The Marketer Who Saved Broke College Students | Sal Pizzo

This week we have a marketer that managed to save broke college students 💰 and build a successful marketing agency in the process.

I introduce Sal Pizzo - a bright marketer hailing from Springfield, Missouri.

Q: Tell us a little about what you’re up to right now

Me and a formal fraternity brother actually co founded a social media marketing agency called 4Social Marketing.

We distributed our services as three packages; content creation, social media management and social media ads.

The whole main point was to get some of these smaller brands online to be able to tell their story, whether it's through videos, pictures, just all type of content in general.

Q: How did you come up with the idea of building your agency?

It's funny because during quarantine I was still technically living in my mother's basement. I would think It's just me down here and It's just this little lab in my head, like, let's try to make like because obviously, I didn't really have a job at that point either.

So I was like, let's just try to make some bit of income while also helping out the community in general. I also felt really self conscious about my resume in general.

So I went ahead and I decided to create an Instagram page highlighting some of the local restaurants because I knew they were struggling.

It was kind of a forefront of okay, how can we help them out? How can we let them be creative, stand out in a noisy environment?

Also a lot of college students were broke and none of them knew there was a restaurant down the street that served an entire meal for $6.

Q: What were the steps you took the create the Instagram page?

So I remember investing in a couple of courses first, because I was like, my mind's going everywhere. I need some bit, of course, template, whatever.

So I first started with a simple Google search restaurants near me in Springfield. I ranked the top 30 or 50. Usually ranked them from like three stars and lower because of the fact that obviously they're not getting as much exposures.

They probably need more help because of the fact that they're struggling more with an online presence or just people talking about them online.

I went to some of them posted about those and then when people ask, like, hey, I need a restaurant recommendation. I was the guy for it. People were like, hey, I need to take my girlfriend out to eat somewhere. Where should I go? Here's a template of 50 restaurants like Pick and choose, buddy.

The overall aspect of being like, okay, well here's restaurants. Let's highlight some specials. Let's highlight where it is. Tag them, have them repost on their account, talk to someone in charge.

Maybe see if we want to do some collaborations and just overall kind of get a blood flowing of where could this restaurant be? And why do people not know about this place that serves a full meal for $6?

Q: What was the coolest thing that happened to you while building that Instagram page?

I was at the bar one time and this girl came up to me and she said, hey, I just want to let you know now, me and my boyfriend went to some of the restaurants because of the fact that we saw them on your page. I will never forget that moment.

Because the fact I was like, you know what? This is why I do that. I still think about to this day how storytelling online can lead anyone going from point A to point B.

Q: At what point did you decide to take a step back and focus on building the agency?

Since I graduated I'm not in Springfield anymore. I'm 3 hours away and so I kind of just have it as a portfolio at this point.

At some point one of my fraternity brother, who is an excellent photographer and videographer, reached out to me was like let's co-found a company, basically.

That agency ended up becoming 4Socialmarketing.

Q: How did you find clients when you first started? What was that process like?

So it was at first family friends. I knew a buddy's father that runs a restaurant, so I reached out to him immediately.

But the rest of clients were from cold calls. I will live and die by cold calls. There's something about cold calls that puts a little hair in your chest.

It's the immediate people skills you have to have. It's like, all right, how do you get this person attention?

Whatever aspect they might say, like, you have to be able to pivot. You have to be able to schedule something out of this.

How can I really grab someone's attention that you have no idea, and they don't know you. How do you do that immediately?

And I've seen a lot more success with cold calls. Email is fine. It's just not as fast. I've seen emails work.

It's totally fine. I'm not bashing on it. But that was the main success we had was cold calling.

I've noticed that using platforms like specific Cold Reach platforms that give me phone numbers, calling up the phone number and then having that handwritten down list or Google Sheets, just basically crossing off who would be a worthy candidate, who wouldn't be. And then reaching back out if needed.