Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Growing a business requires two types of marketing strategies: Overarching Marketing Strategy and Message Strategy.

1. Overarching Marketing Strategy

This is the big picture—a plan that considers the nuances of your business, industry, customer behavior, and buying style. It’s about reducing friction for customers and identifying and alleviating your customers’ fears.

2. Message Strategy

Once the overarching marketing strategy is in place, the message strategy focuses on crafting the best words to build an emotional connection with your audience; often through story.

Part 1: Why You Need an Overarching Marketing Strategy

Running a business without a marketing strategy is like embarking on a road trip without a map. You might eventually get where you’re going, but the journey will likely be longer, more expensive, more stressful, and full of unhelpful detours.

A good marketing strategy answers three essential questions:

1. What should you say?
2. Where should you say it?
3. How and how often should you say it?

Here are a few foundational questions when building your marketing strategy:

• Can you stimulate demand?
• Can you reach the customer easily at the time of purchase?
• Can you win the customer’s heart before they need what you offer?
• Can you use media to efficiently target the customer?
• Should you do direct response or branding style messaging?
• Is trust important? What contributes to trust?
• Do we target Transactional or Relational shoppers?

Can you stimulate demand?

Purchases are either triggered by an external event or an internal desire.

For example, a plumbing company cannot convince a homeowner to hire them to fix a sink that isn’t broken. And a moving company cannot convince a homeowner to move.

The goal of businesses who sell products/services that are externally triggered is not stimulating demand but ensuring customers think of you first and like you the best when the triggering event occurs.

For products with internal triggers—those driven by emotions, desires, or ego—you can actively stimulate demand. This requires addressing three key points:

1. Why they should buy
2. Why they should buy now
3. Why they should buy from you

Here are a few more examples to drive this home.

• An engagement ring is an externally triggered purchase.
• A Rolex is internally triggered.
• Shoes can either be internally or externally triggered based on the customer. Some customers could be internally triggered to buy Air Jordans, while other customers could be externally triggered when the hole in the sole of their shoe gives way to pavement.

Can you use media to efficiently target your customer?

Customers often turn to Google during their “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT). If they don’t already know or trust you, you’ll be competing with others who are willing to pay top dollar for leads. The solution? Reach them before they get to Google.

Media generally falls into two categories: Targeted Media and Mass Media.

Targeted media: narrow reach at a higher cost

Mass media: broad reach at a lower cost

Targeted Media

Targeted media (like PPC, search ads on specific sites, some direct mail, etc) tends to be much more expensive than mass media on a per-impression basis and serves a different purpose.

Purpose 1: Capture leads who are ready to buy

Since bottom-of-funnel, targeted media like PPC is expensive, it’s wise to become decreasingly dependent on unbranded keywords as you reach your first few million in revenue. Instead, focus on building relationships with mass media, then capture leads with branded keywords, which tend to cost only a few cents per click.

Below are industry benchmarks for PPC. Note only a fraction of these will ever convert.

Purpose 2: Engage a very narrow subset of the population

Can you create a quality, cost-effective list of every person who could conceivably buy what you sell? If “yes,” leveraging targeted media could be a great approach.

If you serve multiple industries that have multiple decision-makers and/or influencers, targeting efforts become impractical.

Sidenote: if you have a great list broker, please let me know. From my experience, buying lists is not worth the money, which makes building a list remarkably labor intensive/expensive.

Is social media a form of targeted media?

In 2022, Meta (Facebook & Instagram) settled with the DOJ over accusations of their targeting leading to discrimination. To prevent fines and further legal trouble, social media companies no longer effectively target, thus making them function more like expensive mass media than targeted.

Mass Media

If you can feasibly sell your product/service to a base that’s too diverse or large to build a list, mass media can be a great option. Even though it will reach people beyond your customer base, it’s cost effective enough that it makes sense to reach those who influence your buyers too.

For example, a funeral home would typically do well to skip the Pre-need/funeral planning mailers targeting senior citizens, instead opting for mass media for a few reasons.

1. While each mailer would cost between $1.50 to $5+ per person, radio (for example) can reach the same person 3x/week all year for less than $1.
2. Funeral decisions are typically made with the influence of a spouse and/or family. While a flyer only reaches the decision maker (maybe), radio can influence all parties.
3. Radio can keep the funeral home top of mind all year, a mailer isn’t likely to keep them top of mind longer than it takes to get to the wastebasket.

Here’s how the cost to reach 1,000 people and get their attention compares across multiple media, according to Audacy.

Yes, you read that right, while you could target one lead, one time via PPC for $6.96 in the home service industry, you could alternatively reach 1,000 people for 40 cents with radio!

With such a vast price difference, you can see why mass media even makes sense as a primary media for marketing businesses with a semi-narrow niche.

Should you do direct response or branding style messaging?

Direct response marketing focuses on generating immediate action, whether to purchase or reach out. It requires a compelling offer with scarcity and/or urgency to be effective. Direct response marketing can be effective for Internally Triggered purchases as the offer can give the customer an added reason to buy now. It is less effective for external triggers.

If you cannot come up with a strong offer that aligns with the customers trigger, is scarce and/or urgent and doesn’t compromise your product or service, then direct response marketing is probably not for your business.

Branding, on the other hand, builds long-term trust and loyalty. By creating an emotional connection, you ensure that customers choose you before even considering competitors.

Branding is a great way to avoid competing on price and to maintain high margins.

By answering these questions you’ll have the components to create a phenomenal strategy, telling you where and how to market.

The next step is creating a message strategy that will capitalize on what you learned in your overarching marketing strategy to ensure maximum impact.

Part 2: Message Strategy

Even the best marketing strategy can falter without a strong message. Think of a strong message strategy as a sharp chainsaw that makes cutting through the noise easier, faster, and more effective.

So what is message strategy, and how do you create it?

If you read “The Art of War” – the renowned book on wartime strategy by Sun Tzu – thinking you’ll learn THE strategy to win any war… you’ll be disappointed. Instead, Sun Tzu gives us principles based on:

• What do you have to work with?
• What has worked in the past (across time and contexts)?
• What unrealized opportunities you may have?

Knowing the principles and these three questions, you can create an optimal wartime strategy no matter your circumstances.

Message strategy is much the same.

A good message strategist – like a wartime strategist, will start by asking, “What do we have to work with?” To share a few examples:

On the flip side…

The results of assessing “what do we have to work with?” will yield 2 primary categories of insights: Challenges and Opportunities.

You fix challenges and capitalize on opportunities in a similar fashion.

Remember Sun Tzu’s approach to strategy?

1. What has worked in the past (across time and contexts)
2. What unrealized opportunities may we have

In business, we use the same concepts but with different names:

1. Business Problem Topology
2. Unleveraged Assets

Business Problem Topology is the process of overcoming challenges or implementing opportunities by looking at examples from other businesses and industries.

For example, Henry Ford reduced the time to produce a car by 90% by reverse engineering the pig disassembly line as the assembly line for his cars… that was Business Problem Topology.

Identifying Unleveraged Assets allows you to turn hidden strengths into competitive advantages.

An example of this is a B2B client of mine who moves heaven and earth to satisfy their customers. By turning what they’re already doing into a guarantee, they can stand out from the competition while easing the fears of potential customers. That’s Identifying an Unleveraged Asset

To begin implementing Business Problem Topology and Identifying Unleveraged Assets effectively, study what’s worked in the past and why.

Once you know “why,” you can implement with confidence as you’ll have the “why” as a guiding principle.

When my business partner, Roy Williams, was looking to endear the public to an HVAC company, he identified that Dewey Jenkins had similar personality traits as Andy Griffith. Since he knew Andy Griffith and Barney Fife’s relationship was loved by the public, he created similar characters in their marketing campaigns. It worked. Charlotte, North Carolina, fell in love with “Mr. Jenkins & Bobby” and the company exploded from $20m to over $100m. That’s Business Problem Topology AND Identifying an Unleveraged Asset!

“Strategy is using the past to predict what will work in the present”

If you don’t know what has (or hasn’t) worked in the past, how will you avoid wasting time and money on things destined to fail?

If you don’t know how to leverage what you have to stand above your competitors, how will you grow?

The Wizard of Ads Partners have learned these and many other principles while growing many hundreds of businesses from a few million in revenue to $50m+.

Everything here is learnable, and the Wizard of Ads trilogy by Roy Williams is a great place to start.

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Below is a collection of interviews done this year with marketers from two continents. Each have shown how entertainment and emotion aren’t just nice to have… it’s something you must have in order for your ads to work harder.

Watch the video above or read the transcript below.

With commentary from:

Roy H. Williams/Wizard of Ads
Orlando Wood/System 1 Group
Harry Beckwith/Author
Matt Owens/System 1 Group
R.C. Oates/System 1 Group
Zach Atherton/Harmon Brothers

Johnny: Are creative ads there to just be entertaining or do they serve some purpose? They serve some purpose.

In the late 1900s, which sounds absolutely stupid to say, I was a good ad writer, creative even, but being creative isn’t the same as being effective. This is about the time that the Wizard of Ads trilogy came out and Roy H. Williams closed the gap between creative and effective.

Roy Williams: The most powerful of all words, is “you”. “You” engages the imagination of the listener. It puts the action of your spot in present tense, active. Skillful use of the word you makes the listener a participant in your ad.

Johnny: Of course, the customer is the star. The story draws them in. Emotion leads before logic. This is something all the great postmodern advertisers know.

Roy Williams: That’s our job. Our job is not to give people the facts. Our job is to romance the shit out of what we’re selling.

Johnny: But isn’t that what you’d expect the creative person to say?

“Don’t lessen respect for yourself by any attempt at frivolity. People do not patronize a clown. An eccentric picture may do you serious damage. One may gain attention by wearing a fool’s cap, but he would ruin his selling prospects.”

That 1923 quote from Claude C. Hopkins not only made him the life of the party, but his book, Scientific Advertising spawned generations of ad people to be dull. And dull is deadly. But I didn’t answer the question, what does emotion have to do with making money? Quite a bit it seems. Let’s dive in first with Orlando Wood, author of Lemon and Look Out and Chief Innovation Officer at System One. This is a company that tests ads for their emotional appeal and they have hard data showing how using emotion theater, entertainment that turns into real business growth.

Orlando Wood: That notion of emotion and action, they go together. It’s at the root of the word emotion is motion and movement. And what we’re trying to do, I think in advertising is create that psychological transformation through a shift in emotive state, one that will leave us feeling better disposed towards the advertiser. That makes us want really, I suppose that creates a preference and that makes us want to spend more time with them or buy them because we don’t buy from people we don’t like.

Johnny: Paul Feldwick was the head of planning at DDB Worldwide and has authored The Anatomy of Humbug and the most recent, Why Does the Peddler Sing: What Creativity Really Means in Advertising. Feldwick’s book offers the choice between showmanship and salesmanship, and if future growth is your goal, showmanship is the choice.

Paul Feldwick: Again, we’ve inherited all this baggage that there’s something called brand advertising or emotional advertising is somehow sort of less immediate in its effects. These are business issues. These are not advertising issues, like if you’re running a business, are you seeking to maximize your profits this quarter or are you looking to be in business for the next five years, 10 years and grow this business? And I think depending on how you genuinely answer that question, you will do things accordingly.

Matt Owens: We only have one three-star ad, and this isn’t even a three-star ad, but it was from a local, I think he’s a pest control company in Missouri, and it was like…

Johnny: Matt Owens is a VP of agency and media partnerships at System One.

Matt Owens: We test a bunch of P & G ads. They don’t do as well as little Steve, so the little guys can still punch above their weight. So don’t be scared off by the big fellas out there.

R.C. Oates: I think the philosophical underpinning of this also is interesting for local advertisers. Sometimes the big guys can’t accept the idea of the timeless importance of the show that even though you are trying to speak to this small subset the way in is universal truths. So I think that kind of exposes the opportunity.

Johnny: Legendary marketer Harry Beckwith, whose book Selling the Invisible was named one of the top 10 business and management books of all time. It challenges — even debunks — this idea of logical persuasion. We don’t buy products, we buy services. It’s the promise of the product and that Harry says is invisible.

Harry Beckwith: Well, I think if we begin with the assumption that we’re logical people that have emotions, I think that’s the wrong assumption. I think we’re emotional people that are capable of thinking logically. One of the ways that I put it in one of my later books was that our hearts make our decisions and then they draft the brain to draft the rationale. And you look around again and again and there’s so little logic for so many of our decisions. I mean, why did so many people own American Express cards rather than Visa cards? Visa cards are less expensive. They’re honored at more locations, they’re status, and then you say, what’s the logic of status? Well, that’s a tricky one to deal with.

Zach Atherton: They really want to feel a connection. Lume, for example,

Johnny: Zach Atherton is the head writer at Harmon Brothers, an ad firm known for creating ads that go viral like Poo-Pourri, Purple Mattress, and Lume deodorant.

Zach Atherton: And so she’s posting like a hundred pieces of content. Some of it’s higher production and cool, but a lot of it’s just like, I’m a doctor. I’m an OB GYN, I’m really passionate about my patients and this is why I did it.

Johnny: It’s like she single-handedly invented the full body deodorant industry because the copycats that are coming are mind boggling.

Zach Atherton: Yeah, yeah. I saw Dove do it, and I’m like, that’s interesting.

Johnny: I read a quote from you that I thought was so interesting where you say you just need to put on a show that keeps people in their seats and puts them in a good mood. They’ll like you better and then they’ll buy more of your stuff, which I fundamentally agree with, but it also, it almost sounds too simple.

Paul Feldwick: All successful advertising has been developed and practiced actually by simple people who basically wanted to sell stuff. It was not invented by scientists and philosophers. It was invented by traveling peddlers and salesmen and showmen who knew that if they didn’t attract that crowd and end up selling them some stuff they weren’t going to eat. So that for me is we need to remember that those are the origins, and actually throughout the history of advertising, all the real power of it has come I think from that.

Johnny: Roy Williams, author and founder of Wizard of Ads.

Roy Williams: And I told stories that really actually were true. That’s our job. Our job is not to give people the facts. Our job is to romance the shit out of what we’re selling. Emotional connection, and it doesn’t have shit to do with the delivery channel. And so this idea of how should I deliver my message, what’s the right way to deliver my message? Message isn’t a problem. I’m going, nope. We’re message-first and the message has to be something that connects to the human heart and something that moves people.

Orlando Wood: What you’re trying to do is create this change, this psychological change and great narratives, great advertising can do that and the viewer feels it. And so you end up hopefully with an audience that feels good about you. And what we’ve found is that generally speaking, if you can leave someone feeling good about you, you are creating this thing called the affect heuristic, which is a sort of mental shortcut that we use. Rather than asking ourselves a difficult question as Daniel Kahneman might have put it, great psychologist, what do I think about this? Or which of these two options is better? You ask yourself an easier question to answer, which is one of these, do I feel better about? Which one do I feel good about?

Matt Owens: But I think from our perspective is you have to go in there trying to entertain everybody and knowing that how many people are going to get off? Hopefully a couple are going to get off that ad and go buy your product. Probably not many, but how many hopefully in the next couple of months are going to remember that and say, I need to go buy that shirt, that cologne, whatever it is, that bread.

R.C. Oates: My advice would be don’t fall victim to short-termism of needing to just think about hitting a number today, driving sales today, but really think about how you can tap into the demand that does exist tomorrow, because that is what big brands do. And even if you are operating in a small town of 30,000, those same principles apply, right? Not everyone is going to be buying today, tomorrow, but they will be in a year, two years, three years, some like heating and air, right? How can you embed yourself into their memory so when it comes time they can.

Johnny: Now, don’t get fooled by this word emotion. It doesn’t mean drama or sappy poems. It means finding either the emotional motivation for a person to want your product or an emotional association you’d like people to have with your product.

Harry Beckwith: I think more and more, I think marketers are recognizing, again, we’re emotional beings that are sometimes capable of rational thought. I wouldn’t be critical of advertising or marketers for failing to recognize that there certainly may be some that do. In the area of business to business, you often wonder what is the role of marketing or in emotion and business to business at all? And it’s not always easy to find.

Johnny: But would you argue that it’s there nonetheless? I think it’s still an emotional transaction.

Harry Beckwith: Because yeah, you have to find what’s the emotional trigger in that business to business buyer. I was in pacemakers and defibrillators originally because I was, Carmichael Lynch drafted me to handle that job because I was a medical malpractice and personal injury attorney, so I had some background in it. But we didn’t sell the features of defibrillators. So we ran an ad and had to introduce it and said, this year over 25,000 Americans could die and live to tell about it. Well, there’s both fact and emotional resonance it that.

Johnny: That is such a great headline.

Harry Beckwith: I thought so too. I don’t know if I ever wrote a better one. I wrote a lot of worse ones.

Roy Williams: You connect with people not because of information. You use the information to justify what the heart has already decided. Win the heart and the mind will follow, the mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided. Everybody, please take that more seriously. That is the business we’re in.

Paul Feldwick: And you cannot really talk about rational decisions versus emotional decisions because all decisions are fundamental emotional. The guy who probably over the longest period of time built Coca-Cola from American dominance to worldwide dominance, Robert Woodruff, he repeatedly told his people the purpose of Coca-Cola advertising is to be liked. It’s not complicated, very simple, and he is saying it not for any whimsical or otherworldly reasons. He’s saying it because he understands that the more you are liked, the more you are talked about, the more attractive you are to people, the more distinctive you are. All those things follow.

Roy Williams: That’s our job. Our job is not to give people the facts. Our job is to romance the shit out of what we’re selling.

Johnny: For the past couple of years, I’ve been writing ads intending to entertain, not to entertain myself, but to help businesses grow in the future. It’s something you should be asking your ad person to be doing. If you feel stuck in stats, you probably need more silly. If you feel overprocessed, you probably need more poetry. If you’re drowning in numbers, you probably need more nonsense.

Gene Wilder: A little nonsense known is relished by the men.

Johnny: A little less rote, a lot more romance.

Whether you can afford mass media — radio or TV — usually depends on two factors:

1. how big your town is, meaning how expensive your media is to buy, and
2. how big you are in terms of revenue

Your profit margins also impact this, as the higher your profit margins, the more money you have to spend on advertising at the same revenue size.

But assuming decent margins and a location that’s not in or in the shadow of an expensive mega-city, the mass media tipping point usually comes at around $2-3 Million in revenue.

Please understand that this is very much a ballpark figure, but if you’re looking for a rule of thumb, there it is.

So assuming you pass the benchmark, here’s how to tell if you can’t afford NOT to use mass media…

• If you’re suffering from being on the pay-per-crack treadmill, aka, paying way too much for digitally-sourced leads…

• If you’re attracting too many price-sensitive leads…

• If you’re stuck in the middle between larger and smaller competitors…

• If you’re trying to de-commoditize yourself and fatten your margins…

• IF you’re getting beat-up by low-priced competitors…

• Or IF some of your competition are already running strong mass media campaigns…

Then chances are you can’t afford NOT to use mass media once you’ve crossed the revenue threshold to afford it.

Basically, if you’re doing, say $2 million in sales and you calculate an advertising budget of $200K in total, then you should be able to carve out about $100K for mass media branding.

And that’s more than enough to get started in most markets —

If you’ve debated whether to make your pricing publicly available on your website, you’re not alone. This is a particularly daunting question for businesses with complex pricing structures. But here’s the truth, both B2B and B2C buyers aim to be at least 70% confident in their buying decision before they pick up the phone or inquire on a website. This means when we require them to “Call for an estimate”, it’s likely to lead to frustration and they’ll likely look for their answers elsewhere.

Let’s dive deeper into why posting pricing online, even if complex, can be a game-changer and how to do it effectively.

Common Objections to Putting Price on the Website

Commoditization:

Some business owners don’t publish pricing because they want their customers and competitors to see them as a brand, not a commodity. But, let’s think like your customer.

If your customer needs:

• A Toilet replaced
• Taxes submitted
• Cremation service
• HVAC installed
• Or insurance for their business…

Do they see the product/service as a commodity (anyone can do it) or highly specialized?

If they see it as a commodity but you treat the pricing as “highly specialized”, it easily comes across as:

1. You don’t have enough experience to know ballpark pricing
2. You’re trying to complicate it to take advantage of the customer.

What many forget is a brand can sell commodities. Commodities are easy for the customer to understand and purchase.

Bond with the customer before they need what you offer, then make your offering as simple as possible.

Complexity:

Another reason business owners don’t publish pricing is they feel it’s too complex. “our pricing is complicated and we want our sales reps to educate (sell) them on why we’re the best to provide context (justification)”. But customers want to self-qualify, make a quick decision, and move on. By withholding pricing from them, we create a lack of transparency and distrust with our customers.

So, if you have complex pricing what’s the remedy?

Simplify if you can, estimate if you can’t.

Let me share a real-life example of simplification, my wife and I interviewed contractors for her interior design business. One Contractor, Carlos, noticed that all master bathrooms have the same primary cost levers (vanity, shower, toilet, light fixture, tile). He then changed his pricing model from hourly, to flat rate based on the room, offering an allowance for higher-end finishes. (Ex: He charges the same price for all master bathroom remodels, regardless of size)

Did he lose some projects? Yes.

Did he lose money on some projects? Occasionally.

However, the simplicity in pricing matched how customers wanted to buy AND built trust that the rest of the project would run as simply as his pricing.

Carlos now has a waitlist, consistent subcontractors, and hundreds of 5-star reviews. He made things simple for his customers and they rewarded him for it.

Simplify if you can, estimate if you can’t.

If there’s no way to simplify, you can build trust and convey goodwill by giving them a ballpark price. To do this, start by identifying the primary and secondary levers of your pricing.

• Primary Levers: These are the major factors that influence pricing and are usually non-negotiable for customers. For example, the model of a car would be a primary lever.

• Secondary Levers: These are factors with less smaller on pricing. This could be the trim level in the car example. Important, but typically secondary to the model.

Once you’ve identified your pricing levers, rewrite them in language your customer will understand. Here are three examples I’m helping clients with:

To help you communicate this on your website and across your company, let’s start by playing out what an inbound phone call would look like.

Notice, you don’t need to be narrow in your estimate, just narrow enough to convey transparency, and a desire to help them make the right decision for themselves, (both of which help your brand)

Once you know your levers and script, you can create a pricing video and/or a pricing calculator on your website.

Sharing Pricing

To make complex pricing accessible, consider using video or a calculator on your website:

• Pricing Videos: Keep these short (5-7 minutes max). A pricing video should cover your primary levers and common secondary options with the goal of helping customers understand a general price range. This should also help them feel more equipped to make a buying decision.
  • Here’s an example of a pricing video to give customers ballpark pricing

• Pricing Calculators: A calculator allows customers to plug in primary lever inputs and receive an estimate.
  • Here’s an example of a pricing calculator by an HVAC company

Benefits of Transparent Pricing

• Brand Alignment: When your website, videos, calculators, and sales team share the same message and pricing, customers are more confident in your brand.

• Optimized Messaging: With consistent messaging across touchpoints, your business becomes less dependent on the skills and knowledge of individual employees.

• Better Leads: By providing answers (especially pricing) upfront, customers who cannot afford you, won’t waste your team’s time.

• Pre-sold Customers: When customers feel informed and empowered, they’ll be more comfortable reaching out and buying, as they’ll feel less risk of being taken advantage of.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

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Let me tell you what really grinds my gears: businesses still asking, “How did you hear about us?”

At first, it seems smart—track the ROI, and see what’s working.  But let us be crystal clear: it’s not smart. It’s lazy, amateurish, and borderline rude.

Episode Highlights:

• Big brands don’t ask—they already know what’s working.
• Customers give inaccurate answers that lead to bad data.
• It’s rude to shift focus from their problem to your marketing.
• Marketing works through multiple touchpoints, not single channels.
• The question is a leftover relic from the Yellow Pages era.
• Build brand presence instead of chasing false metrics.
• Track real performance with tools, not customer guesses.
• Align every part of your brand to build trust and preference.
• Smart marketing makes your brand unforgettable—no questions asked.

Asking “How did you hear about us?” is outdated, unscientific, and kind of selfish.
Focus on a strategy that builds trust, not confusion.
Stack your touchpoints. Build memory. Create preference. Be unforgettable.
Stop asking the wrong question—and start owning the market.

You’re not here to beg for breadcrumbs.
You’re here to bake the whole damn pie.
Let’s go.

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Welcome to Advertising in America, the podcast, where we meet entrepreneurs, where they're at in their marketing and bust through their bottlenecks, breakpoints, and blind spots hosted by Wizards, Ryan Chute, and the Royal Torbay twins, where we put the fun in marketing fundamentals. Are you ready to dominate your marketplace?

Are you ready for outrageous advertising? Do you want to become a household name, brought to you by Wizard of Ads for Services?

Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today.

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Ryan: On today's episode of Advertising in America, we want to know how you heard about us. Will asking this question help fine-tune your marketing mix, or are you just getting sold a bill of goods that will never pay off? Mick, I'd really like to know how you heard about us. What do you have to say?

Mick: Okay, sit back because how did you hear about us is something that triggers me. Ever call a company and the first question they ask is, How did you hear about us? You know why they're doing this, right? They want to know which of their advertising efforts resulted in this call.

They're hoping that you say, I heard your commercial on 104.5 Duck FM or maybe you'll say, I see your billboard every day on the way to work or perhaps you'll respond, I saw your TV commercial on my favourite show. Here's the part that bothers me. The reason the business person is asking this question is because they don't know the answer. 

Think about this. A company spending literally thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing doesn't know what works. How dare you? How dare you not know? What's the matter with you? You're doing all this marketing stuff and then wondering if it's all a waste of money. This kind of, what kind of amateur shit is this? You know who doesn't ever ask, how did you hear about us? Home Depot. They never ask this question, you know why? Because they already know the answer. Because they're fucking professionals. And most importantly, they know the answer a customer gives when you put them on the spot won't actually help them anyway. Home Depot has more than one path to connecting a customer with a purchase. You can go to the website, maybe listen to a radio commercial, or see an ad on TV. Perhaps you're just driving by and see a giant orange store. Asking, how did you hear about us doesn't give you a useful answer because you can only give one.

Maybe you've seen Home Depot ads on TV for years, saw their trucks on the road, heard radio commercials, got their flyer in your mailbox, and they're asking, how did you hear about us? Well, which one of those is correct? I mean, if you're holding the flyer in your hand, I guess it's the flyer that worked. All that other stuff was a waste of money, right?

Only, maybe the TV commercial was really great and that's why you bothered to read the flyer in the first place. Oh, and your business has multiple paths to a sale too, doesn't it? Did they see a truck wrap, hear a commercial, visit you online, maybe spot you on Google Maps? Probably all of the above and more.

The answer is never just one thing. So the question is meaningless and you're wasting your customer's valuable time asking it. Shame on you. But my best / worst example of how did you hear about us came from a real client of mine. He'd been working with me for about five years and business was up by a lot. His competitors were struggling, his business was thriving in the same market. So imagine my surprise when the client calls me up and says, we're cancelling the radio campaign.

Well, that's odd. It's been running for years. What's the problem? Well, none of our sales are coming from the radio commercials. So I asked him, how do you know where the calls are coming from? Well, because we ask every single caller as soon as they call, how did you hear about us? And pretty much we, they never say, we heard your radio commercial, so obviously the radio doesn't work.

They all say they got a referral or word of mouth or the website. Never the radio ads. Well, this makes me furious, but not for the reason you think. I mean, yes, I wrote the radio commercials, but that's not why I'm pissed. I'm pissed because asking the question is rude. Asking that question to your customer is rude. You're changing the subject from what your customer wants to talk about to what you want to talk about. And how dare you do that, ever! A customer calls with something specific on her mind and you're all, well, first things first, I want to know if I'm spending my marketing dollars correctly. So hold on to your problem for a while and help me more help me with get more efficient with my spending. No, stop that. Stop it. 

When a customer calls you, you solve their problem and then you let them go on with their day. You never change the subject from what matters to them, to what matters to you, ever. They didn't call to help you with your marketing. Don't ever make your problem the customer's problem, ever.

And it doesn't matter what category you're in. It's never okay to ask the customer to become an unpaid marketing focus group of one. Oh, and just to hammer home my point, the client who called me wanting to cancel the radio campaign, you're gonna think I'm making this up, but I'm not. I'm going to name names. That client, John T. Donahue Funeral Home. Let that sink in. Somebody picks up the phone because they need funeral services. And the first thing they hear is, how did you hear about us? I know you've had a death in the family, but before we go into that, can you help me with my advertising? I think I might be wasting my money on radio or another medium. Did you hear our commercials? No. What about our billboards? Did you see those?

Just hold on a minute. We'll get to your dead mother in a second. You haven't, I haven't solved my ad budget problems yet. Yes. Asking the question is rude. It's always rude. It's particularly rude in this case, but it doesn't matter what business you're in. It's never the customer's job to track your marketing of effectiveness.

Stop asking customers. How did you hear about us? Stop that. Stop it right now.

Ryan: Now, Mick, I know you're triggered right now, and I want you to know that this is not a safe space. We're going to be absolutely horrible to you right now. Now, didn't actually get a panic room in here, but we do have a pancake room. We've called it the Waffle House for you, buddy. Chris. How did you hear about us? Just curious.

Chris: I say, go ahead. What's the downside? Mick's going to tell you it's rude. People call their dentist because they have a toothache and you interrupt them to ask about your marketing. Okay, so, it's America. Rude is our God-given right. It's in the Constitution. You Tesla-driven liberals can whine all you want about politeness.

I'm driving a diesel-powered Ford F-150 with a big ol’ pair of balls hanging off the trailer hitch because I think it's rude. You don't like it? Suck my tailpipe. And seriously, what's the downside? Somebody just spent 20 minutes on Google trying to find a dentist, visited a bunch of websites, read some reviews, and finally called you.

Now you inconvenience them a little with a quick marketing question. You think they're gonna hang up in a huff and go back to the internet and find the second-best dentist? No. So worst case, you tick someone off a little bit before they hire you anyway. Best case, you get some intel on your marketing. Which brings me to the second thing that Mick's going to tell you, that it's bad data. 

Back in the old days, if you asked that question, there were decent odds that the caller would literally be holding the Yellow Pages, so they'd probably just say the Yellow Pages to get you to move on. These days there's pretty decent odds that they are literally in front of a computer having just googled you so they're probably going to say that. Bad data, which doesn't account for all the other places that marketing has shared your brand with this caller. So, okay, I got a better idea. Ask him a couple more questions. There's a weird psychological phenomenon that says if someone doesn't like you very much, you ask them to do you a favor. Seems counterintuitive. You'd think if they don't like you that you should do them a favor. But, no. You ask them to do you a favor. No one's quite sure how this works, but it could be that asking someone to do a favor makes them think, Wow, that's the kind of thing that they would ask their friend to do, so maybe we're actually friends. Or, maybe it's a mental scorecard. If you do them a favor, they think, Great. I hate this guy's guts, and now I owe him one. But if you ask them to do you a favor, well, now they think that you owe them. They think they're ahead. So, go ahead. Ask your caller to do you a favor. Sure, she's a little ticked off that you haven't started talking about her toothache yet, but now she's doing you a favor, so maybe you're friends after all.

And hey, you want better data? Ask more questions. When the caller says yeah, I guess I found out about you on Google, get the CSRs to say, well, sure Mrs. Jenkins, but when you saw that whole list come up on Google, how did you pick us from that list? And that's when she's going to say, I recognized your name from that awesome radio campaign that Chris Torbay wrote, and that's why I called you.

Then ask them to tell you maybe which spots they remember, or which lines, or which offers, and there's your good data. And now, she's done you a favor. Instant friendship. So, in conclusion, yeah. Ask them how they heard about you.

Ryan: I really have no idea which one of you two is the evil twin. Seriously, it's, It's getting to me. Before peeling back this onion any further, let's hear a word from our sponsor.

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Hey, listeners. Wizard Ryan Chute here. Want a personalized strategy that instantly 4X the effectiveness of your marketing dollars? Schedule a free call with me at wizardofads.services. We'll chat about your goals and how you can quickly dominate your marketplace. I have limited availability though, so don't delay.

Well, I guess you could delay a bit, but not too much. That'd be like an over-delay. So maybe you just skip the delay part entirely and book a call just as soon as you're ready to start making money. You certainly don't to delay that, right? And now, pitter-patter.

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Ryan: No, because it's got layers. It's like an onion, though. Oh, and it's also because of his crazy defence about the thing that really kind of stinks a little bit. Yeah. It stinks like an onion. Yeah. I seriously did like the Yellow Pages.

Mick: Let me get this straight. You think we're not wasting enough of our customer's time.

Chris: A better idea. I got an even better idea. Which is you ask them the question. You ask them the follow-up question so you get good data.

And then you say, Mrs. Jenkins, thank you very much for helping me out. You know what? I'm going to give you 100 off your bill. Now! That's value stacking. That's classic Ryan Chute right there. Now you've asked.

Mick: Wants her fucking problems solved. She doesn't want to talk about you and your commercial.

Chris: You've just given, you've just surprised her with an extra hundred bucks.

Mick: You referenced that I was going to talk about bad data. By the way, the data is bad. It's absolute shit. And that's because people will say anything to get you to stop talking about the bullshit they don't care about and get them back to their thing. So they will tell you whatever's at the top of their head.

I saw fucking skywriting. Can we talk about my problem? My dead water heater. My fucking whatever it is I need. The idea that you think you're going to get good data when you put someone on the spot when they don't want to talk about this thing, they actually have a thing that they really want to talk about. They made a phone call about it. And now you're going to say, you're going to derail that whole thing in order to get them to talk about something stupid. They will very quickly derail your problem and get them, get it back on track to it. And they'll say anything and I can prove it.

Ryan: That's true and look, I can prove it because in Scotland we had a mailer that we were sending out for an event. I was live at that event. 1500 mailers did not arrive. The Royal Post let us down, sadly, that they don't really, they very rarely do that.

However, never arrived. So, there was this committee that started buzzing around, thinking we should change the scripts of how we're gonna call out and see if they got their mailer and stuff. And I said, no, we're not changing anything. We're absolutely going to say the exact same thing because I was kind of curious about what was going to happen here. And I tracked the results. So we literally had tracking sheets. 22% of people said that they had received the mailer that was never sent. 33% of us saw us on TV that never ran. 7% of us heard us on the radio that never ran. Never existed.

Mick: It's not just bad data. Bad data in and of itself is already kind of stupid and wasteful. The worst thing is you're going to take bad data and then you're going to act on it. Oh my God, you're going to do something based on this really, really shitty data. There is no worse idea that's ever been invented for business than to gather shitty data and then fricking act on it.

Ryan: So true. So true. So it is, it's a complete red herring.

Mick: And the results of that, you just said from your, your Scottish example, don't surprise me in the least Roy Williams did exactly the same thing when they launched the Benjamin Franklin, the Punctual Plumber, they ran radio commercials for six months before they opened the company. And then they tracked how people heard about them radio was like number six on the list of the previous five things. They didn't do there was no word of mouth. There was no company. There was no website. was no billboard.

Chris: My Dad's been is using that for years.

Mick:  None of that shit. A friend recommended me. No, they didn't. Your friend didn't hire us because we don't exist there. It's shitty data and then we act on it. So we're wasting people's time rudely making them solve our problems instead of us solve their problems. And then the data we get is shit.

Ryan: 31% heard it about them from the newspaper. They didn't run newspaper. This is Benjamin Franklin. 24% saw the TV ad, no TV ad. 19% say said a referral. Nope. There was no company. It didn't exist at that time. 17% had no idea. Not surprising. That's actually probably the most accurate data there. 4% heard it on the radio.

Mick: 4%. Literally 100% of the people heard it on the radio, otherwise, they wouldn't be there. It was the only thing that they had.

Ryan: Great literally. And 5% said other. They weren't 100% sure about it. Put that beat on there. When we've run the data, this has been this has happened, more over and over and over again. We did a similar thing in Detroit not long ago. And look, every time it comes up with the most ridiculous concept combination of numbers that prove our point every single time, you're wasting your time, you're wasting your energy, and you're chasing a red herring, you're chasing a ghost that's never actually going to serve you the way that it needs to serve you.

And that's all we're trying to get at here, is that it's important that we pay attention to the things that matter, not the things that don't.

Chris: Well, and the interesting part, and I mean, the truth is I agree 100% with what with what Mick has to be a good debate.

Mick: Has but I do like want to yell at.

Chris: And it's good fun. But what I loved is that discussion about how it is, almost all the time a bunch of things. I mean, it's interesting the Benjamin Franklin thing, they just ran a radio campaign, and they came out of nowhere. But as he said with Home Depot, there's the building, there's the trucks, there's the outdoor, there's several different media there's word of mouth, there's referrals, there's all kinds of different things. And the fact is almost anything that you buy or use, you have heard about it in a couple of different places. You know, when you finally get yourself an iPhone, is it the TV ad? Is it the Apple store? Is it your buddy's got an iPhone? Is it the TV ads from 10 years ago when the guy said, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC. It's all of those things. 

Finally, all those ways that you have heard about that brand have finally sort of culminated in you making a choice. And so if you were to ask that person a question, as you say, you've got to pick one and it's never one, even when we do the big campaign and there are just a few other  things, like the fact that your trucks are wrapped or the fact that you've got a prominent location, it's three things then. It's the fact that when you hear that radio ad, you go, the guy whose truck I've seen with the, you know, Wizard on the top.

Mick: But you used the example of big companies, but I believe in medium-sized companies, which is generally the clients we're talking about. They also have multiple paths of finding out about a particular brand. And the most ridiculous thing you can do is get so bogged down in the tracking of how did this lead come in. I literally know people who are so ridiculous that they put a different phone number on their truck as compared to the phone number that's on the website, as compared to the phone number that's on the TV commercial, as compared to, because they want to try and sort, oh, and they do an outdoor campaign. They put a different phone number on that because they want to know, well, was it the outdoor? Was it the truck, like how did this thing come in. And again it doesn't tell you why the customer called, it tells you the last thing they did just before they

Chris: And even that might be inaccurate, right? Because they may see that billboard, they're not going to pull over to the side of the road, get a pen out. Write it down, get back on the highway. They're gonna get home and say, I saw a billboard for mixed discount dynamite and they're gonna Google it and find the phone number. Now they're gonna get the Google, the one that comes up on Google and it's gonna be attributed to being the one that's the links when what it was actually the billboard.

Mick: In Latin, it's post hoc ergo proctor hoc. By the way, that's a sentence that's supposed to remind you that it's fucking stupid and it's not true. It happened because of what happened just before. That's not a, that's a fallacy. That's why it was such a popular phrase that they translated it into Latin.

Chris: What it goes to show you people have been making mixed arguments since Roman times.

Mick: Since the freaking Roman times.

Chris: Stop calling, stop asking the Toga purchasers where they heard of your toga shop.

Mick: And the idea of wrapping your trucks is not so that people will see your truck wrap and stand outside next to your truck and dial the phone. That's not actually going to happen. And even if zero people call the number that's on that truck, it doesn't mean the truck wrap was not useful. And ditto for all of the other things in almost every case, a client in a medium-sized business has a wrapped truck, has a website, has some sort of an outdoor thing might have a high visibility location and an offline campaign and an online campaign, and all of these things work together. And if you don't understand that you have no business being in the marketing world, you should have somebody else do it.

If you really don't know the answer to that question, how dare you? You're a fucking amateur and that's bullshit, and you need to stop it.

Chris: Well, or, does it even matter? Because, one of the things we say to our clients a lot is, you know, here's the campaign. It's going to be a really strong campaign. Lots of people are going to see it. We know the reach and frequency and all those sorts of things. But then when we find it, when we get the billboards to align and we get the website to align and we get the, you know, when they do a booth at the local fair, it looks the same. 

What it does is it makes the brand look big and consistent and well thought out and solid and you know, that builds trust. It doesn't actually matter, it, like, what is important is, is what all of that cumulatively conveys as opposed to whether right? So, you do all of those things. They all contribute a little. Doesn't matter how much each one contributes. The fact is the totality is what's meaningful. And so you do all of them so that you continue to look like that big market-leading, trustworthy brand.

Mick: And that's why Dunkin Donuts doesn't ask you how they're heard about you when you walk in and get yourself a cup of coffee.

Ryan: Yeah. Now a lot of this data is covered in a video that you can find on YouTube by Les Binet called The Short Of It, and it really does kind of capture the holistic nature of, marketing. Now this is over a decade worth of research and collected data. So we're talking about sizable sample sizes well researched, well-documented proof that in fact it is a cumulative effect. It is a compounding effect that matters more than the last touch attribution that we're giving whatever place they came from last.

Mick: Even Google will tell you that the best SEO you can possibly do is to have an offline campaign.

Ryan: That's right.

Mick: If people will then do direct search, rather than by intent search or organic search or category search they will even acknowledge and they will show you their data that shows that an offline campaign will accomplish that. Even though nobody will call you up and say, you know, Hello, I heard your radio commercial and I'd like to purchase some products and services. If anybody ever calls you up and says, hello, I heard your radio commercials and I'd like to purchase some products or services. You can say hello, Mrs. Torbay, because that's my mom. She's the only one who does that.

Ryan: The only one who does that.

Mick: Literally the only person who does that.

Ryan: She does it a lot actually.

Mick: Well, mean, she's a team player and we appreciate her.

In fact, I had a client in Edmonton who had someone call up literally and say hi there. I heard your radio commercials and I'd like to spend $35,000 on one of the products they sell and of course, he'd heard me say this before except that my mom doesn't live in Edmonton. He was trying to figure out why she wanted to go like four time zones away to buy a you know a really expensive product which she didn't.

Ryan: Tell me about the Yellow Pages Story.

Mick: Well, so how did you hear about us was invented by The Yellow Pages and that's because back in the good old days before Google, the Yellow Pages was Google. And, and so that allowed people to search by category. That's what I mean, we we search by category. Yeah, Yeah you'd look it up, in the Yellow Pages, under T, instead of Dave's Tow Truck. So, they would have the Yellow Pages, and the Yellow Pages had the phone number. Of course, that was the only way to get a phone number back then.

We didn't have every freaking phone number on the planet in our pocket back in those days. The phone was here, and the phone book was right underneath it. And so if you needed a phone number, you'd do that. And so you'd have a business that would have a TV campaign or a radio campaign or a newspaper campaign.

But then when you actually needed the product or service that they provide, well, you have to call them. Well, if you know that they're a jeweller, then you go to Jay and you look it up and there's a, there's the ad and You go good and you dial them up and they'd say, cool, how did you hear about us? And so the Yellow Pages would say, make sure you ask your customers when they call you. How did they hear about us? They would literally be holding the Yellow Pages in their hand. That was good for the Yellow Pages.

That's why they invented it. That's why no other people did that. Cause there was nobody else who was holding the freaking thing when they called. So Yellow Pages invented this self-serving thing so that they could prove to that purchasing the Yellow Pages was a good idea and it was a good idea. It was absolutely essential. It was as essential as having a Google presence is today, but it wasn't the only thing that mattered. The thing that's wrong, is that we don't have ten boxes to check and if we do have ten boxes to check what's the fucking point? You're checking all ten boxes? The data becomes shittier again.

Chris: But that is why I like my three-question idea because it's good for my business, not good for your business, which is if you ask them three questions, then they are going to say, yeah, okay, well, before I Googled you, yeah, I guess I'd heard you on the radio and then I'm going to get credit and now my

Mick: I think the gonna be even more annoyed with you. And they're going to just say, I don't know. My fucking uncle told me we can, can we please stop with my broken water heater?

Ryan: So certainly creates a friction point also,

Mick: Also you're wrong.

Chris: I am. I am. You know what? I will give you, I'm 100% wrong on this one, but it's a good conversation. 

Ryan: It doesn't make for good commentary. 

Mick: He does like riling up his brother I’ve been doing it since I was 11.

Chris: Whatever you do, don't ask people how you heard of us.

Ryan: Yeah.

Mick: I mean, I know I make a good case. 

Chris: I'm the more compelling of the two brothers, but don't do it.

Mick: He's the better-looking of the two. But he’s wrong about this.

Chris: I am wrong.

Ryan: They come for the conflict. That’s what makes this fun.

Mick: And stay for the cursing.

Ryan: Right, the cursing and the jokes. Before we go though, let's talk about three actions that you can take to figure out your ideal marketing mix.

Chris: But first, word from our sponsors.

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Remember that saying, only half of your marketing is working, you just don't know which half? Let's help you with that. Book a free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today at wizardofads.services. Yes, that's a URL, wizardofads.services. Now let's get back to the show.

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Ryan: In conclusion, to wrap things up, stop asking, how did you hear about us? It's flawed data and red herrings. Measure what needs to be measured, but don't subscribe to this notion that all things must be measured to be effective. 

Plan out your marketing budget to address the short-term and long-term goals in your marketing. Binet and Field suggests that a home service company, for example, should get a mix of about 60 percent of the budget to the brand presence and that 40 percent of the budget should be put towards sales activation. 

When you're just starting out, it'll be the other way around, but your goal should be to reverse that over time. 

Thank you for tuning in to Advertising in America, and remember, you're an American, not an American’t. Get out there and be awesome today. You can do it. Till next time.

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Thank you for joining us on Advertising in America. We hope you enjoyed the show and captured a nugget of marketing magic. Want to hear more?

Subscribe. Leave a review. And share this podcast with your friends. 
Do you have questions or topics you want us to cover? Join us on our social at @advertisinginamerica.

Want to spend your marketing budget better? Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today.

Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and audience captivated.

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You don’t have to be big to be famous.

Marketing researchers found big companies have an unfair advantage in continuing to dominate the market.

The next biggest unfair advantage is interesting. Creative. Not data, not budget, creative.

This means, that by having great creative/copywriting, you too will have outsized results to the budget you have available.

Your creative is leverage. There are 3 main levers that if utilized can help you become famous and wealthy, even on a relatively small budget.

Strategy

Strategy is what ties all of these circles together.

Most businesses don’t have a marketing strategy.

• They follow the crowd… when they should be standing out from it.
• They market inconsistently… when customers need frequency of exposure to build relationship with you.
• They offer an inconsistent experience… when customers expect continuity (brand alignment).

A poor or average strategy will lead to wasted marketing budget and stunted business growth. In this blog, you can learn how to create an optimal strategy.

Creative

If your marketing efforts look/sound like an ad, your efforts will be ignored or frustrate potential customers. Thus wasting your hard-earned marketing budget.If your creative/ad copy is phenomenal, you can literally create marketing campaigns whose effectiveness compounds over time.

“What emerged from the analysis was that creative execution was by far the single most important element of advertising under a marketer’s direct control when it comes to delivering a return on investment. Behind it were a host of different media planning and strategy factors that were all vital to success too. But creativity shone out as something that could yield special results.

This chimed with other research. Nielsen, Binet & Field – even McKinsey’s, a famously rationally-orientated consultancy – all concluded that businesses that excel in creativity perform the best in terms of hard financial metrics. Creative was the single biggest lever that we can pull when it comes to supercharging marketing ROI.”

— Link Below

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Expert creative allows you to win customers with fewer exposures to your ads and therefore lower spent budget.

Media Buying

Did you notice that each circle of marketing profitability (in the top chart) that followed Creative Quality is a function of Media Buying?

Media companies from Social Media to Billboards and Direct Mail to Radio want to sell the spots they have left, that no one else wants.

If you ask a media seller “How many times will the average customer need to hear/see this ad each week for me to become their business of choice” they won’t tell you… because they don’t know.

Media sellers are skilled at selling and have little to no incentive to prioritize the effectiveness of your marketing’s placement, frequency, schedule, etc.

Thankfully, this research exists and my team knows all of it.

Takeaway

By running your creatively exceptional ads with an ideal schedule that aligns with a cohesive strategy, you’ll be on your way to becoming famous in your community with all the financial rewards that come with it.

You don’t need the budget of a massive company to become a massive success.

Source Quote on Creative Effectiveness: https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/thinkbox-research/the-drivers-of-profitability