Christina Ross of Silverfrog Marketing: Five Ways To Leverage Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business
An Interview with Candice Georgiadis
In my experience, Instagram is stronger for E-Commerce brands but still absolutely works for any business as long as your customers are also on Instagram. For example, if you are selling knee braces for older people, you probably wouldn’t go to Instagram because older generations don’t shop that way. TV is still king for certain Direct Response brands.
As a part of our series about How To Leverage Instagram To Grow Your Business, I had the pleasure of interviewing Christina Ross.
Christina Ross is the President and Marketing Director at Silver Frog Marketing and loves helping businesses with their creative design and overall marketing efforts. She has spent the majority of her career in the marketing industry, gaining experiences in areas such as website design, social media marketing, TV/Radio broadcast and Google marketing.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I actually began my career in the Franchise Industry. Throughout my 20’s I watched a larger National Franchisor rise and then fall, ending in bankruptcy and all of the employees losing their jobs, including me. This really opened my eyes in terms of running a company the right way, and simply doing things the right way from the beginning. Over the next decade of my life I got very good at building websites for different ideas I had, and then started helping fellow friends and family with their websites and overall marketing ideas. In 2015 I created Silver Frog Marketing, which was really just websites, email campaigns and light PPC campaigns in the beginning. Through all of this I have developed our core digital marketing package that includes everything a business needs for their marketing, like a new website, proper SEO, a cohesive email campaign and social media posting. Ultimately what got me here is a burning desire to help out small business owners and a strong desire to build and grow a company correctly.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
I have been able to meet the most amazing people but by far the most interesting things are the silly businesses or ideas that people want to advertise for. We had this one lady whose dog needed about $1,000 in vet treatments, and she was so upset by this that she wanted to air a commercial on her local radio station blasting this vet for overcharging. When we asked her what her ad budget was, she said $1,000! Why not just spend that money on your dog we asked? She never became a client. Ha! Another interesting one was this one call of a guy who was running for political office and he wanted our help in airing his spots on tv and radio. Ok, great, we can do that. Well, we got about 10 minutes into the conversation before we asked this guy what political office he was running for, you know; mayor, representative, even president. Nope, this guy was on a mission to become the King of the United States of America! HA! We all went to lunch and had a nice laugh after that one.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I never make mistakes! Haha, I’m kidding! Mistakes happen and are a big part of how you learn. Actually, when I was first getting started, I had a pretty straight forward website that needed to be updated, so I got the design done and once I moved it over to the live URL, I accidentally messed up their email servers. They stopped getting emails and started getting a bit worried. Luckily it wasn’t hard to fix, they are still a client and I definitely never made that mistake again!
Ok. Let’s now move to the main focus of our discussion. For the benefit of our readers, can you explain why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?
I have been planning, placing, and optimizing social media marketing campaigns for over 10 years now! I’ve seen so many changes and new platforms come and go. Each industry is a little different in terms of where your customers are, but I highly recommend setting aside some ad budget for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even LinkedIn. Your customers are most likely using these social platforms, so, you should be too.
Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?
In my experience, Facebook is my go to for increasing business revenues. Facebook, as with the others, have really great targeting abilities so as long as I know who your customers are, I know I can reach them this way. We have a Dental Clinic client who was only doing minimal Google PPC when he first called us. We put together a marketing strategy that reduced his Google and added in Facebook, he was blown away by the results. He was reaching people that he never would have just on Google alone.
Let’s talk about Instagram specifically, now. Can you share five ways to leverage Instagram to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.
In my experience, Instagram is stronger for E-Commerce brands but still absolutely works for any business as long as your customers are also on Instagram. For example, if you are selling knee braces for older people, you probably wouldn’t go to Instagram because older generations don’t shop that way. TV is still king for certain Direct Response brands. Now, let’s talk about Instagram for the E-Commerce client.
Here are 5 things to keep in mind with Facebook/Instagram to help build your business brand:
- Be active and Tell a story
- Plan out your posts
- Post Quality Content
- Follow similar High Quality Accounts
- Embed your Instagram Feed on your website
Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
If I could join a movement and make a difference, I would aggressively address the homeless and near homeless issues in this country. I would start the conversations with larger Real Estate Developers, City Planning committees and community service committees to reallocate existing vacant buildings, malls and warehouses into short term housing to help many people in hard situations. There is a vicious catch 22 that affects too many good, hard working people, where they can’t find a job because they don’t have a home and they can’t get a home because they don’t have a job. Some people just need a little bit of help. In addition to helping with housing, I would also make sure counselors are available to help on that level as well.
Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Marc Cuban or Josh Nelson
Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!
Christina Ross of Silverfrog Marketing: Five Ways To Leverage Instagram To Dramatically Improve… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.