This is the laundry room. Laundry room. I’m Nick Skislak. Michael Taylor here. Michael, it’s good to be back, man. Yeah, man. We’re keeping this going, keeping the dream alive. Making content. Making content. We How long have we been talking about doing something like this? my gosh. Years. I mean, five, six years. Easily. Before it was cool. We were talking about doing podcasts, and now we’re in it.
00:36:08 – 00:01:15:24
How many? What are we, six months in on that? Yeah, we. Yeah, we’re eight months in, man. Eight months? Yeah, about eight. Eight months. Then we’re trying to practice what we preach. Yeah, it’s good. For example, the laundry room for any first time listeners, I’m sure we have a lot of first time listeners. I’m This is a chance for us to share behind the scenes thoughts behind the scenes, insights from the agents agency perspective of all the things we’ve done wrong.
00:01:15:26 – 00:01:42:21
Right areas where we’ve had some success, but mostly areas where we struggle, where we have struggle, where we see our clients struggle. And so to try to give the dirty part of this business to help us, this is a therapy session for us, for sure. Yeah, but to help others who may be in a similar position or role as we are.
00:01:42:25 – 00:02:17:02
Absolutely. And then certainly a bit of a cheat code for people who represent in-house teams, clients. You know, how do you manage a relationship with a firm, an agency that is doing work for you and not just the firm or agency, but also your own squad, your own team, your own marketing team? Yeah, absolutely. So the I love this conversation because we’ve been having the same conversation for men almost 15 years and we just put a comma.
00:02:17:04 – 00:02:47:24
Any time we stop and pick it back up and now we have a microphone in front of us. To do it today, I thought it would be cool to list out a few of the common mistakes or challenges that we see businesses making in their marketing in for for a lot of companies, certainly companies that have been around for a long time, they built their success on sales.
00:02:47:27 – 00:03:23:08
Right. Yeah, well, you have a bona fide sales team or bona fide sales process, and that was the lifeline for growth within the organization. Then this marketing concept became more of a it’s an afterthought, but then you hit a point and it’s like, okay, we’re we’re legit now we got to start thinking about marketing. Yeah, Yeah. And so you have two types of companies who find themselves in these positions.
00:03:23:08 – 00:03:45
One, they haven’t done it before, right? So they’re a newbie and they’re trying to figure it out to the guy who’s done it and got burned. Right? It’s not working. It’s not doing what they think it should do. And so they discount or devalue what market. And when we say get burned, we mean they haven’t been able to do it and get a positive return on the investment.
00:03:45 – 00:04:20:05
Right. So they don’t think it works. Right? Right. So I have ten ideas, ten thoughts of reasons marketing doesn’t work for companies. So I want to kind of do a speed round here, lob some at you and talk about how we’ve seen this in the work we’ve done for our clients. In the work we try to do for ourselves, and hopefully this will help affirm some ideas and some thoughts that people listening are already thinking, That’s awesome, let’s do it.
00:04:20:05 – 00:04:50:13
All right. Number one, why marketing is failing. Why you’re failing at marketing. Lack of clear goals. Sounds really simple, but oftentimes we will just start running. Clients will just start running and doing things, and there is no clear finish line. There’s no clear measurement of is it working, is it good, you know, setting? What are the expected results?
00:04:50:14 – 00:05:18:21
What would we like to achieve? I see this. Yes, we see this all the time. We get the chance to talk with business owners. I just had a meeting. This was a couple of weeks back and this girl’s got a small business and she wants to hire a full time she called Digital Marketer. And this the skill set that they wanted were social search content, email and design.
00:05:18:23 – 00:05:35:19
So they wanted one role to have all of those just to handle all the marketing. And I told her, I said, this is a horrible idea. This is not going to end. While she didn’t listen to me, she did it anyways. The guy stayed on for like four or five days and and that was it. It was it was over.
00:05:35:21 – 00:05:54:20
And the problem was she never understood what she was looking to achieve from the role. She didn’t know what she wanted to get out of it. She said things like, I want emails to go out. I want social, I want to post to be put on my social, none of that. Those are all just things. Those are all just tactics.
00:05:54:20 – 00:06:14:13
If you don’t understand what you want to get out of those, what the result is of that, that’s where you’re doomed. So what we’d like to talk about, I think the big three for us, what is your cost per acquisition? What is your lifetime customer value, and then how much are you willing to invest for a visitor? What is the cost that you’re willing to pay to get a visitor to your website?
00:06:14:15 – 00:06:34:15
And what is the value of that visitor to your business? All as a result of total sales? And if you don’t have those numbers to start, it’s now some don’t first timers, they don’t have these. Now you should know what your lifetime customer value is. I think for the most part you should know what your cost per acquisition is too, but some folks don’t.
00:06:34:21 – 00:07:02:19
And that’s okay. A lot of folks and a lot of folks don’t. That’s okay. Not okay. If you’re going to start trying to go and do marketing, because until you understand those things, nothing you do will work because you’re you don’t have a you’re not aiming at anything, right? You’re waiting for this like magical flow of new clients or whale of a client just to come magically through your Facebook page or an email that you send out and that is doomed every time.
00:07:02:22 – 00:07:24:02
So give me one tip that you would offer to a client to fix that. How would you remedy that? You have to understand, I think it’s the big three know your lifetime customer value. Know what your cost per acquisition is in the marketing start conversation should start with What are we willing to pay to acquire a new piece of business?
00:07:24:05 – 00:07:49:18
You know, you and I did that presentation down in Ohio with it was a1a2 day, three day conference for marketing. We showed these guys, what are you supposed to be investing in marketing? Well, the SBA says I think it was 20% of Rev. And and then there was a disclaimer in the SBA article that said, well, you know, 20% recommended, but we see clients do ten or 15% as well.
00:07:49:18 – 00:08:14:04
Right? They didn’t really give an answer. We did our own research. One of the things we saw was that Salesforce, it was and this was back in 2012 ish era when they were really growing. They plowed, what, 50% of their revenue back into marketing. Now, you think, how does a business if you’re a small biz, you think, how does a business sustain or grow or keep people employed?
00:08:14:10 – 00:08:37:14
If you’re going to throw 50% back in while they were buying market share, they were buying because they knew putting that much money in the lifetime customer value, that payout to them doing that work now was going to extend for seven plus years of new user IDs being created on Salesforce accounts being created on Salesforce. That was going to set them up for the next decade.
00:08:37:14 – 00:09:01:15
Until you understand how marketing or how customer acquisition works in your business, it’s really hard to know, Hey, should I be? Could I? Is that even possible in my business to throw 50% back in? Yeah, yeah. Those so huge. I would add to to that with that with understanding those three aspects. Know what you’re measuring to give it a grade.
00:09:01:17 – 00:09:33:26
Right. So have some type of KPI that you’re using and then put a time table on it. We’re going to look at how successful we are not in X amount of time. Often we see clients who they launch an initiative or a campaign and day three it’s, Hey, this isn’t working. It’s like, whoa, let’s let’s go back to what the goals are and what we are measuring and how much time we need to measure that.
00:09:34:02 – 00:10:12:12
Yeah, that’s a you would think that’s an easy one, but that’s, that’s a really big hurdle. Heck yeah. For, for, for companies to get over second I know your favorite inconsistent branding and I’m being facetious when I say that that made the list. It made the list because, look, I know that, you know, for sake, sake of conversation, your sales guy, I’m the creative guy and that buzzword brand will get in the way of really defining what the work is that we need to do.
00:10:12:14 – 00:10:36:07
It’s an easy buzz word that a lot of people throw around. It is important, though, because if you don’t know who you are or who you are to to the people or group of folks that you’re trying to serve, no amount of marketing is really going to solve the problems that you’re trying to solve. Yeah, and I think I see that most realized when I see in in folks see it out in the world.
00:10:36:07 – 00:10:54:28
Like sometimes you see a billboard down the road and you’re like, okay, this guy just wanted a billboard. Like, there’s no deep strategy to this. There’s no exit here on. It’s like, why is this here? And what is the point? I’ve never seen it before. And then it goes away and you never see it again. Well, that is inconsistent branding.
00:10:54:28 – 00:11:16:27
You have these silos of people working on. Do I think about this or trade shows too? Like they’ve got trade show teams. What are the people that go on the tour around the country to All the trade shows? Set up the booth and you got the folks onsite at all these locations. What knowledge do they have of what’s going on in other aspects of the business as it relates to marketing?
00:11:17 – 00:11:43:16
Do they know that there’s new case studies being developed? Do they know that the business just started a new division that can now accommodate this? These are things that I see, like they don’t talk to each other. So if you’re not consistent as a squad, as a team, that brand is even more of a problem now because you have these guys operating on different playbooks and don’t really have any idea of what other folks are doing.
00:11:43:19 – 00:12:05:22
Yeah, that makes it kind of one dimensional, so to speak, and it does hurt the overall impact of all the dollars you put into marketing. If you’re broken out like that, you know, now you’re looking at segmented budgets to decide what’s the winner and what’s the loser. Sometimes that’s difficult because it does two to the inconsistency part. It does all connect.
00:12:05:27 – 00:12:30:17
Yeah. And I mean someone it down to who who do we want to serve? Who do we want people to see us as? And what do we think it takes to create trust with that. Yeah. Prospective client Everything should, should be built on that type of platform. Then you can start diving into the fun part of branding. How do we look?
00:12:30:20 – 00:12:53:08
What colors do we want to use, what messaging do we want to use? But I do. I hear you. I see a lot of clients skip that step. Yeah, and skip that step. And because that’s our difference, what’s our better? And in different or you’re jumping in, you’re jumping ahead on my list. But yeah, absolutely. I think there is the especially when you have a sales minded team right so look we have the product, we have the service go to market.
00:12:53:10 – 00:13:34:17
Everybody needs this. Well, wait a minute. Who is everybody? Yeah, but you got to do that work to to define that. One of my personal favorites here. Number three. Number three, ignoring the data. yeah, Ignoring the data. Inventors struggle with that. Certainly, if you make a product and owners I mean, owners, not all owners are inventors. I see it more prominent and inventors, business owners struggle from it to is like their conviction is so deep the data they won’t let the data tell them anything different than what their what they feel, what they think about their product.
00:13:34:19 – 00:14:18:17
Yeah, I’ve seen that a ton of times in maybe two. To add on to that the analysis of that data as well. Right, Because any, any competent business person could maybe twist data to tell the story that they want to tell. Looking for it, Right. That’s the game. Right. So being able to do the analysis so that it supports from a very objective standpoint of here’s what the realities are, be it in the market that we’re trying to serve or as relates to the work that we’re doing, here’s how good we are or we aren’t based on the analysis of the data we’re seeing, there’s like two things that happen when you get when you
00:14:18:17 – 00:14:42:16
start talking about data. And I think the one thing that everybody looks for is affirmation. see, yeah, that’s what I thought. Okay, cool. We’re doing it right. Just don’t need that discredited OC on the second thing is, man, look at this. I didn’t know that. Did you know that? No, I didn’t know that. Okay, what are we going to do about it?
00:14:42:18 – 00:15:03:28
That right there? What are we going to do about it? I think that’s where on getting getting data that would kind of promote an argument or start a conversation to make a change is a whole nother level that most are not willing to do. I think it’s easier to kind of brush it under the rug. We don’t have to worry about that yet.
00:15:04 – 00:15:34:13
Okay, good to know. But we don’t need to make any drastic, drastic changes at this moment. I think that happens a lot because if you find good data, it’s kind of on you to make change from it. Like you have to adapt to it. If you don’t do that, you’ve just, you know, I don’t know, you buried your own grave to some degree or you don’t you, you let yourself think it’s not that important, but it’s a lot of work When you find something that it’s going to force you to change your business or the way you do business.
00:15:34:13 – 00:16:07:22
Certainly when you start considering investment that you’re going to make. my gosh. In talent, your team. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And before overreliance in one channel, one marketing channel and so we use the trade show example but search, that’s what we see most often. Clients want the Instagram photo right now cheap is acquisition cost to get a new web visitor search.
00:16:07:24 – 00:16:35:28
As soon as you start talking awareness or prospecting, then for someone who’s only relied on search, that is that’s a turnoff. There was a you and I went and saw Philip Strauss a couple of weeks back. Yeah, I like that guy. Yeah, it was cool. It was really good. And he’s a big research guy and he gets done and, you know, his big takeaway was understand your audience, right?
00:16:35:28 – 00:16:54:16
And what he was selling was, Hey, come and let us do this research so we can show you where where your audience hangs out, what they watch, what they listen to, what they read, what podcasts they do, how they shop, all the things. And he gets done in the guy as the first guy, he’s in the front. You can tell he’s a small business owner.
00:16:54:18 – 00:17:16:18
He raises his hand, he gets called on. He goes, Hey, I’ve been seeing a lot on TikTok videos. Do you think TikTok videos are a good a good place to create content on? And Philip did a good job, I thought, because he could have, you know, really slammed them and he slammed them, but just a little bit and said, that’s the problem.
00:17:16:21 – 00:17:35:22
I have no idea what you do, sir, but second to that, I have no idea what your clients are like. So I don’t know what you do for a living or what your business is, but to I don’t know who buys from you until I understand that only can I go and say, okay, yeah, you should be on TikTok or you should be here, you should be there.
00:17:35:22 – 00:17:59:01
So again, going back to like Skip in that first step, same with brand inconsistency. I see the same thing happening with these. You know, we see these with these Facebook promotions and these are for advertisers. Hey, come on, start advertising on Facebook, guys. Get started with as little as 25 bucks. Google does the same thing. And yeah, it looks fun and exciting.
00:17:59:01 – 00:18:25:02
But until you understand your audience, you’re playing the slot machines, really. I mean, that’s all it is. You’re you’re playing a little a little game to see if something pops and it usually doesn’t work. Yeah, Yeah. There’s more losers in the casino than winners. But once those goals going back to that number one, once the goals are set, it does illuminate what channels you should consider.
00:18:25:02 – 00:18:51:29
Yeah, and that way you can when you start grading whether or not we’re successful, you can break that up a little bit and start asking which channels are we having the most success on versus another channel. And that is that requires some commitment rather than just being interested. Another plug to fill up. Really? Yeah. Talking about. Yeah. What are you willing to do from an investor tone?
00:18:52:03 – 00:19:12:27
You’re going to fail. It’s like walk. It’s the is the best analogy I can think of when you and I walk into a casino. We got 50 bucks and whatever is the shiniest in the music, the coolest or the whatever. Like that’s what we’re going to go through our 50 bucks in and lose that. You and I aren’t going to go back to the casino every day, though, right?
00:19:13 – 00:19:28:04
Professional gamblers, they know right where to go. They don’t look at any of the slot machines. They go right to the blackjack table or the craps table or whatever game that they know that they’re going to get an edge to make the same bet. They always make to try to get their edge. And that’s what I think marketing is.
00:19:28:04 – 00:19:52:03
And those guys that are good at that are committed to it, you’re not winning the poker tournament on Luck right? Like these guys know they are committed to their craft, they study cards, they study poker. Most people don’t want to study. So interesting, they’re consumer interesting referenced. Their marketing is like gambling. We get you on that one for a minute.
00:19:52:07 – 00:20:24:15
Yeah. Yeah. You might get some feedback on that professional gambler versus recreational gambler number five, poor user experience. Now, in our world, that usually equates to some type of poor digital experience. You have some kind of interaction. I was having I was having this poor experience last night. I’ll leave the brand nameless, but trying to find how I could get in contact to get a problem solved.
00:20:24:15 – 00:21:01:21
And the experience was horrible, right? And so the given attention to all of the after investment to get in front of that prospect, are you creating an environment, a place where they can get the answer quickly, Clearly understand who you are, clearly understand how you’re going to solve their problem, and that is often overlooked? Yeah, I think too, I look at it as the as proposing or proposing on the first date.
00:21:01:24 – 00:21:27:06
I think everybody’s hot on what it takes to get a marketing qualified lead that first part of shiny and good and clean and to the point and my gosh, this is what I’m looking for. Fill out the form right now. Clients want to do really good at that. That’s they want new inquiries coming in at a constant pace where most struggle is after that happens, after that form is filled out.
00:21:27:06 – 00:21:52:06
So now you’re talking Mgcl two closed, let’s just say, or MQ out to ask you a marketing qualified lead. The sales qualified lead. No one’s really doing a lot of work in that arena. No one really. hey, we call them. You didn’t answer or well, you called them and you pitched your offering. You didn’t listen to what he needed, what he was looking to achieve.
00:21:52:09 – 00:22:19:22
You jammed a product down his throat. He said he was going to think about it. And now you have them in your pipeline for 90 days when this guy’s got no shot at closing because you’re not create you’re not connecting the dots for them. So I do see to your point, there’s an extreme amount of money being dedicated to generate those marketing qualified leads and virtually no money going into converting those and converting is is a sales term and it’s a dirty word.
00:22:19:24 – 00:22:45:28
Converting is it’s got this negative connotation of closing closing the business. What about starting a relationship? What about being viewed as an authority in your industry? That is the mindset you should have with these. I think too, with the web, you get a lot of you get a lot of dots and you start thinking of people as visits, web visits or Web clicks or likes.
00:22:45:28 – 00:23:09:21
You’re not seeing them as people. You’re looking at a form fill as a form fill instead of a person that has a need. That’s where I think people kind of fall off on that UX of following all the way through. Like once they fill out a form, if they don’t close, you kind of let them go. So the solve is make sure that the dots are being connected all the way through, not just at the front end.
00:23:09:21 – 00:23:39:17
There’s investment in resources thinking that needs to happen. Between that as well as Q Out of clothes and in even brand advocacy, The Post-purchase Experience. man, that’s like nonexistent in most. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s give me a review That’s that’s up there. Yeah, but how are you Feedback. Not enough. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of feedback, that’s number six.
00:23:39:20 – 00:24:03:28
Poor attention to customer feedback or neglecting customer feedback. I think we all do this. If someone and we’ve gotten bad feedback before from clients or employees and what’s the I know what I do, first thing I try to do is justify it. Well they were blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Or they didn’t know what they were talking about or if they would have listened to me.
00:24:03:28 – 00:24:21:15
You know, you get the but you guard up a little bit. But listening to these things and this this is hard to do. Listening to it, taking it in and really putting yourself in their shoes and saying, All right, if I was them, And this happened in my you know, in their head, this is kind of how it played out for them.
00:24:21:15 – 00:24:57:17
What should we change? What should we make better for those experiences? That’s difficult, mean the frequency of that feedback as well because. Right you can you can have and I would say most companies do you’re going to have that really bad review, that really ugly feedback from a customer doesn’t necessarily define everyone’s experience. Yeah. And inversely, that person who just praises everything about their experience, that’s not necessarily the rule.
00:24:57:19 – 00:25:23:22
And so having frequency in how you’re collecting that feedback and try to look at it as objectively as possible, right, Not just react to every piece of feedback that comes in, but review it, you know, analyze it, try to keep the emotions off the sleeve. Those one star reviews are good character builders said they’re right. So that right?
00:25:23:24 – 00:25:55:18
Yeah those Glassdoor reviews that are humble you say well real quick the takeaway I think the figuring out what you do about the reviews because sometimes the answer is do nothing right. We had a we had a lapse in our experience, not a lapse in our process or a lapse in definitions. You know, we’re doing what people think internally, internal, what we do internally.
00:25:55:18 – 00:26:19:02
Hey, nothing. We messed up. We made a mistake. I think just as important, though, letting client know in the public too, on some of these forums of, Hey, we made a mistake on this. Yeah, this is not us. Yeah, let us make it right. Yeah. Give us the opportunity and make it right. That goes a long way. I think those are better than the, like, those five stars that your relatives put on there or your employees put on there.
00:26:19:02 – 00:26:45:13
Like you kid. People are getting good at this stuff now, like, you know the real and the non Yeah. And those kind of stories coming out like, hey, I’m sorry you felt this way. I’m sorry this is what happened. We’re willing to make it right through this. That’s so in all of this. I think too, for us, certainly on the web, it’s it’s becoming more people to people hiding behind a corporation or a company that’s getting harder and harder to do.
00:26:45:13 – 00:27:09:29
I mean, you’re your example that we will not name is one of the biggest companies in the world, right? And you weren’t talking to Suzy or John or Tony, right? You were talking to an Apple rep. And that feels different. If you were you know, if you started having a conversation with someone that you felt cared about, the scenario you were in might feel a little different about it.
00:27:10 – 00:27:50:03
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think your favorite here underestimating the power of content, right? Clients. Companies underestimate the value in the power of content. I’d say my shtick has been for a while is your in-house team should be made up of content creators, people that know your brand inside now that can literally write on the company’s behalf of what it means, what the pains mean, what the solutions, how the solutions work, what the people are made up of.
00:27:50:05 – 00:28:16
And and you’re right, it’s not I mean, the the sad part for business is good part for content creators like us is that your content used to go a lot longer than it does today. The shelf life. Shelf life was awesome. You could do years. I mean, I still like the Hershey Kiss Bells commercial, you know, the Is it Jingle Bells?
00:28:16:02 – 00:28:37:01
No, I don’t think it is. Jingle Bells. I can’t remember the tune, but they’re lined up like a bowling pins and everybody does. And then the last guy does it and plays every Christmas. Man, that’s been on 44 years. Yeah, yeah. I got to be. Yeah. And what a cute little example of a 15 second spot of a Hershey’s, which is a huge brand that are everywhere.
00:28:37:01 – 00:29:02:05
But that is not everyone. That is not what certainly in the digital world they don’t run that on digital. It’s not a Facebook ad that is a TV ad when you’re watching reruns of Christmas movies around the holidays, like they know what they’re doing with that content. That is not their content strategy, though. Their content strategy is on a whole nother level and it’s hard to keep up with it.
00:29:02:05 – 00:29:25:10
It’s it’s more expensive. You have to create way more of it, the value of it, the squeeze that you’re going to get out of it is less. Yeah, you’re not going to have 100,000 people see every piece of content you create that’s hard to do and invest in. That’s why that lifetime customer value is so important. Understanding acquisition cost is so important because you get to a spot, you know exactly what this blog’s going to do.
00:29:25:13 – 00:29:47:13
You get to a spot, you know, Hey, if I can drive a thousand visits to this thing, I’m going to close a piece of biz from it. Yeah, yeah. Where you can now start justifying your investment. Number eight, focus in on short term gains. and even though those short term gains are important, right, you need to know if you have momentum, if you’re gaining traction.
00:29:47:16 – 00:30:11:11
But oftentimes companies will only look at short term. This is a great tool. And we made a video about this a long time ago. And here’s a good piece of inside baseball, not dirty laundry, but realness. It makes for an agency to work with a client. We used to be here and it was it lasted very, very long.
00:30:11:11 – 00:30:27:01
You had to commit a year with us or else we said we weren’t going to do it. Well, no one did it, so no one wanted to come and say, I’m going to work with you for an entire year. So we said, okay, we’re still going to make a year long contract, but now we’re going to cut it down to six months.
00:30:27:01 – 00:30:51:20
So after six months, if you’re not happy, you can leave. That then wasn’t good enough. Agencies started coming out with two month. If you and as do we, we do too. We make it really easy for you. We tell everyone though, if you don’t do this a year over a year, if you haven’t done it before, because you need a year to benchmark right before you actually know what you’re working with.
00:30:51:22 – 00:31:15:06
If you don’t do this in for a year, this is this is playing the slots, the casino because we have no benchmark to go off of. So I would say that like in any event, hiring someone in-house, hiring an agency, if you’re not looking at that on an annualized level, don’t do it. Yeah, because you will not see in 30, 60, 90 days.
00:31:15:13 – 00:31:38:05
You could, you could. We’ve done it. We’ve gotten people cool lucky results in short amount of time and it worked really well for them. But that to be the reason not to do it or to do it because of how you performed in the first 30, 60, 90 days in a second. If you incentivize an agency to go month to month with you, they’re not incentivized to look at your long term goals.
00:31:38:05 – 00:31:57:24
So getting back to that goal setting, if one month to month with someone and we’re fighting for a week, hey, trying to get inquiries this week, we’re not thinking about your business on the long term. We’re not trying to think about new ideas that you should be doing three months from now, six months from now, or at the trade shows that you’re going to next year.
00:31:57:27 – 00:32:22:21
We’re locked in on trying to deliver this week to keep you on next month, and it’s a cycle that you’re never quite caught up to. You’re always chasing ahead of a goal you hit or don’t hit. Yeah, it’s more gimmick that there’s no it’s a scheme. Yeah yeah. And I think some would argue Yeah but it’s working for me.
00:32:22:23 – 00:32:43:25
Yeah, yeah. In the short term. Yeah. No doubt. As soon as something changes though, you are going to be right back where you were. You’re not, you’re not mapping out anything beyond a 30 day period. There could be a, there could be something coming and you’re not paying any attention. Right. Which that happens. That’s happened to our clients before.
00:32:43:26 – 00:33:19:03
My number nine, my biggest pet peeve this last year or so has been not leveraging email marketing. I believe one of the most valuable pieces of data that any company can have is an email address. Right? A valid email address. How do you stay in the inbox of someone and create content, Create communication that forces them to decide that your email is worth staying in their box, right?
00:33:19:03 – 00:33:50
Forced them to stay subscribed or to stay unsubscribe? I have. I’ll give you one example. I was telling someone on our team last week about this. I subscribed to a monthly email newsletter. It’s not even a newsletter. It’s an email about up and coming music video I should share this with you, Vic. I’ll share it with you. And I was using the example of how I get this email once a month.
00:33:50:03 – 00:34:26:03
I rarely read it if I’m being honest about it. It’s not poorly articulated, but it’s poor. In design, there’s no design, it’s just an email. I feel like I know the guy though, Sean, who writes it. I signed up for that email in 2008 2008, and that guy still has me on his list and he is consistent in sending an email out every month about Here is new content that you should be checking out here.
00:34:26:03 – 00:34:46:20
Here’s some new music that is up and coming that you should be thinking about. And I reached out to him last week just to tell him, Hey, man, I’ve been on your list for a decade or a decade and a half. Keep it going. I suppose what I hear on number nine two is not just, you know, to keep with the struts.
00:34:46:22 – 00:35:03:08
You know, some audience is open emails, some don’t. I think the point of that, though, is what are you doing with the data that you’re collecting on your audience? Because sometimes in those cases you don’t just get email. I tell everybody, What’s the greatest thing you could get off the Internet? Someone showing up to your business and saying, I’m ready to work with you.
00:35:03:08 – 00:35:24:12
Yeah, what’s the second best? A phone call. Third best would be a form fail, I suppose. Fourth best would sign up for an email. Yeah. You know, if you kind of tailed it down. So of all those things, like not utilizing the data that you’re already collecting on these guys, like I’ve love this email example and the consistency and you said you said it.
00:35:24:12 – 00:35:43:16
I feel like I know this guy. I have a couple of colleagues. I do the same thing that I through their email content. I feel like I know Jamey Michaelson over at SMS and he does a hell of a job. He’s top of mind for me because I’ve been on his emails maybe not a decade, but at least five years.
00:35:43:16 – 00:36:05:05
Yeah, not utilizing that data. It goes back to my MQ out to ask you how like they’re not doing anything to like you spent all that money upfront to get the inquiry but now you, you say they’re unqualified and you’re just not going to talk to them anymore. Yeah, that’s, you’re right. That’s a huge effort primarily to from what we see.
00:36:05:05 – 00:36:25:18
Anyways, email is the lowest hanging fruit cheapest. Yeah. If you want to do you know remarketing I would put that in there like remarketing to this audience. Now my hidden agenda one reaching out to him last week was okay, great. You have a you have a loyal list in me, right? I’m I haven’t unsubscribed. I’m getting your emails.
00:36:25:18 – 00:36:49:20
I’m reading 40% of the emails that you send. So I would be curious to know what’s your goal? Yeah, because I would ask too, how many offers does it give? Zero. No offers, man. So for him the goal could be I want people to be exposed to the recommendations I’m giving. That is the KPI. How many people my email done?
00:36:49:22 – 00:37:12:15
So I messaged them saying, Hey, I think you have a focus group one here. You got great retention rate on your email list. Why aren’t you only selling me something, I do. What’s the next what’s the next thing? What’s the next group that someone like me could be a part of? And those are the things that I think companies fall short on.
00:37:12:16 – 00:37:34:29
It’s we got to send an email out. Why? What are we trying to do? Well, we should be sent emails. We’re going to do TikTok videos. Why? Because tiktok’s huge. Yeah. Look, these guys did a TikTok video and they got 100,000 views on it. Like, okay, cool, last one. And you’ve already kind of spoken on this, but adapting to change, right?
00:37:34:29 – 00:38:03
The adapting to the change in your market or in your industry, how exhausting, No matter what industry you’re in, no matter what business you have, if you’re any good, you have to be moving all the time. And it’s it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. So the thing that companies found success in, you know, X amount of years ago, it’s hard for them to change from that.
00:38:03:03 – 00:38:27:12
It’s, hey, this thing worked. It’s always worked. We’re going to keep doing it. And they don’t realize that it worked for a different customer, a different audience, a different market. And you think it’s still working or still valuable. Meanwhile, everyone around you has changed. I think the realest thing that we’ve been seeing is the change in consumer behavior in the B2B world.
00:38:27:15 – 00:39:20
I think that’s probably the biggest change. A B2B buyer over the last ten years has changed drastically. B2B buyer ten years ago entertained phone calls, entertained, lunches, entertained. We want to send you a couple of pizzas into the office today, entertained a meeting. Come on in. Sure. We’d love to hear it today. I say no. You know, it’s very hard to break through that way today.
00:39:22 – 00:39:23:19
It is so much more on a solution basis of I know what I need. B2B buyers, I think, have gotten a lot smarter. Yeah, I think B2B buyers have gotten more skeptical, which means sales, folk or marketing has to be smarter. And I don’t believe businesses have kept up with how smart you’re marketing in your sales. We were just talking to you guys, medical sales.
00:39:23:22 – 00:39:45:22
These had these or dudes going door to door. First off, in today’s world, the type of employee that would be willing to do that I’m very interested in. Yeah. What kind of employees that you know your audience enough to say that this is going to this is something we should be doing? Yeah. You’re going along with it. Yeah, that’s interesting to me.
00:39:45:24 – 00:40:06:14
But the the what used to work those, those things used to work literally the guy with the trunk and you open the trunk and pull your briefcase out and door to door, you hit 12 spot today you have four meetings, two hour warm, you got a follow up meeting set. You do that today, you’ll go all week with goose eggs as they are.
00:40:06:14 – 00:40:33:04
Yeah. You’re not talking to anybody through that way. So what do you got to do? You got to change. You got to adapt. You’ve got to think of new strategies. And it’s not the kicker to this whole thing is it’s not salespeople anymore. That’s the as a sales guy that sells marketing, right? I’m somewhat biased. It is. I mean, when we started this, when I started this, it was a door to door, cold call operation.
00:40:33:04 – 00:41:03:02
I was in my car driving to appointments and making cold calls and 12 meetings a week. Yeah, four of them would be warm. Two would have a follow up. I’d close one. And what great time to not need a marketing team, not need collateral operating off of a a Wix splash page or whatever it was today. These buyers are so much more sophisticated, so much smarter, and a lot more skeptical of a guy you’re not getting in.
00:41:03:09 – 00:41:29:15
I mean, I can’t believe that. No solicitation signs I see, which I am a huge opponent of. I don’t think you should have no soliciting, man. DoorDash just can’t even get someone to open the door. Okay. I sleep the food on the floor. It’s. Man can’t even bring food in. Yeah, Yeah, well, good stuff. This is as episode ten, and bravo to us, man.
00:41:29:16 – 00:42:01:23
We did ten. Ten. Look at us with us. Hopefully these ten steps are a reminder to us those who are listening. Thanks for tuning in. Make Michael here for the laundry room. See you guys on the next show.
