Explore Michelle Caba's journey in the Digital Advertising Agencies Industry

To me, being rootless means having no grounding, no foundation, starting from nothing. I have studied at Syracuse University and then I went to Columbia University and got my master’s degree in “Behavioral Psychology”. I’ve always been interested in how people think, why they do what they do, what their interests and behaviors are.
Any of my friends or family members will tell you that I’m constantly analyzing everything. So, I took that passion and went to Wall Street. Wall Street is where you need to know and speculate what people are going to do. I spent 20 years there until I decided that being in Wall Street wasn’t my passion anymore. I wanted to set out to be an entrepreneur, start my own business. I had started with a makeup line so I knew I wanted to be part of the beauty industry.
I also knew that whatever I did, I wanted to bring my culture into it, I wanted to show how powerful women are. So, I ended up buying a failed nail salon in Hoboken from a reality star that had 2 million followers. However, as an entrepreneur, you start to self-doubt and I started thinking that if she didn’t do it with 2 million followers, how am I going to do it with 0 followers?
I quickly referenced back to my expertise in Wall Street and understanding that branding and marketing was everything. So, when I took over the business, that’s exactly what I did. I rebranded and made sure to use a marketing strategy that made sense of the market that I was targeting, which was the 50,000 residents of Hoboken, New Jersey. It opened on my birthday in 2019 and it was a hit from day one.

Being an innovator, always wanting to make things better than what they are, looking at a business from a holistic standpoint, not just as a marketer. From a business consulting sense, there’s branding and after branding there’s marketing.
However, as a business owner, it doesn’t matter how many clients you get in the door. If you don’t have that customer journey defined and ready to execute, it all fails. It’s about understanding the holistic approach. My client isn’t just getting a brand manager or social media manager, he’s getting someone who understands business soup to nuts. – Michelle Caba

It took for me to invest in myself, to sit down and ask myself what my transferable skills from corporate America were, how do they transform and take flight as an entrepreneur. I flipped a nail salon so I understood my limitations. I understood that I didn’t do nails and hair for a living but I loved the business and I knew that when I bought it, I wanted to flip it.
During that process, I ended up meeting many other business owners that would sit on my pedicure chairs, getting their nails done and asking me questions about how to make changes to their business, trying to pick my brain as to why did I go so social media-heavy with the salon.
I started to realize in those conversations what I was really good at and that is creating that customer experience, that journey, and bringing visibility to the brand.

I wish I knew that I had this passion before I had it.

I would say to not be afraid to shadow somebody who already has an existing digital marketing firm. I know before I started mine, I spoke to someone that had built hers from nothing and she was pretty successful. I would say to put pride aside, nobody knows everything, and be open to reaching out to people, asking questions, and asking someone to sponsor and mentor you so that you can understand the business soup to nuts. – Michelle Caba

My approach is understanding what interests me. I like visual clients, clients that have products that are visual, that I can see before and after. It’s easier for me to come up with a marketing plan on that. I’ve had professional motivational speakers come to me, I’ve had nonprofits want to work with me and I won’t work with them because I don’t feel I can really bring high impact conversion to them.
So, I think it’s recognizing what you’re really good at and what interests you the most. For example, in the roofing business, not every two roofers are the same, they have different stories, different expertise. One person may be known for the quality of their work, the other may be known for the time frames they are able to meet. It’s about realizing what’s important to the customer and what interests you. – Michelle Caba

I think that you should always start as a contractor because it gives you an opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. Starting a business like this and hitting the ground running is rare. So, I would say to start out as a contractor. I got lucky because I had just left a business that I had sold and had gained notoriety by other small business owners in the community and they hired me immediately.
So, that helped me but that’s a story that doesn’t happen often. I started my business in the middle of a pandemic. I sold my business in January, I started FAMA in February. I had my first client before I had a name for the business and it just started rolling from there.

I feel like the name, the colors, the logo should all resonate with your potential client. It should give them a feeling of “that’s what I need”. I think it’s very important.

Social media and digital marketing are all married to each other. You can’t live in one and not the others. I think that’s something that we understand but you have to be honest with yourself in terms of how innovative you are, how quick you can learn systems, staying engaged with the times, and always coming from a place of wanting to provide value.
I think when you come from that place and not just wanting to take the money and run, the customer has a different experience. I think my advantage point is that I was a small business owner myself. So, I understand that each dollar is allocated to something.
Just because I own a business, doesn’t mean I’m a CEO overnight. Each dollar matters. In my business, it is very important to me that we provide value and we’re honest about what we can and cannot do. – Michelle Caba

I also do entrepreneur business coaching, which’s the second branch of my brand. I feel pricing should depend on your value, the value you’re providing and the time you’re putting into the customer. If I’m paying someone $200/ad, that to me means they’re not checking the ad every day to make sure that it’s reaching their target audience.
It tells me they don’t even know who their target audience is because they probably have ads that are already populated and they’re just going to run them, grab a few dollars and go. I feel that in my space, because no two businesses are the same, I offer three different pricing points.
That’s because you’ll have the customer that is just starting to get into the game of digital and social and maybe a little apprehensive but if you give them the lower price point, it’s enough for them to dip their foot in the water.
The higher price point is for the client that totally gets it, who knows that I’m not just providing social media management, brand management, or digital ads but we’re going to nurture your clients through a sales funnel email drip. We’re going to keep them up to date with what’s going on.
For example, in the roofing business, you have clients that sell their homes to downgrade or upgrade so you have to always keep them in a loop so that they use you for their upgrades.

By hiring people, being clear on what I’m really good at, which is sales. I’m onboarding new clients and now I’m actually getting to the point where I do need to start looking for talent to help me with the day-to-day. Investing in yourself, in systems that make your life easier, and all the things I speak to my clients about, I do for my business.
I have an automated email drip, if you DM me, you get an automatic message from my company saying thank you for connecting, if you want to be a client you can book a discovery call with me. Everything is intentional to make everything easier but also to deliver that customer experience that I want everybody to leave with when they visit FAMA agency.

I’ve gotten a few through social media. I’ve also gotten potential clients that didn’t use me for service, we’ve become social media friends but it helps because they spread the word and I’ve gotten clients through their referrals. I also do my own digital ads so I get leads through that and I also go out there virtually and I make it a point to virtually network twice a week online.
So, I’ll join different Facebook groups and basically ask them if they have a networking group and I’m there promoting FAMA. When I moved to Florida I joined the Chamber of Commerce in my town and because of the conversations we had, they decided to start a social media board so now we’re the first-ever board.
They asked me to do it. It’s being your own sounding board and sometimes as a business owner we’re so busy running the day-to-day especially if you have employees you need someone out there to be your sounding board, you can’t be too comfortable with the clients that you have. I always say: “Don’t leave money on the table.” – Michelle Caba

So, when I first started, I was blogging every week, I have a few blogs that I’m going to publish soon. I’ve been so busy doing other things but I think blogging is great. I feel that it cements you as the expert in what you do.
If you can be informative in less than three minutes then go for it. We’re all looking for information, we all want that. I think that when you commit to blogging at least from what I’ve learned is that you have to be honest about how frequently you’re going to do it because it can be time-consuming. Coming up with the topics, the wording, the editing, can be draining.

A mistake a lot of people do is that they see a fad. Digital marketing right now is a fad. People take a few classes and they feel like they’re the expert but they don’t take the time out to actually brand themselves, actually figure out what their brand commitment is, what their brand position is, and really be honest on their deliverables.
It’s about understanding that you can’t just take any customer and you have to be clearest about which customer you enjoy showing up for. If you enjoy showing up for them, there’s going to be conversion. Before I even got my first client, I invested in a business coach to help me with the branding.
It was important to know what my message was because it happens often that someone starts a business and doesn’t know how to properly explain what he does when asked about it. Have your elevator pitch ready because that establishes credibility.

So, I actually use a platform that helps me automate their posts. It’s intuitive, smart and it gives me the data that I need, shows the point that we started at and the points we are now. So, I’m able to tell you how many followers you had when we first started, how many you are gaining on a monthly basis, how many people you are reaching, what your top five most engaging posts are.
You have to figure out what’s resonating with your audience. For example, the client I interviewed today has a restaurant business and I’ve noticed that when I post her picture on Fridays, there is a lot of engagement, likes, and saves. The strategy is what’s really going to push that data forward and tell a story about your business. – Michelle Caba

I don’t think you need to be a pro at it. I think you definitely need to have an eye, you need to know math more than anything else because you’re being assessed and you’re being paid by the conversion rate. I’m not a photographer. I have a creative side to me, I know what the eye’s going to capture and what the clients want to see.
That’s because I do the market research with your competitors and see what’s resonating with their followers and what they’re engaging with and from there we can figure out what we should be doing for you. Sometimes I hire photographers for my clients but I’m really clear that my clients need to know what they want to see. I have some clients who give me full reign and I have other clients who are more involved, as they should be. It’s all about communication.
If you want to be in the marketing space you have to be a good communicator, be good at math and be honest in terms of what you can and can’t provide.

You need to be credible. It’s all about credibility and consistency and knowing your brand, being on brand, whatever your message is. Your voice is what makes you credible. If you’re not using the same voice every day, if you’re not consistent, you’re going to lose followers because nowadays everybody has such a short attention span.

I’d say it depends on the work you put in. If you’re not out there, making it a point to prospect clients, you may not have a $10,000 month for six months and you need to be okay with that. What I advise people all the time is to always know your numbers first, before you even start with branding, marketing, etc. for any business.
You need to know what number you need to live on and from there, it motivates you to make your business a six-figure one in a certain time frame.

Yeah, and sometimes you don’t even know what that viral post can be. Sometimes, it’s not even something that is perfectly curated, it can be anything. – Michelle Caba

They have. I want to do more. Considering how times are changing, I keep asking myself what else I can do, how else I need to do to get my brand out there, and what knowledge do I have so I can share with people. I always come from a place of value I guess so I’m always looking for what to share.

Yes. I wake up every day intentionally, with the intentionality of working my business, not sitting there and hoping it will blow up and make me a millionaire. Everything I do is intentional, from the things I surround myself with, to motivate me, to keep my mindset positive, and also my son, the fact I can wake up and be home with him, especially now that he is virtual-learning really makes me want to succeed every day.

Sometimes I have 16 hour work days nonstop. I forget to eat, to feed my child sometimes, he has to remind me he’s hungry. I have days where it can be a 4 hour day and it reminds me that I put in that work. However, I think in the beginning, you have to have the mindset of being willing to do whatever it takes to make this succeed.

I disagree with the ones where they tell you how much money you need to make a day to become a millionaire, they need to stop. You have to take expenses into consideration. So, you can make $200 a day but there are expenses on that day too. You might have to spend $120 for the remaining $80. That is not financial forecasting to me.