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You’ve tried everything.
The funnels. The freelancers. The fancy CRMs.
And what do…
The funnels. The freelancers. The fancy CRMs.
And what do…
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Ivana Taylor shared thisHow much content do you scroll past today because it feels fake? I've noticed this in my own behavior and so I started digging into it. Here's what I found. Gen Z is going analog and I am HERE for it. 62% of their purchases — in person. Mall foot traffic up 4.5% in 2026. The generation born on their phones is deliberately walking away from screens. And honestly? Same. Here's why this is happening and why it matters to your business right now. We literally can't trust our eyes anymore. Deepfake files hit 8 million in 2025. Up from 500,000 in 2023. That's a 900% jump in two years. Over half of people already can't tell AI content from real content. So your beautifully produced video? Looks fake. Your polished testimonial? Looks generated. Your genuine photo? Could be AI. The audience you're spending money to reach has stopped trusting what they see. Full stop. So what do you do about it? First — stop crying about the economy. (Worth crying about, yes. But crying doesn't close clients.) Second — audit your marketing spend. Find the digital channels eating your cash without paying off and cut them. Direct mail right now delivers 161% ROI. Social ads? Around 21%. The math is doing something. Third — go do the thing that literally cannot look like AI. Send a handwritten note. Host a small dinner. Show up somewhere in person. Mail a postcard to your top 50 clients ($30 in postage, zero algorithm required). Just showed up in the mailbox like a human. - Direct mail averages about a 2.5–4.5% response rate, while email sits around 0.1–0.6%, making mail roughly 5–30x more responsive than email - Direct mail open/engagement rates are typically 70–90%, versus 20–30% average open rates for email campaigns - Consumers spend more time with physical mail (often over a minute and with a 7‑day lifespan in the home) compared to marketing emails that are viewed for seconds That's the whole strategy. #SmallBusiness #OfflineMarketing #GenZ #MarketingStrategy #DIYMarketers
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Ivana Taylor shared thisWhat “Treatonomics” Means for Your Sales Conversion Rate ▸ #marketing #Pricing
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Ivana Taylor shared thisHow does fear of SUCCESS (not just failure) show up in an entrepreneur’s daily decisions TODAY on #BizapaloozaChat we'll chat about the ONE thing holding most entrepreneurs back — themselves. Join us on Twitter, Monday 6/1 at 2pmET/11amPT. #smallbusiness #businesstips #strategy #planning #growthmindset
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Ivana Taylor shared thisShould I start with free content or launch a paid newsletter immediately? ▸ #Marketing #SmallBusiness #NewslettersNewsletter Strategies That Generate Revenue in 2026Newsletter Strategies That Generate Revenue in 2026
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Ivana Taylor shared thisWhat's the most human, low-cost thing you ever did for a client — or that someone did for you — that you still think about? Drop it below. I'm collecting these. Today, I'm thinking about zigging and zagging and how anything taken to its extreme becomes its opposite. Lately it's AI, AI, everywhere. I've been reading (and am currently writing) about how Gen Z is going analog. So, more on that later. But right now, I'm thinking in real time about how many truly human ways I used to tell my clients I cared about them. 3-D mail has always been a favorite of mine. Remember web cams? I remember buying about 5 of them and sending them to a few clients with a letter that started with the phrase "I think we should start seeing each other" Postcards -- not the marketing ones, the touristy ones. I'd buy some from my own city, I'd buy some from other cities I'd traveled to and I'd send short little messages to clients to let them know I was thinking about them. Sharing products from other small businesses - I used to have a lot of local business clients with super FUN products like bread, gifts, ceramics, etc. I'd buy little mementos and send those to other small businesses along with a story about that client. NONE of these had a pitch or a call to action or anything like that. I was thinking of them and I sent them something. Much of this happened before digital marketing got huge, before social media, before Zoom calls. It was a way to let them know I was thinking about them. Right now, my friend Vivek Bhaskaran has been posting about his road trips where he's connecting with clients, friends, vendors, people he's built relationships with over the years. I'm just loving this because it's a clear example of what we are all craving right now - human connection and real reach-out-and-touch-someone relationships. Your turn -- what cool, analog way have you told clients you were thinking of them or did someone tell you they cared about you? Bryan Kramer, Steve Strauss, Ramon Ray, John Lawson III, Brent Leary, Monique Johnson, Pierre DeBois, Leland McFarland, Brian Moran, Shashi Bellamkonda
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Ivana Taylor shared thisYour expertise means nothing if nobody knows you have it. Visibility isn't optional anymore. ▸ #PersonalBrand #DirectMarketing #SocialMedia #EntrepreneurLifeWhy Your Personal Brand Drives Sales When Your Marketing Budget Doesn’tWhy Your Personal Brand Drives Sales When Your Marketing Budget Doesn’t
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Ivana Taylor shared thisDon't hate me for saying this — but I've believed for years digital marketing costs us way more than we've been told. So I went down the rabbit hole. Compared digital to direct mail. And the numbers made me a little angry. Direct mail ROI: 161%. That's from independent ANA data — not a platform measuring its own results. Social media ads? 21%. Facebook's average cost per lead hit $27.66 in 2025. Up 21% in one year. And that "$42 for every $1 in email" stat? Invented by email platforms measuring their own performance. The real number is closer to 12:1. Oh — and 48% of B2B emails never reach the inbox at all. In other words, now is the perfect time to take a fresh look at using Direct Marketing or Direct Mail to connect with your customers and start converting. #marketing #DIYMarketing #SmallBusiness #DirectMail #MarketingROI #SmallBusinessMarketing Dave Klein - I'd love to know what you've seen. I'd love to get some "real life" info in addition to what the research shows.
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Ivana Taylor shared thisI don't own a retail store. I don't run a salon. I have never used a point-of-sale system in my life. So when I tell you Square raised processing fees 14% in January with zero warning to existing customers — I'm not saying it because it affects me. I'm saying it because I've watched this pattern repeat itself across every category of small business software for the past two years. These brands get the you hooked. Raise the price. Then dare you to leave. Zoho has never and will never do that. I've been a Zoho customer for more than 8 years and my pricing has stayed virtually flat that entire time. I'm telling you this because Zoho just launched a POS system at $15/month. No proprietary hardware. No long-term contracts. You choose your own payment processor — which means they can't hold your processing rates hostage. I know -- this isn't really exciting news. But it's boring in the very best way possible. It's software doing exactly what software should do: run quietly in the background, cost almost nothing, and stay out of your way. I wrote a full review with the pricing comparison, the feature breakdown, and an honest take on who should switch and who should wait. Link in comments. Ariel Rhodes, Sandra Lo, Brent Leary, Shashi Bellamkonda, Leland McFarland, Ramon Ray, John Lawson III #ZohoPOS #Retail #SmallBusiness #Restaurant #Salon #Services
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Ivana Taylor shared thisWhen do you feel info overload the most—news, social media, group chats, streaming choices? TONIGHT, on #BizapaloozaChat UNPLUGGED we'll talk about too much information, too many tabs, too many notifications. Join us on Twitter, Thursday 5/28 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. #socialmedia #digitalexperience #stressmanagement #mindfulness
Ivana Taylor commented on a post
1h
HA -- great minds - I just completed an article on how Gen Z is going analog, basically they don't want to put in the mental energy involved in figuring out what's fake, what's automated, what's AI: https://diymarketers.com/offline-marketing-strategies-for-small-business/
Ivana Taylor commented on a post
1h
Actually, I think the most telling thing about a company's culture is what you see when you walk in the door or in their offices.
My favorite is the "we love people" message (they are our greatest asset, we help our community, etc) meanwhile no one is talking to each other, there are signs everywhere for visitors so they don't have to talk to anyone -- just so many things.
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Ivana Taylor liked thisIvana Taylor liked thisWhen I asked “What kills trust faster?” I had a hunch how it would go. The results, and the comments, were sharper than I expected: • Generic, empty content – 21% • Dead-on-arrival targeting – 4% • Over-automation / spam at scale – 33% • Fake expertise / pretend expert – 40% So, to me, the numbers say “trust is fragile.” The comments say “trust is paying closer attention than your dashboard.” 1: Generic content: the “Sea of Beige.” Gerry Black honed in on it: “NEWS FLASH* you're doomed to float unnoticed in the Sea of Beige if you don't give your web visitor a reason to consider you as a solution to their problem. And generic content won't help you.” You fight to get the right people to your front door. Then greet them with something so bland it could have been written for anyone. That doesn’t just fail to build trust. It quietly tells people you’re interchangeable. 2: Over-automation: when “scale” empties the room A third of people blamed over-automation and spam at scale. They’re not anti-tool. They’re simply tired of being on the receiving end of “personalization” that obviously came from a workflow. Neal Conlon captured it best: “People just quietly stop opening your emails, stop engaging, stop referring you. You don't lose trust in a moment. You just eventually notice the room is empty.” Yet your reports still say “engagement,” even though your buyers have already checked out. 3: Fake expertise: the quiet winner The top answer: fake expertise. People are saturated with gurus and self-proclaimed experts. So, they’re getting very good at sniffing out who’s actually done the work. As Gale Daikoku put it: “...because this typically smells like fake expertise....” Nobody’s running a formal audit on you. They’re just catching the scent: big claims, thin proof, suddenly-in-this-space “experts” who weren’t here six months ago. Once you’re in the “pretend expert” bucket, it’s hard to climb back out. 4: Targeting: where the leak starts Only 4% chose dead-on-arrival targeting, but Nishant Pant pointed out where it shows up: “Brand picks a creator for audience size, not fit. The content feels slightly off. Audiences feel it before the engagement data does. By the time it shows up in the metrics the trust is already gone.” The misalignment lands in people’s guts long before it lands in your spreadsheet. What this is really saying Tripp Braden commented: “Almost all seem equal to me! I wonder if the question asked of what establishes trust might provide even deeper insights.” He’s right ... and that’s the next step. But even this small poll is a useful mirror. There’s no CRM field for “we don’t believe you anymore.” No report called “trust erosion.” You only see the pattern: → Generic content. → Over-automation. → Fake expertise. → Loose targeting. So here’s the question for you: Where are we asking people to trust a gesture we haven’t actually earned?
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Ivana Taylor liked thisIvana Taylor liked thisMost companies have "integrity" somewhere on their wall. A framed poster, slide deck, or in an onboarding video where the CEO delivers the word with full eye contact. Then someone in a Tuesday morning meeting admits they got the numbers wrong. 😰 The campaign missed. The forecast was off. And in the next four seconds, you learn everything about that company that the wall never told you. ❓Does the room go quiet in that particular way that means someone is about to get humiliated? Does the senior VP's jaw tighten? Does everyone else suddenly find their laptop screens very interesting? Or does the leader lean in, ask what happened, and actually mean it? Those four seconds are the real values document. Every employee in that room reads it instantly, updates their understanding of what is safe to say out loud, and adjusts their behavior accordingly for the next six months. 💡McKinsey's research identifies psychological safety as the single greatest predictor of team performance, ahead of talent density, compensation structure, and leadership tenure. 💡Google's Project Aristotle reached the same conclusion after studying 180 teams over two years. The variable separating high-performing teams from the rest was not who was in the room. It was whether people believed it was safe to take interpersonal risk inside it. 💡Edelman's Trust Barometer has tracked for over a decade that consumers rank internal company conduct among their top signals of brand trustworthiness, higher than advertising, higher than CEO communications, and higher than product claims. What happens inside the room eventually shapes what customers feel outside of it. A mistake admitted in a meeting is that belief being tested in real time. Organizations fail that test so quietly that nobody calls it a failure. The person who spoke up learns not to do it again. The people watching learn the same lesson without a word being said. The wall still says integrity. The meeting room has already said something else entirely...
Experience & Education
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DIY Marketers
View Ivana’s full experience
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Publications
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Marketing for Fitness Centers
DIY Marketers
Spotlight on, Shawn M. Miller, Managing Member of FLEX Fitness Centers in Holland, Michigan (and a marketing expert in his own right who helps small business owners become celebrities in their market). - See more at: http://diymarketers.com
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Excel for Marketing Managers
Holy Macro! Books
The most powerful Microsoft Excel features that can be used to sort through data to produce meaningful marketing analyses are outlined in this manual. Marketing managers will learn the math functions to produce budgets and forecasts, and how to use survey analysis to quickly spot trends using pivot tables and other analysis tools. Ideas for launch schedules, life cycle management, and other date-related information are also presented.
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7 Easy, Low Cost Ways to Generate Leads and Keep Customers
AMEX Open Forum
See publicationSince small business CEOs are most concerned with innovation, lead generation, and funding their future with cash instead of loans, I’ve collected the following easy, low-cost DIY Marketing strategies to help you get and keep profitable customers.
Projects
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BrandLauncher Mentor
- Present
See projectWhen BrandLauncher clients need help with their branding, messaging and marketing systems and strategies, they reach out to me. I do in-depth-interviews with their customers, run them through a branding and messaging process, work with them to develop marketing strategies they can get excited about and help them implement in a way that frees them up to enjoy the business they've created.
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Bizapalooza and BizapaloozaChat
- Present
Are you ready to rock your biz?! Bizapalooza started out as an annual virtual event and has grown into a bi-weekly tweet chat that reaches more than a million small business owners on Twitter.
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English
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Serbian
Professional working proficiency
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