorithms behind it will choose who the winner was based on based on the combination of those marketing deliverables.
It is something that I feel very proud of. Besides my first business book, which also had a lot of marketing stuff, it was the first major contribution to my industry, those marketing deck of cards.
Doris Nagel
I love it. I think it’s just another reflection of the innovative way that you look at this. I mean, who else would come up with a board game for marketing?
Talk about how you help your clients. Maybe you could share a story or to have how your approach has helped some of your clients. I don’t want you to reveal any client confidences or anything like that. But if you do have a short story or two to share, people would probably enjoy that.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 37:50
I love that. So recently, we had a client that was looking to develop a national launch campaign for a kind of an online educational platform. They provide training for out of school educators, whether funded by the government or private. And that really represents a huge opportunity, as they are coaching and training and guiding students for those of the out of school programs.
So they were looking to launch it, and we came up with some very innovative stuff, we launched an out of out of school program award. We also deployed this beautiful, amazing influencer kit — you know, talking about mailings! — that included this beautiful deck of cards that we created that were prompts for conversations, deeper conversations in the in the industry.
We even created a book for them that talked about the 12 principles of OSC. It was completely innovative. The launch happened to be a different trade shows around the United States that were specifically geared for their audience. And now they’re in the process of collecting nominations.
We’re deploying the mailings of the physical influenza boxes that were custom made by us, with all of the different ingredients, all of the different tools, and this has become a huge success.
So we were their right hand. We’ve been providing the strategy, the content, the ideas, the deployment, the creative, the go to market strategy. And they’re like, “Wow, we love all the innovations!” Now, we’re coming back from the pandemic and launching this in a physical sense at different trade shows. We’re curating a list for a very Bullseye-focused audience, of who to give those influencer kits to, that each cost probably 40-50 bucks.
They are now in the stage where they’re like, “We cannot do this alone. Will you’ve been able to do for us? Those legacy pieces that you’ve created, like the deck of cards, the books, the awards that they can now deploy every year to put them on the map for their industry. And then on top of that, you know, securing podcast interviews, media interviews, radio, TV, print magazines.
That means something right? When you deploy something that is strategically integrated, that makes sense, that is cohesive, consistent, and has continuity – you can see the difference miles and miles away.
Doris Nagel
That’s amazing.
Before we run out of time, I want to make sure that you have a chance to talk to listeners about your upcoming book that’s going to be released. It’s not your first book, but it’s your latest one. So talk a little bit about what prompted you to write this one.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 41:02
It’s very exciting, because as I mentioned, I’ve been doing marketing for many, many years. And I coined this five types of marketing methodology.
So my book is called “The Five Types of Marketing: A Blueprint for Successful Business in the 21st Century”. The book is going to come out in June of this year [2022]. We are essentially launching this as my legacy to the industry.
I would love for this amazing book to be taught in universities in marketing [classes], because I’ve had the pulse of this industry for 20 years, and I know the trends and things that have happened. I’ve been at the pulse of manufacturing, IT, professional services, nonprofits, b2b, b2c.
I’m in the trenches with this businesses, right? I’m creating and paving the way for people to lead the way in this. So that’s what I’m really excited about.
Doris Nagel
When is the book going to be released? And where should people look for it?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz
The book will be released in June 2022. And you’ll find me on Amazon. This, by the way, will be my 29th book.
Doris Nagel
That’s insane! You are an EverReady bunny. When do you sleep?
You know, I saw on your website that you have resources to help people become speakers, which obviously is a great way to become a recognized authority or expert in a particular subject. But another way is writing a book.
I’ve had several colleagues and friends lately write books, and most of them have been disappointed. First of all, writing a book is a lot of time, it’s a very big endeavor. But I think there’s more to it than just writing the book.
So for people who might want to be an author, or maybe they have a book in progress, what advice can you offer them in terms of making sure that all that time and energy they put into their book gets them the publicity or exposure that they’re hoping for?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 43:35
First of all, I think there’s a misconception of why people write books, right?
I mean, I wrote my first book because I wanted my children to know who their mommy was in case I died, after surviving cancer two times at the ages of 21, and 23 years old, having my entire digestive system reconstructed, and being told that I might die in two weeks, or I might be fed out of a two for the rest of my life.
So you first need to be sure of why you’re writing a book. Why is this important to you, how is your legacy going to be shared in the world, and why is now the right time.
If you’re looking at a book as a business transaction, you’re looking at it in the wrong way. A book is a legacy building piece. It’s the most humble and amazing way to encapsulate your intellectual property, your legacy, and to impact people that you’ll never meet.
Doing that, you can, of course, use a book strategically from the marketing side — to get speaking engagements to generate revenue, to generate opportunities, to create feel good stories in the community.
But that’s never the intended purpose. Only 1% of the people that write books become millionaires because of it. And typically, they are already millionaires. But for the rest of us in the world, the reasons to write a book is because you have something to say, and you’ve identified that now is the right time to say it, and that you are sprinkling that legacy and as an extension of your personal brand, because you want to add value to that community.
And on the other side, there are a myriad of ways that you can monetize and you can create, and you can connect, and you can elevate and you can intercept conversations.
I would not be where I am today, at the helm of two successful international companies, without having become an author. That was for me one of the accelerators. I have traveled the world to four continents to share my inspiration because I’m an author.
I even had the opportunity to speak at a private island where 300 soldiers live and get a standing ovation from those in uniform and given a coin of actions by the US Army, because I’m an author, because I’m speaker. I’ve had so many micro moments along the way because of it.
And yes, I’ve made a lot of money. I’ve sold 1000s and 1000s of books. I have museums that buy my “Latinos in Aviation” book and one of them is doing a permanent exhibit on some of the authors that were featured in the book.
Doris Nagel
Jackie, I could foresee trying to get you to come back on the show just to talk about things to think about as you’re writing a book and getting it published and then promoting it and successfully using it as a tool to achieve your objectives. I think you’ve offered some really insightful advice.
Before I let you go, I would love to get your advice. Looking back over your own ventures, as a woman CEO, as a Latina CEO. What advice looking back, would you give to other small business people to help them improve their IQ to have a better entrepreneurial journey?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 47:02
Well, I can probably write another book about that—all the mistakes that we make starting a company…
But there are two pieces of advice that I think really stand out to me. One is, be yourself, everybody else is taken. Be yourself and be authentic.
I remember my first PR meeting with one of my mentors. He was a very well known journalist in the community, and he took me under his wing, and we went to a meeting. I was super excited– over the moon to be in this meeting.
And when we get out of the meeting, he said, “Jackie, you said the word “amazing” like 1000 times. Next time, tone it down!” And I got in my car, and I started crying. Because I didn’t even feel like I said the word “amazing” so much, because I was genuinely excited.
Then I called my other mentor, and asked, “Should I tone it down?” And he said, “Absolutely not. This is who you are!”
And I think later in my entrepreneurial career, when people found out that I meant well, that that excitement and motivation and magic was actually turning into results from that pragmatic side as well. Then they’re like, “Oh, bring it on. This is so unique, so different.”
So be yourself. And the sooner that you find yourself, the sooner that you find your authentic voice, your messages, the way that you want to share that with the world, [the better].
Don’t be afraid of that. It’s like believing yourself.
And the second thing is: learn how to delegate, because the success of an amazing entrepreneur lies in the ability to encapsulate his or her intellectual property, and get results through other people – by basically building their wings.
So delegate, delegate, delegate as much as you can, so that you continue to create, you continue to evolve, imagine and grow and become successful.
Doris Nagel
If people are interested in learning more about JJR Marketing, or your upcoming book, or maybe they just want to shoot the breeze with you, what’s the best way for people to get in touch?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz
I love shooting the breeze. I love giving back and brainstorming about your idea. Let’s do it! And I give you the best that I can.
You can go to jjrmarketing.com, which is probably the best way, or go to jackiecamacho.com so you can connect and download a bunch of resources that I have on all my websites. I’m always giving back, always creating opportunities to add value and connections. And I think that’s the most beautiful thing that I can share with people, you know,
Doris Nagel
I assume that there will be or is information on your websites about your upcoming book too, so that people can look for that?
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz 54:38
I will probably have to add it to the JJR.com one but if you go to Jackiecamacho.com, I will see all of my books, all of my programs, and connections to all of the brands and businesses that we operate.
Doris Nagel
And tell people one more time the title of your new book so they can watch for it.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz
The Five Types of Marketing: A Blueprint for Successful Business in the 21st Century.
Doris Nagel
I’m definitely going to watch for that book, and I hope all of you out there do as well. It sounds like a great book. And I’ll be interested to learn more about Jackie’s five different types of marketing in the book.
Jackie, thanks so much for being with me today. It was really a delight having you on the show.
Jackie Comacho-Ruiz
Thank you! You are paving the way for so many entrepreneurs. I’m very proud of you. And what an honor to be here with you today. Thank you.
Doris Nagel
Well, thank you very much. I am absolutely passionate that we need to feature more women entrepreneurs, more immigrant entrepreneurs, more entrepreneurs of color, people who, you know are underrepresented out there.
And if I can help give any of you a hand, please get in touch with me. Email me at dnagel@thesavvyentrepreneur.org. You’ll always get a response back from me.
Be sure to join me again next Saturday at 11am Central noon Eastern.
But until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!.
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