My Favorite Tactic: Programmatic | Marcie Cerillo

Ann Kraus: Hi everybody, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm Ann Kraus. Joining me today is Marcie Cerillo, a brand awareness marketing professional from Treehouse Marketing. Her position with Treehouse is that of BrandBlaster manager for the media buying team. BrandBlaster is the bridge between the online and offline marketing world and uses out of home, traditional broadcast, social and programmatic. All of their clients work in the area of home contracting. Marcie has over 20 years of experience assisting small to medium clients with all of their marketing needs. Her career has taken her from local print publications to larger agencies growing digital sales along the way. At BrandBlaster, she takes pride in her team for their analytic problem solving, project coordination, communication, and creativity. Thank you so much for joining me, Marcie. Marcie Cerillo: Thank you for having me, Ann. Ann Kraus: Absolutely. So let's dive right in here because then the name Treehouse, and with your years of experience, I wanted to get right into it. The list of marketing techniques that you use for your clients is, it's large, it's substantial. So I want to ask you, in your career, what marketing technique have you tried and it failed? And on the flip side, what's one of your favorites? Marcie Cerillo: Oh, interesting. So I guess first when you talk about tried and failed, we've tried everything and sometimes I feel like we're failing initially, and maybe it's because whether it's the medium isn't necessarily right for the contracting world or whatever the case may be, but we also like to try again once we kind of have our legs underneath us. So I don't think there's anything that's been a total failure, which is great, but there are things that have failed for certain clients and then we just move on from it and go on to the next thing. My favorites, and I think that's changed over the years. However, currently my favorite is programmatic. Reason being, I like the ability to actually more refine that customer and look for the right customer as opposed to some of those avenues when I don't really get to not only choose, but not use the machine or use the learning to then follow that customer throughout their entire journey. Ann Kraus: Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. And are you finding that social, like maybe Facebook or anything or for some that might work for some different types of home contractors better than others? Marcie Cerillo: Yeah, I think with social it's a lot more of a loyalty or a comfort feeling with them. Whereas when you see everything else all in the other spaces online, you almost expect it to be, hey, it's going to be this a vague message up front, but after I get to know them a little bit better I will be delivered a more pointed message, so to speak. Ann Kraus: Perfect. Okay. Now having been in your office space, we've come to this time where there's a lot of talk about working from home or trying to get people back into an office. For those who haven't been in your space, and I'm sure there's a lot of viewers who haven't, can you explain a little bit of what you walk into every day? Marcie Cerillo: Yeah. So it's a very unique space. We literally have desks on two levels, but not a first floor and a second floor. It is in actual what appears to be little tree pods, so miniature treehouses. And that's how the cubicles are set up in that area. We have an area called Boomtown, which is the same thing too. They almost look like little houses, two different levels, a forge and anvil section. We have a lot of very eclectic, we have a 50s cafe and I think it just creates a sense of, hey, there's always something going on even when there's not. And it keeps that culture and that elevated creativity going. Ann Kraus: It definitely is a unique space. Having you work with the smaller home contractors, what are some of the obstacles that you have come across in marketing for small and medium businesses as opposed to larger businesses? Marcie Cerillo: I think with the small and medium, it's more of a, I have a limited budget. I need to do what's going to be the most effective for that limited budget. And I can't play around in all these other things. I need to, if my ultimate goal is to get a certain number of leads, we have to figure out the plan to get those leads for that individual dealer. If the plan is to blow their brand out because they're brand new in a market or whatever the case may be, we have to use that money in an effective manner to make sure we get that job done. Ann Kraus: True. And with the larger ones you have basically just a larger budget to- Marcie Cerillo: Correct. And I think in reality, once they get to that point where they have the larger budget, they can play with different things and test things and see what works and see how the pieces more fit together, where they're limited with the smaller ones, they don't have that worry anymore. Ann Kraus: Yeah, and your team seems to work on so many different things that you've got them, they're doing research, proposals, client relationships, media buying. Is that stretching them too thin? Marcie Cerillo: So it's interesting, we've definitely gone through a couple struggles fairly recently. We've grown from a team of four or three, four years ago and now we're 14. So it's definitely, there's a lot of growth. But everybody, although has their specialty, everybody was dabbling in everything, and we're refining that a little bit so we have more of a SME atmosphere, like, this is the subject matter expert on this and these are the people who work on that. I think it's working much better this way. I think it allows, and then we have one person who kind of is looking at all of it holistically and think this is how these pieces all need to fit together, let's make it happen, kind of thing. Ann Kraus: And that fits into your whole gear strategy too, that you have with- Marcie Cerillo: Exactly. Ann Kraus: Yeah. Marcie Cerillo: We're the smaller gears on the watch. Ann Kraus: Yes. Having been in the industry for 20 years or more here, I'm wondering is there a marketing mentor that you follow or somebody you remember? Marcie Cerillo: Yeah, so interesting. Years ago I worked for the phone company, Yellow Pages, to be exact, and my regional vice president at the time, Frank McNulty, I think the way he did it then is so relevant even in today's space. He always talked more about the end user, the audience. It wasn't really about what we were doing in our space of little Yellow Pages. It was about how that's going to impact the homeowner, how it's going to impact the business owner. And I think taking that philosophy with me over the years, it's helped me tremendously. It makes me think about things not from the point of view of a salesperson or even a marketer, but how is this going to be an impact to the people that are using the product or the people that we are placing this advertising for. Ann Kraus: Interesting. And is there a book you recommend for our viewers? Marcie Cerillo: So I recently read The Four Agreements, which I felt was amazing if you get the opportunity, short read, and it kind of gave me back my Zen. I was in a place where I'm like, hey, I need to refocus and get started right at the beginning of the year. And it was really good. And now I am reading at a completely different level, a David Goggins book, which is also very good, Can't Hurt Me. But that is more of a 16-hour read or a 16-hour listen. And so definitely two different sides of the, but if you need your Zen, The Four Agreements is a great book. Ann Kraus: Okay. I'm going to write that one down because I think we all need a Zen refresh every now and then. And with that, I will wrap this up. Marcie, thank you so much for joining us on Simpli.fi TV. It has been a pleasure to have you, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. Marcie Cerillo: Thank you so much, Ann. Have a great day. Ann Kraus: You too. And for the rest of Simpli.fi TV, We'll see you next time.