How to Steal Market Share in 2024

Brandon Welch 0:00
Make a divergent personality out of either a character or your brand voice in general, it’s boring. Make it fun. If it’s not serious, maybe make it over serious like Dos Equis did find some sort of disruption in what people expect you.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and we are back with my co host, Caleb. Mr. Tie Agee,

Caleb Agee 0:36
Tie guy, yes, yes.

Brandon Welch 0:38
All Caleb’s clothes got together to have a coolest, close contest. It was a tie. Okay, last week, we went over part one of how to write more effective ads in 2024 and naturally we are at Part Two. Quick recap. If you didn’t listen to that episode, you’ll probably want to go back and listen to it, because part three is important, but it won’t really work without part one and two. So quick recap, we talked about the three principles for writing better ads this coming year. Secret, it’s the same things you would do in 1924 and the things same things you should do in 3034 24 Yeah, because human beings do not change. Do you plan on being alive that long? I you know, I like my chances. Yeah, I work out. Yeah, look good. So we talked about learning what you’re really selling. It’s not what you think. It’s not your features and benefits, it is the outcome you provide. And we gave you a framework for how to find that and how to think about that a little deeper, we talked about a strategic messaging process, so crafting the right message. And it’s not just creative. It’s not just be more creative. There’s actually a process to get in the mind of your customer and talk to them like a human being and match your outcome with their deep seated needs, pains, hopes and fears, and now we’re going to talk about how to make them want to buy specifically from you, not just because you wrote a good ad, not just because you wrote a compelling story about what your product can do, but in a lot of markets, you aren’t the only one selling this product, and you’re not the only one who’s committed to Good marketing, to be honest with you, like you’re you may be the underdog. So how do you make people want to buy specifically from you? We’re going to use a lot of the principles from the Maven method tomorrow. Customers, yeah,

Caleb Agee 2:36
yeah. Before we go into that, I think it’s important to talk about, I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this, the three things that marketing can do. Marketing can only do three things. So one, you can earn a bigger piece of the pie, which means stealing market share, market share an editor. Earn it more. You can make somebody a customer who wasn’t already going to bring somebody to the category, bring somebody to the category. Bring them into the category. You can convince them to buy an electric car, even though they’ve never bought an electric car, now they’re buying one. Yep, okay, Tesla’s doing that every day, yes. And then the third is, you can get somebody to come back and do repeat business with you, yes, or maybe help with referrals. Yeah, bring their friends and family.

Brandon Welch 3:18
yep, steal piece of the pie. Bring somebody to the category or earn repeat business from past customer. And in the Maven method, we call that today customers, tomorrow, customers and yesterday, customers, yeah, this is going to focus more on earning that bigger piece of the pie from people who are already buying, yeah. So why did they come to Tesla instead of maybe rivian Or maybe Ford, or maybe any other number of automakers that are getting into the EV game, right? But hopefully, if you’re listening to this podcast, you are in control of a business that is not a mega, mega corporation, sure, and you are differentiating your brick and mortar or local or regional company, and the three principles of a tomorrow customer. It’s not as much about price, convenience and hassle, as much as it is commitment, relationships and quality. So we’re building this association with us that we are understood by the public that we serve to be the most committed, therefore the most trustworthy, the most likable, therefore the one that is just just feels good, and the one that is the highest quality, and therefore the one that is the safest and best investment long term. This is, if there’s one thing that Frank and Maven is, like, famous and, like, really, really good at. It’s this. We make our clients famous for who they are, not just selling their products. A lot of marketers can write a good script. They can write a good direct response script that says, hey, if you’re looking for this, you need this. And here’s why, and that’s important, yeah. But what if you’re also doing that in a way? It makes you I’m talking about the Steve Rice’s. I’m talking about the Mike mankers. I’m talking about the Nick Gordon. So I’m talking about the people that are like, just become category leaders in their markets. How do you do that? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 5:13
you’ve got to make sure that you create this dynamic character. And I think that’s where we’re where we’re working to build this character. And it speaks to if you go back, also, if you want supplemental materials, refer back to tribal bond. This is these both go hand in hand together. I don’t remember what episode that was, but just how

Brandon Welch 5:35
to build a tribe of extremely loyal customers, maybe four or five episodes back. Yeah, yep. So we’re breaking that down a little deeper today in this episode, definitely hand in hand with the travel marketing episode, though. So we’re going to do three things. We’re going to build a brand personality, we’re going to make a strong, consistent pursuit of quality. We’re going to hold a strong, consistent style. And I actually said we’re going to do three things, we’re going to do four because the icing on top is a media thing, but it is crucial to this equation. We’re gonna show up every day. So build a personality, make a strong, consistent pursuit of quality, hold a strong, consistent style and show up every day. And if you look at any of our campaigns that we use Randy and D as an example a lot, because they’re good sports and they don’t mind showing you behind their curtain, but we have lots and lots of others who’ve done this for but last week, we talked to Randy D. That’s what they’ve done, like they were good old average Joe people. And instead of letting the ad people, I guess, us just make some slick fake version of them, we accentuated the parts of their personality that were interesting. We added a little bit extra flair to it, yeah. And then we put them both on screen, and we gave them these lines that just make people repeat the things they say. And they’re on the phone, they’re saying, Can I get that D guarantee? Or, you know, where’s that he told a story, I think even on the podcast, people walk in their showroom and they’re looking for they’re asking for their autograph at the, you know, home shows and sometimes at the grocery store, and they just so cool you think about TV. Just use that as an example. Lots of people are on TV. Lots of talking, flapping jaws are on TV. Lots of slicked up sales guys are on TV. We don’t think of those people. We don’t track them down, we don’t remember them. But when you give them specific lines and a specific personality. It’s like they know you, yeah? It’s like you’re their uncle, yes. It’s like you’re their buddy from high school. Yeah, it’s like you’re that caricature that they that’s already made them feel good and laugh and just bond with you in a different way. Yeah? And

Caleb Agee 7:37
I think you need to think about this like you’re writing like little mini episodes of a TV show, exactly. And you, you want to make sure that you’ve set up this character, you’ve set up or characters to be in a certain way, so that people expect them to act that way, and then when they don’t, they’re surprised. And and there’s, there’s all of this stuff, but you, you’ve got, you know, 30 seconds, yes, to establish a character and sell a product, you know, and relate that at some level to a product, but it’s it’s a great nuance, and it’s really powerful when it’s done well. So

Brandon Welch 8:11
I’ve been watching some of the like 90s shows that I grew up with with my kids lately, because, frankly, they’re better than what’s on TV now. So one of them is Seinfeld. One of them actually the red green show. I brought that up again last night. And what you see when you start episode one, you see these characters and how they develop. And you you see that like, who they start to be become stronger and stronger and stronger because they realize what the audience likes and what gets repeated. Yeah, that’s what you’re doing, yeah. So you’re not just the guy that was on TV standing in front of your truck, saying, if you need, you know, heating and plumbing, I’m your guy. You’re You’re becoming guy. You become, you have your own catch phrases. And think of Kramer. Think of all the weird sticks and things Kramer had. Or George Castan always burst into the room and, yeah, or, you know, rest in peace. Think of Chandler. Well, even

Caleb Agee 9:00
I know the story of, if you watch Joey on friends in the first episode, he’s kind of the suave cool guy, yeah. And they realized they needed to kind of make him dumb, the dumb cool guy, you know. And even like Andy Griffith early on him and him and Barney were supposed to both be funny guys, yes. And there’s a quote where he said, I realized I needed to be I needed to go straight, I think is how he said, and he needed to be more straight laced sheriff. Instead of them both being the funny guys. It just, you need that dynamic. So we’re

Brandon Welch 9:29
talking about this, and we haven’t revealed what it actually is yet. It’s called divergence. Yes, we actually learned this from a Hollywood screenwriter. His name’s David Freeman, and he teaches framework for how he literally and everybody you know in Hollywood thinks about characters. So the most famous wild characters you’ve ever think you know, ever thought of Disney characters, Buzz, lightyear Donald Duck, Goofy, like all you start. To think about these shows, and you start to think about these storylines that you’re, you know, very, very familiar with, and what they all have in common is they have divergent characters. They have characters that are over pronounced in some areas, and other characters are the opposite of them. And it’s that magnetic force of back and forth of this person does this, and this person screws it up a little bit, and this person brings this unpredictable flavor, yeah? And there’s a phenomenon inside the human mind that when it can’t see what’s coming next, when we know we think what’s we think we know what’s going to happen, but it constantly gets disrupted. That is the key to holding attention, yeah. And if you think about it, that’s the key to every best selling book. That’s a key to every great podcast. That’s why we have a Nate the camera guy. That’s why we have the kite and the kite and the string. I’m the kite. Caleb’s the string. That’s why. That’s why. And I’m not saying we’re the greatest that ever lived, but we’re trying to follow that framework. Yeah, that’s why. In movies, you have the villain and the hero and then the goofball and then the nerd, and then the you know, you know, think about double oh seven. You’ve got the hero and the, you know, behind the scenes gadget, gadget guy that repeats itself in Batman, that repeats itself in all sorts of storylines. And you realize that in life, we tend to fall in love with the same story over and over again. But the commonality is that it’s divergent. Now that was a whole lot of, you know, literary mumbo jumbo to tell you. What does it have to do with advertising you need to be that guy or that gal or that company and building this personality, the first thing you need to look for is divergence. So let’s go practical. What does that look like? You’re looking to disrupt the stereo stereotypical assumption about you, if you are a attorney and you’re cold and stiff, and you go on TV being cold and stiff and your suit, and you say, call me. That was expected. That’s not interesting. And by the second time, probably by the first time, somebody’s seen that ad, and you’re standing in front of your library of law books, or in your wood clad office with, you know, leather chairs, rich

Caleb Agee 12:09
mahogany, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Brandon Welch 12:11
exactly, yeah. Like, I’m going, Okay, it’s an attorney. Do I need an attorney? Nope, cool. What’s for dinner, right? Yeah, yep. It could be anything. What’s on my phone right? Now, I think I’ll go play checkers until the, you know, commercial break is over. Yeah. But if instead, if you’re an attorney, and you have either spokespeople or a or the courage to have actors or some sort of something else that is completely divergent, such as humor, like law, ain’t funny, right? It’s stiff and cold and cold, and it’s serious business if you have a little fun now you become the the attorney that is interesting, right? And you have Trojan horsed your way inside the attention span of your public Yeah. And it’s not that you can just only do the funny stick and not have the other stuff we talked about in points one and two, but when you both, when you do both of those together, you are the entertaining version of your category. Yeah, humor is one way you can do it, but let’s say you’re the blue collar guy. What do we expect from blue collar guys?

Caleb Agee 13:15
Maybe a little rough around the edges. They’re not typically the most suave. Yeah, folks, they’re going to be, maybe not looking like the lawyer in the fancy office. We

Brandon Welch 13:24
expect every service guy to be standing in front of his truck saying, Hi, I am Dave, and I have Dave’s electric. And if you need electric, remember Dave’s electric? Yeah, that’s not divergent. But what if you’re the blue collar guy that is surprisingly sophisticated in some way, or surprisingly charming, well

Caleb Agee 13:41
spoken, maybe well spoken in some ways, interesting vocabulary, yes, just to make it, people go, huh? Did he just say a $5 word? Dose?

Brandon Welch 13:49
Did this? They took beer, the most unsophisticated beverage known to man, and they made it sophisticated, right? The most interesting man in the world, right? And so it was divergent. We didn’t like beer. Commercials had been the same essentially for decades, and then here comes this gentleman in a really, extremely unknown, you know, beverage, and he became the most interesting man in the world. Everybody paid attention, and they’re like, it’s not like they go that will make me want to buy this beer, because I think it tastes better. And I’m not making any comment about the product. What I’m saying

is that that stuff worked, right? Yeah, let’s

talk about insurance, the most boring. It’s even more boring than nobody

Caleb Agee 14:29
wants to have it, but you have to have it, yeah?

Brandon Welch 14:34
So let’s, instead of making insurance, you know, insurance, let’s turn it into a cartoon, I don’t know, maybe with a gecko, yeah, maybe with an Australian accent, yeah. I can’t prove this, but that campaign came around somewhere around the time that Steve Irwin was, like, blown it up and was, like, probably the most popular guy on TV. I think somebody knew that consciously or so. Consciously, they said, Let’s make a Australians are interesting, especially to us Americans, like they’re in they could be reading the Bible and they’d be interesting, right? Doesn’t even matter that the Bible isn’t interesting. I’m just saying they make everything more fun, right? Yeah, and so, or don’t do that, put, you know, make some dorky character name Flo and make her do weird, dorky stuff, right? Yeah, and the point is, it’s divergent from what you’re doing. Disrupt predictability at all costs, and do that consistently, and then put it inside this box that is your three or four characteristics that you become known for, Kramer, the unorganized leisure suit wearing, you know, goofball, George Costanza, because I’m a Seinfeld guy, the hot head. Elaine, the, you know,

the dork that always gets into trouble. That’s all, you know. They’re all self absorbed. They kind of all fit this character line. They’re all not really good people, but they do things that are divergent from what you’d expect, yes, in their in what they otherwise look like, right? So if you if your category is one of profession, break the mold, be the one that’s a little less professional, or be the one that’s a little more charming, a little more witty, or a little more willing to say what somebody didn’t expect you to say if you’re on the opposite end, if your cat, if your category is a little dirty polish it up in a way, right?

We have a category that is very, very high end luxury outdoor furniture and outdoor experiences. I mean, you you got to have some zeros on your paycheck, probably to be a regular customer this place, right? And so there’s a competitor in town, and they do what you’d expect. They do the, you know, over polished, sleek, you know, maybe lifestyle type ads, and they’re fine, like they’re what you’d expect, right? Yeah, they’re probably getting their footage from the manufacturer. And,

Caleb Agee 17:07
you know, they’ve pretty sweeping shots of the on

Brandon Welch 17:12
the California landscape, yes, of the, you know, $12,000 you know, recliner chair, right? Outdoor recliner chair. Mind you, and what we did with these guys instead is we said, You know what? Everybody gets it. They’re gonna go and see their price tag, but most people want to, want to be reasoned with, even the guys and gals with lots of zeros on their paychecks. And so we made this really whimsical, kind of down to earth character out of one of the owners. But he’s, he’s saying sophisticated things, but he’s doing it in a, almost a goofball manner, yes. And so his, his divergence is that what you see, just by the way, we have him read his scripts, he’s a goofball, but then he ends up throwing these really sophisticated things in. And he’s, he’s a eccentric, right? Yes, that’s interesting, yes, and then happens to be his wife, but we present them as, you know, the Bevin rd campaign, yeah, she’s always the reasonable one. She’s the one speaking, you know, out of his whimsy, and she’s always bringing him back down the string, yeah, in a way, right? Yep. And this, these characters just became magnetic over time, and now they almost write themselves these ads do And side note I wrote them. I thought of two people I know very well in my life, and I wrote them to be sort of characters of those two people and things that make me laugh. I just put it in a note of my apple notes. And when I go to write scripts for them, it comes out, yep. And they end up saying these funny things, and people repeat their ads. And years ago, when we first started this campaign, that these guys were really, really consistent advertisers, and nothing wrong with the with the way they were running their business, their long term thinkers. They’re beautiful store, beautiful products, coolest place on the planet to go to, but their ads were more talking about the product and its features, right? And they were voiced by, honestly, any number of random voiceover artists. They didn’t have a consistent style, yeah? And from the like, this company has been in business a long time, and we were just this little punk ad agency that came around and thought we could do better. And so

literally, the first time we put these two characters on radio direct traffic, I could go back and find it in Google Analytics, went up like 30% in a couple weeks, and it kept climbing, and it is still climbing from that day. So cool. And not trying to say we’re big and bad, but I’m saying that the power of divergence, that’s that was a measure of how much more attention we were holding. And we weren’t even telling people to go to the website. Weren’t even saying, like, you got to go here for this specific thing. It just made them instantly more interesting. And we built some phenomenal things off that. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 19:59
that’s awesome. Them

Brandon Welch 20:02
other quick examples, Mac, first, PC, that’s divergent. Those are good. The Apple ads, right? Everybody loves, yeah, the lemon. Remember the remember the Volkswagen ad, where every car ad in America is putting the pretty car on their ads, and they say, this is all its beautiful features. And they put the lemon on there. Divergent, right? Yeah. You expect people to bring their first forward, and they flip that on its head. And they said, here’s the ugliest one we’ve ever made, and it’s not good enough for you. Oh, that’s good. Yeah, yeah, iconic ad, right? So good in our world, Nick and Jamie, we have a client that is a lot in the solar business, we made two divergent characters. One’s the really excited dad, actually, like the male figure, that’s usually the excited person over excited about what solar is going to do for you. And guys, you gotta check it out. Isn’t that cool? You’re never gonna believe it. And then we have a skeptic, his counterpart, Jamie, and she’s the one always saying, Yeah, but what about this? What about this? And it’s almost echoing in a real household. What data says that it’s a husband and wife or, you know, she’s the practical one. He’s maybe over enthusiastic about this product, yeah? And it lands and it holds attention, right? So, last one, we took a roofer and we turn them into a cartoon. Why not? The most boring thing you’ve ever thought of, other than insurance? Maybe we turn our roofer into a cartoon. We make him dance around and do these little March things. Wrote a jingle for him. Side note, jingle. Episodes coming up soon. How to write a good jingle? Okay? Um, we make them dance around, and that’s like, it’s interesting. So make a divergent personality out of either a character or your brand voice in general. It’s boring. Make it fun. If it’s not serious. Maybe make it over serious, like dose did, but find some sort of disruption in what people expect. Yeah, that’s

Caleb Agee 22:09
good. Do we beat that one to death? I think we got it. That’s we got it divergent character, two things that go together that don’t seem like they should go together. The opposite ends of the magnet they’re pushing apart, but you kind of want them to come together, right? And throw some Hollywood

Brandon Welch 22:25
on it. Yep, that’s good. Second thing, make a strong, consistent pursuit of quality, the stronger your brand stands for something, and I literally don’t care what it is, and you could be standing for it ought to be the cheapest thing, because it ain’t that complicated. Or dad gum it. This thing is so serious you You better get the right one the first time. Right. I don’t care if you’re carrying low and high and somewhere in between, it’s some hell bent thing you’re doing for the customer’s well being. One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning did a great job of this decades ago, always on time where you don’t pay a dime, that’s good. Um, I forget who said it. I’m gonna regret not remembering this. But, uh, somebody said a value isn’t a value unless it costs you something. And so like these, this company’s like, if we’re late, it’s on us. Yeah, you don’t pay us a dime, yeah. And so they follow through. That’s actually cultural for them, that’s in their operating procedures. And they train their people that way, um, so all the better if you can back it up with, like, something that is really either generous or tension worthy, that just cost you something, and you can demonstrate, yeah, no, we’re serious about this, you know, yeah.

Caleb Agee 23:45
I think the the difference though, there is you can very easily, this kind of goes back to our last episode, the what are you really selling? You can easily say quality service, or we do it right the first time. You know, that kind of language, along with all of your competitors, but, but that, yeah, can somebody else say that? So not only do you want to have this pursuit of quality, you want to say it in a way that it’s really only something you can say. And this is, this is why, because we’re trying to make them specifically buy from you. That is the goal right now. And so we do things like the Dee guarantee. There’s no Dee in another window replacement company in Kentucky, and if somebody tried

Brandon Welch 24:25
to rip that off, they’d be called a phony for the rest of creation, for the rest of the world’s existence. So and the D guarantee is we’ll be in out of your house in 30 minutes, and if you got anybody past that time, you call me and I’ll come dragging by their ear out of your house. That’s how Dee talks about it on camera. She’s like, No way. You ain’t got time for that. I’m not gonna settle for it. I don’t like those big, pushy, scary salesmen in my house, so they’re not gonna be in yours. Yeah, that’s the Dee guarantee. It’s a commitment to quality. Absolutely, we have roofer the guarantees that will your house and your yard will be cleaner than when we started. That’s good. It’s on their website. We’ve put it in. Ads, we have some doctors who are just hell bent that you have an incredible life as it relates to your vision. So they will never, never settle for less than the best. That’s why they invest hundreds of 1000s of dollars into equipment they don’t have to buy. They could give you a script and push you out the door, just like any other eye doctor, but Dad gummit, don’t come here. It’s going to be the best. Yep, we’re going to diagnose things that you didn’t see coming. Yeah, you’re going to get

Caleb Agee 25:29
the best lenses, the best frames, the best

Brandon Welch 25:32
doctors. They have a they hire the best of the best out of school. Yep, they spend more time than the average. You know. You know, just all called it.

Caleb Agee 25:43
You can usually find these pursuits of qualities inside of the values and what we would call the pissed off moment, right? There’s that moment in the beginning when you said, usually, if you’re, if you’re the entrepreneur, you were working, probably for somebody else in the business, and you said, Oh, I could do this differently. I could we could we can make a difference. We can do the same thing, but we can do it better. Whatever that thing is, that’s probably your quality point. When you say, I was a roofer and I saw how this was being done, and it was close, but it wasn’t totally right. So from now on, we’re going to make sure that there’s not a nail on the ground when we leave. Yep, you know, and so you want to find those things, and those are the things that you’re going to say out loud over and over and over again.

Brandon Welch 26:28
Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs kind of against their will. They’re by calling, not by choice. Yes, that happened to me. I didn’t like the heartache it takes to build a business is not, is not like on paper, is something you probably shouldn’t sign up for unless you have that nagging Damn it. It’s got to be different than it is now. Yeah. And for me, that was like small businesses that couldn’t confidently grow, yeah, because they were trying this and that, right? But your pissed off moment should drive those values, and it’s probably deep seated in the heart of the founder somewhere. Find that and media folks, your job is to find that, because if you can find that and articulate it, you will never that the client will never leave you Yes, because that is what the world actually wants. That, in and of itself, is probably divergent. Yes, because the world is average, right? The bar of average is easy to see. It’s kind of what you expect. But when somebody’s just a little more aggravated

by your like, the way things ought to be, yes, if it’s, if it’s Dee and Randy, it’s absolutely against high pressure. If it’s my buddy Keith, Hi, Keith in Tulsa, it’s, why would you pay more for the exact same thing? It’s he has tuned his operation so tightly that he doesn’t have to have excess overhead so he can deliver a product that he sells at a much, much better price than you’ll find it for a competitor. Some people at speed, some people it’s made in America. Is a really good one. Thinking of Jerry Cook, yeah, he’s like, I will close my doors before I outsource, outsource any of my jobs overseas. Yeah, and he would do that. He would he would give it all up for you. It could be we give 10 cents of every dollar to XYZ charity, or we will always one thing for us, if we have a client that requires, I can think of a lot of business we’ve turned away that would require, like, an excess stress on our team and their quality of life with their family, and it gets past that tolerance level, we just will say we can’t do good work for you, because we we do great work between these hours, and we are not unavailable completely. But as a rule, we protect, yeah, the sanctity of the families that work for us. So guys, this shows up in your hiring. This shows up in how you deliver your product. This shows in how clean your trucks are. This shows in this shows up in, you know, how many locations you commit to so people don’t have to drive. That’s a really great one. Lori, our friend, Lori, could easily probably do the volume she does with one or two locations, and she has nine, because she doesn’t want her elderly population have to drive too far. Yeah, that’s cool. And so you’re talking about this, you’re making some sort of strong commitment. I believe you should never have to blank, or I believe it ought to be this way for you, when that shows up in your ads, and you say it and not, not a cliche way, like, you know, Customer Satisfaction Guarantee, or we will give you the best price as guarantee. We will price match that’s weak, wrong? Yeah, do better, right? Yeah, give me something I can care about. Okay, yep, say it in a way that only. You can say it. I don’t know any other way to say it than what we just said. So that’s good. Love it. Okay, speaking of only in a way you can say it.

You need to have a style walk into any popular retail store that is a chain in the say, in the mall, if anybody goes to malls anymore, but they will have their own scent. They will have their own lighting color. They will have their own table style. They will have either dark, you know, shadowy type lighting, or will be bright and big glass windows. They will have, you know, cozy little dressing rooms, or they’ll have big, wide, open dressing rooms, you know, 40 foot tall ceilings. That’s an example of style. Think of restaurants, the best restaurants in the world have a signature, yeah, certain plate wear a certain treatment, a certain way that people dress. Yep. Okay, so that’s a practical, tangible world. And I gave you that as an example because the exact same thing is true in a world that you’re creating in the imagination with your ads. So what is your musical style? Are you happy or sad? Are you fast or slow? Are you soft or tenacious in the way you talk? There’s no right or wrong answer. Is your music style percussive or atmospheric? Are you rock and roll or country? Are you jazz or gospel or funk or rap or whatever you know? So it shows up in what I would just say the the audio signature of who you are, that’s inflections, tones, and choose those things very intentionally. And I would encourage you to disrupt whatever you think is expected in the category. So many people are trying to make that pick, that cheesy background music track. We just did this for a jeweler client of ours. Every jeweler in America has a light jazz, Poppy, little background tune. And we said, that sucks, yeah. We picked a folk artist, and we brought in a guitar player that was capable of plucking strings in this really authentic way. We brought in the best cellist in all of the region and had him saw these, you know, very woody notes out of this probably half a million dollar instrument that he came in to a studio that we paid Bucha bucks to right just so we could get this custom moving track that the mood we were trying to create was authenticity, because this campaign is very authentic in the way he talks about love and connections and bonds. And what he stands for is the moment ought to be special, and it can’t be something you can get in some over lit, you know, cheap cologne, shopping mall environment, you got to go to the guy that believes in the sanctity of the moment, and he’s helping you craft that moment. And everything about his campaign says that, yeah, so we selected certain music so it shows up in color, sounds, light, shapes, inflections, speed, percussiveness. The word I’m looking for is meter and pace of how you deliver. Yeah, we do that intentionally on the Maven Marketing Podcast, although I rambled a time or two, I’ve been known we know that the average business owner is busy, so we don’t start this in some like philosophical slow. Well, no, we’re going to talk about, talk about the sanctity of the music in your advertising today, we go, No, it’s the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday, yeah, and we, we drive it forward with speed, right? Yeah, there’s a time and a place for everything, but you’re setting an intentional style that people become to know you know come come to know you with, come to know you by and you and do not abandon that style. Okay? Couple other things you can throw in there, one liners, I think over time, these will happen by accident to you. But to start with, you need to have some things you commit to marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy line. You say it every episode, right? We introduce the episode in a certain way we talk. There’s a couple of today, tomorrow, yesterday. Customers, a vernacular that we use. Any one of our clients has 345, different one liners. They’re not slogans. They’re ways they talk about a certain thing they deliver. Yeah, we’ve said it a lot of times, but we the Dee guarantee, or we have a client that says, when the air is on, your money’s gone, or when the heat is on, your money’s gone. Or keep the outside, outside and the inside, inside, right? You can’t use those. Those are trademark to Frank and Maven FYI. But you’ll come up with your own thing, and you have this series of phrases, just like your grandpa says something a certain way, by the way, grandparents are really cool way, or really they they have a vernacular from, you know, yes, a previous. It’s divergent generation, and it’s divergent from any

Caleb Agee 35:19
other ad writer probably would naturally find or go find

Brandon Welch 35:23
some you know, Gen Z punk Nate the camera guy, and find out what the kids are saying these days. Man that slaps. Man that’s a new one. I learned. I don’t know what that is, but hopefully it wasn’t inappropriate, but man that slaps. This podcast slaps. And what I’m saying is find find these. Find these interesting because you’re gonna make people laugh. You find these like, just unpredictable ways to say things. Yeah, punctuation, are you like visually? Are you a lazy punctuation because you want to demonstrate that you’re laid back. Or are you, you know, tight proper English because you want to, you know, put a proper flare to your otherwise improper category, breaking those things vernacular. Are you southern? Are you Northern? Are you somewhere in between? Are you religious? Are you rock and roll? Not those two things can’t go together. But Are are you all business? You’re picking the style and you’re like, I would write it down. You’re gonna, you’re gonna, hopefully, employ an artist and somebody with some intuition, you know, say like Nate the camera guy to help you put this together, or the Frank and Maven team, or whoever else, or you’re doing it intentionally. So hold a strong, consistent style, and don’t break that probably ever, yep, except for once in a while. Don’t break it ever, except for once in a while. And you’re taking one of those elements, like your one liner, and you’re breaking it a little bit. People, you know, 689, months in, people expect you to say it a certain way every time, and say just a little different, just throwing one, one extra word or something, or change a word. Yeah, that’s just to surprise people. Okay, so we talked about creating a divergent character and a divergent personality. We’ve talked about making a strong, consistent pursuit of quality, or a commitment to something for your people. Talked about holding a consistent style. This last one just ties it all together. And in your media, we talk about this every time we talk about tomorrow customers, but you need to be here today, here tomorrow, here for you. I don’t care if it’s raining, I don’t care if it’s snowing. I don’t care if it’s if you’re a, you know, holiday based business or a summer based business, and it’s the middle of the winter, you need to be in people’s lives all the time, because that’s act, frankly, that’s like, that’s the time that they’ll probably, you’re probably most available to their subconscious, which is the place in the mind where they come to know you like an old friend.

Caleb Agee 38:07
And chances are, if you’re thinking about pausing advertising, somebody else is too your

Brandon Welch 38:12
competitors are. And that is, that’s like you’re taking all the headwinds out of your influence on people getting a head start. Yeah, if you’ve done all these other things right? And you’re interesting as it as it is, we have, we have Home Improvement businesses that don’t do anything in the middle of the winter, but their ads are so entertaining. People still, yeah, comment, respond, send letters in, and they’re like, we’re making them laugh. Yeah? And by the time spring rolls around, and then the, you know, polished up competitor in your market decides, decides to start running ads, because now it’s spring, and now some people are buying you’ve already won them over. Yep, long gone. You got it. You beat them to the punch. So that looks like in TV and radio you’re on every day. Pick a program you can commit to every day of the year, at least Monday through Friday, where people are showing back up on radio, on a station, you typically need 40 spots from the hours of 6am to 7pm to pull that off. Anything less than that, and you’re just not aggressive enough to to, you know, be perceived as a regular voice and people will forget you. Takes longer to work TV that’s picking a program, filling it up, buying a news program, or something like a syndicated program that’s on every day, that has a consistent audience showing up there every day, even in the middle of the winter, even middle of the summer.

Caleb Agee 39:29
Yeah, at Christmas. Refer to our episode with Megan from what, two or three weeks ago, how

Brandon Welch 39:34
to get the best deal on TV and radio advertising. Yes, talk all about that. And I can’t stress enough do it in the same style, yes, and you guys are going to win. And that is how this next year and 10 years from now, and 50 years from now, no matter what’s going on in the world and know what, no matter what’s going on in media, and what channel you end up delivering it on, those are the principles be divergent. Be interesting. Commit to quality, promise a better way of life for your customers. Hold a strong style and do it every day. Show up to them like your life depends on it. And guys, you’re going to be fast forward a year or two doing that, and you’re going to go, wow, my business grew faster than it ever has. Yeah. Fast forward four or five years from now, you’re going to go, I’m unstoppable. There’s a client I’m thinking of we did this for who went from very much an underdog

like maybe 1015 clients or 1015 people in his pretty small market were bigger than him, and now he’s eating all over the lunch. He’s by far number one. Wow. And that took four or five years to do. Yeah? Along the way, he was making buckets of money too. Yeah? So that is what we have for you guys. Be sure to go back and listen to episode or the part one if you haven’t anything

Caleb Agee 40:53
I didn’t cover. I don’t think so. I think the biggest thing, these two things, these two episodes, we’ve got, you know, know what you’re really selling. Craft the strategic message, and then make them want to buy from you. All of those three things work together in a layer, and you have to come back even to the beginning of knowing what you’re really selling when you when you finished your ads, go back through this checklist and make sure it’s not really a checklist. But, you know, consider all these pieces. Did I? Did I sell the thing, beyond the thing? Yes, did I really speak to a person? Did I actually talk to Janet that we use as an example? Did what did I really do that Janet? And then, did I say things that only I could say? Did I speak to the quality of my company in a way that is divergent and interesting, and create a character that’s dynamic. And so when you work all of those things together, you need to step take a step back. I don’t care. Like rest your ad, if you’re looking at script, if you however it works, step away for an hour a day a week. I don’t really care. Come back and put fresh eyes on it and say I’m Janet now, and I’m hearing this for the first time. Do I care? Yes, and does this follow through? And when you can do that and you can step into the customer’s shoes, everything’s changes. Yes, so good.

Brandon Welch 42:10
One last pro tip, I currently have 2041 open notes on my Apple device here from the last couple of years. Every time I hear something heard or said an interesting way. I don’t care if I’m in the middle of church. I don’t care if it’s one of my crazy buddies said something funny, or is my grandpa or something I heard on TV. I grab that and I throw it in a random document. I’m like, that’s an interesting, interesting way to say that. And if it made somebody laugh, that’s how you know you’re onto something. Keep those lines and try to work them into your stuff.

Caleb Agee 42:48
Yeah, they come out of you naturally. They do from time to time. Usually when you’re in ad writing mode, everything is very unnatural, yes, so it’s the naturalness that you gotta grab hold of, yes,

Brandon Welch 42:59
yes. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing and advertising questions because marketers who can’t teach you why need the camera guy. Have a great week.