Stop asking, “How did you hear about us?” (do this instead)

Brandon Welch: 0:06
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, brandon Welch, and I’m here with Caleb, four eyes, Agee. Hey, right back at you, buddy. You know, they say the shoes make the man.

Caleb Agee: 0:18
Okay, well, the frames make the podcaster, I think.

Caleb Agee: 0:20
Okay.

Brandon Welch: 0:20
I like your new frames.

Caleb Agee: 0:22
I have a face for podcasts if you are listening via the audios.

Brandon Welch: 0:26
Pull over and pull up caleb’s fancy new frames and tortoise shell wonder yeah, hey, this is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions so you can eliminate waste and boom, grow your business boom and achieve the big dream double boom I think we should just have nate start working in uh boom just yeah, random sound effects into the podcast yes hey, I was at, uh, a marketing class with Roy Williams, the Roy Williams and somebody big deal around he’s.

Caleb Agee: 0:59
He’s a big deal. We we study him a lot.

Caleb Agee: 1:01
The faja somebody raised their and said it was like an open question time how do you measure the success of your campaigns? And without missing a beat, he looked at them and he said most people use data the way a drunk uses a light post for support, not elimination, and then he just let it sit there. And of course the guy who asked the question is like what the heck does that mean? Right, and he was quoting the Scottish poet. And of course the guy who asked the question is like what the heck does that mean? Right and um, he was quoting the Scottish poet. I looked it up, cause I need to Andrew Lang, cause we’re going to give him credit for this. Um, but what Roy was pointing his finger at is our weakness, our confirmation bias. That happens when we try to be a small business, marketers slash statisticians and the slash voters slash yeah, political experts slash.

Caleb Agee: 1:54
Yeah and um it’s. It’s just that we always have a bias of self-confirming and that drunk um doesn’t use the light post to be illuminated. He doesn’t. He’s not trying to look at the street in all of its glory. What he’s doing is he’s just leaning on it because he needs some support for his current.

Brandon Welch: 2:12
It feels good to find data to confirm your suspicions yes, or insecurities, or whatever Feels good to be right.

Caleb Agee: 2:20
I guess yeah.

Brandon Welch: 2:21
Yeah, there’s a whole nother thing I’ve actually it’s. I didn’t plan on talking about this, but I’ve been doing quite a bit of study on confirmation bias. It is wild how, uh, neurologically wired, we are to do that.

Caleb Agee: 2:35
Yeah, um, I’ve been looking for studies to I’ve been doing a lot of research to to make sure I can prove that confirmation bias is real. So I asked chat GPT cheat GPT.

Brandon Welch: 2:47
I said, hey, find me all the reasons why this is right. It’s actually a really dangerous tool for that.

Caleb Agee: 2:54
It really is. So, in reality, as marketers, we’re all wondering you know, how do we know this thing is working? We’re spending money in all kinds of different places and you want to know what’s working, you want to know why it’s working and you want to reward what is working, and you’re writing the checks and take the money away from what isn’t working, right that?

Caleb Agee: 3:17
makes sense.

Caleb Agee: 3:18
Right, Um, you wouldn’t want to, you know, throw good money after bad, Um, but the way we always do that, and I promise you somebody listening to this podcast it’s hanging out in their sales process somewhere- oh, this has happened today. It’s tucked into a form somewhere on your website and it’s just lurking there waiting for your customers, and it is asking Nobody from Frankenmaven would do this? Yeah, it is asking how did you hear about us? How did you hear about us?

Brandon Welch: 3:46
The infamous question Seems perfectly reasonable.

Caleb Agee: 3:48
Yeah, it seems like a fair question, but we’re going to talk about why that maybe it’s perfectly unreasonable, isn’t the right thing to ask?

Brandon Welch: 4:01
What you need to know is it about your business? Relying on introspection of human beings is just psychologically, neurologically and emotionally impossible, and I would love for it to be true. Trust me, my job would have been a gazillion times easier over the years. Our job would be a gazillion times easier over the years because we would just ask people and they would tell us and we would do that whole elimination Key point we are here to eliminate waste in advertising right.

Caleb Agee: 4:32
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 4:33
That’s like an entire. That’s in our freaking vision and mission statement yes, to help entrepreneurs grow without wasting money on advertising. So this is going to sound very contrary to a lot of people listening. We’re going to get some hate mail on this. I know we are and I can’t wait. But we’re doing it because we love you and we want you to make decisions off of good information, not bad information. We want you to grow, we want you to conquer all these things. So at a high level, we’re going to go into the weeds enough to articulate some people that are way smarter than me and you, yeah.

Caleb Agee: 5:12
Not hard to find.

Brandon Welch: 5:13
This is not an opinion. This has been repeated over and over and over in university studies and advertising science at large has tried to ask this and figure this out for a long time and I’m just going to say as a preface big brands, big brands, like people who have millions of dollars at stake. They don’t ask that question, they use the other things we’re going to talk about at the end of this um. So if you want to be like smart big brand advertisers and we all do right, um, you’re not going to ask how did you hear about it, you’re going to do some other things. Um, there are three big problems with it memory bias uh is the biggest um. Customers struggle to accurately recall specific touch points that led them to purchase uh to any purchase decision. Um. The second is that it’s an oversimplification of a complex journey the path to purchasing, especially large ticket items, and we try to think of it as decisions are made in this vacuum and it’s just like a stimulus response thing. It is just way more complex than that.

Caleb Agee: 6:18
Yeah, I think Google tried to do. They called it the zero moment of truth or something like that. They tried to emphasize that final moment. Yes, but that’s not the only moment.

Caleb Agee: 6:28
Yes.

Caleb Agee: 6:28
You know it might be the last moment, but it’s not the moment.

Brandon Welch: 6:31
Two of the larger like advertising platforms in the world, like Google would be one and. Comscore, who studies like consumer behavior would be another. Like consumer behavior would be another. They themselves, like they, have the most to gain, and probably Google especially has the most to gain, because almost everybody will say Google.

Caleb Agee: 6:51
I found you online.

Brandon Welch: 6:52
And they came out with a book like a decade or more ago. We cite it in the Maven Marketer and they’re like it’s actually not one thing, it’s never one thing. At the time it was like eight or nine things. I’ve heard data that’s more like 12 to 15 things that contribute that they can scientifically measure. But every neuroscientist will admit we don’t know. It’s a very complex web of unconscious. We’re going to talk about unconscious thought today. The third is social desirability bias.

Caleb Agee: 7:20
This one cracks me up, because when you ask somebody to help you, they want to give you the information that they think is the most helpful for you.

Caleb Agee: 7:29
Yeah.

Caleb Agee: 7:29
So they change their answer to help you. They’ll be like oh well, I heard you, maybe they searched on Google. They’ll be like well, I’ve heard your TV ad.

Caleb Agee: 7:42
Yeah.

Caleb Agee: 7:42
And they’ll try to give credit to the thing that they think maybe you’re spending the most money on, or they think that you want to validate, or that makes them look the most sophisticated.

Brandon Welch: 7:50
Yes, Well I definitely didn’t see you on a billboard or I definitely didn’t watch you on television last night, yeah, I know, so they provide answers.

Brandon Welch: 7:57
We, we all do this, we’re not making big bad wolves out of everybody, but we believe are more acceptable or favorable. And I don’t want to tell people I was scrolling on Facebook so I may not say that, right, but the truth is way before that. You just don’t remember. At least 90% of this happens in unconscious thought and everybody is losing their minds right now because they’re going oh, but how do I figure this out? And we have clients that have spent gazillions of dollars on. That’s a real number, right?

Caleb Agee: 8:27
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 8:27
Gazillions on TV and people come in and swear that they have heard them on the radio and they’ve never spent one penny on the radio right Yep.

Brandon Welch: 8:35
This happens all the time in our environment. So we’re doing our best to break this down and just give it to you in a way you can trust and act on. And a way you can trust and act on. And there is a better answer. We’re going to get to that shortly. But hey, let’s talk about the people that are smarter than us, that are going to confirm our bias.

Brandon Welch: 8:52
Richard Nisbet, if you want to look him up, and Timothy DeCamp. Timothy DeCamp Wilson did a study called Telling More Than we Can Know. Landmark study demonstrated that people often fabricate explanations for their own behaviors without realizing it. They got some funding from the University of Michigan to do this and the big takeaway is that people confabulate Confabulate. It’s definitely smarter than us.

Caleb Agee: 9:17
It’s definitely smarter. That’s a $9 word, right there they confabulate reasons for their actions.

Brandon Welch: 9:23
Nisbet and Wilson found that when asked to explain their choices or behaviors, people often provide plausible but inaccurate explanations. They are unaware of the actual factors influencing their decisions. Instead, they construct a post hoc rationalization based on what seems to be reasonable, so essentially what sounds good, right.

Caleb Agee: 9:42
What sounds right. You don’t know your own train of thought that led you to the decision that you made, and then you try to reverse engineer it when somebody asks you at the end yes, and you’re going to do it inaccurately because you cannot account for all of the factors that influenced your decision up to that point.

Brandon Welch: 10:02
You know those late night show guys that go up, they send somebody out on the streets and they ask people questions and they make them look really stupid because the people you know, on the TV audience side, we can see exactly what’s going on with these people, or don’t know in the moment.

Brandon Welch: 10:16
Well, they did the same sort of thing. Here’s an example from the study. They showed them two different pairs of nylon stockings of all things right and they said choose the one that has the best quality. Unbeknownst to the participants in the study, all of the stockings were actually identical. However, all of them provided a detailed justification for why they chose one set of stockings over the other, often mentioning texture or color factors that weren’t actually different when they showed them. And it just demonstrates everybody’s instant ability to come up with a very convincing story as to why they can justify something.

Brandon Welch: 10:52
I know this because I do it all the time. I want my ideas to be right and I’m pretty good at storytelling, so you’ve been warned. So we are unaware of subtle differences in our decisions. The big things we can remember. We can remember where we were when somebody died or we got really good or really bad news. We can remember you know what the weather was like and what. You know what was on the radio when really defining emotional moments happen in our lives, but when they’re when they’re essentially happening in the unconscious things that wouldn’t otherwise warrant the synaptic firing that creates long-term memory. We go back and we look in that corner. We don’t realize we do this, but there’s not enough detail stuck in the brain to even fabricate something, so we just do it.

Caleb Agee: 11:35
We just go.

Brandon Welch: 11:35
we go off what we think, or maybe what we think we would do in that moment, but we were very, very inaccurate at doing that.

Caleb Agee: 11:41
That’s right.

Brandon Welch: 11:43
So that was one study, so here’s another one by Michael Gazzaniga.

Caleb Agee: 11:48
Okay, you nailed it yeah.

Brandon Welch: 11:52
I read this stuff all the time. Yeah, totally didn’t look this up this week. Actually, there are a few in here that we’re referencing that I did some pretty deep research on when we wrote the Maven Marketer.

Caleb Agee: 12:03
Yeah, I was mostly talking about the name. It’s hard to get other people’s names right.

Brandon Welch: 12:07
Gazzaniga Sounds like Italian dish, I’ll have the Gazzaniga. Yeah, he studied the split brain to show how the left hemisphere creates explanations for actions that are actually controlled in the right hemisphere, demonstrating how we rationalize unconscious influences. We weren’t planning on talking about brain lateralization today, but you should know that in the 80s, dr Richard Sperry discovered that we have and demonstrated there are two working hemispheres of the brain and they’re responsible for two very different functions. Tell us about that, dr Sperry.

Caleb Agee: 12:58
I was thinking about shoes after Dr Sperry administrative side of your brain working, and so those two paired together make you a very complex individual. But what this, what Michael’s study found is that your right brain does this creative thinking Pattern finding it doesn’t even know. Chaotic, it’s chaotic, it’s crazy.

Brandon Welch: 13:19
It’s art, it’s music, it’s all these things that are happening in that side of your brain, just like you had no idea you were going to think about tennis shoes 40 seconds ago when I said dr richard sperry, and your brain went off on this. Yeah, I wonder if he was related to the sperry family yeah, the sperry fortune.

Caleb Agee: 13:35
I was like as he found out that there’s a left and a right side of your brain and a left and a right foot yeah so then he started a shoe company, and that’s literally where I went in my brain. See that I was so distracted In real time.

Brandon Welch: 13:45
that is what your brain is constantly doing, by the way, even while you sleep.

Caleb Agee: 13:49
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 13:50
Your left brain deals in finite details, black and white logic.

Caleb Agee: 13:55
Okay.

Brandon Welch: 13:56
Yeah, and it’s the thing that controls a lot of your motor functions. So when you go to explain something, it’s trying to make sense of whatever pattern that the right has fed it. But the right has no ability to actually fully fabricate or put in linear fashion that can be communicated. It’s a chaotic thing. That’s why you think of somebody who’s an artist or a musician or maybe a really talented athlete, and you try to ask them how do you do?

Caleb Agee: 14:21
what you they don’t know, yeah, the right brain is just on go listen to any commentary album uh by an artist, you know, and they’re, they’re like, yeah, we were um just sitting in the studio one day and and dave was, he was just playing this line and against the jukebox and I said, hey, man, don’t rock the jukebox, yeah it’s like and then boom, you got a song and obviously there were a hundred more things that happened for that song to come.

Brandon Welch: 14:46
They make it sound like it’s simple I just need to go sit.

Caleb Agee: 14:49
But they’re trying to rationalize somebody asked him a question, left brain’s showing up trying to answer a right brain question and it’s just not possible there’s also when you ask a child.

Brandon Welch: 14:57
I’ve learned this as a dad why?

Caleb Agee: 14:59
did? Did you do that?

Brandon Welch: 14:59
They don’t know they don’t know, they don’t know. That’s a horrible question.

Caleb Agee: 15:02
I’m so bad at it.

Brandon Welch: 15:03
I’m bad at that too. Yeah, what were you? Why Give me your logic? And they’re like I didn’t have any logic. It just seemed like the right thing to do, just felt good. So there’s your right. Brain is processing things that you can’t even construct into useful thought that can be transferred to another human being, maybe much less even your own understanding.

Caleb Agee: 15:30
Speaking of kind of the automatic thing we’re talking about with our kids, john Barg studied cognitive psychology and the automaticity that’s a good word. Yeah, there’s another, that’s $13.

Brandon Welch: 15:40
That’s a good word. Yeah, there’s another, that’s $13.

Caleb Agee: 15:42
That’s going to cost you. Basically, it showed how much of our behavior is driven by automatic unconscious processes. Yes, so sometimes I think if you ask an adult, why did you do that, they also don’t know.

Brandon Welch: 15:56
Here’s some more proof. Yeah, did you know that, as a person living in American pop culture, you know the better part of hundreds of songs? I think the stat is actually well into a thousand songs that you never, ever, ever intended to learn.

Caleb Agee: 16:12
Yeah, my dad texted my brother and I about a band, just super obscure brand, nobody knows them from our childhood, and he was like hey, what was close? Uh, no less less known than that even. But he was like, hey, what was that band? And we pulled it up and then he, uh, he was like, oh yeah, that’s it. My brother remembered pulled up some of the songs I knew every single word Haven’t heard it in 20 years? Yeah, easily. Yes, every single word.

Brandon Welch: 16:39
Yes, did you ever intend to learn the State Farm jingle? No, like a good neighbor.

Caleb Agee: 16:46
Well, we were doing the Mario Prove my point. Oh yeah, mario, just a minute, we were just playing it before we hit record.

Brandon Welch: 16:51
Yeah.

Caleb Agee: 16:51
And watching the guys that can play it on guitar really well.

Brandon Welch: 16:54
But I need some confirmation bias. Like a good neighbor.

Caleb Agee: 16:56
Yeah, stay Farm is there Okay?

Brandon Welch: 16:58
thank you.

Caleb Agee: 16:59
Yes.

Brandon Welch: 16:59
Mario so there are a gazillion examples of you doing this in a day Like you just do that.

Brandon Welch: 17:08
You could smell perfume that was like your grandmother’s perfume, that you haven’t seen in 30 years because she’s been gone, and you instantly have a flood of emotions that come back to you. You instantly have a flood of emotions that come back to you and you could have never explained or felt those again if it wasn’t for that right brain unconscious automaticity that John Barg studied. Also. Antonio Damasio talked about the somatic marker hypothesis, which is how emotions influence decision making and suggests that much of our reasoning is guided by unconscious emotional signals, our limbic system. This goes way back to childhood, before you could even talk or understand math or words or reading. And these things that happen to you environmental things, good, bad, somewhere in between, sensory-based things create patterns in your brain and it really at its core. It’s a, a survival mechanism.

Brandon Welch: 18:04
It helps us avoid danger. Yeah, helps us know like bad smells versus good smells, and and what are well, and it’s even down to what am I going to waste calories on?

Caleb Agee: 18:14
yes, it costs. That computer you have inside, you know, in between your ears, takes power and your body’s literally thinking what should I spend those calories on today? And it’s trying to cancel out, it’s trying to be as energy efficient as it possibly can be and that’s the unconscious, automatic thing that’s happening.

Brandon Welch: 18:34
If you want to read more about that. We didn’t put it in here today, but that’s actually a fascinating study. It actually informs a lot of things we should be doing in advertising, which is don’t waste people’s time, help them thrive or survive, and if you’re not doing that, shut up um get you a copy of the Maven market, or go to the back resources.

Brandon Welch: 18:51
There’s a study that we uh link to in there, uh, or get the Kindle version and uh read more about that. So, uh, we’re making, we’re making you more smarter, okay, yes, uh, last thing, this one, this one is specifically from the journal of targeting, measurement and analysis and marketing. Did you know there’s a journal for targeting and measurement analysis?

Caleb Agee: 19:11
Of course, Uh, I can’t tell you how I knew that, but I but I do.

Brandon Welch: 19:15
This one in the early 2000s, estimating advertising half-life and data interval bias. Now that is nerd talk and we’re not going to keep you there, mm-hmm. But Monash University Faculty of Business and Economics these people study what makes businesses grow, and all of that sort of stuff concluded that while advertising has a measurable effect on consumer behavior this isn’t a college, okay, this is a collegiate like peer-reviewed study While advertising has a measurable effect on consumer behavior a measurable effect it operates in a way that is not necessarily linked to explicit memory recall. Instead, advertising works through ad stock, a cumulative decaying effect, where past exposures continue to influence purchase decisions long after the ad itself has been forgotten.

Brandon Welch: 20:04
Think about that. You can remember what the dang ad was, what?

Brandon Welch: 20:08
it said Now this is where repeating characters becomes such a useful tool Repeating characters and slogans and jingles and colors and brand like elements, right Brand voice. That helps people remember your campaign. Total side rant you want to create campaigns, not ads, but this is saying the individual ad, the thing that said the whatever thing. You don’t remember where you were, what happened, what channel it was, on what media it was. Even on right. People will swear they saw you in a magazine. You were never in right.

Caleb Agee: 20:41
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 20:43
But you do retain a feeling and a familiarity, much like walking into a room of people you haven’t seen for a very long time, or maybe you don’t remember who they are, or maybe you’re church. You don’t know them individually, but you get a feel for them. Same sort of thing. It does influence the purchase decision, it influences preference, even though the ad itself is a figment of it’s crazy, the past it’s.

Caleb Agee: 21:06
I like that ad stock language. It’s like an impression of your brand, not the ad itself, but the impression of it. It’s the how it made you feel yes, lasts a lot longer than the ad itself. And um, um. And then I guess, by this logic, something I saw when I was 10 years old is still affecting my purchasing decisions today, which is wild to think about it, and it could be for good or for not, right, yeah?

Brandon Welch: 21:35
Absolutely yeah.

Caleb Agee: 21:36
And there are probably ads I saw back then blockbuster ads that aren’t on today, but they affect how I think about. I don’t know, I’m making something up, something random up, but affect how I think about movie purchases today. Oh sure, Whether I realize it or not.

Brandon Welch: 21:49
Yeah, or cars, or yeah, think about big brands Like. Think about Oldsmobile.

Caleb Agee: 21:53
I’m thinking of brands that aren’t around anymore.

Caleb Agee: 21:55
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 22:02
Are they still affecting us today in because of the advertising they did back then, the one I use in the book a lot is coke and pepsi, and it has a heck of a lot more to do, not with the ads themselves, but what kind of household you grew up in, right? Um, my grandma was a was a coca-cola household and therefore, I will always be a coca-cola guy, even though I don’t drink soda yeah, we were a pepsi mountain dew house, so we would choose restaurants.

Caleb Agee: 22:20
that Pepsi Mountain Dew house, so we would choose restaurants. That’s what’s wrong with you. We would choose restaurants based on whether they had. Pepsi products or not.

Caleb Agee: 22:27
Yep, I wondered all this time. That’s, that’s why we you know we have when we have conflict, we know the root of all of it.

Caleb Agee: 22:34
So, pepsi, hey, all of this is the reasons we’re trying to confirm our bias. Uh no, I’m just kidding this. This is real science. Um, on why you shouldn’t be asking how did you hear about us? And um, some of you literally think about that form on your website, where you ask it along the customer’s journey or or at the end of your sales process, you say now, how did you hear about us? And give us? You give them a check, check boxes, or maybe you just leave it as an open question and they type it in Um, well, how the heck am I going to know what?

Caleb Agee: 23:05
yeah.

Brandon Welch: 23:06
Which advertising to keep doing right? It’s the old adage Half my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half.

Caleb Agee: 23:11
Yeah, yes, it’s adage, I like that.

Brandon Welch: 23:14
So hey question when did you first hear Twinkle, twinkle Little Star?

Caleb Agee: 23:20
I don’t know. My, that was probably my That’d be from somewhere. Yeah, I can’t.

Brandon Welch: 23:25
I don’t know, Don’t give credit to the nursery school at church, or your mom or your grandma or your dad or whatever.

Caleb Agee: 23:31
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 23:35
What radio station did you first hear Sweet Home Alabama on.

Caleb Agee: 23:38
Hmm, I have no clue.

Brandon Welch: 23:45
Could you possibly know that? No, now, if you ask a lot of people, they’d probably think oh well, my dad listened to you know 102.5 or something, so it’s probably that, and they probably without somebody. Yep, nobody, nobody knows that, right? Yeah, this, this is my favorite thing to ask people when you you pull to McDonald’s in the morning I actually got to do some of McDonald’s media buys at one point. It was fascinating how they thought about it. But you pull up, you get your sausage of nothing and they’re like we just have one question when did you hear about us? And it’s like the proper response to that would be which time? Yeah, which time are you talking about?

Caleb Agee: 24:25
Well, when you pull up to McDonald’s, you know what they say first Welcome back.

Caleb Agee: 24:29
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 24:29
Welcome back Right Strong case for the yesterday customer.

Caleb Agee: 24:33
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 24:33
But just think about a world where somebody hadn’t been to McDonald’s and there’s a lot of homeschool kids that never have been there, I’m sure, and they’re going. How’d you hear about us? And everybody’s like I don’t know. That’s a, that’s like the most. That’d be the dumbest question to ask, right, yeah, um, I happen to know that the media buyers for mcdonald’s have a formula that between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am, they want you to hear their TV ad for, um, you know, pancakes, or?

Brandon Welch: 25:03
sausage whatever in the morning or while you’re falling asleep. Yep, so that when you wake up and you have that hunger, that’s like one of your first, most recent stimulus.

Caleb Agee: 25:12
Grab a breakfast burrito on the way.

Brandon Welch: 25:13
They also want you to hear the radio ad when you’re pulling out of the garage, right, and they want you to see a billboard on the way. And now I’m sure this was 10 or 15 years ago now I’m sure they have a Instagram Facebook component to that.

Brandon Welch: 25:26
And it’s like stop trying to source your advertising, and what I kind of came to the conclusion of when I was doing this and honestly wrestling with this myself as a business owner and in the early days of advertising for my family’s company, like we would ask this question, and I realized that I was trying to use confirmation bias to figure out who to fire. And the truth is, any one of the multiple medias I was using could have worked, but I would you know wait three months. But I haven’t heard anybody say anything about that. So yeah.

Brandon Welch: 25:59
I don’t think it works. We had somebody come in here Remember this person that came in here for a case study or for a lunch and learn thing and she was like radio doesn’t work. I already tried that and we’re like tell us more.

Caleb Agee: 26:11
When did you try it?

Brandon Welch: 26:11
Yeah, Well, I ran it for two weeks and nobody came in, nobody talked about it.

Brandon Welch: 26:16
Right, like oh, but Right, but break this down. You could be the crappiest radio station in your town, you could be the smallest radio station there are still people that show up and listen to that every day or Billboard, or the smallest whatever. And just think about, there are at least thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people exposed to even the smallest of stations at a medium-sized market. And so you just think, well, have all 10,000 of those people come around to buying from me and or their friends and family? And it’s like no, then why would you stop? Like well, I don’t know if they’re the right people, well, they’re human beings, right?

Caleb Agee: 26:59
On the Younger Pop pop channel.

Brandon Welch: 27:02
You’re probably not going to advertise um things that homeowners would need or right like retirement services concrete foundation repair service yeah to the 18 to 24 year olds, because they don’t likely have a house there’s a station in town that everybody used to listen to in high school. Power 96.5. Yeah.

Caleb Agee: 27:22
We all talk about it and I wouldn’t buy on that station at least as it was back then for something that you need when you retire or as a homeowner or whatever.

Brandon Welch: 27:34
Now would it still work? Yeah, it would still work. Yeah, in time it would work. Add stock it. Just there’s a little bit better decision to make there, right?

Brandon Welch: 27:41
So there’s some demographic like it’s kind of a secondary thought, and we’re getting off track, but what we’re saying is just keep making noise to those people and everybody’s waiting for. Well, how do I measure it? Yep, we’re talking largely about tomorrow marketing. You can measure search engine performance in a very short window. Yes, In a slightly longer window. You can measure really targeted digital like Facebook ads. Right, Mm-hmm.

Brandon Welch: 28:07
At least for their direct response, lead generation or e-commerce ability. Right, you can say I spent $1,000. How many transactions did I get? That data is pretty reliable. But when it comes to influencing and intercepting people when they’re not thinking or trying to actively purchase, which is what we call the tomorrow customer, which is the way that other studies prove, that is the best way to grow a profitable company.

Caleb Agee: 28:30
It should be two-thirds at least of your marketing budget. So it’s the lion’s share. This is the one you’re asking about.

Brandon Welch: 28:39
It’s 70-30, basically. Yeah, the one you’re asking about it’s 70-30,. Basically is, if we’re trying to become known, liked and trusted and become the preferred provider in our market or our industry, here’s seven things that you can do. We call these the seven clues. Along the way, we’re taking these out of the tomorrow marketing strategy chapter. I think it’s the most valuable chapter in the book.

Brandon Welch: 28:58
I agree Because it brings so much clarity to a very historically unclear thing and something that’s been, I think, misrepresented by media salespeople. So, when you’re trying to grow your brand, steal market share, get a bigger piece of the pie, grow faster than you have been. Here’s seven things you want to look at. One I will, almost always within six to twelve months after running a good starting, a good campaign, or even a mediocre campaign frankly I will see a correlation of direct traffic and organic traffic increasing at the same time.

Brandon Welch: 29:33
Yeah, what that is an indicator of is people recalling your name, instead of going to Google and saying show me the list of all roofers in the area, or attorneys, or whatever. So Google Analytics, ga4, any punk could set this up for you and you would at least have the basic data we’re talking about. You go to the user acquisition tab and you just look at did they come from organic search? Did they come from direct traffic? Which means they most likely just put your URL in.

Brandon Welch: 30:05
Look at a really wide window for your date, your timeline, yep 12 months if you want you know, generally web traffic if you’ve done nothing to affect it or if your brand isn’t growing, stays the same or declines because somebody else is stealing it. But I’m oversimplifying this. But I think in a six to 12 month window you could start to see it. If as long as you’re not like, you can definitely see it year over year, but as long as you’re not a really seasonal business. So don’t go comparing December traffic for a summer home improvement business for a summer product or a boat dealership or something like that, but in the same time period, if all other things are the same.

Brandon Welch: 30:42
And one other small caveat if Google hasn’t made any major changes to the competitive landscape or the algorithm, that would have reduced your organic traffic, you will usually see this trend, like when you see Lyft and I’m talking 5% to 10% is reasonable. Year over year we start seeing it in the 30%, 40%, 50% and it’s like oh wow, that brand is growing, because most of you growing a business have at least a few years of data. You’ve had a decent website built for you, so increase direct website traffic and brand searches via organic yeah.

Brandon Welch: 31:19
You can also go to Google Search Console. It’s super nerdy Grab a nerd and just grab via organic. Yeah, you can also go to Google search console.

Caleb Agee: 31:23
It’s super nerdy. Grab a nerd and just grab a nerd.

Brandon Welch: 31:24
Grab the major marketer and say show me if this is happening.

Caleb Agee: 31:27
Second clue along the way you’ll see decreased lead cost and what happens there is tomorrow marketing impacts the overall picture of what’s appears to be today marketing right, so you’ll watch your lead generation, however you’re doing that. It could be google, facebook, instagram, it could be through you know lead aggregate sources. You could watch it in all these areas, but you’ll watch your cost go down because they already know about you. Yes, whether they they clicked on the ad and you paid for it.

Brandon Welch: 32:04
You may have to pay ten dollars for that you still have to pay an extra.

Caleb Agee: 32:07
Yeah but more often than not those people are converting after the click.

Brandon Welch: 32:12
Yes, to we. We laid this out, this very very thing, like a real life, statistical, no numbers lying case study. In last week’s episode we had one roofer that was getting a $313 cost per lead and one getting 72 in very similar next door to door markets, very similar companies, same everything, same budgets. In the whole deal, the roofer getting the lower lead costs had just been doing tomorrow marketing, yeah.

Caleb Agee: 32:40
And a big thing here is somebody searched you know they searched roofer near me, but you had that impression, you had that stock inside of their mind and then they chose you, the ad stock, right. They chose you instead of the other two, three, four on the page. Yes, and that’s what drives the cost down.

Brandon Welch: 33:00
So that’s about the known factor, like direct traffic, and then the decreased lead cost. That’s generally because they know you more and they’re just going to you directly instead of going more often through a paid source. It’s also about the trust and like factor. When people trust you more, guess what? They’ll come to your website and instead of thinking about it more often.

Caleb Agee: 33:26
They will take action. Just fill it out. They’re not in research mode.

Brandon Welch: 33:28
They are in I want you mode. Yes, Most of the most of the non-branded, non-well established I shouldn’t say um non-tomorrow marketing clients that we inherit or take on, come to us with a three to 5% conversion rate on their website and that would be considered average for most industries. Like 5% of the traffic, 5 out of 100 are actually taking the next step.

Caleb Agee: 33:48
A lot of places would say that’s really good.

Brandon Welch: 33:50
Fast forward a few years. Anybody who’s doing the plan we’re talking about, it’s 15 to 20. The ones that we’ve been doing this for a while with easily in the 30s and that’s because the entire market knows who they are. They already came there because they believe in them and they think they sound like a good company to work with. That is the biggest incremental increase in efficiency and therefore profit and therefore riches. That thing right there we just talked about, that’s what’s making millionaires with the Maven method. Fun fact, we almost called the Maven marketer the Maven method. That’s right. Fun fact, we almost called the Maven marketer the Maven millionaire. Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 34:25
I remember that I had several people trying to tell me that was a good idea and I didn’t like it. Yeah, so I went and found confirmation bias as a bad idea.

Caleb Agee: 34:32
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 34:32
Caleb was like that’s a dumb name. You shouldn’t do that. Anyway but I think you, I think it’s true. Yeah, it’s because so many millionaires had come out of that process.

Caleb Agee: 34:41
Yeah, that’s right. That was number three higher conversion rates on your website. Number four is competitors chasing you. You will watch and it’ll be annoying to some of you, it’ll be maybe borderline, make your face red, get you a little angry, but they will copy your amazing ads. They will copy your product offering. They will copy.

Caleb Agee: 35:06
I’ve seen them copy colors how you, yeah, your brand, your logo will start to look the same and, outside of copyright laws assuming they were a percentage away enough to not be completely stealing from you they will do that because what you are doing is working.

Brandon Welch: 35:26
Yes, and they’re hearing it on the sales pitch, they’re seeing their appointments go down, they’re seeing themselves lose more deals or conversations to you, and so they’re like, oh, they’re advertising that TV.

Caleb Agee: 35:37
I better do it the same. They’ll buy the billboard across the street from your billboard.

Brandon Welch: 35:40
Man, I have a really, really solid example of this. I don’t want to say the company’s names, but literally this annoying, just like what’s the word. I’m a cringy competitor of one of our big law firms.

Caleb Agee: 35:57
Clients yeah.

Brandon Welch: 35:59
Does the? They tried to rip it and the thing is let them do it. The name almost sounds the same. They ripped off the name. They ripped off. Yeah, actually she’s had three or four people in her town, but what you have to do is take things and make them.

Caleb Agee: 36:13
if that happens, by the way, that’s one that is a signal that your marketing is working. That’s the point we’re making here Mostly good working.

Brandon Welch: 36:19
That’s. That’s the point we’re making here.

Caleb Agee: 36:20
That is mostly good news. It’s mostly good, but you also have to make sure you have things inside of your marketing that make that nobody could copy things that are special to you, that make you completely different yeah, so, um, yeah, we try to make sure that’s baked in.

Brandon Welch: 36:32
So competitors chasing you you’re gonna hear it um more repeat and referral business. So, uh, literally you’ll be like, oh, my repeat and referral business is up and it’s like what’s happening is your past customers are in that audience that you are winning over and and your. Your brand is just becoming more of a of a household thing like a market awareness thing. And that also prompts past customers. They’re not immune to your ad just because they’ve already done business with you.

Caleb Agee: 36:59
They’ve become not tomorrow customers, but yesterday customers.

Brandon Welch: 37:02
Use this confirmation bias thing in reverse. People love to be the person that refers good people. I got a guy. I got a guy. Oh, you should go to so-and-so, they’re awesome. Yeah, and some people will even refer you, not ever having used you. This happens to Randy and Dee all the time.

Caleb Agee: 37:22
Oh, you should call that Randy and Dee. They’re good people. It’s like they’ve never met them ever.

Brandon Welch: 37:24
And they are good people, but you don’t know that. They just had really good ad people, so more repeat referral business. If you see that going up, you can know that your marketing is working.

Caleb Agee: 37:34
Yeah, higher and easier sales closing ratios. You will watch that sales call, uh, or that appointment or whatever. However you close the deal, you’ll watch your close rates go up. Doesn’t matter which salesperson you’re talking about. It doesn’t matter if it, if, if you’re in your ads yeah and you go to the sales appointment, you’ll watch that skyrocket. But even without that you will watch your sales close. Ratios just climb over time because people trust you before you ever come to their house or before they ever have that call with you.

Brandon Welch: 38:06
I had a client in a year and a half when they started. Their lowest closing sales guy was doing about 35%, which was meh. Their highest closing sales guy was doing about 60%, which is meh or which is good. Sorry, it’s better than average, but the blended average was like 45-50% right Year and a half later. The team average was 58%. The lowest guy came up, the highest guy even got higher and they’re closing 58% Wild.

Caleb Agee: 38:40
Wild, wild, wild. Do the math in your business.

Brandon Welch: 38:43
You watch the top line change and what’s crazy if you do the campaigns like we taught you how to do last week and in like most of the episodes we talk about here.

Brandon Welch: 38:52
If you do that, you go to the front door or they come into your place. Your prospects will start repeating your ads. Oh, are you going to do that thing? Are you going to say that thing? Show me about the, you know, d guarantee or whatever. Or the whistle, your jingle, or whatever. It’s working, they’re doing it For sure. That’s right. So last one, that’s what we all want Drum roll, please. Faster growth rate annually. You may see this in your first year. You’ll definitely see it in years like two and a half, through Forever, forever.

Caleb Agee: 39:27
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 39:27
You’re going to start growing faster than you have Again, all other things being the same. Let’s assume you didn’t buy a new location or you didn’t do something else, add a new product line or something. But if you’re just doing the same things you’ve always done and then you start adding this component to your marketing, where people know, like and trust you before the sale your company will grow faster than it did before. Uh, not like, not like compared to years one and two, when everything is growth, but just your average. Like people that have come to us with you know, 10 year old businesses, we haven’t grown this fast since our first second year, so it can be easily in the 30, 40%, 50% range for service companies. So lots of getting in the weeds there. What are we talking about?

Brandon Welch: 40:14
Measuring your marketing is a very complex emotional equation. There are very few, there are no exact scientific ways to measure it, but there are very few ways even after that that give you a full picture. But the worst possible one is introspection, humans’ introspection. We are way more complex than we even understand. This is why we have psychiatrists. This is why people go to school for 20 years to try to have some sort of fathom about why we do the things we do, but we’re just simply not wired to be able to tell you why we made a purchase decision.

Caleb Agee: 40:52
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 40:53
We’re just not Not reliably, not reliably, not consistently, yeah. Second point long-term payoffs can’t be measured in a short-term window. What you’re doing today will pay dividends for months and years past today, if you must measure something, if your accountant is going but I gotta see the data use the seven clues along the way to get a better feel, to get more accurate, real data about what’s happening. And, uh, ultimately, stop asking how did you hear about us? And just make sure people did, make sure they did hear about you. We’ll look for reasons to stop making noise. Just keep making noise and they will have heard about you. Doesn’t matter where. Sound bounces off the walls, emotions bounce from human to human. Just keep making noise. We’ll be back here every Monday answering your real-life marketing questions, because marketers who cannot teach you why?

Caleb Agee: 41:56
are just a fancy lie.

Brandon Welch: 41:57
Have a great week.