How to Cash In on Your Brand Equity

Brandon Welch 0:00
We’re saving people time, money or hassle, so that they have a reason to buy now instead of waiting, because if you do nothing and you just let them live in this toxic environment of doubt that we are in right now, they’re going to wait. You have to give them a better reason to do it than a better reason for them to wait. The reasons to wait are like plentiful right now.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch and I am joined for the third week in a row by Kyle the big deal, debris, it’s gonna be back. You’re becoming a regular around here. Dude,

Kyle DeVries 0:35
yeah, man, I think Caleb should be worried coming first comes first job or me.

Brandon Welch 0:38
I mean, just kind of bouncing around so Caleb is out, and you can send your prayers to him and his family. There’s a little bit of sickness going through the house.

Kyle DeVries 0:48
It’s going around.

Brandon Welch 0:49
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. And right now, we are talking about cashing in on your big brand, if you’ve been following the Maven method, or if you’ve been following this podcast at all, you know that the most profitable marketing campaigns, the most profitable businesses, build a snowball effect with what we call tomorrow marketing. You can read all about it here in the Maven marketer, and if you don’t have a copy, the first person who likes and subscribes to the podcast with this episode and sends an email to Maven Monday at frankon maven.com we’ll send you a hard copy of the book and maybe even some other top secret, cool swag that may or may not be sitting on the table,

Kyle DeVries 1:33
life changing book right there.

Brandon Welch 1:34
Yeah, you’ll get you’ll get that in your hands. So but the tomorrow customer, or what a lot of people call branding is the idea that most of us running a business don’t have, like, an abundance. There’s not, like, millions of people buying what we need today. There might be 10s or hundreds, like, if you’re in a medium sized town and you have a, you know, HVAC service, or an electrician service, or some sort of professional service, like a law firm or a medical practice or something. It’s no matter what you say right now, there’s just not that many customers. There’s there’s a very finite amount of people today buying. But if you win these people over, and they become bonded to you, if they know, like and trust you before the sale, they become your tomorrow customer. And so you’re always putting seeds in the ground, right? And for those types of campaigns, anybody who knows us, anybody who’s using our book to grow their business, knows that one of the things you generally want to avoid is direct response type calls to action in those ads on the whole like, you want to build something bigger than just your product. You want to be talking about something entertaining, or you want to build a entertaining shtick or a personality around your brand so that you enter this like friendship status with them, right? We can all think of a business in our town that has funny or goofy ads, or we can think of dozens of national ads. You guys did a podcast on one, you know, few weeks ago. So Kyle, we have, we have, like, a group of clients on your team that are doing this, like, better than probably, you know, 99% of businesses in America like, we have some of the best branded tomorrow customers with all of that normally, that that’s producing, like, a snowball effect and, like, this awesome thing. But what’s going on right now? What are you hearing?

Kyle DeVries 3:27
Yeah, so it’s a little bit of a weird year. You know, there’s election going on. You’ve heard about that, obviously. And we’re getting really, really close. We’re just a couple of weeks away from,

Brandon Welch 3:35
one week away from the drop of this episode.

Kyle DeVries 3:37
Yeah? So, yeah, exactly. So there’s a lot going on in the world. And, you know, I think that for bigger ticket items, like new windows, a new roof, those kinds of things, you know, people are holding on to their money right now. They’re saying, I’m not really sure what’s going to happen. I don’t really know what the next, you know, what the next few months are going to look like, and whether they should be scared or not. That’s another conversation. But people are it’s it’s a fact, and people are afraid to spend their money right now.

Brandon Welch 4:04
Actually have a guy who’s doing some work on my house, or I asked for a bid, and he’s like, Man, I’d probably wait. This is the this is the business telling me this I’d probably wait till after the election, because we may not have a country that. And I’m like, Dude, we’re making it so hard on ourselves, but that’s what’s happening.

Kyle DeVries 4:19
And, yeah, whether it’s right or not, it’s happening.

Brandon Welch 4:23
Yeah, and we’re seeing it in the in the automotive industry. We’re definitely seeing it in home improvement. We’re seeing it in high end luxury and kind of the kind of, you know, the people we work with are so mature in their business thinking that they know it’s a long term thing. They’re like, it’s happened every election year. We’ve been working with some clients long enough, clients long enough we literally look back at our meeting notes from 2, 4, 6, and eight years ago, and we’re like, Yep, yeah. October before election was just a weird one, right? Yeah, but it’s especially weird right now, yeah.

Kyle DeVries 4:54
And I, I just on a call with someone this morning. They’ve got a business in a swing state, and it’s even. More extreme than maybe somewhere here in Missouri.

Brandon Welch 5:04
So he’s been on a killer, killer run with that business. I know you’re talking about, and yeah, they’ve had some awesome growth, but they’re going What in the world’s going on. So what we’re talking about today is, for those of you that who are, you know, followers of the Maven method, or followers, or you’ve built a brand that is, you know, got you as a category leader in your market. What do you do in weird times? You have an option, and I don’t know that we’ve ever said this out loud. We definitely do this on the fly with, you know, with people we work with one on one, but it is okay to go transactional and move your voice to a transactional thing for a limited time. That is sometimes what you want to do, to ride the bull, if you’re if you’re just tired of like, having dud weeks, there is a time to change what’s in the water. And so if you built a strong brand, like, there’s a time to cash in on it. So we’re gonna talk about three things you need to do in order to capitalize on this big brand equity you’ve created. Kyle, would you tell them what those three things are?

Kyle DeVries 6:09
Absolutely, we’re gonna be talking about saving time, saving money and saving hassle for our customers.

Brandon Welch 6:14
If you want to move the needle, you have to save somebody time, save somebody money, or save them hassle from what an average day would be, right? That’s the secret to a great offer. They need to perceive that right now is the best time to do it, because they save time, they save money, or they save hassle, or give some examples of that, but yeah, in a normal tomorrow campaign, like a normal good Brandon campaign, we’re trying to entertain, we’re trying to build relationships, we’re trying to talk about quality and commitment. We have to the long term value of the customer, and that’s what wins. The mass is over, but there are people who would buy today. They’re, if they’re frozen, they’re they’re just they’ve got anxiety in them. They’re just waiting. They don’t think it’s the right time to buy, and you need to give them a reason to buy. Yeah, that’s where the save time, save money, save hassle, comes in. And so we’ve done this with a few, like, really long term thinking, really profitable, you know, clients that normally would never put an offer out there, because they don’t have to, because people just come to them because they like them. We’ve, we’ve said, hey, if it’s up to you, like, we can, we can wade it through this, but if you want to grab some deals off the table. Here’s how you would do it. So making an offer is just simply saying, Hey, if you order between now and the end of the month, we’ll have your job done before Thanksgiving. That’s an example of saving somebody time. We have a client that is just making really specific, like convenience type offers, like, saying it’s not this normally, our category is like, you know, could be six to eight to 12 weeks, but right now, guess what? I got guys that need to work and they’re ready to work for you. You call today, and we’ll start on it tomorrow.

Kyle DeVries 7:55
So one campaign that we’ve done recently that we saw a lot of success with was for a window dealer in Atlanta. They’ve spent years building equity in their tomorrow marketing so their customers know, like and trust them. But they they did something to kind of shake the trees a little bit. And they put out a an eight windows for 4399 and it was, it was that simple. It wasn’t eight Windows starting at 4399 it was eight windows for exactly this price. And, man, it’s crazy how much people appreciate just knowing exactly what they’re getting themselves into.

Brandon Welch 8:27
And they’re calling saying you still got that deal right, yeah. And it’s like, yeah, if you have us come out this week exactly,

Kyle DeVries 8:32
and yeah, we put a time on it. We said, By this exact date, this is how long you’ve got this opportunity.

Brandon Welch 8:38
And we’re going to talk about some best practices with that, but you certainly want to follow through with that. You never the danger of doing promotions long term, like anybody who does this now who’s not normally used to doing this, your phone’s probably going to ring off the hook and you’re going to go, that’s awesome, awesome. Let’s keep doing that. But you don’t want to do that, because if you train the general public that you’ve always got something on sale and you are the discount provider, your authority and your potency in doing these things just diminishes over time. Because the general thing in the water doesn’t become about how wonderful you are and great you are to do business with, and how high quality your products and how high quality the results are. It comes it becomes we’re the ones who will always do it for cheaper, and that brings a type of customer that most people I know don’t actually want, so you can tolerate them a little bit in the short term. Yeah, let’s go back to saving time for just a second giving a quote right over the phone. Promise. Hey, we’ll make this easy. Normally, it’s an appointment thing. Hey, call us right now. We’ll give you a quote right now. You’ll know exactly what you’re dealing with. Just be the one that gets them to the answer. Because everybody’s anxious. They don’t want uncertainty. Everybody wants certainty right now. Do an upfront package price, like we just talked that saves time and money, by the way, yeah, because I don’t have to think about pricing. I go, Yep, you got it. I need it. I’ve already done the math in my mind, and I don’t have to wrestle over i. Options and things like that. Yeah, I will tell you that particular client you were talking about is actually getting an average sale value of like, eight or $9,000 yeah, he’s making an entry offer. Yeah, we’ll deliver that. He’ll if that’s what you want, you’ll absolutely get it, and it won’t be a penny more than 4399 but it’s getting people to the table that just otherwise were frozen up. That’s exactly right. Otherwise you can save time. Do the virtual estimate, doing the paperwork for them. I have a automotive client who is like, you know what? I’ll make this easy. You don’t even have to come in. I’m going to DocuSign all the things to you, and you just created a DocuSign. And I click, click, click, click, click, and I signed all the stuff. And then they delivered the car to my house, right? I don’t even have to go in to do that, right?

Kyle DeVries 10:41
And some of these types of things, obviously can, can be good to help you kind of earn the sale at first, get people interested. But you know, that’s almost like a deeper into the transaction, where at this point you’re just kind of gaining that favor with a customer. So maybe they’re a repeat customer someday, maybe they’re telling their friends and family about how great an experience they had, or maybe they’re writing a Google review. There’s these types of things just always pay dividends.

Brandon Welch 11:04
Totally Yes, because you’re going to become known for the faster, easier provider. And that’s that’s never a bad thing, right? Couple other things, delivering it to the door, promoting a larger than normal in stock selection, so they have to avoid a special order, and then last thing is maybe just installation time, and promising a shorter window, or just saying we’ll install it for free, which would pivot us to money. We talked a second ago about naming a price that’s that’s a really good thing to do right now, bundling things that would normally be bundled. So maybe, maybe you’re the garage door provider in your town, and normally a door is XYZ, and the openers an extra few 100 bucks. Maybe you’re throwing the opener in right now, yeah. Or I’ve seen HVAC companies do buy an HVAC unit, get a new buy by AC unit, get a heater free, right? Because the heater is usually the cheaper of the two, right? So bundle something, or throw in an accessory that normally would be an upsell, and maybe you raise the overall price a little bit, but you you take the perceived value higher and the perceived pain lower,

Kyle DeVries 12:12
right? I think a big thing right now is like financing offers, interest rates are really high. We talked about how weird of a year it is. Right now, people are holding on to their money. They’re looking for any way they can to save a Bucha. And I think that we’ve, we’ve seen that to be really successful, you know, 0% down for a certain amount of time, maybe the first year or two, or something like that. I think buy

Brandon Welch 12:32
now and pay in 2028 Exactly. Never mind the fact it’s going to be twice the price. Probably you can build that in, and just promoting that more than normal is that’s a that’s a really good tactic. You see the biggest companies do it. You see big automotive companies and things like that. How about letting them trade their old thing in?

Kyle DeVries 12:49
Yeah,

Brandon Welch 12:50
I’ve seen this done with computers Best Buys, doing this really well. Yeah.

Kyle DeVries 12:54
Almost seems too good to be true. It’s like, Oh, you want this crappy old phone I’ve had for five years? Yeah,

Brandon Welch 12:59
yeah, exactly. And they’re getting all sorts of credits from the manufacturer. And stuff for recycling, even if you don’t want the old thing, maybe make that your discount, because that logic makes more sense to people, makes them not feel bad for having to sell their thing, or takes away the pain of like, transition for them, and they think, Oh, my thing gets to go to a new person. Yeah. And even if you throw it in the trash or you, I don’t know what you do with it, but or wholesale it or whatever, maybe let them trade their old thing in. Maybe you’re a furniture company and you offered all their old furniture off for free. That’s a bit money. That’s a big one. It would hit all three of them, right? Yeah. So just think about the life of your customer. It’ll never go out of fashion to put yourself in their shoes. Empathy will always be the best thing you can do to increase sales. And the reason this works better right now than normal, and the reason it’s okay to do is because people are more anxious and more emotionally tied to like, holding on to what they have. So meet them there. Look at the world through their lens and just say, what would what would I do if I were thinking that way?

Kyle DeVries 14:05
Yeah, what small concession or inconvenience can I do to make their entire experience memorable or small

Brandon Welch 14:11
Joy factor? I had a client that did really well recently by just saying, you can finance the whole thing, but I’m gonna give you $2,000 cash. And the visual of literally $2,000 cash, when you think about it, it’s actually kind of a dumb deal for the customer, but they’re like, Oh man, $2,000 cash, or I’ll take it, or I’m gonna give you a free shotgun, and be like, I want that shotgun, right? It’s just like, this, this, or a free Deep Freeze or something, or the end of times, right? Time, money or hassle. Let’s talk about hassle because people ask, What’s How’s time or hassle different than time hassle is taking the friction out of the sales process, especially when you’re making long term, large purchase decisions. The hassle has to do with like, what if I make the wrong decision? What if I how can I get out of this? Or what? If it breaks, or what if I don’t need this in my life right now. And so some things you can do to qualify them and say, Hey, it is actually the right time to buy. And yes, you are qualified. And yes, let me make this easy for you. Instead of doing an in home appointment, let’s do that virtual estimate. Let’s give them a money back guarantee. Yeah,

Kyle DeVries 15:19
yeah. Change your mind, here’s a we have a very generous return policy. Mattress companies

Brandon Welch 15:24
are really good at that. Yeah, sleep on it for 180 days, and if you don’t like it, we’ll come pick it up. That’s that. That’s

Kyle DeVries 15:29
that safety that I want you know, like what I want to be able to know that I can get out of this if I make the wrong decision.

Brandon Welch 15:35
Yes, show more success stories about how people got the exact thing that you think this particular customer wants. So I would do more of a sales thing like say, you know, Mrs. Jones, I help somebody solve this exact problem and just clarify all the steps that it took to get there, or the fewest steps possible to get to the result. Generous return policy we just talked about that. How about adding on value to the sale. So I had an electrician come out to our house, and we had picked out some, like, new fans and some light fixtures and stuff, and we were gonna, we said, like, yeah, we’ll come back in a couple weeks. And we got the quote, come back in a couple weeks and you can put that stuff in. He’s like, I can go to Lowe’s right now and get it for you. And I was like, That sounds awesome. And so we ordered it online. He went and picked it up and put it in the same day, and that got the deal done. Because you never know we got, we got, you know, a gaggle of kids, and life could have happened, and we could have made a million excuses. He may not have gotten the sale till January, right, right, but he got it done that day, and he was willing to drive out of his way. You’ll probably remember that for a long time, absolutely, yeah. And he got the plus one, like, he made my life easy. More importantly, he made Valerie’s life easy. How about a boat dealer that’ll bring the boat to your dock?

Kyle DeVries 16:48
Yeah? Yeah. I mean, talk about the excitement of buying a new boat, like, Man, that is a huge deal. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a massive like, achievement, that’s, that’s a leisure activity. Like, what’s even better is having someone hand deliver it to your doc, like, when you the excitement of seeing that come and just know you don’t have to deal with, like, the logistics of that, that’s pretty awesome. Any

Brandon Welch 17:09
amount of online ordering you can add to a product that isn’t normally orderable online would be a beautiful way to do this. You can do video tutorials. You can say you can have my cell phone and call me in the middle of the night if something breaks or something you have a problem with something, or offer some extra level of support that you normally wouldn’t. I love this one. Most people in the service industry or professional industry are used to saying, well, when would you like to come in? Let’s here’s two appointments for the next, you know, 10 days or whatever we have available, dude, if you got an afternoon free, like, just change your process for a minute. Say, I can come out right now. Like, just be willing to jump and do that. So what are we doing? We’re saving people time, money or hassle, so that they have a reason to buy now instead of waiting. Because if you do nothing and you just let them live in this toxic environment of doubt that we are in right now, they’re going to wait, if to give them a better reason to do it than a better reason for them to wait. And the reasons to wait are like plentiful right now, few best practices, and then we’ll send you on your way. Always put a limited time offer on it. If you do this now, we’ll do this now, stick to the limited time. Don’t be the one that says the best deal is this Saturday, and then have another best deal next Saturday, right, right. People are gonna notice that eventually, absolutely and it just yeah, just loses credibility. Don’t get addicted to discounting. So this is going to work really well, especially if you don’t do this often. If you wish to remain the high quality, high margin provider in your market, you do not want to go down that rabbit hole, because it will be a race to the bottom and you’ll start getting a lower quality customer. Right now, the high quality customers are just pent up, and you’re just unlocking their cage and letting them out via one of these methods, but you do not want that to be your primary way of earning business. Go back to entertaining. Go back to talking about good news. Go back to building this beautiful brand you already have built, you know, say some somewhere after the election, right? Yeah. And this, this little weirdness, will take a month or two to wear off. Like I think January and February are going to be pretty unhinged customers. I think they’re going to like, get past the holidays. You’re going to have this New Year’s energy, yeah, and first quarter is not going to look so bad. And that’s regardless of who you know is in the White House. So last thing, make these offers to people who are stuck in the pipeline first and just see how well it works. Yeah. Like, if you’ve got a lot of people who have said maybe or let’s wait till after the election, call them and say, Hey, I got an election special. And blame somebody else for the reason you can do the special. Don’t look desperate. Say, Hey, my. My supplier is going to give me a heck of a deal, yeah, if we do it now, but I gotta have the order in before 1031

Kyle DeVries 20:06
Yep, we struck a deal with our manufacturer. Yeah, put the blame on somebody else. Yep,

Brandon Welch 20:10
or I happen to have a week where none of my doctors are on vacation, so you want to help me fill the calendar. Let’s get it done. Or I had a cancelation from somebody else, and that makes me and give them a reason so it doesn’t seem like this desperate money grab. Do you add anything to that? I think you nailed it. All right. Save them time, save them money. Save them hassle. If they do it now, go out and and just test that with a few of your your stuck customers in the pipeline. Yeah, and you’re gonna get through this? Yeah,

Kyle DeVries 20:39
it’s, it’s one of the great benefits of building the equity, the brand that you have, the presence that you have in the trust, is being able to kind of pull the rabbit out of the hat whenever and when they’re wearing these really weird times, and kind of be able to shake the trees a little bit. You’ve got those customers that are that are out there, that are loyal, just maybe need a little push, a little bit, a little reminder, and you’ve you’ve earned that with them, and this is the some great examples of ways to do that.

Brandon Welch 21:04
All right, like subscribe, send us an email, letting you let us know you’ve done that, and you will get a free copy of the Maven marketer. I might even sign it ooh and Kyle might too. I need the camera guy. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back here next week, and every week answering your real life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week. You.