How to Avoid Costly Mistakes and Be More Memorable

Brandon Welch 0:00
And if you have a transactional mentality and you only show up when you need something from them, Are you a person worth being around? You’re not a friend. No, you’re not a friend. You’re using them. And so many companies have such a great inside culture, and they have such a great like feeling and thoughts about their product, and then they forget, at this moment that a lead is just a person with a need. Welcome to the Maven Marketing podcast. It is Maven Monday, and I am your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m here with my co host, Caleb Agee. Caleb Agee, 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, the big dream. Yeah, every Monday we’re gonna come here with a new episode where we’re taking your real life questions on marketing and advertising and business,

Caleb Agee 0:51
yeah, and we’ve got, we’ve got two really strong questions today, and this, we just love doing this. This is fun, and we get to answer questions like this all the time in our conference room, but we get to do it here with you and help more of you as we hear them. So Randy is a business coach. He’s a good friend of ours. He’s asking, where do most businesses fail when marketing? So a little bit of a sad, sad trumpet, sad

Brandon Welch 1:19
trombone, the failure. So we’re gonna position this as a cautionary tale. This is not to make anybody feel bad. The truth is, everybody could be a little better at anything, sure. And so hopefully you take something away from this, and I’m gonna answer it with three bullet points, and then we’ll dive into each of those bullet points, just off my own experience, and especially having grown up in a small business and having consulted well over 1000 businesses on growth right now, at this point in my career, I would boil it down to the number one failure is the desire for instant gratification. That is, I’m using actually ROY WILLIAMS words there. He says, the desire for instant gratification. I completely agree, and that’s really not always the business owners fault. It’s very often how the ad has been sold, or the lack of understanding about how human beings interact with advertising. But this is desire for instant gratification. Put $1 in. I need a customer out. That’s not a bad thing that can happen, yeah, but it’s just understanding how and why and when that happens. Yeah. Second is putting media before message. So we get excited about some sort of advertising platform. We want to get our name out there, yeah, and then talking about yourself instead of the customer. Want to dive into each one of these, but instant gratification, putting media before message and talking about yourself instead of your customer. Three biggest ways marketers of all kinds, fail, fail. Yeah, so instant gratification

Caleb Agee 2:48
goodness seems like it’s a bigger thought than business itself. Caleb

Brandon Welch 2:53
always takes us back to life and wisdom and tell us about I can’t help it. Are we in a world of instant gratification? Oh

Caleb Agee 3:00
yeah. Oh yeah. Hold on. Let me check my phone and see if the only good if the phone let me Google that real quick, yeah, and I’ll let you

Brandon Welch 3:05
know I want to lose 20 pounds

Caleb Agee 3:06
tomorrow, right? Tomorrow? Yeah, we don’t want to wait for results. We always are looking for the get rich quick scheme, the crypto anybody? Yeah, the stock that’s gonna climb next week, the insider stock trading, yeah, the fat, you know, fat cutting diet, that’s just gonna a crash diet, that’s gonna make me lose 400 pounds in a week. They don’t work. They don’t work. And by the way, anything that happens that fast is probably not healthy.

Brandon Welch 3:34
Uh, oh, yeah. We’re

Caleb Agee 3:35
almost super philosophical

Brandon Welch 3:38
for just a moment. Yeah. Think about this. The only things in nature that grow faster than they should are called cancer cells. They grow without the right kind of nutrition. They take over, and they are not healthy tissue. So way deep on you folks there, and you can tell what we’re trying to say is great marketing and great results and great growth is worth waiting for, and it’s worth building the right way. It’s about patience. The in betweens. The in between wins, just like your stock portfolio was probably up a lot this time last year, and it’s probably up, not a lot right now, if not down. Yeah, those are going to be temporary, and we want to celebrate those. We want to learn from them. We want to try to maximize the wins and how often they happen. But we’re not talking about marketing like marketing is not a thing. Marketing is really just a means of communicating with human beings. And so with this instant gratification, what we tend to see is like hunger for people who just are ready to show up and pay money. And if you there’s certain parts in a product’s lifestyle, or there’s certain seasons where products are going to have that, like it’s going to be really hard to find a. Umbrella on a rainy day, right at Disney World? Yeah, and so. But how many umbrellas are selling, you know, in the month of July, where it doesn’t rain at Disney World, but you know, so there’s a time and a place where your your product is going to naturally surge, and you want to be the most obvious option. But the in betweens are commitment, just like you would commit to any other human being, you have friends, you have a spouse, maybe you have kids, you have people at work. And if you have a transactional mentality, and you only show up when you need something from them, Are you a person worth being around? You’re not a friend. No, you’re not a friend. You’re using them. And so many companies have such a great inside culture, and they have such a great like feeling and thoughts about their product, and then they forget, at this moment that a lead is just a person with a need.

Caleb Agee 5:50
Say it with me, a lead is a person with a need. A

Brandon Welch 5:54
lead is a person with a need. And so what are we talking about? Practically, we’re talking about, if it’s MEDIA SELECTION, we’re talking about only trying to target and find people who are buying right now, there’s, there’s a percentage of people, but there’s a far, far, far, far larger group of people who aren’t buying today for any reason. You could not sell me a new washing machine today because my washing machine is not broke, working just fine, right? But if you are committed, if you’re the appliance store that talks about here today, here tomorrow, we’re here to make your life better. You know, we commit to our community, and we talk about, you know, all the things you could be doing in your home to make your life better, and you’re doing that consistently in my life, and suddenly my washing machine breaks. I wake up and I go, Oh, that’s the washing machine company I’m gonna go to, right? Yes, the appliance store I’m gonna go to. There’s a really great example of that in town. So have the patience. And when you set off into a marketing goal, understand that you’re going to have wins today, but the wins you’re gonna have are far better and bigger tomorrow, if you just commit. Yeah, that kind of leads to the second point, which is putting media before message. And what happens here is that very often a business owner or even a marketing team thinks the most about marketing when when

Caleb Agee 7:19
something is being sold them? Yeah, when somebody’s asking about

Brandon Welch 7:21
a salesperson comes up and has a shiny object. Maybe that shiny object is a billboard or a, you know, a fancy new social media where there’s a We should answer this question, because we got asked it last week, geofencing, exactly what I was thinking. Whoo geofencio, if you sell geofencing. You might not want to listen to what’s going to happen, but it’s just there’s just these shiny objects in marketing. And so we go, ooh, we’re missing the boat because we’re not doing this certain type of media. And again, we’ve lost sight of the human being. Your goal should be, not what media can I use to get business? It should be, how can I best connect with the people that I want to serve, who need me, who I whose life I can make better? Yeah, and what is the most efficient way to do that and

Caleb Agee 8:08
that, I think that I’m going to back up one step, because we always talk about our order of operations. Sounds like a math thing, but our order of operations is strategy first. So it’s, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to make happen? We would call that the business objective. Business

Brandon Welch 8:21
objective. So then also, who are you? Like, what’s the impact you want to make

Caleb Agee 8:24
on the world? Yeah, so I have a special product we we bring marketing that has a business minded flair, if you’re talking about Frank and Maven. So you want to think of that business objective first, and then you would go to the message, and then you go to the media. But most people flip that upside down right, and they say, I want to be on TV. And then they say, what’s my commercial gonna say? What should we make it say? And then in six months, they say, we’ve been writing all these checks. What was that supposed to do for

Brandon Welch 8:54
us? Yes, that’s all backwards, yeah.

Caleb Agee 8:56
And you got splitter. You gotta flip it over.

Brandon Welch 8:59
I just went all Rogersville on people there. Oh, I am from the country, and I’m not not afraid to say it. So what happens there? Just what Caleb said, start with the wrong thing. And hint, if you are an advertising consultant or a salesperson, your job is going to be much, much, much easier if you start with people who have a holistic view of the world. I’m thinking of so many of our clients right now, but they they don’t get up to sell XYZ. They get up because they’re trying to make a dad gum difference. And they’ll die trying to do that, yep, if sometimes it’s on a pain or a lack of quality that their category is delivering. So they want to be the more honest, fair, easy going person. Sometimes they’re literally trying to save people from bad life situations by planning ahead, by being their financial planner or being their legal planner. Sometimes it’s people that believe in the sanctity of family and outdoors and being connected with nature, and so they have a a. Doesn’t really matter what product they sell. That’s why they’re doing it. And so start there, I feel really sorry for businesses that don’t have that, because missing an opportunity, it makes your work really a job instead of a mission. And that is super holistic, and I’m going real fluffy on you, but that

Caleb Agee 10:20
extrapolates in a lot of different ways. Yeah, buddy, how do you keep good people? How do you have a heart inside of your company? Oh, man, that’s real bad. I

Brandon Welch 10:28
am convinced we are a we are a business just like any other business owner. We have challenges, just like anybody else, but the challenges we don’t really have are our clients staying with us. We have a very long track record, sometimes 789, 10 years, as long as we’ve been around, because our mission is never lost. We write books, we do podcasts like this, we teach, we show up and give, give, give to the world, because we want to save people from wasting money and making bad decisions that happen so often. You have an origin story too. You have something that happened to you and your life that made you excited about selling or doing what you are doing. I hope you don’t probably consider getting into a different business. But if you start there, and so it’s therefore I believe this. I want the world to know this. I want to save the world or make the world better because of this. Your message is like, easy to write that is a home run for ad guys like me and copywriters, and you can’t hardly write a bad ad, because it’s about the customer in their world, and then the MEDIA SELECTION kind of becomes irrelevant. But you’re just going on a mission to say, Where are the most amount of people that I could win over in time? And you’re going to measure that by the ratings and the 1000s of people you reach. Yeah, just oversimplified something, but hopefully you have a good media buyer or an honest person who’s going to help you say, Okay, this media is better only because it reaches more people or only because it’s a little more aligned with your customer. We’ll

Caleb Agee 11:57
talk about media buying in other episodes, for sure, this one’s simple,

Brandon Welch 12:01
and it relates to the last one, talking about yourself instead of your customer. Guess what? Unless you’re selling hamburgers or giving away free Lamborghinis, ain’t nobody want to hear about you, right? Or giving away something like it’s it’s not about you and the product. It’s not about how many years you’ve been in business. It’s not about how easy you are to find. It’s not about your new website. It’s not about find us on Facebook. It’s about you as the customer. Don’t you wish this was a little better. Are you tired of this? Would you? Wouldn’t it be nice if this is the world you woke up to? You’re starting with them using the word you, you, you. We make it a game to see if we can completely eliminate our customers name or reference to themselves and our ads and just let them become so famous that their people already know who they are. Yeah, and so just talk about your customer their life. The more you do that, the better you’re going to be. In our book, on page 45 there is a chapter called what you’re really selling, and it doesn’t matter what you’re selling, you can find a way to sell it more customer centric. And you would like a free copy of that book. Caleb, yeah, use a plan for you. You

Caleb Agee 13:13
can send us a question to Maven Monday at Frank and maven.com we would love to answer it right here on the podcast, and we’re taking real life questions. These are actual business owners with actual problems, actual questions about how to eliminate waste in their advertising, and that is what we are all about. So what’s the next question? The next question is from another Randy. Another two books out to Randy’s. Can’t fake that. So Randy is in what we would call like a luxury, high end retail type of business. He’s been doing his thing for a long time, well established business. He’s got marketing and advertisement that has been happening for decades, right? We’re talking he’s done so many of these other things. Well, yes. So he asks, How do I make my ads stand out for my competition?

Brandon Welch 14:04
Yeah, in his category happens to have a lot of competition, yes. And national competition, yeah. And so if that is you and you’re going, how do I compete against people, maybe even with bigger budgets or been around longer than me, or I just want to be the guy that has his ads remembered, or gal, I have a three part answer. Again. There’s so much that could go into this. This could probably be an entire podcast on its own. Yeah, quickly I’m going to say it. Entertain. Say less and know what’s going on in your customer’s life. Entertain. Say less. Know what’s going on in your customer’s life. Let’s break into those so entertainment. This comes in so many forms. I’m gonna list some of the big ones that that are like easy go tos telling stories are way more interesting than facts. Right? We all know that stories are way more interesting the facts. So if you can tell a fictitious story about the customer’s journey, if you can tell a story about something where you actually made a difference, and it’s got to be a good story, like story that would be campfire worthy, right? Yeah, let me tell you about this person, okay? And you’re talking about pains or situations or like outcomes that you helped them get to, but tell it in a climactic way. So, you know, Jan had this problem. She tried this, she tried this, man. She was so frustrated. And then finally, we were able to meet her, and we figured out this one magic thing that helped her get exactly what she wanted. Yep, so telling stories, if you don’t have stories, some products don’t have stories. It’s like, I went to the grocery store and I bought a watermelon, like, there’s a story, right? Yeah, it’s not, it’s not like that. But sometimes when you don’t have this, like, compelling or complex product, just using things that are universally appealing, like rhythm and music, I think

Caleb Agee 15:57
of insurance this kind of perfect example. It’s just boring. Nobody wants it. You have to have it

Brandon Welch 16:03
least gratifying purchase ever. Yeah. But best ads, those ads,

Caleb Agee 16:07
they’re spending big dollars, and what are they doing? They’re just entertaining over and over again,

Brandon Welch 16:11
over over and over and over again. You got even multiple campaigns and multiple pillars of entertainment, progressive. You got flow. You’ve got the guy who’s trying to help you from becoming your parents, yes. And they’re just trying to make you laugh, because they know that if they make you laugh, that is firing little pumps in your brain that release oxytocin. And when that’s present, and then you put a name next to that, they associate you with good feelings, yeah. And so the next time that person has a oh crap moment, I got canceled by my insurance, or my rates went up, or I need insurance because my got a jet ski or something like that. They’re on the list. And this whole name top of mind awareness is a thing, but it’s not your name. You’re trying to get people to recall you’re trying to get them to recall the feelings, the good feelings around you, which we would call branding. Most people would call that branding. Also, most people misuse the word branding. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 16:59
they think logos and colors. It’s not logos and colors of the progressive logo. Nobody

Brandon Welch 17:03
cares. Nobody cares. It could be polka dot pink, yeah, no way we care. Wouldn’t change a thing. So rhythm, music I put on here, humor, inflection, consistency in the way you land your ads. We have a client. His product is universally like appealing. He sells really nice barbecue grills, Big Green Eggs and all kinds of fun, cool stuff. And even though their product is interesting, we still do it a lot of intention with the way we have them read their ads. So his location, because it’s a big deal where he is, it’s kind of hard to find. So he stretches that he says just off South Campbell, on tracker road every time. And so for hundreds and hundreds of ads and lots of years now we’ve done it that way, and it’s kind of like his mark. And all he had to do was just say it a little different. And every time we do it that way, yeah. And so you have little kids running around, going just off South Campbell on track of red. And then when they meet him, they’re like, say the thing, you know? He’s like, Yeah. He’s like, the party trick, right? Yeah. Um, so inflection, just doing something a little bit weird, yeah, a little bit, uh, it shocks

Caleb Agee 18:16
the mind alone. It takes you out of right? You’re listening, you’re sitting in the car, listen to radio. You’re You’re honestly at a commercial break on TV, everybody, they’re not watching the commercials. They’re flipping on their phone, right? Yes. It doesn’t matter where you are on Facebook, you have to intrude on what they were expecting, to ignore.

Brandon Welch 18:36
You just said the number one thing, which is unpredictability. Like, yeah, when you’re predictable, you’re ignored. Yeah, even if they might be interested in your product, your ads ignored. So the whole big folder this, since it’s into, is entertainment. But the key to entertainment is being unpredictable. When you can see something coming next, when you can see the punch line coming next, when you know that here’s a dude standing in front of his truck, and he’s going to tell you about his company. And about his company and how many years he’s been in business. And then he’s going to say, so, when you remember, when you need blankety blanks, remember

Caleb Agee 19:08
me three convenient locations, and we’re always here, and everybody’s like,

Brandon Welch 19:13
Ah, I know I can see to the end of this as a guy, and there’s this company truck, and I don’t get list anymore, same script as they’ve got time for that. Yep. So emotion another. Another way to to jolt the public in an unpredictable way is take a stand for something, Dad gum. And it ought not to be that way. Aren’t you tired of this? You could do this on the on the realm of traditional values, or untraditional values, or it’s about time somebody said something. Or there’s been a lot of great social movements that happen this way. You could use a current event. You could use some sort of common interest, like family values or sporting teams or lifestyle or whatever’s going on. We have a client who says, I believe. Your time on the water is important. Takes a stand, yeah. And so that informs why he has more mechanics on staff, so that when you have a problem with your boat that you bought from him, you’re back on the water. I believe time, your time on the water is valuable to stand, right, yeah. And instantly, even though might not be buying a boat, you’re like, Wow, a guy believes in what he’s selling, right? Yeah, so use your own self as a filter and just be like, Man, if I wasn’t in the know about this product, right? Will this get my attention? And everybody’s gonna have their own opinions about creative. It’s not necessarily about being creative. It’s about being inspiring. And Did it meet somebody where they are? Did we deliver that in an entertaining way? And did it make them feel good for one day when they’re gonna buy for gonna buy for me? Yeah, so entertainment. Holy smokes. That took a long, long time for that one. This one’s easy. Say less white space, okay, that in and of itself. See

Caleb Agee 21:00
what you did there. See what I did there.

Brandon Welch 21:01
Oh, I see you had to ruin it. That, in and of itself, is for a really occupied and overstimulated public, stopping putting a little bit more quiet to yourself, letting your words be fewer, but therefore louder, not only if you’re in a traditional format or even in social media land, you’re the ad that stopped all the loud noise and the screaming at him to come in and buy something this Saturday, and you’re the guy that just stops and levels with him. We have a campaign in Iowa, and then these two guys get on screen, and it’s just the most dry, fast pace. But in between pauses we put in between their lines, and they’re famous, like people stop and watch them every time. So sometimes it’s about letting a couple seconds on the end of the ad breathe, instead of trying to cram 120 words in 30 seconds, it’s let them breathe. And with this, if you’re going to be a successful advertiser, this will not be the first second or 100th time you’re going to advertise. It’s perpetual. So say one thing or AD. Say it powerfully. Give

Caleb Agee 22:16
me an example how, how would I not say one thing,

Brandon Welch 22:22
what’s um? So we recently consulted a company out of California, and they’re in the real estate business, and they had had an ad produced for them, and unfortunately, they had been sort of led to believe that this is the only ad they would ever need. They can run it for years and years, and it’s a 32nd ad about why you should let them buy your home from you, and it shoved in all their features and benefits. And we’ll buy this type of house. We’ll buy this type of house. And if you have a high rise condo, we’ll buy that too. We buy water properties. We buy distressed properties. And it’s like sometimes the variety that you have is kind of an important pain to speak to, but very but way more often there’s going to be a certain type of buyer that needs more than the three second blip you talk to them, so pick their pain and say, Hey, times are tough. Government regulations are getting tougher. Yep. Are you ready to cash out of your rental property? Yeah? And you lay out some math for me. Say, you know, you’re going to get 40% more than you ever would have gotten in the past. And I’m just totally making this up on the fly. But you’re taking that one customer and saying, let’s make it easy for you, rental, rental owner, right? And you’re saying, um, you know, I’ll make this easy for you, or using language they understand versus maybe a retail person would understand, and you’re leading them to a call to action that has everything to do with them. If you’re ready to get rid of your rental property, not for all properties, consider me, yeah. Like, so it’s kind of like when it’s all things, it’s nothing, yep. But when you speak to one person, everybody hears it, yep, called the eavesdropper effect, yeah? And it forces you to talk like a human being, because I would not go to go to you to lunch today after this podcast and try to tell you 800 things in 12 minutes, right? No, we would have one, maybe two things we talked about, yep and do that. That’s a human factor, but it also it knocks down the things in persuasion that need to happen, because 30 seconds isn’t a long time, or 60 seconds isn’t even a long time. Anyway. Make it about one thing, one principle.

Caleb Agee 24:27
So I’m gonna, I’m just gonna recap that really quick, because I think it’s really important. You’re saying one thing and saying it powerfully. We’re choosing who to lose. Is how we would say that, which is, you have a you have a specific customer. I’m picturing Brandon across the table from me, and I’m reading this ad, does this speak to Brandon and, and if it’s not Brandon, right? If Brandon’s not a real estate investor, I’m okay with losing Brandon in this in this case, right? I want to, I want to speak to just one type of customer. I have five we’re talking about, maybe that. Real Estate Investor. They’ve got one glass at a time. They’ve got people who have lost grandma and they have to, you know, sell grandma’s house. They have people who’ve done all these different they have real estate investors, they’ve got divorce, they’ve got all these different reasons that people would be selling their home. They just need to speak to one at a time, one

Brandon Welch 25:17
at a time. Next month, you can run a different ad, yeah, or write it, or run two ads at the same time, but make them both individually, fill that that customers

Caleb Agee 25:26
too, too often. We’re worried about wasting our money by not saying all, not saying all the things to all the people, but we lose all relevance. Oh, and throw

Brandon Welch 25:36
in, I have 87 locations and throw in all this, throw in this, throw in this, and, and, yeah, say less great with white space around

Caleb Agee 25:47
it. And point 3.3, is

Brandon Welch 25:50
know what’s going on in your customer’s life. So we’ve been talking in this format because we’re aware of who asked the question more in traditional media. That won’t always be the case.

Caleb Agee 26:01
Traditional media would be like print, Billboard, radio, TV, large,

Brandon Welch 26:05
we would call that mass media, reaching a lot of people, but stop and ask, what? Where’s this media going to intercept your customer today? And so if that’s like a transactional media like search engines, they probably want to hear more about the solution and how they get it faster or cheaper or maybe with a little less hassle. Yep, and so you’re going, okay, somebody’s searching today. That means they probably want it today. But if you’re in a mass media situation where it’s 100,000 people in a TV audience, and you know very, very few people at 8pm at night are considering you know who they’re gonna call tomorrow to clean their teeth, talk to them about broader things be more entertaining. Make it more about your personality. Make it more about these stories and this humor. And by the way, in that moment, like when you’re talking to all those people, don’t disrupt your style from AD to AD, either have a consistent book, musical style, visual style, values that you talk about the same kind of half a dozen things, person, definitely spokesperson, if you,

Caleb Agee 27:08
if you have you want to make it a similar style of editing all of that, yeah, you want people

Brandon Welch 27:13
to say, Oh, you’re that gal that sings in our ads. We have a guy. He just literally goes drums, acoustic guitar and sings his URL, website, URL, and he’s a goober, and he feels so dumb doing it, but we’re like, you got to do it, because that makes you human. And all the kids in the backseat of the car are singing that jingle with them so so know what’s going on their life. If it’s not a transactional media, you probably need to be a little more entertaining. But also, when you’re going to your yesterday customer and you’re talking to your past your past customers, you can talk to them like they already know you. You don’t have to say at insert my business name, we stand for a block. They already know you, right? So don’t try to bore them with those details. Jump right in and say, Hey, has it been a while since you’ve updated your estate plan? Hey, I know it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. Check out what we’ve got going on. Just have a few pieces of advice for you, to keep them part of your tribe. Add value. Give them tips and tricks to continue getting value out of your relationship with them. Yeah. So to understand, are they in today, tomorrow, yesterday mode, and speak to them accordingly, or entertain them accordingly. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 28:15
Well, if you would like a copy of Brandon’s book, the Maven marketer, it’s an Amazon bestseller. You can get that. Guess what? On Amazon, we’d encourage you to go pick up a copy everything we’re talking about is in here. Everything,

Brandon Welch 28:30
start to finish stories, you’ll be able to see yourself in these examples, whether you’re doing a million bucks or $100 million a year. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 28:37
So, so we’d encourage you grab grab a copy of that, and please send us your questions to Maven Monday at Frank and maven.com We’ll

Brandon Welch 28:45
be here every Monday taking your real life questions on advertising because we believe marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great day.