EntreLeadership - Avoid Failure by Following These Marketing Principles with Seth Godin

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Did you know one of the top questions we get asked week after week centers around how to scale a business? Everyone wants to increase their opportunities, leads and revenue—and marketing is a great solution to that problem. But where do we start? In this episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast, we sit down with bestselling author Seth Godin as he breaks down the difference between direct marketing and brand marketing and which one your business should invest in. Then in our second segment, George Kamel talks to two of Ramsey Solutions’ top marketing leaders, Jen Sievertsen and Trey Sheneman. They give you some tactical tips for how you can apply brand and direct marketing in your business right now.   The EntreLeadership Podcast Books by Seth Godin Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin RamseySolutions.com The Fine Print with George Kamel Learn More About EntreLeadership Coaching Download the EntreLeader's Guide to Hiring Schedule a Call With Tim, Our Producer   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership partners: BELAY  |  Gravy  |  Hite Digital | NetSuite Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Wanamaker famously summed up advertising by saying this. Half of my advertising works. The problem is that I don't know which half. Wasted advertising dollars put a strain on small businesses' cash flow. And cash flow issues are one of the top five reasons that small businesses fail in the first five years of operation. So how should you focus your marketing efforts in your business? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Campbell, and today's episode is all about direct marketing and brain marketing, which connects to our business driver of plan.

Our first guest today is Seth Godin. He's a successful entrepreneur, best-selling author of 20 books, and has been inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame. We break down the difference between direct marketing and brand marketing and which one your business should focus on. In our second conversation, I talk with Ramsey leaders, Trey Shindman, and Jen Sievertson, about how we use direct and brand marketing here at Ramsey Solutions. Up first, here's my conversation with Seth Godin. Seth, it's so great to talk to you today. How you doing? I'm doing okay. Thank you for having me. Beautiful day.

I've been a big fan of yours for over a decade now. I've been in the marketing world to start my career. And so your books, Purple Cow, Lynchpin tribes, there's so many I could name, have been a game changer, not only for me, but many of the leaders here at Ramsey's Solutions. So thank you for the work that you've done. Oh, it's a privilege every day, for sure. Well, let's talk about this. You are my marketing North Star.

Whenever I think marketing, I think of Seth Godin. And so I want to talk about the idea of brand marketing versus direct marketing. And a lot of small business owners out there are going, wait, what? There's more than one type of marketing. What's going on here? So lay this out for us. What is direct marketing? Right.

So there's lots of kinds of marketing, but in this case, there are only two in this category. Direct marketing is measured marketing in which you are going from you directly to the person you're seeking to change or influence, and you can tell if it works or not. So calling somebody on the telephone is direct marketing, and so is running a Facebook ad. On the other hand, brand marketing isn't measured. Brand marketing is a TV ad. Brand marketing is sponsoring a podcast. And where small businesses stumble is in two places. First, they run brand ads thinking they're direct. So that's when you hear a podcast and you'll hear that weird long URL at the end of the ad, as if someone's going to pull over their car, type something into, no, that's not going to happen.

You should just, if you're going to do brand advertising, do brand advertising, don't measure it. But the other mistakes small businesses make is if they can't make money on it in one day, they don't want to spend. So they only do direct marketing. And this is a mistake because it shows a lack of confidence on your part and doesn't build trust over time. It kind of reminds me of our financial advice when it comes to investing. A lot of people go, yeah, but I can't wait 10 years. for this investment to compound.

I've got to get rich quick now. I've got to get it on cryptocurrency and dogecoin. Is it similar with brand versus direct marketing? There's kind of a long-term play? Brand marketing is always a long-term play. So if you think about something like Absolute vodka, absolute vodka is worth billions of dollars. But those ads in the New Yorker and all those other magazines,

they didn't pay for a long time. Heinz ketchup is worth billions of dollars. But all of those Carly Simon commercials didn't pay for a long time. If you want to have something of substance, it's almost impossible to get there with just direct marketing because the thing about direct marketing is it's a miracle when it works. You pay five bucks, you make ten bucks. Do it all day long. But pretty soon it stops working because it's like finding money on the ground. If you can find it, other people can, and pretty soon there's no money on the ground. So, you know, cash flow issues can be a problem for these small business owners.

and when they're going, okay, I've got to spend some money on marketing, they want to see that direct return, that immediate ROI on ads been. So what do you say to that small business owner who has concerns about that? Well, you know, it's a little bit like Halloween and the kid who is so eager to get a bunch of candy that he sticks around in the wrong neighborhood because the doorbells are close, as opposed to investing 15 minutes to get to the neighborhood where they're giving out better candy. And what I would say to a small business person, and I've been one, my whole life is why are you doing this in the first place? Who are you doing it for? What change are you seeking to make? If you're just looking for a job without a boss, guess what? You have a lousy boss.

But if you're looking to build something of substance and significance, you're going to have to figure out how to lean into it in a way that others are afraid to. And so investing in being in the right place, not every place, but the right place over time with generous messages, to people who want to hear them, it can really pay. I'll give you another small business example. Last week, MailChimp sold for $12 billion. It is, as far as we know, the biggest exit ever for a company that didn't raise a penny in investment.

So Ben and just a couple other people own the whole thing. Now, the reason you've heard of MailChimp is probably for two reasons. One, because they built a product that customers talked about when they used it, because you saw it in the emails you were giving. And two, because they spent as much as they could afford sponsoring podcasts. And they didn't measure, but they knew that smart, leading kinds of citizens were listening to podcasts five years ago. So they bought them all because they could afford it. And that turns out in just a few years to be worth $12 billion.

Wow. That's a great example. And I mean, when I think podcast ad, I immediately think MailChimp. That's how much they've entered the zeitgeist of podcast ads. That's a great example. So let's dig into the brand marketing idea here. You say that a problem some marketers make is they initially ask, what can the medium do for you instead of what you can do for the medium?

What do you mean by that? So television dominated marketing for a really long time, and television was invented so that they could run TV ads. That's its purpose. And so if you ran a TV ad that matched the genre, it was more likely than not to work. But Facebook isn't TV, and Google ads aren't TV. you can go down the list. If you show up in a medium trying to insist that it been to your will,

it's really unlikely that that will happen. If instead you say, oh, what this is good for is so-and-so. So a simple example. I invented email marketing 30 years ago. And over time, email marketing has gotten more and more slick with images and HTML and all that stuff. It doesn't work as well as a human sending an email to another human. That email is a medium. That email is a media. is about one person emailing another person. And so if I send out a bunch of emails, a quarter million a day for my blog, a lot of people read them because it's from me.

Whereas when you get one of those slick emails to sell you some boots, you just hit delete because it doesn't match what the medium is for. That's a good reminder that we kind of need to be human here and not just be a marketing machine when it comes to the way that we market. So why is it important to consider the behavior of users on a platform before trying to advertise them.

So clearly that's something you've thought through when it comes to email. Yeah. So, you know, I'm working on a project right now and someone said, well, how is this going to work on mobile? And I'm like, if someone has a choice between watching TikTok or the latest YouTube video and doing what we're working on, we're going to lose no matter what. So don't start compromising to put it in a medium where it's not what people want to do in that medium. and this is part of what the magic of podcasting has been, because podcasting is the only thing you can do with your phone safely

while you're driving or running or at the gym. So it matches exactly what the medium is for. Yeah, that's a great reminder. And you've got a great podcast, Akimbo, that everyone needs to check out for sure. What do you mean by this phrase here, great products work far better than great ads do? Right. So we talked about mail.

Jim. So, for example, think about the first person who had a fax machine. What did they do with it? Because you can't send a fax to yourself. You get a busy signal. The only thing you can do with it is tell other people to get a fax machine. And when you tell other people to get a fax machine, now more fax machines are sold. And your fax machine works better. And that is the essence of how you build a marketing juggernaut. That Dave has hundreds of employees. He has millions of people, listen to you. And that is the essence of how you build a marketing juggernaut. That Dave has, you know, Dave has millions of people, to them on the radio. There are hundreds of thousands of people listening to this and other things. Why? Because you guys bought a lot of ads? I don't think so. Because you built something other people want to talk about. They're not talking about it because they like George. They're not talking about it because they like Dave. They're talking about it because they like themselves. Because it will raise their status because it will raise their relationships with other people if they talk about you. And too often marketers think they're in the hustle business. No one wants to be hustled.

The business we're in is do work that matters for people who care. So focusing on product makes you think about the customer first. Thinking about an ad makes you think, how can I make money off of this person? What can they do for me? Bingo. I'm getting it. This is great.

Hopefully I have an A on the test so far. I love this. So the first rule of branding here, keep your promises. That's a big one for small business owners out there. Why is it important to make promises and keep them as a brand? Okay, so there's trust. And there's attention. And a lot of business people who think they have a marketing problem think they have an attention

problem. How do I interrupt more people? How do I call people at home? How do I buy an email list? How do I spam the world? How do I put up a billboard? Most things are all about attention. Here's the deal.

There's seven billion people on earth. If you end up with 7,000 customers, which by my math is one out of every million people, you are doing great. I'm doing fine. and I maybe have 100 paying customers a year. 7,000 would be a lot, a lot. So what we need to focus on instead of attention is trust. The people who know you exist, do they trust you?

Do they trust you to keep your promise? Do they trust you to solve their problem? So if you wake up in the middle of the night and the sink is overflowing, you only get one call to one plumber. It's like getting arrested, right? You get one phone call. Who are you going to call? You're going to call the person with the biggest ad,

add in the yellow pages, or you're going to call the people who have SEO, or you're going to call the plumber who every time you call them shows up and treats you fairly. Well, it's pretty obvious who you're going to call. So the hard work is to earn trust. Yeah, and that's something that we've been doing for 30 years now with Dave. He's so big on being a trust brand and Entree leadership being a trust brand. And so when Dave says, go reach out to this person, people actually do it. I mean, you know, three hours a day, he's offering advice on the show and people take it. And that's because they trust him. And a lot of companies struggle with this.

You know, they don't have a Dave Ramsey talking to customers three hours a day. So how can companies make those promises and keep that trust and not break it? Well, the first thing is they could have someone talking to customers three hours a day, except the customers don't want to hear from them. So that's the first problem. Make something customers want to hear about. do something that is a service, not a hassle. You get the pick, you're the boss.

And then the second thing is to be really specific about the promises. So let's say you make wedding cakes for a living. If your promise is, if you order a cake, we will make a cake. That's not much of a promise. That's not what the bride is thinking about when they are going out to spend $1,000 on a cake. What they are thinking about is how will this make me feel? What they are thinking about is how will this make my partner feel? How will this make my family feel?

If you make a promise around those things and you keep that promise, then they're going to tell the others. Yeah. Right? That's how you make magic going forward is you have a very specific promise and you over-deliver on it, but it's not about the features. It's about the story. And doing that consistently for a long period of time is how you win in business. That's fascinating.

Talk to the idea of word of mouth, because when I think of brand marketing, usually I didn't fall for an ad. I listened to a friend who said, hey, you've got to check out this new canned water. It's fantastic. So what is the power of word of mouth and how can business owners use that when it's not really quantifiable? Well, business owners do all sorts of things that aren't quantifiable. they just pretend they don't. Who decided that the place of your retail location is the maximum return on investment? Who decided that of all the people you could hire,

this person is quantifiably better than that person? Go down the list, right? So you're only quantifying the stuff that Facebook makes it easy for you to quantify. That's a trap. Don't fall into that trap. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that loyalty is the number one way to increase profitability. And word of mouth is the number two. way. And way down the list is a clever advertisement. And the real challenge you've got is

nobody wants to talk about canned water. I don't. Right. So no one's talking about you because you want them to. This whole idea of life insurance salespeople being trained to ask for referrals, no one's referring life insurance salespeople to anybody ever. Because it lowers your status to say to your friend, my cousin sells insurance, will you meet with them? Of course you're not going to say that. But there's all sorts of things that could raise your status. So I don't know if you've ever reported on these tiger groups that started in New York and spread where wealthy people get together and talk about their finances. And I don't know any of the details about it. All I know is it's been growing for years and years. Well, yeah, because what a great humble brag. Oh, yeah,

I was in my elite group where rich people get together and talk about our finances. And we were talking about so-and-so. Well, yeah, because it makes you feel better to talk about it to other people. But the same thing's true when you give a merit badge to a Boy Scout. That is bragging rights, which then the kid can talk about to the others. I'll give you one more example, which is years and years ago, I hang out a lot with people of totally different ages than me. That's how you learn things.

A bunch of kids were into skateboarding. And one kid said, 12-year-olds old, one kid says, you know, I'm sponsored. And it turns out this skateboard company that made skatewear and jackets and shirts and stuff made a deal to 12-year-olds. They said, send us a video of you skateboarding. If you're good enough, we'll sponsor you. And if you're sponsored, you get anything we make for 50% off, but you have to promise in writing with your parents agreeing that you won't wear anybody else's brand. And these 12-year-olds are like so proud of themselves. Well, 50% off, the company is still making a profit.

Right? And what they were actually doing was activating 12-year-olds by giving them bragging rights, which gave them something to talk about. That's brilliant. That is brilliant marketing right there. 50% off. Not quite the sponsorship that Tiger Woods has, but it's close. Yeah. As a former skateboarder, I appreciate that. I would have liked 50% off back in my day. So let's talk about when a promise is broken because a lot of business owners, there's failings. There's a customer service issue. It wasn't delivered on time. quality wasn't there. How do you rebuild trust with the customer? And maybe it's a, you, you turned them into a raving fan. Right. There's a great news. Congratulations. It didn't work. What an opportunity to see and be seen. What an opportunity to have empathy. To show up for somebody. The person doesn't want you to give them a refund. They really don't. They want to be understood.

They want things to be better. They want you to heal a. broken bridge, because we all have so many broken bridges in our life anyway, so many rifts in our culture, we don't need to be angry, right? So in the hotel says, well, we have a policy. Here's your $19 back. That makes it worse, right? Instead, there's the opportunity for an apology of action, not one that you're reading out of a script, but to actually do something to make it better. And, you know, one business I know of just yesterday had a glitch. And they reached out to the person and they said, we know that you are having a family gathering around something. Is there a charity that you care about?

And the woman said, well, actually, blah, blah, blah. And then without promising her anything, just called up the charity and made a donation in her name. And that's so much more powerful than giving her a gift card for 20 bucks, right? Because what we want is Saobana, the Zulu term for ICU. And to be really understood for how things were messed up, not to minimize it, but to maximize it, is how we build the bridge. Part of my thesis is that customer service is free. Customer service might be expensive, but customer service pays for itself, which means it's free. And overinvesting in that direction is better than putting people on hold.

saying due to an usually heavy call volume, your call may be monitored. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, that doesn't make me feel seen. That's for sure. Wow, that's good. I want to move into this idea of the law of diffusion of innovation. There's a lot of $10 words there that are over my head at least.

So talk to us about what this is, the law of diffusion innovation, and why is it important for the small business owner to understand? All right, I'll draw your picture, even though we might be on audio for some people. So I didn't make this up. Guy named Rogers did. And you've all seen a bell curve, right?

It's that thing with the hump in the middle. It looks like a snake that ate a gerbil or something. The middle of the curve is the masses. That's everybody. These are people who watch Netflix right now. The beginning of the curve are the early adopters, the geeks and the nerds. These are the people who watch all their television on a pair of Facebook glasses with augmented reality and things sticking out of their head. And at the end of the curve, just a few people are still have a 12 flashing on their VCR.

Right. And so what we know is there's five to 10 percent of the audience are geeks and nerds who want to go first. Five to 10 percent of people are laggered to go last. And then there's the big hunk in the middle. And many small business people get distracted by the big hump in the middle, right? The undigested gerbil. Because that looks like where all the people are. Those people don't have a problem.

Those people aren't paying attention. Those people don't care about you. But the people who want to go first, the people who are early, if you show up and say, I got something new and unproven, they are listening. So we begin by going to those people, by going to people who want to get in early. And I would imagine 80 to 80% of the people have an iPhone, 100% of people have a smartphone. Nobody who's listening to this bought one on the first day. None of you.

Because I was there on the first day and I didn't see you there. So geeks go on the first day and laggards are just getting a smartphone today. And in between a lot of people. But first you got to make a smartphone and you got to get the geeks excited. So if you're starting a small business, you're not going to grow it by saying, if you're looking for anyone, we're anyone. You're going to grow it by saying if you were looking for something specific and edgy and incredibly well built and that no one else has, that's what we've got.

I just came across a really small business. the guy makes handplanes for woodworkers that cost six times more than any other handplate. And they're like wrapped in linen when you get them and they're, you know, made under an electron microscope and blah, blah, blah. Almost no one wants one of these. But the people who do want one are waiting in line on the waiting list and happily paying so they have something to brag about. Yeah, I can think of so many brands that are like that in platforms, right? TikTok or Snapchat or Facebook.

And at first it was like, no, that's for kids. No, that's for college kids. And now everyone in their mom has a Facebook, and it's mostly moms. And now the TikTok is the new, oh, that TikTok's for dance challenges. Well, now it's for education and for all kinds of things. And so it's an amazing principle there, the law of diffusion of innovation. I love that. So this is an interesting quote that I've got from you.

You once said Super Bowl ads are stupid. They are. that those people are paying a premium to reach average people. So Super Bowl viewers, they're average people. They should instead be paying a premium to reach the specific people. Why is the attention of the masses not valuable in your eyes? So as we just talked about, you've got that big hump in the middle. So if you're Budweiser or Heinz or somebody who needs to reach the average masses,

there's almost no place to buy that ad. That's why you overpay for the Super Bowl. But the Internet is not a mass medium. it is impossible to reach as many people on the internet in what at once as you can reach on a Super Bowl. But it's a huge but. The internet is the greatest medium ever invented to reach specific people.

You want to reach left-handed unicyclists in Nevada? We got them. You can reach a whole bunch of them, 100, all at once. So what that means is you need to make a product that left-handed unicyclists really want. Because if you're making average stuff for average people, the internet is not your friend. Television is your friend, but television is left the building. And when I first met Dave, we had this whole argument about radio because radio is taking a very long time to fade away,

but it's fading away. And the reason it's fading away is because it's only average stuff for average people. And as soon as people get income or intelligence, they tend to switch. to a smartphone. And so if you want specific people who are looking for specific interests, it's really hard to reach them with a radio ad now. Because what's left is that middle group.

The juice is when you're getting people who are listening on purpose for something specific. Yeah, like many of our Entree leadership listeners who can only listen on podcast because they want this specific content. Exactly. That's a great reminder there.

So I want to wrap with kind of the trends you're seeing. What is your most, your biggest frustration with what's going on in the marketing world today? What grinds your gears? Well, first, I'm going to talk, I will answer your question. Then I want to talk about trends because this is not a trend question. This is just a peeve question. The problem with pet peeves is that peaves make lousy pets because they keep your distracted from the important stuff. However, I've been railing about narcissistic, short-term, selfish hustling marketers for 25 years and it's not working, there's still too many of them. And if you are walking into the world saying, I worked really hard to get here and I deserve your

attention, buyer beware, I'm going to cut corners and it might work. I want nothing to do with you. And neither does anybody else. The trend, though, that I want to talk about is trends are overrated. You don't need the next big thing. You don't need to be on a new medium. 25 years ago, I wrote, that permission, the privilege of talking to people who want to hear from you is the future. It is still the future. If you send a note out tomorrow to 100 of your customers, how many would open it, how many would read it, how many would write back? If the answer is four, then you need to make a better product. That the goal, the future, all of it is not about which tech platform is winning.

Ignore the trends. It's who wants to hear from you? who trusts you and who is telling their friends. That's good. That's a good pet peeve, too. I love that. So what excites you? What is getting you fired up right now where you go, wow, this is amazing.

We need more of this in the marketing world, in the business world. So listening to this podcast are thousands and thousands of people who woke up this morning intent on solving a problem. And my whole life, people with guts have been solving problems. A friend of mine, Pablo, pointed out that in the last 100 years, we've created three billion jobs on this planet, maybe more. And that gets me excited. There are plenty of problems right in front of us. There are problems around climate.

There are problems around social justice. There are problems around dignity. There are problems around how we're going to make a living. And on this podcast, there are thousands of people who are trying to solve problems. Go do that. That would make me happy. That's a great reminder. So for the small business owner listening who goes,

hey, I love everything I've just heard, but okay, what now? What do I go do tomorrow? Brand marketing feels far away. It feels like a squishy idea. What is the thing I can go to my team and say, here's what we're going to do today, this week, this month?

Three words, smallest, viable audience. Are there 100 people that you could describe that if you were in their trust, your business would be transformed? go do brand marketing to 100 people or a thousand people, persistently and consistently, figure out what would delight the smallest viable audience. Do that. Stop making average stuff for average people. As soon as you figure that out, you're on the hook. It's scary to be on the hook, but being on the hook is the best place to be. Well, Seth, it's an honor to talk with you.

Appreciate you pouring into our listeners to help make their businesses better. And congrats on all the stuff you've got going on. You just, you never cease to amaze me. Well, thank you. Thanks for showing up. I know it's not easy. Drip by drip, day by day. Goet. Such an honor to talk with marketing legends, Seth Godin. Thank you so much for your time, Seth. You know, great marketing truly is all about giving more than you take. And both direct marketing and brand marketing have a part to play in that. So how do we use those both here, Ramsey Solutions? We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right. In our second conversation, I talk with Jen Civerts, our chief marketing officer and Trey Shenaman,

our executive marketing director of Ramsey Plus, and they share their thoughts on how to effectively implement both direct marketing and brand marketing in your business. Trey, Jen, thanks for being on the podcast. Excited to be here. Happy to be here. I love talking marketing. I spent the first half of my career here at Ramsey in marketing.

Jen, you were my leader's leader, and I learned so much from this place when it came to marketing, and we've got two of the heavy hitters here, Ramsey's Solutions. talk about direct marketing versus brand marketing what is the the difference in your minds when it comes to brand versus direct i would say for me brand is more about connection whereas direct marketing is more about conversion so they they sort of live in different parts in what we would call the consumer journey or the funnel and brand marketing tends to be higher in the funnel it's like a first touch point whereas direct marketing is you should know enough about your target consumer at that point that you can

actually drive them to an action yeah so brand marketing is all about awareness You know, if you think of automobile manufacturers, they do this really well. They shoot those really beautiful car commercials that make you, you know, dream about what it would be like to drive their particular type of car and get you excited about that dream. But they don't do anything to drive you to the local dealership. That would be more the direct marketing push. Yeah. And so you've got to create this relationship, which is where the brand part comes in. And then it's kind of like, all right, we've been on a first date.

now I can maybe propose, and it's a deeper relationship at that point when you're asking for something. Yeah, you think about direct response marketing and direct marketing for short is when you're getting them to take a commitment. So sometimes that might be becoming, being what we would call a lead. So I'm getting some verifiable piece of information about you, whether it's your name and address or your email, your phone number or all of the above. Or we're going to step even further than that and that you're putting your actual payment in. And we're actually transacting on either a single purchase or a subscription. we do a lot of those different kinds of things here. So, yeah, it's a further down in the funnel.

It's when we're ready to actually move somebody to action. That's when we're going to put a very specific CTA or a call to action in the marketing and actually get them to make a choice, either to do what we'd like them to do or to not. So how do we use direct marketing here at Ramsey Solutions? What are some examples? For us in Ramsey Plus,

so I work on the Ramsey Plus team, the first major mechanism that we try and drive people to is what we call a free trial. So many of us have participated in Netflix or Hulu or other brands. out there that are subscription models. And so the first transaction that we track is a trial process for us. That means somebody's going into a two-week period and they're going to have a chance to explore the product, try it for free. And then at that point, we're hoping the product does everything that we

promised they would do in the funnel and they decide to stay on that 15th day there beyond. So that's one example. We have in our Ramsey Trusted Division. We connect people with real estate agents or accountants or tax advisors, so on and so forth. So there's lots of different ways we use direct marketing, but it's all about taking somebody to that very first step where we really want to actually build that true financial relationship with their fiscal relationship with the customer. Jen, any examples you can think of of how we use direct marketing here or different channels we might use? We do tons of different channels here.

So direct marketing, you know, back in the day, if you will, was a lot of direct mail and maybe even phone calls to your house. might be kind of annoying if you think back, you know, 20 or 30 years. But today, most of that is digital. And so you'll see keywords on search engines is a big way that this is done. You'll see ads within social media platforms is another big way that this is done. There's also display advertising online. But I would say most people are going more for those distribution outlets like social media where people are already, you know, living, if you will. Yeah. So for the small business owner, how should they know when to use direct marketing versus brand marketing? What's better suited for what?

Yeah. So if they're trying to get awareness out there about a product or service or maybe they're new to a market and they're not known in a certain market, they would want to do more brand or, you know, the awareness driving brand marketing. And once you're in a market and you're known somewhat and you're ready to get people to take an action like Trey was describing, that's when you really do more, the direct. marketing piece of it. Yeah, I would completely agree. I think direct marketing, it really depends on stage of business market that you're in. So there's a lot of, a lot of variables to it. But anytime you have a very specific financial goal that you need to drive for the business like a certain net number of new leads you need to create or pipeline is a term we would use in kind of the B2B space where you want to create opportunity for your sales team to be able to engage in close new business or if you're in the kind of consumer marketing like say Ramsey Plus is where

we have a very specific number of lives that we want to. to serve. When you have those very specific goals at some point, you're going to have to do direct marketing. So I think it's the balance between the two, the nuance of the timing of, I need to have enough awareness to those who have the problem that my solution solves. So we don't want to just go and spend a ton of money or, you know, create a ton of awareness for people who don't have the problem that our product solves. So once we've done that, then we actually need to move them into taking an action so that that's the way business works. You know, it moves to the speed of cash, the speed of trust. And so we need to make sure that we're doing both of those things really well.

Yeah, and both of these types of marketing can cost money, which can be a little scary as a small business owner when you're pouring money into marketing and you're not sure if it's going to ROI immediately. And when it comes to brand marketing, that's even harder to track sometimes. It really is. So what are some of the ways that we do brand marketing here at Ramsey? We're a little different than some other places. One of the ways that we've traditionally done brand marketing here is we've put out trusted content for people to listen to in the form of shows or even blog posts and information. that we put out there for people to engage with, that's free. And then they build trust, they're ready to take action,

and then we do the direct marketing. We might advertise a book to them that drives them to our e-commerce store to make a purchase, for instance, once they're warmed up to the content. That's a little unusual for most places. If you're a local business and you've got a service or a retail location, you might want to do different brand marketing within your area. That could be anything from TV commercials or radio ads. They might not be the most effective.

You might have the most effectiveness by understanding who your customers are and then really understanding where they're hanging out because that's how you can best get your brand out there to them. And on that question about what the small business owner should invest in, to me the fundamental tactic that a small business owner should invest in is what we would call retargeting. So if your brand is built up enough or your awareness in the marketplace

is enough that you're getting natural traffic to your website, whether that's direct traffic, organic traffic, so on and so forth, it's very effective but affordable way to actually do some spend is to target those people who have visited your site but haven't converted yet.

So you can use Facebook, you can use Google different platforms to do that retargeting. And there should be very specific cost per action metrics that you're trying to drive. Say your average transaction value, these are arbitrary numbers, say it's $50.

then you would say, hey, if I can get somebody who's already been in my website to take the next step and convert for, say, $10 a piece or $15 a piece, that's a three to one ROAS return on ad spend. That is a very effective strategy. You would want to do what I would tell my team to do, which is to find the ceiling on that strategy. So what I mean is I'm going to start spending $50 a day. Well, now I'm going to spend $100 a day. Do I get $10? If I spend $200 a day, do I get $20?

And you wouldn't want to keep ratcheting that up because it's the most bottom of the funnel tactic that you can do. And I think every small business owner should be doing that. if they have a digital presence. So because there's a little more awareness, you know, hey, they're more likely to actually maybe make this purchase because they've been to our website or they've taken this action. And you're saying, do it in incremental steps.

You don't have to go and spend 10 grand tomorrow. You might spend 100 tomorrow and then increase it over time once you see what works. And digitally, it's so easy to both ratchet that spend up the right sort of way, ratchet it down if it's not working and also measure it. From a brand marketing standpoint, what you want to see over time is a sustained increase in, traffic and awareness and people coming to your store. It's a little harder to measure, but you still should be able to see an increase over time. Yeah. It's interest, which would be more awareness and

intent. I've taken a step to show you that I'm ready to move down the funnel with you. So I've downloaded a white paper, or I've read a blog on your website, or I've listened to 15 minutes of a show program. Well, you can put markers inside of that video content and know exactly the length of time somebody's consumed a piece of video content and then retarget them with the a very specific message to what you know they've consumed. So there's a real education that you bring to the table where it feels super personalized. To me, the consumer is like you're paying attention to what I'm doing and you're helping

me make the decision a lot easier. You're allowing them to buy instead of forcing to sell on them in that way. You're working a little smarter and not harder because you've got the data to show, hey, they're actually interested in this. We're not just hoping that they're interested. That's really smart. So how is our approach to marketing changed as we've scaled? When I started here, you know, eight years ago, we were like 300.

people when now we're a thousand and the numbers scale with that and the marketing changes so what ways have you seen marketing change jen in your time sure yeah we're we're constantly testing new approaches new platforms new distribution methods for our marketing messages and so um that's always evolving and for us testing is a key term and it really should be for anybody that's out there right now so testing different platforms testing different messages different ads um that's a really important thing and we have evolved with that for sure as we've grown. We have also evolved the way that we're doing our brand advertising. So I mentioned shows as something we've done for years and years.

We're continuing to do that in testing different types of shows, like the fine print or different formats of our shows. But we're also looking at testing different ways to bring new brand awareness to our various shows, to our various products and services as well. Yeah, outside of testing, I think a testing mindset, is a critical framework to have in any marketing in today's world, especially digital world. The second part I would say that is that we are omnichannel here. And so our multiple business units, if there's a channel that exists for the most part, we are active there because

we understand we want to meet consumers where they are and then get them to come where we want them to go rather than just waiting on them to find us. And so whether it's organic search, paid search, organic social, paid social, email, even affiliate marketing, you know, doing some television and radio. So we're pretty an exhaustive approach. You know, obviously we're a mature marketing function now. You know, Jen leads an incredible team here. So I would say not the small business, what I would say to that end is like instead of being mature horizontally. And so like trying to feel like you've got to go do 10 channels really well, a good tactic for a small business would be to mature vertically. So meaning like pick one channel and make sure that you're there.

That's where your target consumer is. And you're really maximizing the yield you can get out of that before you go and stretch yourself super thin across the rest of the channels. Just because we do it well, doesn't mean that's the stage that you're in yet as a small business. Yeah. What is an example of a way a small business owner might be able to test something marketing-wise that they can know, okay, this worked or this didn't? Yeah. Such an easy thing to test on a local level because you can target it so well is paid search and paid social. But those things can be targeted on the local level. You can target a very specific type of consumer or even on a B-to-B side. You can target via other social platforms where people, you can target a very specific.

people work, the types of jobs that they do if you're more in the B-to-B space. And it's just a really good way to test and learn. And then as you learn, you can optimize and keep getting better at that. Yeah, I'll give you a non-digital answer. I mean, that's the very first example I would have gone to digitally as well. I think if you're, say, in the local service business like plumbing or landscaping or something as integral as that, I think you could take a neighborhood and drop 100 mailers in the mail and have 50, say, one CTA and the other 50 say the other and watch and see which one has a better conversion rate. Do 10 of these 50 call you back and 20 of these 50? Well, why did those 20 of those 50 call you back? It's more about a mindset to not having a single way you want to do it

and being open-handed with, I'm going to let the data skew my opinion instead of my gut. Many small business owners have gotten where they work because they have a great gut. But at some point, you've got to move past the gut and get into what the data says or you get into spending your wheels and missing opportunities. And don't be afraid to talk to your customers, specifically as you're trying to figure out the different types of tests you want to run to. Yeah, a lot of this does come down to messaging and the way that you talk to the customers. What are some of the top things you guys have learned after doing a lot of this research and talking with customers and having our teams to all this research?

What is it that really connects when it comes to messaging? It evolves, whether when I was in agency world prior to coming to Ramsey or the three years I've been here, is even when you feel like you've got the customers zeroed in on, there's always nuances to the product, to the messaging, to the market. you think about market dynamics. I mean, we live in a pandemic world for the last 18 months now. That means your messaging has to evolve or has to adjust so that you don't seem tone-deaf. So the biggest thing I would say is that you understand that marketing is a science that is not yet finished.

I mean, and so therefore messaging has to kind of follow suit. Now, that being said, if you talk to your ideal customer, if you see the customer that comes in, uses your product, buys a second product, refers a person, go and figure out exactly what resonated with that person and kind of make them the center of what you're going to go after. and then you can always have nuances kind of in the periphery from out from that person. So you should have a zero-focused message like this is the person I'm going after, but then you should be open-handed kind of outside of that to make sure that you're willing to nuance it as things change. Yes, I would say exactly what Trace said is 100% on point and understanding the why of that target customer,

because if you can understand why and you can connect with that emotional thing that is driving them and really making sure that you're connecting with them on an emotional level and then backing it up with whatever facts need to be backed up. Most people make their decisions based on emotions and then support it with the facts. And so start with that why. People, by the why. That's a good reminder.

And whether it's direct marketing or brand marketing, when they feel like, man, they're reading my mail. They knew exactly what my problem was, and they're really giving me the solution and offering the value of how they can solve that with their product or service. So there's some great reminders there. So for the small business owner who's listening and their head is spinning right now,

they're like, ROI, what ad spend? Like, hey, man, I don't dabble in that kind of stuff. What is the thing they can do this week to just dip their toe in the water when it comes to, let's start with direct marketing? Okay. I would say you have got to have a good set of what I would call leading and lagging indicators of success. So break that down super simple. If I'm going to spend money on Facebook tomorrow, I should have a rough idea of what,

if I'm going to spend, say, $500 on a campaign, what I need to make back on that campaign to justify that it worked is for some businesses, that might be $501. But for other businesses, because they're in a position where they need to make revenue a little quicker and that, they might need to make $5,000. So you need to actually have a measurement protocol in place before you start marketing. And if you're doing any marketing right now and you're not measuring it, like I spent X and I got Y, I would almost turn it off and actually come up with a game plan of how I want to measure it

because measuring it is what matters most. At the end of the day, you could be really wasteful or you could be really wasteful or you could missing opportunities. And so I think having a good game plan for how you're going to measure what you're doing is the single thing they need to focus on this week. Good. And when it comes to brand marketing, Jen, what is that one thing? If they are doing zero brand marketing right now, what is that next step they can take? The thing I would take as a first step is they're probably doing some sort of direct marketing. And so I would evaluate all the direct marketing that you're doing and making sure that it's in your brand voice and making sure that it doesn't feel Uber transactional,

that it feels like it's actually connecting with an individual. Our head of branding here always says to make it feel like a helpful human. And that's really what you want, even if it's direct marketing. It shouldn't feel overly transactional. A lot of great stuff there. To the point, Joy, if you do direct marketing really well, your customers will take care of the brand marketing for you. So, you know, if you crush it and your product delivers on the promise that you carried out in the funnel,

they will go tell other people for you. You get that right, and then you can move up the funnel and do brand storytelling, and like the best brands in the world once you've earned that opportunity for it to be effective. Yeah. So much good stuff here, guys. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and for leading the marketing charges here at Ramsey Solutions. We've got a lot of people to reach, and I'm grateful that you guys are leading that charge. Thanks, George.

As Seth, Jen, and Trey talked about, you need to focus on brand marketing to build trust and awareness of your brand. If marketing or branding is not your thing, then you need to hire the right person to work with you to build that trust and awareness in the marketplace. So to help you out with the hiring process, you can download the Entree Leaders Guide to Hiring. To get this free guide, just click the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And if you're a small business owner with two to 200 team members, we want to hear what you think of the show. What you like, what you don't like, and what we could do better.

You can give us your feedback by clicking the link in the show notes to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison and Bob Borquez, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Christy Wright Show. Hey, y'all, I'm Christy Wright. You know, it's so easy to feel stuck.

You live life, just going through the motions, doing dishes, doing laundry, carpool lines, and a whole. whole list of commitments that bring you no joy. We say yes to what everyone expects of us, and we have no energy or time for what we want. And let's be honest, most of the time, we don't even know what we want. Why do we live like that? God certainly never called us to. You know, I believe that the life God has for us is bigger and more amazing than any of us realize. That's why I want you to check out the Christy Wright Show. Every week, we will fire you up to break through what's holding you back and inspire you to create a life you love and are proud of. Each episode will help you build confidence in yourself and the God that created you.

To hear full episodes, just search Christy Wright wherever you listen to podcasts or go to ramsysolutions.com slash shows.