Brandon Welch: 0:07
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m joined by Caleb. What’d you do for Valentine’s Day? Agee.

Caleb Agee: 0:14
You know, we don’t honestly, we don’t celebrate Valentine’s in the same way. But what we did this year is we had like a little night with the kids. So Sierra and I, my wife, in case that wasn’t clear, we had like a little night with the kids. So, wow, uh, Ciera and I, my wife, in case that wasn’t clear, we have a regular date night.

Brandon Welch: 0:29
Some girl he’s dating.

Caleb Agee: 0:30
We, yeah, the lady I’ve been dating for more than half of my life, yes, um, yeah, we. We try to keep a consistent date night. So Valentine’s day actually will randomly go out to a restaurant and they’ll be like and we’ve got a special menu tonight. We’re like why? And then like Valentine’s Day, oh yeah.

Brandon Welch: 0:49
So I’m I wonder why there were so many people here I’m more of like a all the time.

Caleb Agee: 0:53
Every day is Valentine’s Day. You know what?

Brandon Welch: 0:54
I’m saying Dr Love Agee, there you go, all right. I do the same thing at home and we make like a wild dinner like seafood pasta, homemade pasta, steak on top. Except for my wife has alpha gal.

Caleb Agee: 1:09
We call her alpha gal Val. She’s the alpha gal.

Brandon Welch: 1:11
She can’t have red meat anymore, so we sub with chicken. Chicken, okay, but hey, good times. Hope you had a good day of love with your love. Hey, before we start today’s episode, I want to shout out to Brian McDonough, one of my favorite bosses I ever got to have in the marketing industry. He taught me these three principles. They simplified my life as a marketer, and so I just wanted to honor him today and say thank you for teaching these principles. I hope they help you as much as they helped me. Hey, guess what? Advertising is complicated? Yeah, we make it complicated, yes and uh. This is just kind of a you know what reset conversation we’ve had with a handful of people that have come in our door looking for guidance and going like, oh gosh, I gotta get more foot traffic, I gotta get more leads and I want to build seo and I know I need to. You know, have a multi. I heard that two times this week a multi-channel or no, an omni-channel marketing strategy, and I’m like, ooh.

Caleb Agee: 2:07
Omni-channel.

Brandon Welch: 2:08
Yeah, like mm omni-channel and I’m going. You know what? All those things are fine and we’ve lived in the industry, we’ve been in all the nerd corners of marketing. But you don’t listen to the Maven Marketing Podcast to nerd out. You listen to the Maven Marketing Podcast to eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream, right? Yeah, and we think that that ought to be through the lens of simplifying what we’re doing. Yeah, if we can bring all of these fancy parameters down to a human level and just start to make our decisions from some logic and some dadgum common sense, yeah, I think a lot of the waste gets eliminated that way. That’s what we’re proud to do for the people that are in our four walls every week, and so we just thought we would share a little bit of simplifying wisdom.

Caleb Agee: 3:00
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 3:01
And some like, when things are chaotic, we go wait, what are we trying to do here? And so the title of this episode is Marketing Can Only Do Three Things, and you want the big three things? Bring it on, and then you can get on with your week.

Brandon Welch: 3:13
Yeah let’s do it All right. Number one marketing can bring people to your category, your industry. They weren’t buying solar systems, but you’re going to present the idea of you should buy a solar system. Or they weren’t in the market for buying an automobile, but this new crazy thing came out called the electric vehicle, and now you can bring them into the idea of buying an electric vehicle right, yeah. They weren’t previously buying anybody in your category.

Caleb Agee: 3:39
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 3:40
But you appealed to them.

Caleb Agee: 3:42
This one is the hardest to do. It is literally the hardest to pull off, because you have to take them from not consideration right. So there’s this thing in marketing called the customer sophistication, or-.

Brandon Welch: 3:56
Yeah, customer sophistication, eugene.

Caleb Agee: 3:58
Swartz? Yeah, Eugene Swartz talks about it and this person is not Aware there’s even a problem. Probably have a problem. Or maybe they’re aware of the problem but they’re not solution aware, or they don’t care. Right, I know that I know solar exists, but maybe that customer doesn’t care or they’re not buying that today. Your job as the marketer, if you’re trying to make this outcome happen, is to convince them to buy that thing and also to buy it from you.

Brandon Welch: 4:24
Yes.

Caleb Agee: 4:24
Which usually, if you’re the one who convinces them, you have a better chance. But that’s a lot of work.

Brandon Welch: 4:27
I didn’t know I needed a replacement for the CD player until you came out and said I could put a thousand songs in my pocket. Yes, and now I brought you to the category of the MP3 player. Right.

Caleb Agee: 4:36
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 4:38
I didn’t know. I needed a phone that could surf the internet right, the internet right. So there’s a lot of things historically you could look back and go oh, they brought them to the category.

Brandon Welch: 4:48
But also even if you’re a bank or a roofer or anybody short of a funeral home, you could reasonably, it would be a good idea to try to bring people to your category a little earlier, right? Yes, so we’re tending to do this with large groups of people. We would call that largely like tomorrow marketing. Yeah, kind of the same tactics we put in the tomorrow marketing and you are is appealing to a void that’s in their life that they’re not currently actively buying for.

Caleb Agee: 5:18
Yeah, and the hard thing about that is you have to do it probably in a long-term, tomorrow kind of situation, because it’s very unlikely that you’re going to convince somebody from 0% all the way to 100% in a today customer transactional setting. First of all, if you’re trying to catch them in a search engine or something like that, they’re not searching for this.

Brandon Welch: 5:38
Yeah. So that’s impossible, you have to reach them in their leisure.

Caleb Agee: 5:42
Even if you caught them with an intrusive ad, like in social ad or a billboard or print piece or something, even TV ads that you show up, you can’t expect them probably to be convinced from zero to 100% in that first moment Think of remember Billy Mays yeah, and it’s like I didn’t know that we needed anything besides Tide to clean our clothes.

Brandon Welch: 6:03
But he’s like the power of oxygen and it does X, y and Z, oxyclean, oxyclean, right, yes. Or Al Borland I forget what his actual name is the old guy from Tim the. Tool man, yeah, tool, I was like, now he’s selling pocket hoses and I’m like I didn’t know I needed a pocket hose.

Caleb Agee: 6:17
I think I might need one. I think.

Brandon Welch: 6:18
I might have ordered three of them last week, right? So just at a basic level, ask yourself, what am I trying to do in these three categories? The first was bring them to the category and then ask is my business in a position where that’s what I need to do? Yes, or is it number two, which is make them buy from you instead of a competitor? Yes, I would say most of our commoditized service companies your law firms, your brick and mortar medical firms, your brick and mortar home improvement type companies. This is probably the category you’re going to be in the most often, because it’s like there’s nothing you can say. To bring me to the category of buying a roof if I don’t already know or believe I need one. Yes, because that’s $30,000 and there’s nothing gratifying about that, because guess what happens when I put one on Nothing? Yeah Well, that’s the reality, yeah.

Caleb Agee: 7:10
Category one, bring people to your category. If you’re a roofer or a body shop or something like that, you can’t force it to hail and for people to need the dings taken out of their roof or their car, that’s not going to happen. So you are looking to make sure that when they need you, when they need somebody who is in your category, they’re choosing you instead of their competitor?

Brandon Welch: 7:32
Yes. So the second one make them buy from you instead of a competitor is probably the goal for most of brick and mortar America, and to do this, you have to become the most liked, trusted and thought of partner in the market. Own, liked and trusted, right. So part of that is have they heard of you? Second part of that is what have they heard about you? Yeah, third part of that is did have they heard about you? Yeah, uh. Third part of that is did you make them feel good, like and and like I said this is. I think this is also very hard to do, but it’s, it’s the most common need or utility of advertising. Yeah, here’s what happens A lot of people don’t stop to think about these two things, um, and they and they just start making noise, they go. Did you know that Peter’s Roofing has been around for 25 years and we have 84 years of combined experience and we’re in three different locations, so we can Serve you best. Serve you best, right.

Caleb Agee: 8:29
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 8:30
I swear I heard that ad, a local ad like that. It’s like with our customer satisfaction guarantee and it’s like you’re not even doing either one of these things. You’re not convincing anybody they need a roof, or you’re not really making me like you more than any other roofer who would say the exact same thing.

Caleb Agee: 8:47
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 8:48
So making them buy from you instead of a competitor has to do with your endearment, your personality, probably the entertainment factor of your advertising.

Caleb Agee: 8:58
The old marketing way would be your UVPs, unique value proposition. Right, but there is something that makes you special there’s no unique UVP. There’s not a unique, unique one.

Brandon Welch: 9:11
I would say yes, not a unique value proposition, it’s unique value. Personality yes.

Caleb Agee: 9:16
And that’s what you have to find in the difference there. Um, you could catch somebody at the finish line at this level. It’ll cost you a lot more.

Brandon Welch: 9:24
Um but what caleb means by that is it’s like if I go into the abyss of google and, by the way, we spend millions of dollars on google so I’m not, you know, anti-google, but if I go into the abyss and it is an abyss and try to win over my people there, it’s like I’m a snippet of text, maybe a phone number, and, if I’m lucky, some good reviews, a high review count amongst a list of other people at least half a dozen others that have probably kind of sort of the same thing, yeah, half a dozen others that have probably kind of sort of the same thing, yeah. And so if there’s not other value or bond or likeness or personality attached to my brand and the feelings that my brand name evokes, yeah, I’m just kind of subject to whoever answered the phone first, whoever happened to be highest on the search engine and did I.

Caleb Agee: 10:15
Did those 200 characters say more than the other guys?

Brandon Welch: 10:18
200 characters yeah, and like I said, you can, you can do you? Can make marginal gains there. Yeah, you can put in things like you know we’ll be at your house within an hour, or get somebody on the phone right now and those are the things you want to do.

Brandon Welch: 10:29
Save them, you know, time, money or hassle, right yeah um, but just know, when you’re in that category and go hey, hey, my job isn’t to make noise, my job is to make them like me more than the other competition, and so make sure you’re talking to things that matter to them and that are about them, not you and your company. Hey, what’s number?

Caleb Agee: 10:49
three Number three make them come back and do repeat business.

Caleb Agee: 10:52
So this would be what we call a yesterday customer and we’re asking them to come back. Um, everybody knows the cheapest customer to earn is the one you already have. Forbes did a study that shows existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers. Another stat we found was the probability of selling a previous customer is ranges between 60 and 70%. Your close rate, wow A, whereas, um, overall we’re talking about all leads, not your close rate when you get in the home or when you get to the customer. Overall close rate for a new customer is five to 20%.

Caleb Agee: 11:31
Hmm, so we’re talking about three times more likely to sell an existing customer At least three times. Yeah, if you’re in the retail space, I’d be paying attention to this because you’re thinking, wow, if I’ve sold them one of these selling an accessory, I am, you know.

Brandon Welch: 11:51
But what does every customer come in our door asking for?

Caleb Agee: 11:54
New customers, right, new customers.

Brandon Welch: 11:55
Yeah, they want new customers, it’s like you realize that’s the most expensive customer to go after. So we always turn over every rock in the in the database and a lot of times these businesses who’ve been been around for 20, 30 years they’ve got 50,000 people on their past customer roster and it’s like would buy you again. Or I bet if you just showed up in their life daily with emails or customer appreciation events or something fun you’re doing in the community, I bet they would think of you more often to send a friend or family member.

Caleb Agee: 12:29
So, yeah, once again in this category, though, the thing you want to do, you can get referrals, but you also, if you have a really, really really long buying cycle like windows, windows, a roof caskets caskets once in a lifetime deal then you’ve got to really pay attention to the fact that the only opportunity you have with yesterday customers sort of, is referrals.

Brandon Welch: 12:57
Right, right, the repeat business is probably not going to happen unless you have secondary products or services, or you add a product, like if you’re a roofing company and you decide to start doing gutters, yes, or if you’re a window company and you decide to start doing shades or window tinting.

Caleb Agee: 13:10
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 13:11
Or window washing or something like that right Some and that’s a good strategy sometimes for business expansion, yeah, or maybe you buy another business that’s complimentary to yours, but that’s a different episode for a different day. What you want to remember is don’t get caught up in the chaos, don’t get in the weeds of advertising, don’t try to start micro-focusing on metrics. Those are really secondary, lagging indicators of success and what you ought to be doing. What you want to focus on first is what’s the fundamental thing I need to make happen here? Yeah, is that bringing people to my category? So I’m going to talk about why this product will make their life better? Is it stealing market share from my competitor, and that that’s illustrating and demonstrating why you’re the better, more fun, more easygoing, more likable choice within that category. Or are you just going to say, hey, I’ve got a lot of really awesome past customers and I’m going to inspire them to come back and talk and talk good about me and buy from me again when I, you know, when the time’s right?

Caleb Agee: 14:16
You’ve got to keep in mind. This actually works its way down through your strategy decision-making, your your message decision-making and your media decision-making. It it starts at the strategy level, but you need to, you need to realize which of these am I most likely, which one am I going to get the most juice?

Brandon Welch: 14:32
out of Just sort of gut feeling. Yeah.

Caleb Agee: 14:34
You’ll know. You’ll know right off the bat and, um, you know, if you pay attention to even your market share in the in your area, you’ll you’ll know how much room there is to take from other competitors, grow your piece of the pie, um, or how often people are coming into your category. It may be big or small, but then that that informs your message, because if you’re trying to make yourself different, that’s a much different message than if you’re just trying to. If you’re trying to make an infomercial, essentially, and make Pete convince somebody what you’re selling, yes, so just pay attention to that, and then that definitely informs your media because you want to put yourself in the right place.

Brandon Welch: 15:10
We share this as a pre-step before all other steps. Don’t get caught in the weeds. Don’t overcomplicate marketing. Think about one of these three things, uh, that you’re doing, and I think it gets a lot easier to make the most common sense decision after that. I don’t know who needed to hear that. Yeah, uh, I think a lot of people we’ve talked to in the last two weeks needed to hear that uh, someone’s, someone’s gonna hate on this a little bit, I think they’re gonna be like oh, duh you know, I’m just like only three.

Caleb Agee: 15:34
You know what I?

Brandon Welch: 15:34
could show you some very, very, very heavy advertisers that just got overcomplicated and they didn’t realize the core essence, core strategy, core message and media alignment of what they were trying to do, and don’t make it harder than it has to be.

Caleb Agee: 15:48
Yes, it’s already hard it is. It’s a complicated subject.

Brandon Welch: 15:51
Hey, if you like this episode, if you know somebody that needs to hear it, please forward. Please like, please subscribe or tag them in the comments or whatever you want to do. We’ll be back here every Monday answering your real-life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.