In this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor is joined by Dree Ziegler, founder of Drizzle Digital, a woman-owned digital marketing agency. Dree discusses Drizzle Digital’s services, including social media management, website development, email marketing, and paid advertising. She emphasizes the agency’s data-driven approach and the importance of understanding client goals. Dree also introduces a new turnkey digital marketing package for small and medium e-commerce businesses. The conversation highlights the value of community and networking through organizations like WBEC-West and previews Drizzle Digital’s future expansion into the hospitality industry.
Dree Ziegler is the founder of Drizzle Digital, a WBENC-certified, woman-owned digital agency built for businesses ready to stand out and grow.
Based in Denver, Colorado, Dree leads a fully remote team that thrives on creative strategy and delivering results. With more than 15 years of experience in digital marketing and e-commerce, she’s as passionate about crafting compelling campaigns as she is about exploring the world.
Whether she’s skiing down Colorado’s slopes, tackling an adventure halfway across the globe, or drumming with enthusiasm that far outweighs precision, Dree brings curiosity and determination to everything she does.
Connect with Dree on LinkedIn and follow Drizzle Digital on Facebook.
Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Dree Ziegler with Drizzle Digital. Welcome.
Dree Ziegler: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Drizzle, how are you serving folks?
Dree Ziegler: Well, Drizzle Digital is a woman-owned, woman-led digital marketing agency, and we’re based here in Denver, Colorado. We specialize in social media management, website development, email marketing, and paid advertising. And we really deliver creative, data-backed solutions for B2B and B2C companies. So, our goal is to help them grow their digital presence, engage their audiences, and build their brands online.
Lee Kantor: So, what kind of differentiates Drizzle from maybe others in the digital marketing space?
Dree Ziegler: So, Drizzle Digital is woman-owned and we are WBENC certified, as you mentioned, so we really bring a fresh perspective, I think. We’re also women-led, so we have women in leadership roles throughout our company. And in terms of our actual service offering, we really take a bold, creative approach to our clients, and that work that we do is data-backed. So, we are looking at data on a monthly basis based on the work we do to see if what we’re doing is working and how we can do it better.
Dree Ziegler: The other piece is that we really like to engage with our clients as part of their team, so we like to become an extension of your marketing team, an extension of your goals to work together hand-in-hand.
Lee Kantor: So, what’s it like when you begin a relationship with a client? What types of questions are you kind of asking them to really hone in on what are the metrics that matter and how you can really move the needle in areas that are important to them?
Dree Ziegler: Sure. I think the first thing we’re going to do is understand our client’s goals. So, clients come to us at a number of different points in their journey, and what we try to understand is what they’re trying to accomplish online, so we’re problem solvers in a way.
Dree Ziegler: If they come to us as an e-commerce company, we know most likely their goal is going to be to sell more online, and we are going to put strategies in place to make that happen. With a lot of our B2B clients, we’re looking at lead nurturing education, building leads for them. It’s sort of that longer sales cycle.
Dree Ziegler: So, the first thing we’re going to ask is what their goals are and try to understand that, and then understand how we can put together a strategy that is creative, that is data-backed, that can help them meet those goals.
Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with a client, obviously this is what you do 24/7, and the client obviously doesn’t understand all the nuances, and sometimes they ask you questions or have requests that maybe they read about in a blog post or a friend of theirs is doing, but isn’t really going to be effective for them. So, how do you go about kind of educating them and getting kind of layers deep to the real action that it will take for them to get the outcome they desire, but maybe not the tactic they think they need?
Dree Ziegler: Sure, and that definitely happens. I think understanding the client goals is really critical to this piece of it. So, not every client is going to need the same strategy or the same plan. It really depends on what that goal is. And it also depends on other factors, like budget and resources that they have on their side and things like that.
Dree Ziegler: But there are some misconceptions that we really try to address early on. So, for example, just posting on social media is not necessarily going to get you what you want for your business. You need to have an overarching strategy, and you might need to combine it with another tactic to make it work. For example, social media platforms really kind of limit the amount of reach you might have for organic posting. So, you might need to combine it with another strategy, like a paid ad or a boosting strategy to get in front of the right audiences to get what you need.
Dree Ziegler: So, we’re really digging into what their actual goals are, and trying to meet their goals within their budget, and be effective for them online, and that could be a range of solutions for them.
Lee Kantor: Now, how do you kind of protect your clients from the shiny object syndrome of “Hey, there’s a new platform that my nephew told me about, I don’t want to miss out on that, and let’s kind of reconfigure everything and get really into that.” Like, how do you kind of separate the fad from the trend?
Dree Ziegler: So, I think a lot of this comes down to reporting. So, we spend a lot of time in the data, understanding where things are successful and where things are not. And the thing about shiny things is that sometimes the shiny thing is a good thing to try and sometimes it’s not. So, it depends on what the data is telling us. If we’re not being as effective as we want to be with some of our strategies, we might try something new. We are always open to testing. Testing helps us to understand where we’re going to be successful.
Dree Ziegler: So, for example, the shiny object that you might be talking about, maybe it’s a new platform for social media. We might actually try that and say, “Let’s go and post a couple times this month, see if we get any traction on that platform and go from there.” So, I would say sometimes the shiny object is not going to work. Testing it will tell us whether it’s a good idea or not.
Lee Kantor: So, do you have any advice for the listener out there that maybe is not ready for Drizzle but wants to test something, like, is there an easy way to test something or kind of a simple way maybe is better than easy way of trying out something to see if it will work or not?
Dree Ziegler: I think social media platforms and email marketing are a good place for trying different things, trying new creative things like that. If you’re already doing some of those things, I would absolutely recommend that you give something a try. So, try posting a new type of content or try sending an email that includes maybe a new creative or something fresh for your email marketing, those are kind of things that you might, as a baseline, already have in your small business.
Dree Ziegler: When you start talking about things like paid ads or doing website development, things that get technical, that’s when you might want to get involved with a company like Drizzle, an agency that can help you do those more technical, difficult things.
Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned a couple different types of clients, you have e-commerce or B2B, is there kind of an industry niche or is it just anybody that is marketing that could benefit from digital? What is the profile of that ideal client? Is it more of a mindset or values rather than what they’re actually doing? Who is that ideal client for you?
Dree Ziegler: Yeah. So, we have clients in a number of different verticals, both B2C and B2B. We actually work with some very large corporations on their social media marketing. And then, we work with small and medium-sized businesses on website, email, things like that. So, really, we work with any size business.
Dree Ziegler: What we see in terms of consistency is our clients come to us because they understand that digital needs to be a strong part of their marketing strategy. And I think that’s true for almost all businesses at this point. So, whether they come to us early on and we helped them build their brand from the logo to look and feel to messaging, or they have an established brand and they come to us and they’re just really looking to grow online, the consistent theme for our clients is they know that digital needs to be a large stream for them and we need to help them to optimize it.
Lee Kantor: Now, you recently launched a turnkey digital marketing package, can you talk a little bit about that and what’s special about it?
Dree Ziegler: Yeah, sure. So, we see this gap in the market where particularly small and medium e-commerce businesses, they know they need to be doing paid ads, they know they need to be doing social, they know they need an email marketing strategy. And so, they can hire someone to handle that. So, they can hire a digital marketing manager in-house or what we’re proposing with our turnkey tool is that we come in as that marketing strategist for them. These are usually businesses where ownership is a big part of their marketing, where they have needs for a variety of digital marketing tactics and maybe only the budget for somebody to manage one.
Dree Ziegler: So, we come in with a strategist and we say we can handle your paid ads, your website management, your social media, and your email, and we’ll handle all of that under one flat rate. And that really helps the client to feel confident that they’re getting all the services in an integrated approach across all the different services.
Dree Ziegler: So, we become that extension of the team that we like to be. We have a single point of contact that is that main person helping to organize on our side. And we really think this gives the client, you know, the best digital marketing tools to grow their brand online.
Dree Ziegler: And for them, you know, in addition to that, they don’t have to spend to build that in-house team with all the skill sets that a digital marketing team on our side can provide. So, for one flat rate, they’re getting data, they’re getting creative, they’re getting strategy, they’re getting technical resources. So, that’s really the benefits for that service and we’re really excited to launch it.
Lee Kantor: Now, is it a better fit for the B2B or the e-commerce or the B2C? What is the ideal kind of fit for this or it works for either one?
Dree Ziegler: It technically could work for either one, but we’re really focused on small and medium e-commerce businesses. So, these are companies that are established bigger than a startup, but they’re at the point where they want to sell more online, and they are looking for resources to do it at a reasonable rate.
Lee Kantor: Now, why was it important for you and your firm to become part of WBEC- West? What was it that you were looking for when you joined that community and what have you gotten out of it?
Dree Ziegler: I think for one, it provides a ton of opportunity to connect and network with larger corporations and businesses. Being certified gets you in front of a ton of large organizations at their national conference. Those meet and greets are really, really valuable. On top of that, though, the community is really wonderful. It’s a lot of women who are facing a lot of the same challenges that we are in terms of growth, in terms of managing employees, in terms of just the day-to-day of running a business. And reaching out and leaning on them has been a really wonderful part of being a part of that organization.
Lee Kantor: Now, what do you need more of and how can we help? What’s next for you guys?
Dree Ziegler: So, the turnkey piece is really exciting. That’s been launched already. But the next thing that we are working on, a number of our clients ended up being in the hospitality industry, so we are actually launching a second digital brand really focused on hotels and hospitality, and that will be probably in the next month or so. But that will be a separate brand that we will be working with hotels to build their social media presence, run their email, and help them really book more rooms in a modern way. So, stay tuned for that. That’s probably coming in February.
Lee Kantor: So, if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?
Dree Ziegler: We are at drizzledigital.com, and you can set a meeting with us right there on the homepage.
Lee Kantor: And that’s D-R-I-Z-Z-L-E-digital.com.
Dree Ziegler: Correct.
Lee Kantor: Well, Dree, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Dree Ziegler: Thank you. It’s been great to be here.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.