4 Questions That Will Work Miracles In Your Advertising

Brandon Welch 0:00
You can make a bright pink billboard that people goes, Oh, I saw that. But if the words are all about you and not about something that adds value to their life, they’re gonna forget it as soon as they saw it or noticed it, right? Anybody can get attention for a second or two. Holding attention is the art.

Welcome to the Maven marketing podcast today is Maven Monday. This is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions so you can eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. I’m your host. Brandon Welch, I’m here with Caleb, the Reverend. AG, wow. Bringing the goodness,

Caleb Agee 0:37
the goodness the

Brandon Welch 0:38
spirit, the spiritual leader of our company. Oh, well, thank you. He’s praying for you. He’s definitely praying for me. And today he has some marketing, some marketing miracles that are going to solve any ailment you have in your marketing process. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 0:52
it feels a little televangelist to go that direction. But

Brandon Welch 0:56
hey, listen. Dial one 888, or one 888, wings, and we’ll send you a prayer mug, prayer for your donation of $25

Caleb Agee 1:07
on a mission from God. Yeah, yes. Well, in all seriousness, I’ll wear the Reverend hat.

Brandon Welch 1:14
Yeah, he is the red. We’re so grateful for pride. Yeah, blessing. What are we talking about today? We’re talking about four questions that can improve any marketing equation. If you’ve got something that’s broken, not producing what it should, these four questions will help you diagnose the issue. If you got something that’s good, not great, these four questions will help you improve every area. If you’ve got something that’s great and you want to make it even better this these four questions will help you understand what is working and why and how you can pour more gas on that. That’s a big claim. It is. We use these four questions

Caleb Agee 1:43
every day, though. Yeah, they’re systematic in in how they can help you diagnose any, any marketing problem. So I’m gonna list off the questions real quick, and then we’re gonna just jump in.

Brandon Welch 1:52
Yeah, don’t save it full over the altar call. Alright, we’re

Caleb Agee 1:54
gonna keep it. Oh my god. We’re gonna keep it. Keep it tight for you. Question number one, were you seen? Question number two, were you relevant? Question number three, was your next step? Clear? And question number four, are you doing everything you can to set the appointment? With those four questions, you can literally diagnose. You can solve any marketing problem that you’re running up

Brandon Welch 2:16
against. It presents as, oh gosh, Google isn’t working like it used to, or, oh gosh, I don’t think that, you know, XYZ media is worth the money anymore. And really, it’s never, it’s never just that thing. And we’re not standing up for the, you know, inefficient media, but there’s a reason behind those things. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 2:33
we’re asking the wrong questions as marketers a lot.

Brandon Welch 2:35
So were you seen? Were you relevant? Was your next step clear, and are you doing everything you can to set the appointment speaks to the all phases of the buyer journey.

Caleb Agee 2:43
Yes, that’s right.

Brandon Welch 2:45
So something No,

Caleb Agee 2:46
I was gonna say number one is, were you seen? And we’re gonna look at all of these through the lens of the three types of customers. What

Brandon Welch 2:53
are the three types of customers? Nate the camera. Guy, yeah. Today. Customer, tomorrow. Customer, yesterday. Customer, if you listen to this podcast for half a minute, you know what that means. But quick review today is people who woke up going, Holy smokes. They got to have it today. Something broke, or I’m just dad gum tired of not having it. So they’re looking for you or somebody in your category tomorrow. Customer, small amount of people, very small amount of people. Unless you’re selling cheeseburgers, that’s a small amount of people today. Even then, they

Caleb Agee 3:19
can still buy chicken wings, yes, if you’re buying

Brandon Welch 3:21
caskets, it’s once every 72 years. If you’re buying windows, it’s once every 30. And if you’re buying roofs, it’s once every 15. You’re buying attorneys, it’s once every seven or eight, buying cars. It’s every two and a half, five to seven, I think, yeah. So it’s different. There’s a smaller group of people per categories that are longer buying cycle, yes, but you already knew that tomorrow customers being seen by tomorrow customers a different equation than today customers, because tomorrow customers don’t need to think about your category, right? So they’re not

Caleb Agee 3:54
they’re somewhere in those three years, yeah, or 30 years, they could

Brandon Welch 3:58
suddenly become today customer at any point. But right now they’re not an active thinking about you mode. And so how we get seen by them is different equation. And then yesterday, customers, yes, you still need to be seen by people who’ve already bought from you. I mean, that’s the most profitable customer, yeah, in long run. And so we’re going to speak to how to be seen by each three, three of these today. Customers, the obvious one is

Caleb Agee 4:19
the search engine. It’s everybody lands there. We whip out our phone, or when we hit it, do you smash it? I tap it. I hit it. Just punch it in the face. You tap your phone, type in whatever solve my problem, roofer, window, attorney, whatever you’re looking for and because you have a need that day. And the question is, are you were you seen? And you need to go and know that you were seen in those search results. There

Brandon Welch 4:48
are a lot of people right now that think they’re being seen on search engines because they’re paying money to somebody or some search engine platform. And what you need to know is that even compared to a year ago or. Maybe even six months ago, that money is not going the same places. If you aren’t actively managing it, you may be going in and saying, Hey, put me in front of all people looking for roofs. And they may be showing you to people looking for awnings or, you know, like gutter repair or service car parts, carports. Yeah. I mean literally, Google is being that liberal with its alignment of what you think you’re bidding on and what it’s showing. And there are a lot of ways to fix that. And Nate’s gonna link to an episode where we talk a lot about that. But your first suspicion, your first I wonder if should be, am I actually being seen? Yeah. So I’m not gonna over complicate that right now, you want to ask your search engine people, what’s my search impression share compared to my competitors? Because a competitor could come in and swoop out bid you and swoop over the traffic overnight, any minute they could do that. So that could change. If you’re just going ads light, it could be Google Search Console. Ask your nerds about the Google Search Console. How many times am I showing up for X amount of queries? It’d

Caleb Agee 6:04
be more like organic search research. Yep.

Brandon Welch 6:06
Were you ranking in maps? We had a client who had, like, literally 16 years of being number one in maps for his category, and it disappeared overnight, because Google is a bunch of butt heads, and they had a bug in the Google system. And it took that one disappearing off maps, literally cut their call volume in half for their business and half. And it was bad, not good, and it took us nine weeks to get it restored. Yeah. So that could be going on your you have the experts to go figure help you figure this out. Easy

Caleb Agee 6:36
way. Go google it yourself.

Brandon Welch 6:39
Call yourself, just

Caleb Agee 6:39
check it out.

Brandon Welch 6:40
First smell test.

Caleb Agee 6:41
It’s just like something wrong here. Sometimes that doesn’t give you an accurate result. Yeah, it’s not, it’s not true to form, but you can maybe get a sense of where you’re landing, how you’re Are you showing up.

Brandon Welch 6:54
There’s a lot of wacky stuff going on at Google, so at least do that regularly. But tomorrow. Customers, how do we get seen by tomorrow customers,

Caleb Agee 7:01
well, we have to, there’s, there’s kind of a level of being seen on a weekly level that we want to, we want to make sure that we are a part of their lives. For the we just talked about 74 years for a casket, right? We want to be there for 74 years. And some marketer Listen to me. Said, what? Yeah, you’re gonna make me well, you’re not going out of business next week, right? Yeah, you’re,

Brandon Welch 7:26
you should, you should advertise for as long as you plan on being in business, that’s right, and so long as you plan on earning future customers, yeah?

Caleb Agee 7:35
So what that means is, and we’re gonna hit, hit this in the next step, but you just need to at this level. We’re just making sure that you are actively being seen by tomorrow customers, usually in a tomorrow media. And what do those look like?

Brandon Welch 7:50
Yes, so we’re talking the medias that reach large groups of people daily, hopefully like a high frequency, because it’s a lot cheaper to talk to 200,000 people every week and then wait for them to need you than it is to try to intercept the 500 that actually need you this month. That’s right, like, it’s way, way, way, way cheaper, yeah, and it snowballs and so but, but the thing you can’t do, if you want to be seen, and that’s the goal where you’ve seen. The thing you can’t do is talk about your silly product all in, you know, just by itself. You can’t just say, you know, are you needing vacuum repair? Well, we’re the best vacuum repair salesman and all of you know, in Timbuktu right

Caleb Agee 8:34
in that moment you were ignored. Yeah,

Brandon Welch 8:36
you were ignored, right? So you have to entertain. We’re going to talk a little bit more about relevancy in a second, but for the tomorrow customer to be seen, you have to entertain. You have to disrupt regular you have to disrupt predictability. That’s right. So we call it being like, known, liked and trusted before the sale. Because guess what were you seen? Could mean in their own mind, if that’s right, your vacuum suddenly breaks, and you go, gosh Golly. Who do I like? Your your brain is a lot closer even than your cell phone, and your thumbs can type and it’s right, if you know Tim’s vacuum repair, and Tim Bucha Tennessee is already in your mind because you he’s been seen all these years or days or weeks ahead of the sale. But guess what? Tim wins, because you don’t even go look at the other vacuum repair guys, that’s right. So we’re gonna talk about how to do that more in just a second. But third is

Caleb Agee 9:27
yesterday. Customers, so were you seen by yesterday? Customers, easy way to do this, to be a part of their lives, is email marketing, text message marketing. You should be having some sort of touch point with your past customers on a regular basis. How? No reason. How

Brandon Welch 9:45
long has it been since your past customers have heard from you? Yep, and it ought not to be more than a few weeks. Yep, you can at least be a blip. Yep. Um, cool. So that’s the that’s the first thing. Just say, was I seen? Was this thing even seen? Mean, slight interjection here, there’s a lot of people paying money to advertising platforms that get these random video impressions or these random things that sound really fancy, and they think, Well, I’m paying $3,000 a month to, you know, XYZ digital expert to do this fancy OTT advertising. And it can work, but a lot of times those impressions, those those times your ad is seen, are by a very, very, very random set of people, and not enough people in the same tight unit to even think of you twice or even remember you. Yeah, so that’s a part of that equation. Was it just That’s common sense. Thing like, Is this even getting seen and how and make that media person or platform explain that to you? Yep, cool. Second question,

Caleb Agee 10:47
were you relevant? Were

Brandon Welch 10:48
you relevant? Reverend, relevancy, relevant. Okay, one thing to be seen, that’s another to be heard. This has everything to do with not talking about yourself and talking about the customer their life, right? It’s very, very, very, very rarely and never. The first thing you do is to is to offer the bullet points about your business and your existence and your product and your service, right. Relevancy is based in

Caleb Agee 11:23
um, empathy, yeah,

Brandon Welch 11:24
and curiosity for what that person is going through,

Caleb Agee 11:27
understanding who they are, where they are, and then speaking to that from from, really, from their situation. Yes, you’re kind of offering. You’re reaching out to them in that way. Yes, nobody likes

Brandon Welch 11:39
the pushy insurance salesman at the dinner party who only wants to talk about himself, everybody loves the guy or gal who asks three questions about the other person about you before you ever even know their name. So same is true with advertising today, customers. That means, did your landing page speak to their void? Yeah, there’s a there’s a client that I saw recently, or a potential client. That’s that their biggest thing is, we’re the biggest, you know, yada yada providers in the Midwest. And I’m like, that’s the first thing you’re going to greet your customer with. Like in this the product they sell is full of, like, huge problems they solve for people, but they’re talking about how we’re the biggest, the number one, the most trucks, the most locations and the most amount of reviews. And it’s like, That’s not the thing. It’s really, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve? Yeah. So did your landing page speak to their void or only talk about you second person language, like you, you, you, you’re gonna feel great, you’re gonna save money, you’re gonna save time, you’re gonna whatever benefit and outcome you provide. That’s right, easiest way to hack that and the Maven method we always talk about, what are their needs, pains, hopes and fears that should guide the words that you use in all of your advertising? What are their needs? What are their pains? What their pains, what are their hopes, what are their fears? Speak to one or multiple of those, and then social proof. Hopefully. That tells stories. Yeah, not just, they’re great. I highly recommend them. But like, I had this problem, and Caleb came out, and he took a look at it, and, my gosh, I’d learned more in five minutes talking with him than I’ve you know, anybody’s ever taken the time to tell me, tell show stories about how you solved problems that are similar to theirs.

Caleb Agee 13:27
They this, were you relevant? I would argue, is one of the harder questions to answer in these four, in these four here, because you have to with today marketing, especially, and tomorrow marketing, I would say all of these, the message is, the is the critical piece here, are we relevancy has to do with how well we’re speaking to that human that’s on the other end of whatever we’re we’re dealing with. And the struggle, or the difficulty, is, if I’m in a today mode, I’m very transactional, right? Which is, I need it quickly, and I need you to convince me quickly you’ve got five seconds to answer my question, or seem like you can fix my problem, or I hit back and I’m going somewhere else and to write ad copy and landing page copy that speaks to my perceived need in that moment, takes an immense amount of sharpening, because you have to take what maybe would take you, you know, 200 words to say in person. You have to make it tighter and smaller and tighter, and you have to get razor sharp with all of

Brandon Welch 14:35
that. Yes. So good, really good litmus test is to go have your person who’s answering the phones for one week write down all the questions that he or she gets and make sure that the top five questions are answered within one scroll of your website. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 14:53
So that’s today, customers, tomorrow, customers. We hit on this a second ago. It’s all about entertainment. But again. In the message is the pivotal piece here, because we can get seen. We can make a TV ad, we can make a billboard. We can make think of any media you could put it on, but the relevancy is the difference between being noticed and being ignored. You

Brandon Welch 15:16
can make a bright pink billboard that people goes, Oh, I saw that. But if the words are all about you and not about something that adds value to their life, they’re gonna forget it as soon as they saw it or noticed it, right? Same with TV ads, yeah, a lot of people think they just have to be obnoxious. That’s really not the thing. Anybody can get attention for a second or two. Holding attention is the art. And so Roy talks about this, our friend Roy Williams, offering a thought more interesting than the one they were previously thinking, and then offering them another thought more interesting than that, yeah, offering another thought and predictability as soon as they think they know what you’re saying, as soon as they realize, Oh, crap, I’m paying attention to an ad, you’re toast. But if you can pile on, you know, punchy lines that either make them think differently or laugh at something or get mad, or remind them of something that ought to be better in their life, or remind them of a hope or a desire that they have or a secret wish that has not been granted to them. You take them to a better future. All of those things add up to ads that get paid attention to. It doesn’t matter if I’m buying today or not, because I was relevant in that person’s life. Today, I will be relevant at the time that they decide to buy. I don’t have to run that race like my competitors do, because I was already relevant. I was already the guy they know, like and trusted, right? That’s right. So that’s relevancy. We do that most often with memorable personalities. That’s the that’s the most sure way to do it.

Caleb Agee 16:56
People don’t connect to your logo as much as they will a human

Brandon Welch 17:00
or graphics or a spokesperson, or even a cartoon, right? Yep, sometimes we use cartoons when the when the owner is 100% out on being part of the campaign, but we’re still building a personality, right? For the sake of this episode. What that means is having a consistent set of words that you use, a consistent style of voice that is not just informative, but it’s engaging and it’s dynamic. Yeah, a consistent tone you use, a consistent smile, probably a consistent way you look, a consistent way you make eye contact and you write lines for yourself or your ad. Writer writes lines for you that makes you a character in your own company or your own ads. Yep, and it may not be how you talk exactly every single day, but it’s a boiled down more interesting presentation of your characteristics. Yeah, concentration, yes, characteristics than just being like, Hi, I’m Tom and I have Tom’s gutters. And so when you need a gutters, remember Tom’s gutters, right? That’s right, you got to have some stick to it. Yeah, it’s

Caleb Agee 18:12
a, it’s a caricature of who you are. You think about. You’ve got 30 seconds to to be this character, to be the forms of a dynamic character, and hopefully not just a talking head on the screen. And so to do that, you have to exaggerate. You have to have moments that are a little bit confusing or different or quirky or in. You got to look for those things and build them in, sometimes intentionally, yeah, a lot of times intentionally, you have to force it into the script, or the way you deliver.

Brandon Welch 18:45
And this is everywhere you know it. You see it in national ads. Geico, progressive, state, farm, Allstate, the mayhem, guy from all state, like you see them build these personas and they become these things. We’re kind of always wondering what they’re going to do next. Yeah, you can do this in your ads. We’ve talked about a ton of them on this podcast, Randy D Tyler and Ashley absolute roofing. Even even categories that are a little more buttoned up and professional are attorneys and our doctors. We do this for every client. That’s right,

Caleb Agee 19:19
and even if you end up with a voiceover of sorts, think about, thinking about Subaru and Toyota do this really well, they still leave me with a feeling. So it’s still, it’s a pretty polished, it’s

Brandon Welch 19:30
a brand personality voiceover, and

Caleb Agee 19:31
you hear that, that guy or gal talking, but they’re talking about how they’re saving puppies or and you, you finish the ad, going, Oh, that was, you feel

Brandon Welch 19:40
your family. You feel the things you love when you Yeah, yeah, Subaru, that’s love. That’s what makes Subaru Subaru. That’s right. That’s right. Harley Davidson does all this. Jeep does this well. So you’re, you’re at a base level. Relevancy for tomorrow customers is not about hey, when you think of this, think of us. Um, it is presenting yourself in a way that they determine in their own mind that you share their values and they like you. Just making them like you, yep. Um, we don’t like guys that walk up to us and try to sell us something, right? That’s right, so don’t do that. Uh, yesterday customers, that’s just celebrating the tribe. That’s Hey, we’re having a Harley Davidson rally, or, Hey, we’re having a barbecue cook off because we’re an outdoor grilling store. Or, Hey, look at our you know, last latest projects wasn’t this awesome. We talked to a custom home builder about just doing a catalog of his past homes and sharing that with people who have already built homes with him, because it’s because it’s just inspiring, right?

Caleb Agee 20:44
It is. It’s exciting. Another good way to be relevant to a yesterday customer is with education and teaching them. So we have, we have an outdoor store. It’s outdoor home. We can just say it just south south Campbell on tracker road. Yeah. Um, so one of our clients, they sell grills of all kinds and outdoor patio furniture. They if you Google, um, big green egg recipes, they will show up in the top five results for most of the big recipes you’d imagine cooking on your grill. Yes, that that is happening because could have

Brandon Welch 21:23
bought something 20 years ago from them and they are still adding value to your life. Then they

Caleb Agee 21:26
have a they have a follow up list, an email flow that literally gives you a recipe, like every week or something cool you can do, How about

Brandon Welch 21:34
how about Alec? And the music stores, every week they’re sending you a really, really well produced and really good video on how on guitar techniques. And so if you bought a any level of guitar from them, you’re seeing these guys, and it’s constant inspiration. So talk to your yesterday customers, and duh, talk to them about stuff they bought and how they can get more out of it, right? That’s right, or if, or if they’re not gonna ever buy again, if it’s not like an add on repeat sale, then bring them all together, give them cake and ice cream and celebrate them once a year, call in a bluegrass band and have fun, throw a hoe down, right? Customer appreciation events or just Christmas cards, right? Just, you know, make them feel relevant. So that’s right, were you seen? Were you relevant? Now we’re going to talk about is your next step? Clear, the relevancy one’s the hardest one, but I would say this is the, probably the easiest one that people just miss is the most missed thing, right? Yes, we think it’s obvious that somebody can imagine the steps of doing business with this. Well, you just call us up and you do business with us. And actually, for a lot of people who have never bought your category before, that’s not even clear. But also, the one who removes all doubt about how simple this is going to be is the one who gets the fastest response to the ad, or the, you know, yeah, recalled tomorrow. Customer, yeah.

Caleb Agee 22:55
So that looks a lot like, yes. You could tag it with, you know, visit us online, or call us now or something like that. But being more clear than that, why am I calling you? What’s going to happen? Call to get this call to get Yes. Call to so we have a client says, uh, call us to talk to a real person in seven seconds or less, yes,

Brandon Welch 23:19
and it’s an industry and a product that is extremely cloudy, right? Yeah, it’s phone tree call centers, and I don’t even know who I would talk to or what I’m even going to ask them. And they’re like, talk to a real person in seven seconds or less and test them. And it’s it happens. It would work if you need payroll solutions, by the way, a plus payroll That’s right. Hey Paul. Hey Paul. Hey Brian, um, okay, so practically for today, customers, you want the steps listed out on your landing page. It’s easy. 1231, you give us a few details about your home. Two, we’re going to send you a price before we have to waste any of your time. Three, if you like what you see, set up an appointment to pick out your final product, right? Yes. And to the person is going, Gosh, that’s going to be high pressure, and I don’t even know what’s going to cost. And, man, if I have to take a couple evenings out of my life to even consider this product, yeah, that’s like music to their ears, because you removed all objections and frictions.

Caleb Agee 24:16
The get a

Brandon Welch 24:19
price is one that you can do if you’re not in an industry that does that does that, explain what they’re going to learn in the consultation, give them a guarantee about how long it’s going to take or not going to take, remove the pressure of them having to make a decision, or, you know, move forward without the information they want. Yeah, in the initial promise, if you’re

Caleb Agee 24:38
scaling, if you’re skilling, if you’re selling cars, you can offer somebody to come and take a no hassle, no guaranteed test drive, right? No worries. And I think a lot of times it would just be like, I don’t know, come, come see this car or tell me more about it, or inquire. About request a quote of this car. Is

Brandon Welch 25:01
this vehicle still available? Yeah.

Caleb Agee 25:04
But instead, what if you said, Come try it out, yeah,

Brandon Welch 25:08
schedule your test drive. Yeah, at your house, right? Yeah, free delivery. So today, customers just clarify the easiest, most reasonable next step for them. But for tomorrow, what do we do about people who aren’t buying yet? We don’t we know they’re not buying. So we’re not going to say, Come on in today. It’s like, I can say that, but you know, less than 1% of 1% is going to respond to that. The next step for clear tomorrow, marketing is all about a hook. I like location hooks and website hooks. It’s a retail experience. I’m not saying at 1025, you know, County Road, whatever, whatever, because nobody knows where the flip that is, but everybody knows where South Campbell Street is, or everybody knows where the big pink gorilla is, or by the Nixa water tower or whatever, right? Yeah, I’m giving them a location recall queue that they can easily call up, and they can imagine in their mind, without ever going there, where that place kind of is, and they can get within a stone’s throw of it, right? That’s right. Used to be an advertiser in Springfield that said Stones Throw west to Sam’s. And it’s like, I know where Sam’s Club is. There’s only one in town, right? So we have a client that we just said it a minute ago, just off South Campbell on tracker road. He says his address or his location in a really weird way. If you have multiple locations, or you’re not a retail brick and mortar based experience, you might say, schedule an appointment anytime at my vision clinic.com, right? And so you’re just, you’re, you’re planting that consistency. You want to deliver the same way, and hopefully it’s in a weird, interesting way. You say it, yeah, it’s not just put the website on the screen and expect people to know or remember that, yeah, audio, right? Yeah.

Caleb Agee 26:55
We’re, and we’re, we’re talking about a hook. Think a lot of times a hook is maybe in writing. That’s the first thing you do to grab the person. In this case, we’re actually talking about a hook like a song, the chorus of a song, that the part that repeats that gets stuck in your head over and over, and they kind of do it at the end of the chorus. That’s what the hook we’re talking about here is, it’s the it’s that little ear worm that kind of gets stuck in your head, and you can’t go on the rest of your day without humming it. We’re trying to do that in your ad, and the way you do that is by doing it the same way, and you add a little bit of a melody to it, to your delivery. I’m not saying you have to sing it, but there’s, there’s melody to how you deliver it. Yeah, uh,

Brandon Welch 27:36
actually, sometimes it’s literally melody, it’s musical, it’s rhythmic, or it’s to a jingle. The one that we put on here was you don’t need to worry at all. Just make one shingle call to your trusted solid guys at solid roofs, solid roofs. So it’s like, make one shingle call, and it’s like, people love to hate that little thing, but they literally cannot forget it. They’re gonna be singing it in their sleep, and that’s a wonderful thing. So I promise you gonna change for your business, yes, but do it a little bit more obnoxious. Isn’t the right word? Theatrical, theatrical. Thank you. Yes, whimsical. I think you ought to. I

Caleb Agee 28:19
promise you, even if you have the most boring, reasonable next step, yep, for your category, and if it was just call us at this number, yeah, we could make it more interesting without changing the words,

Brandon Welch 28:33
I think you just offered something for free. Let’s bring it on the first person who says, Hey, make my memorable hook for me. We’re gonna make one.

Caleb Agee 28:39
Yeah. It might be spoken word. It might be sung in Word, sung in Word, sign in Word.

Brandon Welch 28:47
How about Tyler wind disorders, atlanta.com, right? Yep. Anyway, okay, you guys get the point for tomorrow. Marketing put a memorable hook that they’re not going to be able to forget yesterday. It’s literally the clear next step there is realize because they go, gosh, these guys keep adding value in my life. But if it’s a email driven thing, it’s click the button to get XYZ coupon or XYZ RSVP to our special event, or click the button to share this with your friends, like it’s clear, right? Yeah, you’re usually doing that in email or social media, that’s right. Last question, are you doing everything you can to set the appointment? Now we have a full blown episode on this, and it is maybe one of my favorite because it really goes deep into this. But a lot of people will go, oh, nothing’s working. Or Bad’s not working like it used to. And what you find out is that, you know, Sarah, the wonderfully wonderful, like secretary or whoever answered the phone, Yep, got promoted to be project manager, or left and went home, you know, and did a different job, or something like that. And. You realize that you’ve got some person who’s never had the training or the importance placed on the call dialog, and that man, I can’t tell you how many times that’s turned out to be the reason a campaign wasn’t working. That’s right, all other things were firing on the cylinders or on cylinders. And that firing on all cylinders is how they say that lots of cylinders, lots of cylinders, at least three, these

Caleb Agee 30:20
three male male trust. So

Brandon Welch 30:25
just take tremendous like care into how that final step is going, because that’s the last like leg of profitability before it reaches the salesperson.

Caleb Agee 30:36
And I think this can become a cold afterthought, right? It’s like, yeah, we gotta lead. The marketing job is done, right? We’re actually stepping into our sales game here, yeah, um, what you want to make sure make it part of that job. Make it part of that follow up process to track that if you don’t have a CRM, make a spreadsheet and literally put website lead, Facebook lead called in and have that person make notes on what time, what happened? Yep, you know all of that, and make sure that we’re keeping a good

Brandon Welch 31:09
log. So, so surefire way to know if you’re off. I’ve never had a service based company that couldn’t set at least 60% of Google leads if it was being done, probably even average, like, have some that are really, really good, and they set 70 to 80% of the leads that come from a search engine, if it’s from a non like, Finish Line Type media so like Facebook or some sort of a targeted list where people weren’t actually ready to buy this second, I still see very often. We set at least 15% of those types of appointments. Okay? If they raise their hand, said, Yeah, I’m kind of curious. I’m curious enough to take the first step. Facebook leads, one out of six. That works out to about 15, 16% of your leads, if you’re, excuse me, if you’re below that, you can probably start assuming that that’s where the leakage is, right? Here’s some quick tactics. Are you aligning your phone scripts to the last action they took if they clicked? Get a price or get a free estimate. Don’t call and say, hey, when can Fred come out and I’m here to set the lead right? Yeah, it’s Oh, I see you wanted a price. Tell me more about what you’re trying to make happen. Yeah. And it’s not that that person has to be able to give the price, actually they should. But it’s not that you have to be able to be the expert, because sometimes your you know, your phone setting team is not the same caliber as your person out in the field, but you can at least empathize with it. You say, Oh, I understand you want to get a price. Oh, that’s great. We that’s great. We believe that should be really easy around here. And you’re gonna love Fred, and he just has a few more details. He needs to be able to button this up for you. Hey, he’s gonna be in your area three o’clock tomorrow. Are you around? Right? That’s a way different conversation than this. Is Caleb with Frank, and may have been. How are you? Are you looking for Windows, right? Yeah. So heard you want to come to my church. So are you aligning the phone scripts to the last action they took? Just make sure you know what that landing page said, and that you’re picking up the conversation from there, and you’re validating the reason that they took that step, that’s it. Follow up with a minimum of 15 times. Yes, I said 15, if not 50, but at least 15 in a few weeks. First day, second day, third day, seventh day, 10th day, 14th day. You want multiple points of contact within those ranges, especially if the lead came in after hours, but do it anyway, right? Yeah, if it came in after hours and you just missed that opportunity, you’re kind

Caleb Agee 33:50
of alternating your medium that you’re reaching out to them with, call, text, email, whatever that looks like, handwritten, no, call

Brandon Welch 33:58
them until they say they’re going to call the cops on you, right? Yeah, I say that in good fun.

Caleb Agee 34:03
They say, don’t call me. Then you are legally required to stop calling them. But

Brandon Welch 34:09
until you get to know, because I can tell you right now, just because the nature of the headwinds and just the the friction in the economy, we have customers who paid hundreds, if not 1000s, of dollars in unset leads in like, first quarter, second quarter, those people are coming back in September. So not only do you need to do a high frequency when they call, if it goes to, like, maintain status once or twice a month, you need to be looking back six to 12 months and say, who didn’t ever set an appointment, who didn’t we get a stop calling from Yeah, that’s right. You’re not obnoxious. You’re trying to help them. They reached up, reached their hand up, and they said, Please help me. And then they pulled it back down. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need help, so don’t let them. They didn’t

Caleb Agee 34:53
do it on accident. Yep, cool.

Brandon Welch 34:57
Are you smiling when you talk like. Use the time. Are you picking up that personality that they’ve built with you and you know, come to know in your ads, and are you? Are you a joy to talk to? Are you leaving them better than you found them? These are things you want to do to improve that appointment setting rate. But it all starts with saying, instead of dad gum at my marketing is not working, I’m saying, was I really seen? Was I really relevant? Like, is my ad really relevant? Did I really talk to them? About them? Was your next step clear? And did you do everything you could to set the appointment? Have we covered it all?

Caleb Agee 35:33
I think we have. Think that, does it Yes?

Brandon Welch 35:41
Put that in place. If there’s a question you’re having about any of these phases and saying, Hey, I think this adds relevant. What do you guys think we would love to see it? We would love to give you live feedback. Yeah, if

Caleb Agee 35:54
you want us to make it better, fix your hook, your call to action, or your reasonable next step, as we would call it Yes, let us know, send us an email, and we will. We’ll make suggestions as to what it should say and how it should be remembered.

Brandon Welch 36:10
That’s Maven Monday at frankon. Maven.com We’ll be back here every week answering your real life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why

Caleb Agee 36:18
are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.