This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Rolling into the suburbs of Chicago, today we're gonna hear from Elliot. Elliot has a classic example of turning lemons into lemonade, or I suppose it is sugar, butter, and flour into cookies. Elliot and his wife launched a home-based cookie business during the 2020 COVID lockdowns. Do you remember that? Gosh, it feels like, I don't know, it feels like 20 years ago, it feels like last week.
What a strange time. And of course we saw so many different businesses thriving during that time, launching lots of changes, transitions, pivots, and such. It was really an interesting time to be around. But of course now we are a couple of years out from that, and the side hustle, at least for Elliot, continues. He and his wife are still baking and selling cookies, but as they seek to grow, they're pondering a move that's a bit unusual, potentially risky.
Well, maybe it's not super risky, but just is it going to be effective? I think that's what we're going to look at here. Elliot is considering investing in cameo shoutouts from celebrities. If you don't know cameo, it's a network where you can go and pay for all sorts of actors and other famous people to do a quick little shout out, for your friend's birthday or for your business in this case. So it's a bold idea, it's different.
And I applaud Elliot's innovative spirit. But of course, let's take a moment to examine the strategy's potential drawbacks as well as those benefits. All right, so let's talk about using cameo shoutouts from celebrities for a cookie business. It's all coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hi there, I'm Elliot from the suburbs of Chicago.
My wife and I have been running a home-baked cookie business, which I started during the lockdown. To add a unique twist to my marketing efforts and perhaps give my business a bit of a celebrity sparkle, I've been contemplating hiring some actors on cameo to give a shout out for my cookie brand. I feel this could be a fun, quirky strategy that could help my brand stand out, but I'm not entirely sure about its potential effectiveness. What's your take on this idea? Do you think using cameo shoutouts can serve as a viable marketing strategy for a small business like mine?
[Music]
Hey Elliot, thanks for calling in. So glad to know that the cookie baking business continues, all from COVID till now, well done. But of course I'm here to give you my true and honest opinion, right? And I don't always say like every idea is a good idea because that's not helpful. So in my opinion here, like using cameo for a shout out as a business strategy and actually like investing some money in it, I mean, it's kind of fun to like have a celebrity shout out your business, but if you're trying to find the most effective strategy, I don't think it's going to work that well.
You don't wanna just throw away money. You really gotta think about return on investment. So for a lot of these like celebrities, first of all, most of them are doing like personal greetings only, like for your friend's birthday or something graduation. When it comes to like a business endorsement, they're pretty careful about that or it might cost more for that. There's always like a broad range of fees and some of the biggest celebrities, the ones that might actually get the most attention, those can be pretty expensive.
And there's almost no expectation that the celebrity is going to then post that on their social media. The whole point is to get it so that you can post it. So with the limitations and such, you just need to be careful about how you leverage the content in your marketing strategy. So let's just say, in my opinion, in short, I think you can probably do better. I would consider other grassroots marketing tactics that might have a more direct impact on sales.
So engaging with the local community on social media, doing local ads, perhaps on Google, which can be a lot cheaper than national ads. Maybe some referral program, maybe some donations that you can do that might be helpful in terms of goodwill, probably some other stuff. And don't get me wrong, it's great to be innovative. I just think your marketing budget might be better spent elsewhere at this stage of the business. But that's my two cents, of course, which is provided for free, just like the podcast every single day, completely free, seven days a week, sidehustleschool.com.
If you wanna check out some free resources, got a five steps to hustle course there, show notes for every episode and more. And of course, a new episode tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
