¶ Marketing Simplified
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast . Today is Maven Monday . I'm your host , Brandon Welch , and I'm joined by Caleb . What'd you do for Valentine's Day ? Agee .
You know , we don't honestly , we don't celebrate Valentine's in the same way . But what we did this year is we had like a little night with the kids . So Sierra and I , my wife, in case that wasn't clear, we had like a little night with the kids . So , wow , uh , Ciera and I , my wife , in case that wasn't clear , we have a regular date night .
Some girl he's dating .
We , yeah , the lady I've been dating for more than half of my life , yes , um , yeah , we . We try to keep a consistent date night . So Valentine's day actually will randomly go out to a restaurant and they'll be like and we've got a special menu tonight . We're like why ? And then like Valentine's Day , oh yeah .
So I'm I wonder why there were so many people here I'm more of like a all the time .
Every day is Valentine's Day . You know what ?
I'm saying Dr Love Agee , there you go , all right . I do the same thing at home and we make like a wild dinner like seafood pasta , homemade pasta , steak on top . Except for my wife has alpha gal .
We call her alpha gal Val . She's the alpha gal .
She can't have red meat anymore , so we sub with chicken . Chicken , okay , but hey , good times . Hope you had a good day of love with your love . Hey , before we start today's episode , I want to shout out to Brian McDonough , one of my favorite bosses I ever got to have in the marketing industry . He taught me these three principles .
They simplified my life as a marketer , and so I just wanted to honor him today and say thank you for teaching these principles . I hope they help you as much as they helped me . Hey , guess what ? Advertising is complicated ? Yeah , we make it complicated , yes and uh .
This is just kind of a you know what reset conversation we've had with a handful of people that have come in our door looking for guidance and going like , oh gosh , I gotta get more foot traffic , I gotta get more leads and I want to build seo and I know I need to . You know , have a multi .
I heard that two times this week a multi-channel or no , an omni-channel marketing strategy , and I'm like , ooh .
Omni-channel .
Yeah , like mm omni-channel and I'm going . You know what ? All those things are fine and we've lived in the industry , we've been in all the nerd corners of marketing . But you don't listen to the Maven Marketing Podcast to nerd out . You listen to the Maven Marketing Podcast to eliminate waste in advertising , grow your business and achieve the big dream , right ?
Yeah , and we think that that ought to be through the lens of simplifying what we're doing . Yeah , if we can bring all of these fancy parameters down to a human level and just start to make our decisions from some logic and some dadgum common sense , yeah , I think a lot of the waste gets eliminated that way .
That's what we're proud to do for the people that are in our four walls every week , and so we just thought we would share a little bit of simplifying wisdom .
Yeah .
And some like , when things are chaotic , we go wait , what are we trying to do here ? And so the title of this episode is Marketing Can Only Do Three Things , and you want the big three things ? Bring it on , and then you can get on with your week . Yeah let's do it All right . Number one marketing can bring people to your category , your industry .
They weren't buying solar systems , but you're going to present the idea of you should buy a solar system . Or they weren't in the market for buying an automobile , but this new crazy thing came out called the electric vehicle , and now you can bring them into the idea of buying an electric vehicle right , yeah .
They weren't previously buying anybody in your category .
Yeah .
But you appealed to them .
This one is the hardest to do . It is literally the hardest to pull off , because you have to take them from not consideration right . So there's this thing in marketing called the customer sophistication , or- .
Yeah , customer sophistication , eugene .
Swartz ? Yeah , Eugene Swartz talks about it and this person is not Aware there's even a problem . Probably have a problem . Or maybe they're aware of the problem but they're not solution aware , or they don't care . Right , I know that I know solar exists , but maybe that customer doesn't care or they're not buying that today .
Your job as the marketer , if you're trying to make this outcome happen , is to convince them to buy that thing and also to buy it from you .
Yes .
Which usually , if you're the one who convinces them , you have a better chance . But that's a lot of work .
I didn't know I needed a replacement for the CD player until you came out and said I could put a thousand songs in my pocket . Yes , and now I brought you to the category of the MP3 player . Right .
Yeah .
I didn't know . I needed a phone that could surf the internet right , the internet right . So there's a lot of things historically you could look back and go oh , they brought them to the category .
But also even if you're a bank or a roofer or anybody short of a funeral home , you could reasonably , it would be a good idea to try to bring people to your category a little earlier , right ? Yes , so we're tending to do this with large groups of people . We would call that largely like tomorrow marketing .
Yeah , kind of the same tactics we put in the tomorrow marketing and you are is appealing to a void that's in their life that they're not currently actively buying for .
Yeah , and the hard thing about that is you have to do it probably in a long-term , tomorrow kind of situation , because it's very unlikely that you're going to convince somebody from 0% all the way to 100% in a today customer transactional setting .
First of all , if you're trying to catch them in a search engine or something like that , they're not searching for this .
Yeah . So that's impossible , you have to reach them in their leisure .
Even if you caught them with an intrusive ad , like in social ad or a billboard or print piece or something , even TV ads that you show up , you can't expect them probably to be convinced from zero to 100% in that first moment Think of remember Billy Mays yeah , and it's like I didn't know that we needed anything besides Tide to clean our clothes .
But he's like the power of oxygen and it does X , y and Z , oxyclean , oxyclean , right , yes . Or Al Borland I forget what his actual name is the old guy from Tim the . Tool man , yeah , tool , I was like , now he's selling pocket hoses and I'm like I didn't know I needed a pocket hose .
I think I might need one . I think .
I might have ordered three of them last week , right ? So just at a basic level , ask yourself , what am I trying to do in these three categories ? The first was bring them to the category and then ask is my business in a position where that's what I need to do ? Yes , or is it number two , which is make them buy from you instead of a competitor ?
Yes , I would say most of our commoditized service companies your law firms , your brick and mortar medical firms , your brick and mortar home improvement type companies . This is probably the category you're going to be in the most often , because it's like there's nothing you can say .
To bring me to the category of buying a roof if I don't already know or believe I need one . Yes , because that's $30,000 and there's nothing gratifying about that , because guess what happens when I put one on Nothing ? Yeah Well , that's the reality , yeah .
¶ Customer Loyalty and Brand Differentiation
Category one , bring people to your category . If you're a roofer or a body shop or something like that , you can't force it to hail and for people to need the dings taken out of their roof or their car , that's not going to happen .
So you are looking to make sure that when they need you , when they need somebody who is in your category , they're choosing you instead of their competitor ?
Yes . So the second one make them buy from you instead of a competitor is probably the goal for most of brick and mortar America , and to do this , you have to become the most liked , trusted and thought of partner in the market . Own , liked and trusted , right . So part of that is have they heard of you ?
Second part of that is what have they heard about you ? Yeah , third part of that is did have they heard about you ? Yeah , uh . Third part of that is did you make them feel good , like and and like I said this is . I think this is also very hard to do , but it's , it's the most common need or utility of advertising .
Yeah , here's what happens A lot of people don't stop to think about these two things , um , and they and they just start making noise , they go . Did you know that Peter's Roofing has been around for 25 years and we have 84 years of combined experience and we're in three different locations , so we can Serve you best . Serve you best , right .
Yeah .
I swear I heard that ad , a local ad like that . It's like with our customer satisfaction guarantee and it's like you're not even doing either one of these things . You're not convincing anybody they need a roof , or you're not really making me like you more than any other roofer who would say the exact same thing .
Yeah .
So making them buy from you instead of a competitor has to do with your endearment , your personality , probably the entertainment factor of your advertising .
The old marketing way would be your UVPs , unique value proposition . Right , but there is something that makes you special there's no unique UVP . There's not a unique , unique one .
I would say yes , not a unique value proposition , it's unique value . Personality yes .
And that's what you have to find in the difference there . Um , you could catch somebody at the finish line at this level . It'll cost you a lot more .
Um but what caleb means by that is it's like if I go into the abyss of google and , by the way , we spend millions of dollars on google so I'm not , you know , anti-google , but if I go into the abyss and it is an abyss and try to win over my people there , it's like I'm a snippet of text , maybe a phone number , and , if I'm lucky , some good reviews ,
a high review count amongst a list of other people at least half a dozen others that have probably kind of sort of the same thing , yeah , half a dozen others that have probably kind of sort of the same thing , yeah .
And so if there's not other value or bond or likeness or personality attached to my brand and the feelings that my brand name evokes , yeah , I'm just kind of subject to whoever answered the phone first , whoever happened to be highest on the search engine and did I .
Did those 200 characters say more than the other guys ?
200 characters yeah , and like I said , you can , you can do you ? Can make marginal gains there . Yeah , you can put in things like you know we'll be at your house within an hour , or get somebody on the phone right now and those are the things you want to do .
Save them , you know , time , money or hassle , right yeah um , but just know , when you're in that category and go hey , hey , my job isn't to make noise , my job is to make them like me more than the other competition , and so make sure you're talking to things that matter to them and that are about them , not you and your company . Hey , what's number ?
three Number three make them come back and do repeat business . So this would be what we call a yesterday customer and we're asking them to come back . Um , everybody knows the cheapest customer to earn is the one you already have . Forbes did a study that shows existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers .
Another stat we found was the probability of selling a previous customer is ranges between 60 and 70% . Your close rate , wow A , whereas , um , overall we're talking about all leads , not your close rate when you get in the home or when you get to the customer . Overall close rate for a new customer is five to 20% .
Hmm , so we're talking about three times more likely to sell an existing customer At least three times . Yeah , if you're in the retail space , I'd be paying attention to this because you're thinking , wow , if I've sold them one of these selling an accessory , I am , you know .
But what does every customer come in our door asking for ?
New customers , right , new customers .
Yeah , they want new customers , it's like you realize that's the most expensive customer to go after . So we always turn over every rock in the in the database and a lot of times these businesses who've been been around for 20 , 30 years they've got 50,000 people on their past customer roster and it's like would buy you again .
Or I bet if you just showed up in their life daily with emails or customer appreciation events or something fun you're doing in the community , I bet they would think of you more often to send a friend or family member .
So , yeah , once again in this category , though , the thing you want to do , you can get referrals , but you also , if you have a really , really really long buying cycle like windows , windows , a roof caskets caskets once in a lifetime deal then you've got to really pay attention to the fact that the only opportunity you have with yesterday customers sort of , is
referrals .
Right , right , the repeat business is probably not going to happen unless you have secondary products or services , or you add a product , like if you're a roofing company and you decide to start doing gutters , yes , or if you're a window company and you decide to start doing shades or window tinting .
Yeah .
Or window washing or something like that right Some and that's a good strategy sometimes for business expansion , yeah , or maybe you buy another business that's complimentary to yours , but that's a different episode for a different day .
What you want to remember is don't get caught up in the chaos , don't get in the weeds of advertising , don't try to start micro-focusing on metrics . Those are really secondary , lagging indicators of success and what you ought to be doing . What you want to focus on first is what's the fundamental thing I need to make happen here ?
Yeah , is that bringing people to my category ? So I'm going to talk about why this product will make their life better ? Is it stealing market share from my competitor , and that that's illustrating and demonstrating why you're the better , more fun , more easygoing , more likable choice within that category .
Or are you just going to say , hey , I've got a lot of really awesome past customers and I'm going to inspire them to come back and talk and talk good about me and buy from me again when I , you know , when the time's right ?
You've got to keep in mind . This actually works its way down through your strategy decision-making , your your message decision-making and your media decision-making . It it starts at the strategy level , but you need to , you need to realize which of these am I most likely , which one am I going to get the most juice ?
out of Just sort of gut feeling . Yeah .
You'll know . You'll know right off the bat and , um , you know , if you pay attention to even your market share in the in your area , you'll you'll know how much room there is to take from other competitors , grow your piece of the pie , um , or how often people are coming into your category .
It may be big or small , but then that that informs your message , because if you're trying to make yourself different , that's a much different message than if you're just trying to .
If you're trying to make an infomercial , essentially , and make Pete convince somebody what you're selling , yes , so just pay attention to that , and then that definitely informs your media because you want to put yourself in the right place .
We share this as a pre-step before all other steps . Don't get caught in the weeds . Don't overcomplicate marketing . Think about one of these three things , uh , that you're doing , and I think it gets a lot easier to make the most common sense decision
¶ Marketing Simplified
after that . I don't know who needed to hear that . Yeah , uh , I think a lot of people we've talked to in the last two weeks needed to hear that uh , someone's , someone's gonna hate on this a little bit , I think they're gonna be like oh , duh you know , I'm just like only three .
You know what I ?
could show you some very , very , very heavy advertisers that just got overcomplicated and they didn't realize the core essence , core strategy , core message and media alignment of what they were trying to do , and don't make it harder than it has to be .
Yes , it's already hard it is . It's a complicated subject .
Hey , if you like this episode , if you know somebody that needs to hear it , please forward . Please like , please subscribe or tag them in the comments or whatever you want to do . We'll be back here every Monday answering your real-life marketing questions , because marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie . Have a great week .