Show notes
Social media doesn't work. Cold calling doesn't work. Print advertising doesn't work. Email is dead! Whenever an advertiser is unable to make a particular marketing vehicle work, they often blame the delivery mechanism and declare it either dead or ineffective. But what if the problem isn't the marketing vehicle? What if it's just the way you're using it?
David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. Today co-host Chris Templeton and I will be talking about marketing vehicles, which ones work, and which ones don't. Welcome Chris!
Chris: Hi David! In a previous podcast we talked about the MVP of marketing and sales. What's the marketing message we're communicating? Which combination of marketing vehicles will we use to communicate the message? And which people or prospects do we plan to reach? But today we're going to take a closer look at the marketing vehicles and try to figure out why so many people tend to blame the marketing vehicle when things go wrong. What's up with that?
David: Yeah, what is up with that? Well, it's easier than taking responsibility for the failure of any campaign. Because really what we're talking about here in terms of any sort of communication is the MVPs. You know, what's the message I'm conveying? Which combination of marketing vehicles will I use to communicate the message? And who are the people or prospects that I want to reach? So if I post a bunch of social media messages and no one responds... if no one likes it, nobody looks at it, it's far easier for me to blame the media than to ask if what I'm posting is compelling enough. If I run a paid ad somewhere and no one responds to it, it's easier for me to blame the delivery mechanism than it is to think that my well-crafted, beautiful offer is somehow inadequate or unappealing. It forces me to blame myself instead of the medium. And in a lot of cases it's just easier to blame the marketing vehicle or the medium that we're using.
Chris: But that doesn't serve us much, does it though?
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David: No, because when a particular marketing vehicle isn't working for us, it doesn't mean the entire vehicle itself is flawed. It might just be the way that we're using it and when we understand that we're going to be on the path to be able to start to fix these things rather than just become a victim of them.
Chris: Again, it goes back to the whole piece that we did on who's the buyer and looking at this and saying, what are the things that I need to look out for myself? It's so easy to blame the vehicle, but there's so many things that we can do to improve how we perform on any of those vehicles, including consistency. But let's start with cold calling. Lots of people are not big fans of it. It can be intrusive. It's usually unwelcome and it often disrupts a person's day. But is it effective?
Is Cold Calling Effective?
David: Well, it can be and cold calling is not my favorite form of first contact, but it doesn't really matter that it's not my favorite form of first contact because for some people it works very well. I mean, I personally don't like it from a positioning standpoint, but some people are great at it and they swear by it and they're able to generate customers with it. So from that standpoint, for them it is absolutely effective. That's where I think we run into trouble is just because cold calling is not my preferred method of initiating contact with a new prospect doesn't mean that it doesn't work. So if I say something like, "Oh, cold calling stinks, that doesn't work." It's just not true. It's not factually true. And no matter how much I dislike a particular marketing method, for me to summarily dismiss anyone's preferred method of marketing, it's not right. It's not honest. Because for some people, different types of marketing are going to work.
Chris: And the other thing to keep in mind is if cold calling isn't for you, but you recognize its value, there are ways to get people to do the initial cold call. And let's face facts. For me as a business owner, once I know somebody who's interested, I have no problem with making the calls. It's that tough call, the cold call where I don't know if they have an interest, go find somebody who loves to do it. There are people out there that love to do it, aren't there?
David: There are, and as I said, I mean I'm not a big fan of it myself. I have not made a cold call in a long time, but I have paid other people to do it. So, it continues to happen whether I'm doing it or not.
Social media, email & advertising
Chris: Yep. Good point. Should people focus on one primary method of communication or do you think it's better to mix it up? What's your sense on that?
David: Well, I think it's definitely better if you mix it up. I tend to favor a varied approach because I think it creates a different experience when we do that. If all I do is call you on the phone, right? If I'm trying to sell you something and I have your phone number, Chris, and I'm calling you whatever, every couple of days or every couple of weeks, and I'm trying to find out if you want to buy what it is that I'm selling. That can get old pretty quickly because you're kind of used to, okay, this guy is calling me on the phone and trying to sell me something. But if we were to take more of a varied approach where maybe you visited my website and maybe as a result of visiting my website, you've been cookied and so now when you're on Facebook, you're seeing an ad for something that I offer that could potentially be of interest to you. Now you're seeing me on there as well. As a result of stopping by my website, maybe you've opted in to receive a special report that I offer a free report or something like that. So, you're also getting emails with the free report and with the follow-ups to the free report. So now it's a combination approach. You're seeing my ads on Facebook, you're getting my emails with a follow-up to the information you requested and then if I'm contacting you on the phone now it seems like a continuation of something else as opposed to the one thing I'm doing, like I'm just calling. So when you're able to accomplish this, what ends up happening is people seem to feel like you're everywhere they look and the better you can create that environment in which you are essentially everywhere they look; then you start to become more present to them and they look that and say, “Okay, this person must really be good because I'm seeing them everywhere.” Not realizing that you have orchestrated that.
Chris: You know, one of the things that I think is really important to talk about is retargeting, which is the piece that you're talking about where five years ago that was a really scary thing, but I think now people are in a much different place with finding ads for sites that I've visited popping up in other places. Wouldn't you agree with that?
David: Well, yeah. People are more used to it, but also a lot of times people don't think about it. I mean they're on there, they're seeing all kinds of ads for all kinds of things and they're ignoring most of them and it may be that they're ignoring your ads as well, but somewhere in the back corner of their mind they're recognizing it. They're recognizing the fact that this is there, and it starts to permeate the brain. And if they see those ads after visiting your website and then if you're contacting them a month or so later, they're going to be a lot more likely to be familiar with your company, with your brand because they've been seeing it whether or not they've been paying attention to it.
Consistency across messaging
Chris: And now it's test time. If anybody listening to our last podcast, one of the primary focuses we had was consistency across messaging. Talk a little bit about that, David.
David: Right, you want to make sure that people can essentially follow the scent. It's like a hunting dog, the, you know, the dog wants to pick up on a particular scent and follow it through. If you've got different forms of communication and they're all conveying a very similar message, then they're able to follow the scent and all make sense. If you've got three different ads talking about three different things, then there's going to be a disconnect. They're not going to perceive it as part of the same thing. It's going to be disjointed or disconnected. There are a lot of people who run all kinds of ads and you see the ad and what's in the ad is very appealing and then you click through the ad and it takes you to the homepage of their website, which doesn't address at all whatever it was that was in the ad. So they make you dig for it and people will not dig for it. They'll get to it. There will be a disconnect. Their mind will say, "this isn't what I clicked on" and they'll go away. So making sure that there's a consistency between the ad that you're running and then wherever you're directing the person to. And then if you're offering them something free, that all of that is consistent so that when they get to the point where they have to enter their name and their information to receive more information from you, they feel comfortable doing it because they know exactly what it is that's being asked of them.
Chris: You made a comment on the last podcast about helping the buyer insert themselves into the story. This is again, that whole idea of a path that they can follow that makes sense, that's consistent, the messaging is similar. If I can create that story, I've just done myself a huge favor in my sales. Haven’t I?
David: Yeah,