Mac&Ernie Marketing Services

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Warragul, VIC
Mac&Ernie Marketing Services

I help Australian businesses & community organisations retain & grow their customer base. Please reach out to connect.
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I develop smart & qualified strategy & branding to build trust & loyalty through clearer communication, more sustainable tactics & better customer experiences. I help Australian regional, suburban and small-town businesses build trust, loyalty and referrals through clearer communication, more sustainable marketing and better customer experience. I’m a marketing and customer experience strategist, focused helping you to build strategies that take into account the people in your world and the place you are. I am practical, kind and passionate about sharing knowledge that is relevant and more 'you'. With 30 years’ experience across marketing, advertising, employer branding and customer experience strategy, I help organisations close the gap between how they want to show up and how they’re actually experienced - by customers, communities and the public. I believe clear thinking creates better experiences, and better experiences create trust and we know the impact trust has on the success of any business. I support:

👉 Small businesses and community organisations to simplify their marketing, strengthen customer experience, and build brands people return to.

👉 Leaders, boards, academics and public figures to communicate with clarity, build influence responsibly, and show up publicly without compromising integrity.

👉 Councils, chambers of commerce and member organisations with training, strategy and practical frameworks that improve visibility, trust and engagement at scale. Ways to work with me include strategy sessions, custom workshops & masterclasses, coaching, advisory projects, training, and the development of practical social media policies and playbooks for organisations and councils. If you value marketing that is structured, realistic and grounded in community - you’ll feel at home here. I work locally throughout Gippsland and across Australia.

10/11/2026

Where are you shopping this year? I’m going to add my purchases in the comments as I go and hopefully inspire more local purchases.

My recent blog on this topic shares some great data but I want to pull one thing out here in case you don’t read the article.

Westpac modelling from October 2025 showed that if every household redirected just $100 a week (of existing spend) to Australian owned and made products, it would increase our GDP by around $16 billion and create around 38,000 jobs 😱

So let’s go and not only keep a small business alive, but make sure every dollar we spend circulates in our local and national economy.

👏

06/11/2026

😉 If you’ve been in business for a few years and keeping up with all the marketing yourself, you’re probably really over it by now and doing one or more of these things:

1. Creating less content and taking longer and longer breaks from social media.

2. Posting more but handing it off to AI and kinda hoping it knows what it’s doing.

3. Spending hours saving ideas and advice to use one day but never going back to them.

4. Ignoring other marketing channels and going all in on social media because it feels free and quick and you get that dopamine hit when a post takes off.

If I was your marketing partner, we’d put a plan together that suits your time, resources, skills and business goals.

It would not be difficult, boring, prescriptive or hard to follow.

It would be strategic, customer focused and sustainable. We’d get everything out of your head and build you something really useful that you can use yourself, hand over to someone in your team or even brief AI.

But you’d still be in control and know what was happening and if it was working.

We’d go all in on what your business needs and how to attract and retain your customers…not try and fit someone else’s strategy into your business.

Sound good? Book a free chat with me or send a message if you prefer text. I’m happy to talk through options and opportunities with zero pressure.

💛 Erika

03/11/2026

Did you know that I offer Action Hours? Perfect if you don’t need a full program and just have one thing you need help with.

✨For the whole of November if you book an Action Hour, I’m offering a second one for $100✨

You just tell me what you want to work on and give me some background so I can do some pre-work and come prepared.

Some recent examples:
- Worked through a website design draft that my client was DIYing and wanted feedback.
- Wrote the text for a new ‘team page’ for a website, some recruitment ads and position descriptions for a business about to go from solo to three.
- Content Smash (what I call an hour of brainstorming content ideas)
- Discussed a proposed restructure and pivot of a business from in-person to online and what that might look like and how to communicate it to existing clients.

Sessions are recorded and you get very detailed notes and actions, so we can spend the whole session deep in whatever challenges you set.

To book:

https://helpmemacandernie.as.me/

But of course if you have questions or aren’t sure if we can get through your challenge in the hour, just send a message and we can work through it there and decide what’s possible. The pre work I do as part of the fee, means we can get a LOT done.

28/10/2026

I went into Sunday’s event feeling a little apprehensive.

Ten women standing as political candidates, in one room, after the week we’d just had. I wasn’t sure how the conversation would go.

I needn’t have worried. They showed up ready to hear from the community and answer difficult questions. The room was full of people with different views, and the conversations felt relevant and respectful.

Even with a microphone that seemed determined to have its own say, I loved being the MC and grateful to be asked. I left feeling more energised about an election I’d been finding pretty meh.

What surprised me most was how often the candidates agreed on the issues that matter here. They had different ideas about what to do, of course, but there was more common ground in that room than I expected.

So if you’ve already decided who’s worth listening to, take a little time to hear from someone else as well. They might surprise you.

Our region has real challenges and real opportunities. I hope whoever is elected gives both the attention they deserve.

Stephanie Sabrinskas you did an amazing job on this event.

📸 Josie Hess
Environment Victoria
Yes2Renewables

27/10/2026

Earlier this month I had the privilege of presenting to the Latrobe Health Assembly AGM and supporters. I was walking them through some new positioning, language and marketing strategy for this wonderful organisation. One of the goals for this was to activate supporters in bringing this messaging to life.

You see The Assembly has been in a period of great change. Not in mission, not in values, not in purpose. They have moved from fully funded to DGR status and are now seeking funding to continue their important work across the Latrobe Valley community.

That means new language, new marketing goals and strategies, some training and more…and I absolutely LOVED working on this strategic marketing project.

So if you need this kind of help, please reach out 👋 I’ve got space to take on new projects before the end of the year.

Share if you know an organisation who needs help 💛 Erika

21/10/2026

I’ve thought about this every now and then, never more so than when I was in Greece 2 years ago 🥺

I don’t have an answer yet.

Mac&Ernie was built around my knowledge and the way I work with people. That’s a lot harder to hand over than the passwords.

If you’re the brains, the founder, the person everyone asks for, the reason clients keep coming back - have YOU thought about how you’ll eventually leave or step aside or fill appointments for new people in your team?

Transitions, new service providers and handovers are tricky and need to be planned into your customer journey in advance of major changes.

At some point, I know I’ll want something different. Maybe fewer hours or maybe something entirely new. I’d quite like a Greek island or two, to feature somewhere - sound like a plan?

But what happens to the business then? What could someone else take on? What would I want to keep doing? Would I be comfortable just closing it?

I spend a lot of time helping other people work out what comes next. I’ve given my own exit considerably less attention.

I’d love to hear where your head is with this, especially if you haven’t worked it out either.

Anyone coming to Greece with me?

💛 Erika

08/10/2026

Value isn’t just about what you pay or what you get. It’s about how the exchange made you feel.

Two coffees for $14 might seem expensive, but add in the atmosphere, the company, the opportunity to get out of the rain and the chance to sit and enjoy a moment, and suddenly it feels like a bargain.

That’s the thing about customer experience - it shapes how we perceive value and is something every business should be thinking about.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you feel you got.

Join me for a webinar where I will unpack a stack of advice and guidance on this topic. It’s on October 29th and it’s $55 for 35mins of my expertise and 10mins to ask me anything. I’ll let you decide the value of that 😉

Now I’m going to blow one of my two monthly links (generous Meta 🙄) so be sure to click on it and make it worth my while.

https://events.humanitix.com/from-contact-to-connection-mastering-the-art-of-customer-delight

Address

PO Box 124
Warragul, VIC
3820

Website

https://www.macandernie.com.au/, https://www.smalltownbusinesspodcast.au/

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