Episode 37: Elevate Your Marketing with Tifiny Swedensky of Sharp Cookie

Good afternoon, everybody. This is David Vicknair and welcome to the Overruled podcast. Brought to you by the Scott Vicknair Law firm. Brad is not here, so I’m solo today. It is Taylor Swift-fest. We have Taylor Swift in the air. The Swifties have descended upon New Orleans. A lot of people, a lot of money coming into the economy, but, have a great guest today, Tiffany Swedensky who’s in our podcast studio, of Sharp Cookie Development. Tiffany, welcome to the Overruled podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me. It’s nice to visit the office and everything and see all that’s been going on kind of in person. Yeah.

So for those of you who don’t know, which most of you probably wouldn’t. Tiffany is, our fractional marketing director and CMO here at the law firm. She manages both our marketing team and the estate and PI practice group. And Tiffany, I was hoping you could maybe tell everybody a little bit about how you found yourself in this weird world of legal marketing and becoming the expert on paper click on Google and digital marketing and all the things that it is, you know about legal marketing.

So, when I got started, I got started in digital marketing. So I taught myself a little bit of web development because back then we didn’t have drag and drop builders or like AI machines. What is that? I don’t know. Just we didn’t have all the things that make it easy to build a website now. Website. Yeah. Gotcha. And so like I learned those programming languages and got into digital marketing and from there, I specifically got into digital marketing working for Ben Glass at Great Legal Marketing and Ben Glass’s law. Did you teach yourself how to build websites with all those programs? Well, I got you learn. YouTube, and there is a one site that I went to a lot, W3 Schools, that basically has like a step-by-step thing that if you follow through it, it’ll teach you. I learned JavaScript that way. Oh wow. Yeah. And so you taught yourself. Yeah, basically. Yeah.

Which is I think a great point because anybody who wants to do something can teach themselves a lot of stuff with the resources you have online now, right? Oh yeah. And I know you, I mean, I know you were for those our listeners who wouldn’t know, you worked for Ben Glass at Great Legal Marketing and Ben Glass’s law. Ben is a, fantastic, lawyer up in Virginia, and wonderful person and a very big industry leader and, law firm marketing and teaching other law firms the things they should and shouldn’t be doing in marketing. Yeah. So tell them everybody, if you don’t mind, Tiffany, a little bit about kind of what you learned there and what that experience was like and how that kind of got you to this next step where you are now.

So, I basically learned like, I learned a lot of marketing in college, kind of some of the basics, more like theory, I guess. But when I started working for Ben, like it was the first time I learned about like direct response marketing. And your listeners probably aren’t also familiar with this, but like the Dan Kennedy universe of marketers who create direct response marketing. When you say direct response marketing, to the layman listening, what does that mean? Direct response marketing is basically any marketing that’s going to say like, call now, act now, and the ad is supposed to generate results that are directly measured to refine the marketing for the further, basically. And that, that is used by any industry, right? Like it’s not just law firms. So it could be any industry that has that as a part of their marketing program. I mean, more, more commonly direct response marketing is used outside of legal marketing. Like legal marketing is for traditionally been brand marketing, brand based for a long time. Ben Glass was kind of unique in that he was like a direct response legal marketer and that’s how he’s, you know, that was kind of how he founded Great Legal Marketing and, teaching lawyers just about like this whole direct response method, I guess. Gotcha. And yeah, that was And when you distinguish direct response from brand, just for our listeners, you mean like television, radio, billboards, because like right in injury or any other type of legal service, you’re really trying to build a brand for people to know about you because they don’t necessarily need you when they see your ad or when they see your billboard or see your mailer, but that you want them to think about you when they may need you one day, right? You know.

Any who. And so how long were you at Ben’s firm and what are some of the biggest things you learned there? So I was, I was worked for Ben for seven years. First was the digital marketer, then as the marketing director for both the companies, and then, Ben went back just to working for Great Legal Marketing for a little while and then started my own things. So seven years in total. And what other the what did I, what are some of the things I learned there? I really learned, I mean, honestly, a lot. There’s a lot to pick from. So a lot about like running a small business and like what that looks like from the inside out. Because I was on his leadership team for a while and in that while I was on the leadership team, I learned the finances, how of the firm, like we reviewed P&Ls, what, how the firm spent money, how we got money. I just learned like a lot about just running a law firm specifically. Yeah, and running a business. And like I wouldn’t, wouldn’t have gotten that anywhere else. So like working on his team, I learned a lot about that. And then, I mean, really just about like how to build these marketing systems. Because we were automating a lot. It was like a small team marketers and so like that became kind of my niche and the thing that I did. And like Tiffany built the marketing systems and set up the processes and stuff and the, younger marketers kind of followed along with whatever it was. Right.

And I guess those are the big things. I mean, there’re two like huge things because like how to run a small business is like a huge topic. Sure. But yeah, learned a lot about that.

And very complicated. It has a lot of things going on all at once, right? Yeah, to make it all kind of work when it does work. And what made you get the impetus to try to go out on your own and kind of, because now you have your own marketing company where you have law firm clients like ours, that you help build up the marketing team as the firm is growing, which has been an incredible, benefit to us because, like, from the economics of it, like we couldn’t afford at the stage that you sort of working for us to have a marketer as skilled as you to lead our marketing team, but from a fractional perspective, right? We could. And so it made it plausible for us to have a lot of marketing talent in house that we otherwise couldn’t have afforded. Or afforded. So tell, our listeners maybe a little bit about how your company works, what gave you the impetus to start it, how it works.

So I, I started my own company, it felt, I before I started it officially and went out and said like Sharp Cookie, we’re a fractional CMO company and all that stuff. I actually established it in like 2016. So my LLC has existed for a while. Oh, okay. And, you know, I, I mean, me and my husband had moved. We were much further away from the offices. I was commuting like an hour in, an hour back. And, you know, that’s that’s always like a big thing that makes people like change, change whatever they’re doing. And also like, I knew back when I was doing like freelance web development, I could make money doing it. And I had like a really good close rate. Like if somebody met with me, I was going to do their project. Right. And so, you know, it was easy for me to get work and I was just brave enough, I guess. And I was just like, I’m going to do this. And also, you know, would feel nice working for myself and not for other people, even though I do work for all my clients, but you know what I mean.

And, so, what was the second question you asked? I forgot. That’s how it started. Yeah, I forgot too. It’s later in the day, the coffee isn’t. Yeah, I know. I’m like, oh. How does it, I think it was like, how do you, how does the company kind of work as far as like the, not getting too much into that, but like, what kind of services you offer, how many people do you have working for you, give us a feel for it.

So I mean, I’m a fractional CMO and so there’s that part of my business where I have set number of clients, including Scott Vicknair. Right. And then a few others. And that part is hard to scale. There are a lot of fractional CMOs. Now I actually talked to one like last week, and they were like, how are you going to scale this? And I’m like, how are you going to scale this? Like, we’re trying to figure it out. So a lot of a lot of people in this kind of market trying to figure it out or wondering their own things. So it’s exciting and I like that part of it. Yeah. And that’s not, that’s also too, that is a lot, there is like a niche just for people who wouldn’t know this, like beside there are some really good fractional CMOs like you, that law firms who aren’t yet at 10, 15 million dollars in revenue, can have the type of talent that you all have in house marketing teams. And the same concept plays along with like fractional CFOs. There’s different vendors for every type of department head where you want like a more experienced person, but you can’t afford yet what they cost. Yeah. If that makes sense. So continue, sorry.

Well, and I mean, just, you know, just going off what you said there, like I actually, I heard about fractional CMOs like on podcasts and stuff before, you know, I left the company and I was like, oh, how interesting. It didn’t click with me to do that until, one of the first people who hired me as soon as I left GLM, they were like, come work for me, please. And I loved him. Still love him. But they were like, you should do the fractional CMO thing. And it, it was just like, you know, there is such a huge need because like among the small business owners that I know, you know, they all need talent, but talent’s hard to find and if you do find it, you usually can’t afford it. Yeah. And if, you know, a marketer is good enough, they’re going to start their own business, they’re going to go work for a bigger company. And so like, it’s, you know, it’s a good way to like serve like a group of people in need who need that, that kind of skills and expertise, know how. And you know, I think it’s a great, great solution for like small to medium sized businesses that are scaling up and growing. And also like for the marketers, like it’s also nice to be able to work for multiple businesses because you can like, what’s working over here, we can use it over here. And 100%. Makes it some things easier. No different than some of the agencies that work for us, right? Yeah. When we’re in these calls and talking about, what are these trends happening in online search for PPC or LSAs or whatever, they serve clients in different markets and they can tell us trends that they’re seeing in other markets, things that they’re seeing work in other markets, and you get to almost like be like a fractional mastermind, right? Not even to your mastermind program yet. But like a fractional mastermind that you’re seeing what’s working in different firms. And they’re not competing against each other. So why wouldn’t they be fine with you sharing information and helping all the firms that you work for, right? I mean, I’m having, haven’t had any complaints yet. Yeah. Well, you can do it. You can share our stuff with people who work competing against. We don’t care. Like they still have to execute and do it. Is the way I look at it, right? Yeah. So.

I mean, that’s and I mean, that’s that’s the truth of it. Like marketing and marketing ideas are everywhere. This is what I tell people. It’s like, you know, I trip over marketing ideas every day. The hard part is implementing them. And so like for me, like when I look at like a marketplace, like that’s one of the principles like I try to implement with Sharp Cookie is like, we’re going to be the first to implement or we’re going to try to implement the fastest because sometimes that’s what matters. Is what matters what gets done because like a lot of the other businesses, small businesses, like the fight is against like, not being productive enough or procrastination or just not doing it and not executing. So I mean, that’s that’s for me, like that’s really important. Just implementing these ideas, you know.

I have a question and this is maybe more analytical and deeper about marketing that you just triggered me to think of. So I’ve been thinking about this like I am like a, as you know, like a huge proponent of marketing. I mean, we spend a lot of money this year on marketing and I can’t wait to spend even more next year. As a proportionate share of what like our planned revenue will be. So we’re not like overspending, right? In a healthy, sustainable growth way. But it really hit me that I think a part of the reason I want your take on it that business owners are reticent to spend money on marketing is they don’t really know their numbers as far as like cost per acquisition and what that customer generates in revenue to be able to like do a true ROI analysis and say, if I invest this much in marketing, and it brings me this many clients, patients, whatever it is at this cost, and I can expect this level of revenue for each one, it’s simple math, right? It’s a pretty good investment. And legal, it’s a pretty good investment. But I don’t think that business owners really analytically even know their numbers enough in mass to make those like intelligent decisions and they just think it’s foolery. Like, what is your opinion on it? I’m just curious. For the ones who do fight you or are nervous about spending money on marketing, like what would you say?

I mean, all marketing is an investment and you have to, I mean, you have to put it out there for people to see it. So like the biggest marketing failure that there ever is, is just not implementing it. So just marketing that doesn’t happen. That’s the big failure we’re trying to avoid. And like for business owners who are hesitant to spend money, like I can point to so many real life examples and I’m trying to remember the law firm name, but they’re huge and in New Jersey and New York. And I will if I, if I find the Google article or whatever. But basically like every time they want a case, whatever of like profits they have from that, all of it went back into marketing. And they started like really small, but grew like super huge, really quick. Because like all of their profits were going back into more TV ads, more billboards, more radio ads. And the more that they invested, the bigger they got and the more business that they got in. And like what I have noticed, like working with a lot of small businesses, like frankly, not all of them grow. And like the ones that don’t grow tend to be the ones that like, will sit on things for a long time, don’t invest in it or invest a little, you know, and like maybe pay an SEO vendor every month, you know, to do stuff with their site, they don’t know what’s going on. You know, they usually stay the same. It’s kind of flat line. Or maybe like a little bit of growth. And so like I just see so many real life examples. And I try to communicate that. And I’m just like, look, like there are businesses that grow and they put money into marketing and they spend on marketing. And then there are businesses who try to like spend as little as possible and they usually don’t grow. Yeah. I mean, they may not crash entirely, but they just don’t get any bigger.

Which is just fascinating to me, because there’s a whole different side of it, which is like, there’s a talent need, right? Like you want to have talented, like we call, like I hear in the industry a lot, like you probably A players. Yeah. And any business wants A players, right? But like part of it, like A players, it’s not just money for them. Of course, they want to make more money. But like the business has to grow for them to proportionally be able to continually get more and more money and grow, right? And the business also has to grow for them to have more leadership opportunities to move up, to manage more people. And so like, for me, it’s like perplexing because I’m like, if you don’t want to grow, like you’re going to be susceptible to losing talented people because they’re just frustrated that they don’t see a path for them to advance in the organization. But that’s my rant.

I, I, I, I, I see that. Like I see that like if there’s no growth opportunities or the jobs going to be the same for the next five years. You know, I mean, that for a lot of people, particularly people like getting to be like our age, getting to be in their thirties and forties, like, and you think about like, where’s, you know, if this company is staying the same, you know, like and what’s my life going to look like in five years, it’s going to be the same and a lot of people don’t want that. And so they start their own thing, they go to bigger companies. And so, yeah, I mean, you got a great point. Like growth is a, it’s like a retention device. Yeah.

Let me ask you, if I’m listening to this podcast and I’m thinking of starting my own company, law firm, not necessarily a law firm, because we have people who listen to this podcast, they’re in all different types of industries. What are some, what are maybe the three first tips you would give a person starting their business as it relates to marketing that, okay, it doesn’t necessarily, could be an action item or maybe just suggestions like, you get the question like, what, where the three things you would recommend.

So, email newsletter. Like. And I was like debating like, should I crack a joke? No, it’s like, I’ll go for it. It’s on brand because I randomly saw some ad the other day on LinkedIn like, email marketing is not dead. Like, whatever. Please explain. I mean, building a list, engaging with that list, nurturing that list. And I mean, doing more than just building your following on TikTok or LinkedIn. But start there, you know, start on a social media platform. Because it’s cheap. Oh, it’s cheap. Or it’s free. You can put the content up, but it’s not nothing, you know. Just the time to make it and edit it, right? I mean, figure out who you’re going to talk to. Talk to that audience on social media. Get them off social media and onto your marketing list somehow through offers, call to actions, asking them to visit the website, asking them to engage. And some people just go naturally because they’re interested in you as an influencer, so to speak. Right. And then get them on your email marketing list and just continue to like nurture and engage those relationships. One of my hobbies is I write science fiction, and I’m still bad at it. But I try. Anyway, like I’m in a writer’s group and one of the writers, they do this professionally. Like they continually write like science fiction stories and they, they have their own publishing company, they self publish, they sell on Amazon. They’re, they’re retired, but that’s how they bring in an income. And like that’s their like bread and butter. Like that’s how they sell books is pretty much what I described, social media, email marketing, and then whenever he releases a book, he mainly sells it into his newsletter list. Yeah. You know, I think the list thing hits me because like, and I hope any of my competitors listen to this, like somebody starting a law firm who’s trying to compete against, whatever, the list is number one. It’s priority. Like nobody wants to hear it because it’s not like sexy or exciting, right? Like figuring out what technology database you want to use to store those names in. But for me, I’m like a, a maniac, I guess about like every potential lead, every client, every friend, like let’s get them in our database because we can cheaply stay in front of them through newsletters, through magnets, birthday cards, none of this stuff is exciting. But what is it? It’s like tested and true marketing for generations, right? And it’s cumulative. Like you send out an email newsletter each week and you’re like, that’s all I do, that’s kind of lame. And it does feel a little lame. Because you’re doing just that one thing. But then you do like the birthday cards. And then you do extra email newsletters. And then you’re doing stuff on social media, all builds and works together until you have like this really nice, engaged audience of people who know you and like you and will buy from you. And are thinking of you as your top of mind. So when they are thinking of using your service or need your service or whatever it is you’re selling, like you’re there, right?

So how does everybody find you? If I’m thinking about working with you and I want to go get a fractional CMO, how do I find you?

So my name is spelled T I F A N Y, and actually if you Google Tiffany Marketing, I, I think I have really good SEO for that. So I at least from my searches I come up for it. But you can also go to Sharp Cookie D E V.com because Sharp Cookie dot com wasn’t available. And then, yeah, if you search for me on LinkedIn, I’m always posting on LinkedIn.

Awesome. Well, I have to give you a big plug because Tiffany has definitely, it’s hard to really say how much you’ve meant to us. And continue to, the growth of our company, which is important to me, Brad, and our entire team, they’re all invested now and growing the law firm. Is directly attributable to a lot of the things that you’ve done behind the scenes, the automations, working through some of the kinks on those automations. The training, the teaching the different people in our marketing department, what works, what doesn’t work. I like to joke that our lead intake specialist calls you the goat. Like anytime you name comes up, like, oh, Tiffany’s the goat. So sweet. And so you’ve had such an incredible impact on our law firm. We’re so excited working with you. We want to work with you forever. And, yeah, I can’t really recommend your service enough. So if you’re in the business for a fractional, I can’t remember looking at, let’s go. Fractional, legal, chief marketing officer, you should go find Tiffany. The reason we hired you was because Ben Glass at his law conference like two years ago, when I first decided to kind of put my foot on the gas and go all in on this marketing stuff. I think he said on stage, he’s like, the day you left the firm was the worst day of his life. I’m sure he’s exaggerating. He said something like that. And, Brad, just colloquially was telling me at the conference like, you would really vibe with Tiffany. And, and we just, I think we hired you like a month later.

Oh yeah, yeah. So we’ve loved working with you. Can’t say enough good things about you, so. Thank you so much for being here in person for a couple of days and the podcast. I know, I know, it’s been lovely being down here.

Well, thank you for having me. It’s been great.

Yeah. All right, well, thank you all for listening. Once again, this has been a great episode talking about marketing and a little bit about Tiffany’s company, Sharp Cookie. Please go check her out. I know she’s online. Got her own website and in LinkedIn and a lot of also has TikTok, Instagram. All of them. All of them. You can find her anywhere on the web. But thank you all for listening. Once again, this has been David Vicknair. This has been the Overruled podcast. Brought to you by the Scott Vicknair Law firm. We look forward to talking with you next time. Take care.

Scott Vicknair, Injury Attorneys, we fight for the win.

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