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And growing a small business. The Small Business show is the official podcast of Garuda promo and branding solutions.
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HELLo EveryOne, you're listening to the Small Business show.
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I'm your host Swayer Ho. You can also call me the promo guy.
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My guest today is Mike Snyder from RSM Marketing.
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Mike is an interesting guy. RSN Marketing is a firm and outsourcing marketing department to company across all industry
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and nationwide. For Mike's background, he is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who served as the
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public affair officer in New York City, the Pentagon and Nora where he led media relations
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and information operation. In the aftermath of 911.
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He's routinely addressed the media question regarding UFO sightings and area 51.
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Very interesting. Mike is a graduate of Marine Corps Command and Staff College.
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Mike is also co author of the book the great Marketing Line.
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Welcome to the show Mike. Hello swire, thank you for having me here.
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No wonder you answer questions so good.
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I was asking Mike a lot of random questions before we start the show and he answered
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everything perfectly because he has trained for it, he has all the experience.
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Mike, love to dive deeper. With your background in marketing, how did you transition from being in the military and to
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your role in marketing at RSM marketing?
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Well, that's a very fair question. I was very fortunate to go into public affairs in the Marine Corps, right?
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And I did it in very great markets for expansive learning like New York City, DC, the
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Pentagon, NORAd over 911, dealing with international media and that's a subset of
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marketing. So I got my master's degree in marketing communications.
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I got out of the military for the third time and I went to work for a large accounting firm
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and I was the first marketing director. And that is really what led to my niching in marketing.
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And I had the opportunity to start several businesses.
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I worked at an ad agency and then I started a marketing firm and a couple of other
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businesses. And that's really how I traipsed from the Marine Corps through my skill set in public
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affairs into marketing and even becoming a marketing consultant.
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Over the years I've learned a lot through hundreds of case studies with small businesses
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all across the country and even wrote a book about it called the great marketing lie.
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And here we are talking about it. But that's how it went from being a member of the gun club.
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The US Marine Corps highly recommend know retiring as lieutenant colonel and getting into
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marketing and advertising. Isn't that just a wonderful second career, so to speak?
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Yeah, that's a fun segue and fun transition to a different career.
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So since you are a marketing expert and you are used to answering all kinds of questions
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that throw at you. I want to start out with a soft, but it's a difficult one for a lot of us small business
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people. What is marketing in your opinion?
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Oh my God. This is starting off with a softball, right?
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Wow. What is the universe? Let's define that.
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So what is marketing? I tell you what, I'm very passionate about this question.
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Unfortunately for you in the audience, and I can give you a short answer, most of us get it
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wrong. We think that marketing is all the stuff.
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So if you talk to a business owner and they go, you say, what is marketing?
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They're going to say, well, that's my website and that's the video that I have on the
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website and that's my PPC, my ads that I'm running, that's my sales presentation, my trade
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show booth, right? And it goes on and on and on and on.
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And we go, no, that's not marketing. Marketing is above that.
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What you're talking about, and what everybody gets confused is you're talking about
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marketing communications, okay?
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Marketing is simply different than that.
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And it's easy. And this is where marketing, you take it out of the hands of marketers.
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And truly marketing, the function of marketing belongs with that president, with that CEO,
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with that business owner. Because marketing, and here comes the definition, in my humble opinion, and this is
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reinforced by a lot of business literature out there, they say it slightly differently, but
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it's a core function that we all agree on.
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And it is simply the ability within a business to identify what a market will value and buy
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that the company can make. That's two at a profit to the shareholders.
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So just again, marketing is the function in a business, usually distributed, that
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identifies what a market will value and pay for that the company can make at a profit.
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Those are the three fundamental components of marketing.
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That is why marketing does not deserve to be in the same department as marketing
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communications. Because marketing communications simply takes that marketing, right.
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All that we've defined in that marketing function and they communicate it down.
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I'm so glad that you're able to answer that in a short amount of time.
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And there's a lot to that.
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The communication, as we think sometimes we call tactics, right?
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Whatever that you decide to do, direct mail, email, marketing or promotional product, those
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are the tactics. But you are talking about the high level view of who you're targeting, what you should be
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doing. So you're actually figuring out the strategy that is needed to the communication part.
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And I think a lot of the small business owner.
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We think about their tactics first. Everyone is doing, even marketing.
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Everyone is doing billboard on the freeway. That's why if we are in the same industry, we should do that.
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Do you notice that happen a lot? Like people in the same industry always do the same thing and they are somewhat afraid to
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try something new. Do you see that a lot in working with clients?
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Well, that's really another fascinating question.
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Marketing, true marketing. True marketing requires great courage because true marketing results in differentiation.
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Differentiation is the goal of marketing.
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It's like, okay, what will a market value?
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Well, they're going to value something that generally does not exist yet.
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They don't want what they can get cheap.
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They want something that has value that they haven't seen yet.
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Look at the suv when it was created. Look at the iPhone when it was created.
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Look, it doesn't even. I can tell you a story. Right?
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What does value look like that differentiates for a business and a business owner so that
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they don't have to go spending a lot of money. A lot of business owners, to your point, they get into business.
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I don't care whether it's a small business or a large business.
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It could be 100 million dollar manufacturing firm and they're making fuel transfer pumps,
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or they're making custom dyes.
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And so are ten other competitors doing it the same way and they're all talking the same
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way. And so what that does, because there's no real value identification for the market, it
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drives the price down. So again, when you sell a commodity that has general category, what I call category value,
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that drives your price down, if you can identify value, and I'll give you two examples
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really quickly, that price goes up.
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So we were working with an led distributor.
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They distributed large led panels like you'd see in a retail outfit or as you'd see on a
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highway, the big boards, right, 24 x 48 or whatever size they are.
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And so they brought us in to help them sell, break into a small business niche.
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And we said, okay, we have to figure out what they value.
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And so we did a bunch of research on behalf of this client and we came back with them and
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they said, okay, your typical small business owner is going to work eight to six or seven
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to six, seven to seven, go home, have dinner with the family, and then they're going to pay
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their bills and do some accounting.
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00 at night, they're going to get online and they're going to
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try to find out how much does a panel cost?
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If I want to put it up in my store or if I want to put it up my medical office, right.
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Or if I want to put it up, whatever. And that's when they're doing the research.
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So our recommendation is to create value for them by giving them the pricing online.
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So the strategy, the value point is your audience wants online pricing.
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Your strategy is going to be, guess what? Give them what they want.
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Give them online pricing. And the client, no, we can't do that.
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As soon as we do that, our competitors are going to know.
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And we said, well, we know. We've already talked to a lot of people and your competitors already know anyway, because
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as soon as you give the quote to even that business owner, they're going to go quote it out
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elsewhere, give them what they want.
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And so they reluctantly did it.
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We created what we call this configurator.
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A decade later, they're still using it as a primary strategy for that market segment.
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And in that first year, it brought a million dollars of new business to that client in that
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new market segment. And they learned that the average client bought four more times for a huge lifetime value.
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And it didn't cost them anything. Swire and it just cost get it out.
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Because people find through SEO, they found them, they didn't have to go spend a lot of
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money on marketing. They just had to create.
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Frankly, it's an operational function. It's an ops expense, not even a marketing expense.
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That's one example. I think you touched on a good point.
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And I especially want to point out that this client of Mike pay him and his firm to do the
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research. And at the point that may not able to afford a marketing firm to help you, you need to do
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the research. Because a lot of us sometimes think that it doesn't work because we haven't done any
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research. We just do whatever the industry norm will.
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You know, in the case of Mike's example, he actually studied that he actually make
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recommendation to the client. This is what you haven't done that you should be doing.
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So if you can find it, that could change the way that you market.
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I think that we under something here.
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Research always says what we try to do, what I try to do.
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And this very much goes back to my marine Corps training.
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Keep it simple, right? Keep it simple. Stupid.
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The kiss principle. And so in know, everybody tries to make it all hard.
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Okay? And frankly, that's the riddle, the book, the great marketing lie.
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What is the great marketing lie? The lie is that marketing is hard.
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Marketing is not hard because we do marketing every day.
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We're surrounded by marketing. I have a quote, which is everything is marketing, and marketing is everything.
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So marketing is not hard. As I look at your backdrop, I see all kinds of things that you bought, and that is a
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function of marketing. You found value in the things you bought.
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And I can look at all that stuff, the headphones, the microphone, and the cat and the dad
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thing. It all got manufactured, created and sold because somebody found value in it.
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So we are surrounded by marketing. It's like we don't give ourselves a credit.
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It's like, okay, we make choices every day.
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So reverse engineer how it is that we make our purchase decisions, right?
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So marketing is not hard, and research is not hard.
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You know how we did the research? I'll tell you how we did the research.
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We took an intern and I turned to this intern and I said, I want you to call some
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distributors of these flat panels and ask them this, this and this.
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I want you to call some small businesses and ask them this, this and this.
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And I went about 20 instances of both.
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And at the end of the week, this intern came back and gave us.
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This is qualitative research. This is not quantitative.
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Quantitative can be more expensive. We didn't do expensive focus groups.
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We just talked to people. We talked to the market, we came back and we made some generalized assumptions that proved
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to be spot on. So research does not have to be hard.
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Marketing does not have to be hard. Yeah, I love that.
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And what I normally do. And people, when they come to us, buy promotional product, they just want to buy.
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When I ask them that same question, who are your audience?
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What are you trying to do? Right?
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So they stutter.
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Right? I just want to buy stuff and you're asking me all the question, kind of like what you have.
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But if you don't know who the ideal client is, talk to them, right?
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Or maybe if you're an intern, maybe you're a secretary, maybe yourself can call and
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especially your top ten, ask them why you buy from us.
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What do you think separate us than other companies?
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Do you think people sometimes are afraid to ask question, why do you buy from us?
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What's so good about us? No, I'll tell you all the clients that I've had over the two decades, hundreds of them, no
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business owners get comfortable, right? I'm talking about 5 million, 10 million, up to even 250,000,000.
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They just get comfortable. And what happens is the interaction with customers gets relegated to what?
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The sales team, right? And the sales team, they come back and they say what the customers want better pricing.
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That's what the sales team always says. They want better pricing, they want more for less, right.
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And so just to give you an know, how did our company, RSM marketing, you read the intro,
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you know, we offer an outsourced marketing department, okay?
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And that only came around because when we first started our company, we were talking to
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principals. So Bob and Jeff would walk into our office, right?
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They got referred. Bob and Jeff ran a manufacturing plant, and they realized Bob and Jeff would come in and,
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you know, after the great Recession, we understand this marketing thing has a new place.
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We kind of need to embrace it and figure it out. And we said, okay, well, as soon as you hire a marketing director, give us a call, because
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we'll need a marketing director to know our point of contact at your company to do all this
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good stuff. And they would walk out dejected.
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Well, that happened about four times. And we listened every time to what Bob and Jeff were saying.
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The next time that Bob and Jeff came in, we had decided in a kitchen talk, my business
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partner and I, the prior night, we were going to try to know a new category within
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marketing for ourselves, right?
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A new niche. And so we said to Bob and Jeff, the next set of BoB and ah, we know what you're really
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after. You really don't want to hire a marketing director because you don't know how to hire a
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marketing director. You don't understand marketing.
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You don't know how to manage that person. You don't know how to hire that person.
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We'll be your marketing director. Well, how are you going to do that?
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We have marketing directors on staff.
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We call them account managers, but account managers are generally marketing directors.
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So we just decided to change our labels.
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By the way, this comes out of a nice model called repositioning.
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Right. That is in this book with great marketing lie that business owners ought to embrace, which
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is, okay, just talk about your business differently.
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So we started talking about our business differently to Bob and Jeff.
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So we're going to give you a fractional marketing director, and we're going to give you
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everything you need for a flat monthly subscription.
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And Bob and Jeff went, you're going to do that?
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Well, no one else is doing that. Value creation, ring a ding a ding.
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No one else is doing it. And even to this day, not very many companies nationwide are doing it.
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And we did it. And as soon as we started talking to the market that way, products started flying, sales
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were flying off the shelf. We went from a $1 million company into multiple of that very quickly because we made
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changes on our marketing concept.
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Right. And who did it? The business owners did it, and it didn't cost us anything.
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We had to figure it out. I think it's always important for the person in charge.
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Right. Or if you're executive, things that you really care about, to talk to the end user, people
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actually using it, and really to ask that question, why do you buy from us?
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You have choices out there. I don't care what industry that you're in.
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There are always another solution.
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Right. Maybe you're saying I don't have competitors.
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Yeah. They could choose not to buy it. Right. When they purchase from you, especially if they repeat purchase from you, you're onto
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something, and you got to find out why these individuals want to buy from you.
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It's completely critical, because here's what happens.
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This is a really important point. It's called bias.
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So business owners think that they're solving the problem.
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Right. If I have an HR outsourcing firm, then obviously my customers want to buy outsourced HR.
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Okay? So in our case, we were a marketing firm, we would think that obviously our customers want
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to buy marketing services. But no, what we found out was far different.
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They actually didn't want to buy marketing services.
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That was a necessary. They knew they had to.
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But the problem we were solving, they didn't want to hire a marketing director.
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Whoa. Mind blown, right?
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They didn't want to hire a marketing director.
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That was the primary problem they had.
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And we brought a valued solution to that problem that really, we never even saw.
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We never even thought about that. Here's another example of how if you free your mind, your butt will follow, okay?
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And. But means your wallet is in your butt.
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Okay? So you start stuffing money into your wallet because you freed your mind.
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So we had another client. He was like a $50 million manufacturing firm.
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Brilliant guy. Just an engineer prodigy.
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And he made the best customized tools, custom tools.
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He would sell them to other manufacturing companies, and that's how you make all the custom
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products that we get.
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So, anyway, he sold dies. Custom dies.
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And he's like, we're trying to sell purchasing managers, and they send out rfps, these
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purchasing managers. And so purchasing managers, they don't value the product.
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They're just trying to drive the cost down. And he said to me, and this is where the answer is right in front of.
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Right. If I talk to a business owner for an hour, we can generally get to a very good place.
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So he said to me, Mike, what they don't understand is that all of our competitors take
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three months in order to make that tool, we can do it in three weeks.
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And what they don't know is when that tool goes down and they're waiting for three months,
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they're not able to run that manufacturing line and it's going to cost them way more.
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We can give the market the product in three weeks instead of three months.
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And I went, whoa, whoa, whoa. Here's what we're going to do.
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You're going to stop talking to purchasing managers, and we're going to start talking to
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coos and presidents and ceos because they're responsible for the P L.
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And you're saying, look, you can get your line up in three weeks instead of three months.
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And so their new tagline in an hour became three weeks, not three months.
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And they had targeted three very large, ideal customers.
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And within a month, with that change in strategy and change in brand strategy, closed one
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of those million dollar accounts in 30 days.
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And it didn't cost them anything. They freed their mind.
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Yeah, it's just a simple shift.
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Right. They still do the same thing. Same, providing the same value and same dollar amount.
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Right. For the invoice. But just by targeting different people who care about different things, it does all the
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wonders for them. Well, so what they found was the president or COO went into the purchasing manager and
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said, look, I want you. To buy, you got to buy.
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And the purchasing manager said, you ready for this?
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Here comes a corollary. Will they charge more?
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And the president or CEO would go, yeah, I don't care.
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We need to get this line back up. Give them whatever they want.
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That's literally the stories we heard back because that's how a C suite executive
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purchasing manager, their job is to drive down cost.
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But when you start talking. So all of a sudden, our clients pricing started going up.
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They had premium pricing and it was just not hard.
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But again, it focused on how can you differentiate a differentiation, model an exercise and
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extract that value that other people, your competitors aren't seeing?
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Yeah, I think that's a million dollar advice there, Mike.
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That's the million dollar question. Yeah.
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I'm giving you a lower level. I would say in my example, what I do in promotional product is I go to CEO and I go to
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chief marketing officer at trade shows or at events.
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So I normally make my case to them, but I find out when I talk to my customer, it's always
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the executive assistant and secretary who purchased from me.
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And I actually dropped down their ordering.
21:13
00 p.m.
21:20
Because their boss, when they walk out the door, the CEO, the marketing manager walk out
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the door. Hey, we're doing an event in two weeks.
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You go find us the stuff that we need to giveaways.
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So they're actually in panic. So what I think I am providing the value to them because there are tons of competitors like
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myself who have all the pricing on there.
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It's automatic. You could go on there one click, it's shipped to you.
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They don't want that. They're in panic and then they need someone they can actually want to talk to.
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Someone. That's right. Someone will actually email me and then get it done.
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The kicker, similar to your example is I don't mind to pay more.
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I want to keep my job. I'm willing to pay you more just to get it done right so I can look good in front of my
22:05
boss. So I actually figured that out.
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So right now, a lot of sales book talk about how to get past the gatekeeper.
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Like my model now is I'm hanging out at the gate to talk to all the gatekeepers because if
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I approach a bigger client, chances are I work with a client that they have over 50
22:23
executive assistant that works with me.
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They're big departments, but the boss, I never talk to the boss.
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It's always the executive assistant or the secretary who ordered for me.
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So that's how I am interpreting my validators.
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I ask them my phone call, I respond to you.
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Yes. I might not have all the bells and whistles on the online portal, but you get a human being
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that will respond to you and not just some bot give you a standard answer.
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I love it. Because I'll tell you what, this is what we hear all the time, too.
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I love what you said because you said, hey, we can be last minute and you're going to be
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dealing with real people rather than indiscriminate clicking and indiscriminate robots you
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don't even have. So here's a critical thought.
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When somebody buys that marketing message, that value proposition.
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Look, I get to work with swire's team and I know if it's last minute, they're okay with
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that, and I'll still be dealing with real people.
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I don't have to do a search online and try to get it clicking and wondering, is it going to
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arrive on time? No. And that's my risk profile.
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Okay. What I mean is I may never actually use that capability, but if that risk arises, I know
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I've got a solution for that risk. And so you're selling people today who may never, ever use what you're offering, but they
23:44
want that in their back pocket. And for the CEO, sometimes there are CEO who ask their executive assistant to do my job to
23:53
spend like 20 hours or even months searching for the perfect product.
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But when I ask them, how much do you pay your executive assistant or secretary?
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And then let's say my cost is $500 more, do you think have her spending two months on it
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will be less than $500 that you might potentially be spending with me?
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And then that's kind of like a mind shift. You say, oh, okay, we messed up.
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They spent two months just finding the product and I could just have it on my fingertip.
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Right. And so what happens then is I don't know where you've taken this on your website or even in
24:27
your own marketing communications, right?
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But you're talking some strategic marketing stuff.
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You're making decisions on who you're talking to and your marketing message.
24:36
Right. And how you shape that and then getting it out there.
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So it should, I would think that based on what you've said, if I were to go look at your
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website, it would look completely different, right.
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Because that's where you see a good proof of have you executed the marketing concept well,
24:52
is go look at your website and if it looks different above the fold, if I can identify who
24:58
are you, what do you do and why should I care, right.
25:01
Especially the why should I care part above the fold.
25:04
When I first look at your website, whether it's on laptop or mobile, I should be able to
25:10
see that great marketing executed simply.
25:15
Right. I'm a small business professional.
25:18
Right. So I think the most frequently question or things that I'm scared of, if I listed all of
25:24
that, am I missing out? Like if I list swire, I like to answer my own phone call, I respond to you quickly.
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And if I put that, am I missing out on other opportunity?
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Do you get asked that question a lot?
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Substitute a particular industry that the clients is in?
25:42
Well, I got to tell you, yes. There's a couple of interesting takes there.
25:47
First of all, you're going to have to go farther.
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You need to be uncomfortable with your own marketing messages.
25:54
You need to feel a little like, oh, my God, that just feels.
25:58
I'm just uncomfortable with that. Right. So, for instance, you said, we respond quickly.
26:03
I'm going to challenge that because that's a 30,000 foot construct.
26:06
We respond quickly. What does that really mean?
26:09
So we recommend the four C's is in the book four C's is a mental model.
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The four C's is a way to get to easier decision making.
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So one of the C's, I'll give you the four C's, cut, concretize, categorize, and condition
26:25
for complexity. Those are the four know.
26:29
There's a great TEd talk on it. That's where we got it. But we listened to this TEd talk, pulled it down, and we changed how we thought about
26:34
marketing. So one of the C's you're talking about is concretization, meaning take that thought.
26:41
We respond quickly and make it concrete.
26:44
Okay. And it's like, well, let's just.
26:47
Quickly. So what does that look like?
26:49
We respond within 10 minutes. Okay.
26:52
That is more concrete than we respond quickly.
26:55
Let's even make that more concrete.
26:57
You will receive a call back from a live human being within 10 minutes, 24 hours a day,
27:04
seven days a week, 365 days a year.
27:07
That's really quick. Now, I know.
27:09
Exactly. You can't get any more concrete than that.
27:12
You know what I mean? Unless you offer guarantees.
27:15
I mean, there's ways you can even have more fun with that.
27:17
So that is, you take your marketing message, and then you make it concrete.
27:21
And then you put it out there and you get uncomfortable with it because no one else in your
27:25
category is doing it. And then you know what happens?
27:28
Your phone starts ringing and you start closing business.
27:31
And you start closing business at a higher price because people want insurance.
27:36
I know how many tens of thousands of dollars I've spent on fire insurance for my home, and
27:40
I've never had a fire. People do it in business.
27:45
I want that company. Yes. I want that peace of mind.
27:48
People want convenient. No. What are people buying today?
27:52
Right? They're buying peace of mind. They're buying convenience.
27:55
They're buying status.
27:58
I don't have to do this anymore. I don't have to worry about this anymore.
28:02
Instead of just, I'm buying a widget.
28:05
I know I'm buying a widget, but I want all these other things.
28:08
I want a lifetime warranty. I don't want to have to think about a warranty.
28:12
Charge me a bit more for that. Make it go away.
28:14
Really give me free shipping.
28:18
I just want to think about. Make it go away.
28:21
Yeah. That's a lot of good advice there, but I think I wouldn't let you go without asking this
28:27
question, and I think. I'm sure that you get asked a lot.
28:32
How much will marketing cost to me, to a company, or to a client?
28:37
Okay. Does it cost more if I want more result or does it?
28:41
Do you guarantee a result if I put in money in marketing?
28:44
All right, you ready? I'm going to give you a very simple answer.
28:47
Bad marketing costs a lot.
28:50
Good marketing costs a lot less.
28:53
Apple, Starbucks initially. Hey, but you don't have to be an apple and a Starbucks, right?
28:59
So this is what I mean. When you achieve differentiation with value that nobody else has, then your marketers put
29:08
it out there, right? So when we put it out there and we added a little bit of SEO, then all of a sudden, day and
29:14
night and weekends, we started getting calls from presidents and business owners about what
29:18
is this outsourced marketing department? I don't have to hire.
29:20
They were curious and so they started reaching out to us.
29:24
So that reduced the cost of marketing.
29:26
We didn't have to buy billboards and we didn't have to do PPC ads.
29:29
And I didn't even have to have a salesperson. I only got a salesperson.
29:33
I was doing all that myself. Why? Because I was a business owner who needed to talk to another business owner because we
29:38
understood and spoke the same language. So I was helping them and selling.
29:42
Now, if you don't have, if you're selling a commodity product, then you're going to be
29:47
trying to get a ton of your messaging out there.
29:50
So now it all comes back to a 0.5% response rate, blah, blah, blah.
29:55
And so you're going to get lucky to get a response that had a high marketing cost and a low
30:00
closing rate. Do you see what I'm saying?
30:03
Bad marketing costs a lot.
30:05
Or marketing without strategy costs a lot.
30:09
Matter of fact, if you're a business owner and you can't think of one strategy, I'm not
30:12
saying website, that's not a strategy. Right.
30:16
And a strategy should be easily defined in one to three words, right?
30:21
Like outsource, marketing department.
30:23
That is our strategy. That's our product strategy.
30:26
For instance, we're online. Did you answer this so well, Mike, can I ask you one more?
30:31
Yes. How long does it take?
30:37
Boy, that's a tough one. It's almost like when do you stop being a parent?
30:41
Never. So great marketing never stops.
30:46
Because great marketing, when you have great marketing processes inside the management
30:50
team, you're always coming to new levels of discovery.
30:53
Oh my God, the market, we just learned this.
30:56
Or perhaps they want that. Let's migrate.
30:58
So how long does it really take? It can take as little as 5 minutes to get the idea and then the execution of it can take a
31:07
little bit longer. You're going to have to, like in that example of the manufacturing company, when the CEO
31:13
and I said, look, your strategy is speed.
31:17
Your strategy is speed to market, right?
31:20
Speed of delivery. And your brand strategy is three weeks.
31:25
Say it over and over again, three weeks. Well, he had to get that down to the sales team.
31:30
He had to get that out on his website. He had to get that into his business literature.
31:34
He had to get that into his email campaign.
31:36
So that takes a bit of time. But no, you can execute great marketing in as little as one to three months.
31:43
And you can have that marketing spark.
31:46
And frankly, if you have the right tools in place, wire.
31:50
And that's what the great marketing lie really is.
31:52
It gives you a set of tools that you can use with your management team in your annual
31:59
strategy planning retreats for three to five years.
32:02
Because there's always more things to take down in a company's business, right?
32:08
What can we do better? How can we. Pricing.
32:11
So product pricing place.
32:14
How are we delivering online? Not online, International.
32:17
Not international. What are we saying promotion about?
32:19
How are we talking to our always ways to do those four P's better?
32:23
And I like to keep it simple and just use the four P's.
32:26
So yes, if you get me, you can get miles ahead fast and then you can build a moat around
32:34
your business within one to three years.
32:37
Build a moat around your business so that full of sharks with laser beams so that your
32:43
competitors are nowhere close. Your business, that'll take one to three years.
32:46
Generally, I think the biggest takeaway, Mike, is after you spend, assume that you spend
32:52
money in marketing, right? You do all that.
32:54
Your ultimate goal should be, that's why I can charge more.
32:57
That's why we are premium. If you spend money in marketing so you could sell it for less, then I don't think you
33:04
should do it. There's a great truth, and so I like to refer to great truths, and this is a great truth,
33:09
swire. And everybody can take this to the bank today.
33:13
Scarcity breeds value.
33:16
The scarcer something is, the more we're going to pay for it.
33:20
So if a business can make itself more scarce in the value that it offers and the higher the
33:25
price, people will pay forever and ever and ever until supply increases to meet that
33:31
demand. And that's know the fast mover advantage.
33:34
That's what Silicon Valley has been trying to achieve for decades.
33:37
Be the first mover because everybody's going to catch up with you in three to six months or
33:42
a year, and then you got to go catch another first mover advantage.
33:47
Mike, I think these are very good conversations.
33:50
And getting to the point that I think listeners have a specific question for you.
33:55
So if they do decide to reach out, what's the best way to reach out to you?
33:59
Just go to Raptors biz.
34:03
I would love to spend an hour with the business owner and talking just like this.
34:06
And by the way, I enjoy these conversations because swire ho don't know everything, bro.
34:11
I just know enough to be dangerous. But I'll tell you what, two people are a lot smarter than one, and you can rip off one
34:17
another. And so what I enjoy about these discussions is that business owner is going to get a lot of
34:23
value out of 30 minutes, and I'm going to get a lot of value because I'm going to learn
34:27
what they're doing. And I've got this huge library computer going on, as they do.
34:33
And you plug in new prompts to reach new places.
34:37
And so I enjoy these conversations as well. But I swear, especially if we're talking about strategies and models to get to those
34:44
strategies, then you can get there very quickly.
34:47
Okay. And so, yeah, just go to raptors biz and you'll just contact me.
34:53
Let's have a nice conversation over a cup of coffee.
34:57
Thank you so much for coming on today, Mike.
34:59
Thank you. Suwar. I had a lot of fun. Appreciate it.
35:02
Thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends or
35:09
colleagues who might benefit from the conversation.
35:12
Any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.
35:16
I'd love to connect with you.
35:18
00 p.m.
35:23
Pacific Standard Time. I'll see you next time.
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