7 Other Marketing Truths
The internet is filled with ad agency posts revealing ‘What Ad Agencies Wished Their Clients Knew’ where their self-proclaimed marketing gurus explain why your business is not advertising and marketing correctly. The problem with this approach is that all their sage advice typically consists of agency-speak and ideas recycled out of a Marketing 101 textbook. We are here to change that with straight-forward talk and real-world marketing truths that can help every local business owner.
1. Your Grandma doesn’t have to like the logo. While Grandma may be a lovely lady who makes an amazing apple strudel, she really doesn’t have to like your logo or your new ad or video or any of your marketing materials. Even if she’s a silent investor who has bankrolled your company, her opinion still doesn’t matter when it comes to marketing. Why? Because unless you’re selling blue hair dye or knitting needles, she is not your target market.
The only opinions that matter about your branding and marketing design, are your customers. They are the ones you are trying to attract and sell to. If your market is young and urban, you may use Rap music and a grungy graphic look – both styles that Grandma can’t stand but styles that directly connect with your customers.
We’ve seen this time and time again with small business owners. After in-depth customer research and discovery to set the direction for a new creative campaign, the owner decides at the final design stage that he just doesn’t like the look of the creative elements. They’re just not something he likes. He may not be Grandma, but the same truth applies – he’s not his own target audience. If you find yourself in this situation, have a little faith in the marketing professionals that you are working with. Look at things through your customer’s eyes.
2. There’s a lot more to marketing than just buying some advertising. Do you know a business owner like this?... Sales start slipping so they decide it’s time to spend more on advertising. Later that day, the rep from a local direct mail coupon clipper walks in on a cold call trying to sell an ad. Little did they know that they were in the right place at the right time. The owner signs the contract and feels good because he accomplished his advertising goal; the sales rep will paste the logo onto a stock ad and feel good because he earned a commission; and the customers will flock to the business! Well, two out of three ain’t bad!
Marketing is not a one-time drop of coupons into a bunch of mailboxes. In fact, marketing is part of the larger goal of ‘Branding’ a business which comes from the effective use of three different disciplines – Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations. Entire books have been written about each area, but here are quick descriptions:
Advertising: Using paid media to draw attention to the product or service you are trying to sell.
Marketing: A much broader focus that includes every touchpoint you have with a customer or potential customer. From your logo to your sales pitch to the scent in your lobby, these are all marketing building blocks that contribute to creating your brand.
Public Relations: Using media coverage and public conversations to create a favorable public image of your business or product, through what essentially acts as a 3rd party endorsement.
3. A successful agency relationship is a marriage, not a one-night fling. Many small business owners treat their marketing agency as a vendor, much like a plumber or an electrician. The sink is clogged – call our plumber. Our sales are down – call our ad agency. Unfortunately, successful marketing is not as simple as that. To get the most out of your agency, you need to commit to them for an extended period of time.
Instead of jumping from agency to agency, do your research and ‘dating’ to choose a group of people you have confidence in and trust. Then make yourself and your team fully accessible to work with them through the process of planning, executing, and then reviewing results to help guide the planning of your next marketing effort. With each round of this proven process, your marketing will become better and more effective – something that just doesn’t happen if you jump from agency to agency and don’t allow them to become a ‘partner’ in your business.
4. ‘Overnight Success’ takes months of hard work and preparation. Begin with realistic expectations, not an expectation of miracles. We have worked with multiple small business owners who budget a few hundred of dollars for Google Ads, and expect to see a 30% growth in their business overnight. Often this is an issue of educating the owner about marketing. They may know how to build the best furniture in town or bake the tastiest pizza around, but their training in these skills never included a foundation in marketing and advertising.
Effective marketing that leads to sales growth takes time and effort. Without identifying the right audience and the right message, those ads even with a large budget will fall on deaf ears and will not be effective. But when you deliver the right message to the right target audience, there will be lines out your front door of eager customers with money in hand!
5. It is impossible to drive when you are blind. Successful marketing can be viewed as a circle – an endless loop that starts with discovery and planning; moves to creative execution and campaign launch; then ends with data collection and analysis of the results. You can visualize that circle with a little train on it that goes around and around. When one campaign ends, analysis of the results guides the planning of the next campaign, and the train keeps running.
But very often we’ve watched the train jump the track at the results and analysis stage, when the campaign or advertising effort ends. And it’s not from a lack of trying by the agency, who really does want to analyze the results. For some reason, many business owners are apprehensive to share sales numbers with their marketing agency. But without these numbers, the agency is operating blind, with no validation of positive results or guidance to modify failed marketing efforts. If you are one of those business owners, it’s time to change your attitude toward information sharing. You have hired the agency to help you grow your sales. Why are you blindfolding them so they can’t accomplish what you’ve hired them to do?
6. Don’t get your Ferrari’s oil changed at Jiffy Lube. An oil change at Jiffy Lube costs $49 dollars. An oil change at the Ferrari dealer (depending on your model) can cost $1,100. So why not take your Ferrari to Jiffy Lube and save $1,000. I think we all agree that quality comes at a price, and something you’ve made a big investment in deserves to be cared for in the correct manner.
So why doesn’t the same apply for your biggest investment – your business? How often have we heard, “My sister’s teenage son can create an ad for me” or “I have a friend who knows how to shoot some photos.” We’ve all seen examples that prove the old saying, “you get what you pay for.”
When it comes to marketing, treat your business as you would treat your Ferrari.
7. Marketing can get you the first date, but you still need to shower and talk sweet. A successful marketing and advertising effort can deliver potential customers to your business, but once they arrive it’s up to you to get them back for the second visit. To be more direct, your business needs to have it’s act together before inviting a wave of customers in, because if your operation does not deliver an amazing experience on the first visit, they will not be back for a second no matter how much advertising you direct at them.
This is precisely why a lot of new restaurants have what they call a ‘soft opening’ where they don’t have their ‘Grand Opening’ on the first day the doors are open for business. They want some time to train their new employees and perfect their ability to deliver the hot food hot and the cold food cold before inviting the whole community over to try the new place. With word of mouth, one bad experience gets told to their friends, and their friends’ friends, and before you know it a bad reputation spreads through town that tanks the new owner’s hopes of success.
The same principle applies to even established businesses. The advertising can win the initial trial of your business, but how you meet the expectations of the new customer will determine if they become a returning customer.
8. You’ve got to spend money to make money. In the ‘old days’ business owners expected to spend money on advertising. Everyone had to pay to be in the Yellow Pages phone book, Then there were the newspaper ads, and radio and television. But then came the early days of Social Media, and early adopters learned they could build a big following on Facebook and send their marketing messages to all of these potential customers for FREE! But then Facebook and other social companies became Billion dollar publicly-traded companies who profit from advertising, and the days of reaching all your followers for free are now gone forever.
Do you know how many of your followers a post reaches on your Facebook page? It can be as little as 3% of your fans and followers. To reach a broader audience, they are happy to help you reach that goal by selling you advertising.
What’s old has become new again – you have to spend money to advertise your business. There are some tremendous advantages to digital advertising, with tracking and reporting so you know how many people actually saw your ad and how many took action, and you can even re-target these people to follow-up with the most interested prospects. But in the end it’s still advertising and it requires an investment.