Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Showmanship is symbolism, the essence of pageantry and tradition: the sweep of an extended arm with an upraised palm in an expansive gesture; a deep bow with the added flourish of both arms extended to the sides, again with palms turned upward; dramatic emphasis expressed by hopping in place on the balls of your feet – timed precisely to the syllables you speak – pent-up energy that demands release.

Showmanship is mesmerizing but it takes courage because it’s easy to feel you’re making a fool of yourself.

Storytelling requires finesse and restraint as you work your way through a series of small reveals, waiting with the patience of a magician for the moment of the big reveal.

Showmanship and storytelling don’t change reality but they do change perception.

Are you beginning to understand why an ad man might be interested in these?

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford’s business school determined that the intensity of the pleasure we experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. “And that’s true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it’s exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag.”

The story you tell about the wine affects how it tastes.

The study wasn’t speculative; it was medical. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) to monitor the medial orbitofrontal cortex – the pleasure center of the brain – of wine connoisseurs who tasted wines after hearing stories about them.

The scientific verdict: good stories accelerate the physical pleasures generated through our senses. This should come as no surprise, really. We’ve known for decades that humans are uniquely gifted to attach complex meanings to sounds.

Words. Work. Magic.

Daniel Whittington’s “Tour of Scotland” – an adventure in storytelling and showmanship and single malt Scotch – has attracted so much attention that Wizard Academy is launching the world’s first curriculum to officially certify Whisk(e)y Sommeliers. In this endeavor he’ll be joined by cognoscenti Tom Fischer, the founder of BourbonBlog.com, one of the world’s most authoritative voices on corn liquor (Bourbon.)

Whisk(e)y Marketing School isn’t about making whiskey; it’s about putting on a great show and telling great stories to accelerate the pleasure of customers “taking a Tour of Scotland” or “going on a Bourbon Run.” Fine restaurants worldwide will soon have tables full of people mesmerized as their Whisk(e)y Sommeliers wheel carts to their tables, open elegant wooden boxes, slip magnificent badges of office over their heads, and begin their tales of wonder.

Same song, second verse:

Angel Skating^TM is a new organization whose mission is to use storytelling and showmanship to popularize a little-known sport called artistic roller skating. You’ve seen figure skating in the Winter Olympics, right? Now imagine exactly that, but on roller skates. The objective of Angel Skating is to help artistic roller skating become the figure skating of the Summer Olympics.

Angel Skating was born last week when Craig Arthur, the director of Wizard of Ads, Australia, was in Austin for 10 days of catching up at the home office. Wizard of Ads partners Tom Wanek, Paul Boomer and Dave Young flew in from Columbia, Cleveland and Tucson to hang out with Craig, who mentioned that his daughter, Bridget, was becoming rather good at artistic roller skating, but that the sport wasn’t very well packaged or promoted.

Packaging and promoting are just different names for showmanship and storytelling.

A Tour of Scotland and a comical comment from Indiana Beagle was all it took. Angel Skating^TM was born before the sun went down. An official logo, a cartoon character mascot, a series of domain names and the rules of advancement through a series of “elegance levels” were all agreed upon within 36 hours.

Showmanship and storytelling – packaging and promotion – are what whiskey tasting and roller skating have in common with what you do.

And now you know what we do.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and we’ll hook you up.

Occasionally a client will send a spreadsheet of company statistics and ask me to comment on what I see.

I usually look and see ambiguous statistics but I certainly don’t want to say that.

Discussing business numbers with people is like discussing religion. No matter what you say, you’re unlikely to change their intrinsic beliefs, so I always approach these conversations carefully.

“What do you see?” I ask.

“Well, last year 68 percent of our customers were repeat customers and 32 percent were new customers. Now we’re selling 63 percent repeat customers and 37 percent new customers.”

“What do you think this tells us?”

“It tells us your ads are working!” the client says excitedly.

“Perhaps it does,” I say. “But it could just as easily indicate that our competition is growing stronger or that we have somehow offended or disappointed our old customers.”

My client gave me a confused look, so I continued, “If a smaller percentage of our business is repeat customers, couldn’t this mean that fewer customers are choosing to buy from us again? Couldn’t it indicate that we’ve disappointed them somehow?”

The confused look became a worried look. “But our sales volume has never been higher.”

“I know that,” I said. “But that could mean that we’re bringing in new customers fast enough to disguise the very serious problem that we’re losing our old customers to someone else. After all, you said yourself that our percentage of repeat customers is down.”

“Do you think we have a problem with our old customers?” the client asked, now truly worried.

“Not at all,” I smiled. “I’m just saying that nothing can be learned from the numbers you gave me.”

Not everything that can be measured has meaning.

Many of you are now recoiling in doubt and disbelief. I get that. Like I said, talking about business numbers is like talking about religion.

Here’s how I finished that conversation: “If a company sells a product or service that people buy once a year, what percentage of their customers will be new customers in year one?”

“One hundred percent,” said my client with confidence.

“And if our sales volume doubles in year two and exactly 50 percent of the customers are new customers, what percentage of customers did we retain from year one?”

The client thought for a moment, then said, “If business has doubled and one half of our customers are new and the other half are repeat, this means that one hundred percent of last year’s customers chose to buy from us again.”

I continued, “Sales in year three are exactly triple the sales of year one. One third of the customers are new and two-thirds are repeat customers. What does this tell us?”

Another moment of thought, he answered, “We have 100 percent retention of customers from the first two years.”

That’s when I said, “But someone is likely to point out that your percentage of new customers is falling and they’ll likely interpret this to mean that your ads aren’t working. After all, your sales volume grew 100 percent in year two but only 50 percent in year three and your percentage of new customers has fallen from 100 percent to only 33 percent. You’re now doing triple the volume you were doing just two years ago but these numbers would seem to indicate that you’ve got serious problems with your advertising.”

The client began to smile again, so I continued, “Oh, and I forgot to tell you that this company increased their prices by 12 percent at the beginning of year two, so none of what we just calculated is accurate. And that company has only been in business for 3 years! Your company, on the other hand, has been in business since 1939 and you sell a product the average person buys every 13 years and lots of old customers have died or moved away and new people have moved to town and some of your old competitors have gotten more aggressive while others have gone out of business and we need to factor in the percentage of sales opportunities your salespeople are closing and yes, you’ve also got a brand new ad campaign. If we take all that into consideration – assuming all the data is available and can be trusted – how are we going to calculate it and what do you think we’re going to learn?”

He smiled as he ceremoniously tore up the spreadsheet and said, “We’re making a lot of money and I like the ads.”

“Good. Let’s go have lunch.”

So we did.

When I got back from lunch, two other clients had emailed spreadsheets to me and asked me to comment on what I saw.

Sigh.

To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.

Branding – bonding with a hero or a company or other imaginary character – is merely an entangling of identity hooks.

We connect because we are alike.

But where do we gather these identity hooks on which hang our self-definitions?

“The music we listen to may not define who we are. But it’s a damn good start.”
― Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

Our books and movies define us.

“What makes a library a reflection of its owner is not merely the choice of the titles themselves, but the mesh of associations implied in the choice… A keen observer might be able to tell who I am from a tattered copy of the poems of Blas de Otero, the number of volumes by Robert Louis Stevenson, the large section devoted to detective stories, the miniscule section devoted to literary theory, the fact that there is much Plato and very little Aristotle on my shelves. Every library is autobiographical.”
– Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night, p. 194

“I’m not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I’ve gotten from books.”
― Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice

Our imaginations define us.

“Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do.”
― RuPaul

Our relationships define us.

“Relationships take up energy; lettinag go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.”
― Meghan O’Rourke

“People leave imprints on our lives, shaping who we become in much the same way that a symbol is pressed into the page of a book to tell you who it comes from. Dogs, however, leave paw prints on our lives and our souls, which are as unique as fingerprints in every way.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

Our beliefs about God define us.

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”
― Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

Our weaknesses define us.

“Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.”
― G.K. Chesterton

Our choices define us.

“Identity was partly heritage, partly upbringing, but mostly the choices you make in life.”
― Patricia Briggs, Cry Wolf

“We are not defined by the family into which we are born, but the one we choose and create. We are not born, we become.”
― Tori Spelling

“We are what we love. We are the things, the people, the ideas we spend our days with. They center us, they drive us, they define us to our very core.”
― Daisy Whitney, The Rivals

But what does this mean to a business?

“Branding is not merely about differentiating products; it is about striking emotional chords with consumers. It is about cultivating identity, attachment, and trust to inspire customer loyalty. Chinese brands score low on attributes such as ‘sophisticated,’ ‘desirable,’ ‘innovative,’ ‘friendly,’ and ‘trustworthy.'”
– Professor Nirmalya Kumar, London Business School

“The firmest friendship is based on an identity of likes and dislikes.”
– Gaius Sallustius Crispus, 35 BC

Quirks and preferences, foibles and flaws, these are the essence of branding. They are the feathers and robes of a tribe.

Your mainstream virtues do not define you.

Definitions like “Honest” “Family-oriented” “Success-driven” and “Caring” blur you into the watery crowd, for which of us doesn’t embrace these things?

If you will stand on a surfboard and ride the waves, you must confess your uncommon characteristics.

“Bookworm”
“Poker Player”
“Ballroom Dancer”
“Bow-Hunter”
“Lover of Marching Bands”
“Fantasy Football Freak”
“Singer of Broadway Show Tunes”
“History Nerd”
“Shade-tree Mechanic”
“Aspiring Magician”
“Rescuer of Insects”
“Would-be Inventor.”

Your guilty pleasures are what people remember best about you. They add depth and dimension to your image. They are the identity hooks that entangle others.

They are the feathers of your tribe.

Wear them with pride.

If you need new branding guidance, book a call with no other than Wizard of Ads®. We'll help you figure out what new perspective on branding can work for your business.  

Ladies and gents, step right up! In this week's episode of Advertising in America, we're entering the ring to settle an age-old turf war: Marketing vs. Sales — who's really to blame for bad leads?

Spoiler alert: It's not that simple.

Episode Highlights:

• Sales and marketing should spar, not snuggle.
• Discount brands attract discount buyers — choose wisely.
• Customers test your empathy and competence before they trust you.
• Stop chasing leads — start becoming the brand they want.
• Generous offers + sticky stories = leads that convert.

Stop pointing fingers. Start building bridges. If you're ready to attract better leads, convert more sales, and maybe ruffle a few feathers along the way, this episode is your secret weapon.

Tune in now — your pipeline will thank you.

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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 explore how to get some more of them good leads. You know the ones, they buy what you tell them to, they spend buckets of money, and they have no objections. Not like them pesky prospects who just don't comply. Mick, light her up, bud.

Mick: Okay, this is going to get me off on a bit of a rant. The question, how do I get more good leads has a basic error in it. The error is the combining of marketing with sales. There's nothing that scares me more than a company with one person whose job title is Director of Sales and Marketing. Major red flag.

Because those two jobs aren't just different, they're actually supposed to be in a bit of a conflict with each other. It's like my partner, Stephen Semple says about accounting and finance. Yes, they're both involved with numbers and money, but they're not the same. Finance is about how you're going to get the money to accomplish your goals. Accounting is keeping track of exactly where all the money is spent. Put an accountant in charge of finance, and your company will be efficient but will never grow because growing is risky, and there's no line item in the budget for risky experiments. Put a finance guy in charge of accounting, and you'll be bankrupt in six months and nobody will know where all of the money went.

You need to have both, separate, and in mild conflict with each other. Accounting keeps finances in check to make sure the bills get paid. Finance pushes accounting out of its comfort zone so you can grow and flourish. Now, marketing and sales. Yes, they're both involved with influencing consumers to buy things from us, but they're not the same. The job of marketing is to get a person to want to choose you over the other options or brands that sell what you sell. That person now becomes a lead. The job of sales is to take a lead and convert that lead to a purchase. Marketing has been successful if more people walk through the door, call on the phone, visit your website, and fill out an online form.

Sales have been successful only if money changes hands. Sales and marketing, and yes, they're supposed to be in conflict a bit. And this usually results in one blaming the other if revenue isn't up. Marketing says we sent you all these leads. Why didn't you convert them? And sales replies, the leads you sent were shitty. Send me good leads.

The Glengarry leads. How do I get more leads? I'm a marketing guy, not a sales guy, so it's in my nature to side with marketing in this particular fight. Marketing doesn't believe there are good leads, or the right people, or anything that a salesperson might describe as a qualifier. It's not the job of marketing to qualify the customer. That's your job. That's the job of the salesperson. And by the way, you don't want marketing to qualify your customers because marketing doesn't know how to do that. We have no expertise in this area. Asking us to qualify your customer is a mistake. We might fuck it up, you qualify the customer. Our job is to make everyone love this brand, everyone. Those who can afford it and those who can't, those who are ready to buy today, and those who are just looking. I bring you more leads, you sift through them and convert the ones who qualify. That's it. I'll do my job, you do yours.

Ryan: So, coffee is for closers. I guess that means, marketers get Kale Seaweed Smoothies until you get them leads up. Chris, can marketing get more of them good leads? Or are they really the anti-sales department?

Chris: This is one of the most annoying, whiny complaints I hear. Sure, we have lots of leads, but they aren't the right people to afford our products and services, and they always want price cuts, and they always want to argue with our recommendations. Why can't you get us more people who take our advice, and pay full price? 

First of all, take your advice. This is America. We don't respect experts anymore. I saw a thing on Facebook that says, the opposite of what your highly trained HVAC technician recommended, so I think we should do that. In a world where we don't trust doctors, and scientists, and journalists, what are the odds we have respect for your plumber?

Deal with it. And stop whining to your advertising guys that when people come through the door, they don't immediately open their wallets and dump the contents into your till. I get people in the door, you close. When I get you the lead, you have to earn the sale. I was the creative director of Porsche in Canada for seven years, and when we got people into the Porsche dealership, they usually bought a Porsche.

Why? They're awesome. All I had to do was get people to take a test drive. I warn you, don't test drive a Porsche, because you will buy one because they closed the deal by being awesome. But interestingly, we didn't fill the dealership with Hyundai drivers. You want the right people to be your leads? Easy, be the brand these leads choose.

No one buying a purse who walks into a Chanel store or a Burberry or a Louis Vuitton and says, can I get a discount? They know the deal. If they can only afford a $49 Target purse, they won't go to Louis Vuitton. If you offer discounts and two for one, and limited-time-only clearance sales, that is the kind of consumer you will attract. And guess what? People from all classes and income levels will pay good money for good value. People from all walks of life pay a premium price for the latest iPhone, and they don't think they can haggle the price down. Why? Because Apple doesn't play that game. They behave like Apple. Want good leads? Be the brand good leads want.

Ryan: On behalf of mediocre sales, people selling mediocre goods and services everywhere, I just want you two to know that you're both assholes. Clearly, marketing ain't going to make it easy for us, hard-working sales guys. Let's delve deep into how we can all just get along. But first, 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: Chris, I just love that you spoke about being the brand good leads want. That was such a powerful point that you made out of this whole conversation.

Chris: I appreciate that you appreciate it. But that's what it comes down to is your advertising can't do something that you can't communicate about your company, or your brand, or your product that you aren't, you have to behave that way. And it is the cumulative effect of you behaving that way, which is what people identify with and go, that's the brand that's right for me.

If you behave like a discount brand and all the people who are looking for the cheapest, something will come there. And that works, there's a lot of companies that, that's their way in. It works for Walmart. And so, they make sure they behave that way, so that, that consumer knows that's where they get those kinds of deals. Other brands behave in other ways and that's how they attract those kinds of consumers. What you can't do is, behave one way and then just say, can you run an ad that says we're something else?

Mick: What I find ironic is that, very often, you'll have a company that will be running deal after deal, discount after discount, sale after sale. And then they'll complain to their marketing department saying, all the people that come into our store are very price sensitive. They're very price-sensitive.

All the fuck you're talking about is discounts, and deals, and an opportunity to pay less. And then you're surprised when the very consumer you're attracting is the person who is looking for a deal.

Chris: No kidding that, that guy's ears perked up and he said, maybe I should go there and get some of them deals for myself.

Mick: Yeah. Now the hard part, of course, is that when you do that, especially for years at a time, and then you want to suddenly change to a more relational campaign, there's going to be significant pain when you stop constantly talking about sales and discounts and deals. A significant amount of time, people are going to be waiting for that next deal and they simply won't buy from you.

You're doing that to yourself when you make yourself a brand that always has a deal, if you ever stop, now you're gonna have to get past that and go through sort of a withdrawal period, and it's painful, it is withdrawal. But at least then you can start talking about some other reason why someone might want to choose your brand because, good heavens, if you don't have another reason for people to choose your brand beyond they'll pay less, then you're already in trouble anyway. So, you really have to do something.

Ryan: I think it really does come down to the fact that a lot of the companies that we work with are working with a premium in the price. They're not selling based on the lowest price, which is the standard go-to when you're attracting as many people as you can for the transactional sale.

And if in fact you are the cheapest price, that's a really simple and easy way to market, not unlike Walmart. But most companies that we work with, particularly in the services business, where there is this variability to the value proposition, many of our clients mistake this idea of, we have really good techs and we really do it better than everyone else when the average consumer sees every HVAC or plumbing company or electric company as basically the same. That you are absolutely in an every way interchangeable, right? It does not matter until you make it matter with something more than, we really just do a much better job than our competitors.

Mick: And the trouble with we do a better job than our competitors, is so easy to say and so difficult to prove. And if everybody is saying, Oh, we do a really good job, or Chris's favourite, our people really care. Again, something that anyone could say, then you're really not saying anything at all.

So, you might as well not even bother. I'm fascinated by the fact that in many cases, even companies that are the high-price provider or the premium provider, they will still act like a discounter. If you go to their website, not talking about our clients, obviously, you'll be dealing with a high-price provider.

You go to their website and they're putting freaking coupons in there saying, Oh, we'll do this thing for $50 off. It's like, why are you acting like Walmart and pretending to be Tiffany? Will you make your fucking mind up? Because people just want to understand what it is that you are, and what you stand for, and how I file you in my brain. Are you a high-priced premium provider? Or are you the cheapest way to a quick and dirty solution?

Ryan: You're never going to go to Tiffany's and see coupons on their website. And the notion of it in-home services, and frankly a lot of professional services, is absolutely absurd. There is no reason to have it. Now, there is one reason why it's done, it's because digital marketers desperately want to prove their value.

Mick: Ah, there it is.

Chris: Yes. When our advertising has got you to visit the website, then they're going to click on the coupon and the digital marketer is going to claim the sale. Because look, they clipped on a coupon that I put on your website. No, your advertising got you to the website and then you gave them a hundred bucks for no reason.

Mick: You made them pay less.

Chris: You gave them a, Hey, would you like to pay less for that thing that you were just to buy from me? Yeah, we're both claiming victory. There was only one person who got you to the website in the first place, and that's your advertising.

Mick: Yeah. And the business owner lost because that discount came off of his bottom line. That was pure profit that you just gave away. Why did you do that?

Ryan: It doesn't make any sense, and it certainly didn't move any needles that they imagine they do. This has been researched so much that there is absolutely zero proof of the true effect of those things in things that aren't, what do we call it? Impulse buys, right? Discretionary or sunk cost purchases.

Good leads pay a premium for two things. They pay a premium for convenience and they pay a premium to elevate their own personal class, right? Their class within the ranks of the tribes that they're within, including the class within themselves, right?

That, I'm good enough for this and I deserve this. There's an awful lot of people who also don't believe that they deserve to spend a little bit more on themselves. So, it becomes this really interesting dichotomy of truly, the psychology of good leads are, we're looking for people who are trying to positively affect their identity, and in the absence of it lending to identity, we only get a premium price if we're actually doing something that conveniences them at a level that is higher than our competitor who sells literally the exact same product.

Mick: The trick to being a successful high-priced provider is not simply charging more, you actually have to give them a premium experience. When they are going to pay more, you want to believe they want to have a different experience. And when you go to Tiffany, you will not get the same experience you will at the Walmart diamond counter, even though they're technically both selling little carbon rocks. So, yeah, you pay more, but you get more. And the value proposition is well understood, and both are very successful companies.

Chris: And people know what to expect. So, when they walk into Tiffany's, they look forward to that experience. I'm going to be shown around like I'm a valued customer. They're going to take the time, they're going to get the gloves on, whatever it is they do. And it's all the behavior of that. And then when you walk out there having paid hundreds of dollars more than perhaps you could have gotten a similar product somewhere else, you go, yeah, but I just went through that experience.

So, they behaved in a way that made me appreciate, why I paid that. When you go to an Apple store, there is that whole process, right? There's no cash registers. The receipt just comes out of one of the random tables nearby. And the guy just pushes a button on his phone, and the guy comes running out from the back room somewhere with your computer, and no one ever pressures you.

There's this whole experience. And when you walk out of an Apple store with an Apple product, you think, that was a really cool experience. I feel premium. It's that thing you said a minute ago about, you feel like you've elevated yourself. Look, I deserved that. I deserve to be treated that way.

I deserve to have this cutting-edge thing. But it's all in the way they behave. And then I don't mind paying that kind of money, paying 75 bucks for a three-foot court.

Ryan: And when my hot water tank dies, I want hot water today. Not tomorrow. Right now.

Mick: I want it before my wife gets home. It could be right now, but as long as it's before my wife gets home.

Ryan: Absolutely. And that means building an operation that supports convenience, right? So, now, we're inconveniencing our business at the convenience of the customer. That's where true value lies.

Chris: And that's you doing something that closes the deal. See, we just say, you're the best guy to get a water heater from. But then when you come in and you can offer that, then I go, okay, yes, that's the closer. You can do it before my wife gets home? Thank you very much that I've called the right place.

Mick: And the price matters a lot less. But on the topic of good leads, the thing that I, as a marketing person, I spot it very easily, and it annoys me every time is when you hear advertising that is designed to qualify consumers. And they usually do it in such a ham-fisted manner that it's especially irritating.

Chris: Why don't you just say, idiots, don't listen to the following message?

Mick: Exactly. You know, do you have an investment portfolio or a $1 million or more? I'd like to be your investment guy. Of course, you'd like to be my investment guy. I've got all this money. And I know you don't want to waste your time with the small potatoes guys. And I also know that it's the same amount of work to work with a million-dollar portfolio as it is to work with a hundred thousand dollar portfolio. So, why would you want to work for the smaller one? You'll make 10 times as much money. I get it, but you know what? It's so freaking self-serving, we can all tell that. When we hear the commercial, we all know what you're saying is, I don't want to waste my time with people who won't make me a lot of money. Do you hear yourself saying that? And do you realize what you're conveying to the consumer?

The job of marketing is not to qualify your potential customer, because qualifying a customer is a subtle thing which should be done by people.

A commercial doesn't have the intelligence, because it's only a one-direction conversation, to be able to figure out, is this person really qualified or not really?

If you give that away to a commercial, you're taking a  tremendous risk because the commercial might get it wrong. A well-trained salesperson is really the only person who should ever be saying, this person is a good lead or this person is not so good lead.

Ryan: As a sales guy, I've come to learn that the good leads are the leads that know, like, and trust you before they need your thing. And I invite you to explore that idea that yes indeed, there is a good lead and we get good leads by the message that we put out into the world. For example, you and I just had a meeting with one of our wonderful clients out of California. And they were running this ad that was $1,500 off of any air conditioner for the rest of the year, because we need to clear out our inventory for the rest of the year, and we've got this thing, so we'll give everyone anything, $1,500 off just buy from me, please, for the love of God, just buy from me. And I said, So, what if, maybe just what if, what if we instead said, we'll give you $1,500 off if we can't install it today. Now, what we've done is we've appealed to both categories of customers. We have the relational customer who appreciates their time and cherishes their time.

Mick: And wants the water heater replaced, or the air conditioner replaced before my wife gets home.

Ryan: Bingo. And the flip side of that is, I'll take the consolation prize if I have to get it installed tomorrow or Saturday.

Mick: If I'm a transactional customer, I'll say, can you take a long way so you can't make it, and then I get $1,500 back? The company was prepared to give the customer anyway.

Ryan: This is not about spending money you don't have and digging deep to get that deal done, worse than you would have any other way. What you've framed it as is, now I can deliver a premium experience with premium being convenience in the case of an externally triggered grudge purchase like air conditioning. And now you've appealed to both the relational and transactional customer.

Mick: And you've set it up so that if you disappoint the customer, actually you didn't disappoint them at all because you handed them 1,500 bucks.

Ryan: No one's getting out of bed for 250 bucks, but I certainly will get out of bed, and you got my attention at $1,500, especially, for one of the largest purchases in your house at any given time. So, you become the brand of choice because there's a presumption about the value, your values, and that lines with the buyer's identity.

Now, even with convenience, the buyer looks at it and goes, I'm a buyer that made a smart buying decision. I have found a company that convenience me, not just before the sale or during the sale, but also after the sale. With the warranties that they offer, after a sales service that they provide with the kindness and the empathetic approach to how they handled everything throughout the experience. People are looking to elevate themselves, not just with others, but within themselves to know that they made the right purchase. And these are the things that we can talk about top of the funnel and mid-funnel, but it all starts back with that employee experience. If we haven't actually got the employee bought in on this notion, they're really going to have a hard time portraying that to the customer.

Chris: That top-of-funnel thing that you mentioned, Mick touched on this with his financial advisor example to the other kind of supposedly not great lead that gets provided is the tire kickers, right? The people who aren't ready to buy today. You're sending me these people, but they're just looking around as if that person's a bad lead.

And the truth is, all leads are good leads. They may not be a good lead today. They may not walk into your store and buy a diamond ring today. But if you get them into the store, and they look at some stuff, and they talk to a guy and they figure out how much it costs, and they get treated like a potentially valuable customer. Then when they reach that stage, they are going to call you. So, this whole thing about how well, yeah, but they weren't ready to close the deal. A, you're the one who closes the deal. B, if you don't close the deal today, but you make a friend, you make a contact, you're going to close the deal a year from now when they actually are in a position to do that.

So, if you get them at the top of the funnel, those top-of-the-funnel leads are not bad leads because they're in your funnel now. And then later on, they are going to pay off. So, that whole idea of sending me a guy whose water heater broke today. Okay, that's great if I can send you that guy. But if I can just make you the plumber of choice, and there's nothing wrong today and you're not buying today, still a good lead.

Mick: Still a win, actually.

Ryan: And I'm gonna say yes. And when you step over the threshold of the customer's house, or when they step over the threshold of your shop and start to experience your store, you're on trial. You're being tested.

Mick: It's no longer about the marketing actually.

Ryan: It is 100% about the sales experience and what they're testing you for is number one, empathy. Did you demonstrate empathetic cues throughout this process? And are those empathetic cues that we heard in marketing consistent with those in sales?

Two, once empathy has been covered, because empathy is always the first step, it goes into competence. Are you demonstrating your competence to me? Now, if your salesperson fumbles it up, doesn't know any answers, ignores you, treats you poorly, does all of the things that a very high potential thing, technicians going in and trying to sell nonsense and all of this stuff that sends the signal that, you're not the right choice, then that was your sale to lose. That's not a bad lead. That's a bad salesperson. And that is a fundamental flaw that happens most of the time that is exposed through sales yield. We start to see whether or not they're closing, what the percentage they're closing at, what their average tickets are, and whether or not they're trying to go after the primary sale, the necessary sales, or the discretionary sales depending on what the customer is sending us for feedback, right?

We need to be hyper-conscientious and focus on that. After they've engaged your company, you're either going to meet or exceed or fail to meet their expectations. And ultimately, that's what's going to determine whether or not you ever see them again. And there's nothing that we can do in marketing or branding that's going to change that. Aside from possibly getting a second chance if we have an outside think chance of them connecting with us at some other level.

Mick: I think another interesting thing about salespeople, and this is cyclical, of course, and I'm going to sound like I'm picking on salespeople again from the marketing perspective.

But remember a few years ago, right at the beginning of COVID, when everybody decided that were all working at home and they suddenly realized their home was too freaking hot during the day, and they all bought a new air conditioner. And I think there was like a year and a half when at HVAC companies, they didn't have to sell. They simply had to answer the phone and say, yes, we can do that.

And I think a lot of salespeople started to decide, they stopped selling and they started taking orders. And when you do that for a year and a half, you start to think, then you just ring, ring. Yes, I can install that. It'll be $20,000. See you next week. They think that that's what the process is supposed to be like. And then, now, of course, that created an overabundance of people proactively fixing their air conditioners, and that always results in a couple of years later when there aren't that many.

It's the other side of that curve. It's a correction where there are not that many people calling. And what they then say is, that the leads are no good now. The leads are not no good now. It's that now you have to sell again. Now, they're not just calling up saying, can you please do this? And how quickly can you do it? And I'll pay anything. And a salesperson who's not doing the things you're talking about is not a particularly energetic or proactive salesperson will simply look at it and say, the leads are shitty now. What's wrong with your commercials, Chris? It's the mindset of the consumer has changed. You now have to go back to selling.

Chris: So, you do the conversion. So, I got them into their house and they just need a new filter today. So, it's only a $50 sale not a $15,000 sale, but if you can treat that person empathetically and all the things you talked about, and solve their problem today, then two years from now, when they do need a new system, that's the conversion, right?

So, you do the work on that smaller ticket item in order to cement that relationship.

Ryan: When a lot of people are saying that the customers just aren't buying anymore. A broken air conditioner or broken hot water tank is a broken air conditioner and hot water tank. Now, there is a small percentage of cannibalization of sales that were pulled forward through COVID because of a higher access to discretionary funds, there is less debt, discretionary debt is available to people even those with good credit right now, that is an economic factor, that is 100% uncontrollable, but that does not change the fact that you have to actually be a good salesperson, right? And maybe consider the business model that you're in as to whether or not you're trying to get the big home run every single time.

Or if you're actually going back to work to do what the customer called you for in-home services. It's very often to fix the thing, not to take the big swing and hit and replace the thing.

So, we look at those opportunities shockingly show up overabundantly to businesses that I work with, and that we work with, that go in with the right intentions out of the gate that are speaking the language of the customer about what the customer likes in a manner that the customer is going to buy in, right? This is selling in its greatest form. So, we as leaders do have an obligation to not only build marketing that appeals to the relational mindset and brings them in under the right terms and conditions but equally as much to curate our inventory, our solutions, our offers, to be easier for sellers to sell and easier for buyers to buy.

If this whole thing is going to work, we're going to need that beautiful combination of marketing and sales working together hand in hand. Yes, there is a friction, a tension, a conflict.

Mick: We should never really always agree. Marketing should always be trying to make everybody love this company, even though that will always result in wasting a little bit of the salesperson's time as they now have to sift through more leads, not all of which are qualified.

Chris: Better to have false positives that sales have to sort through than to leave positives outside the door. Because you overqualified or you made it seem like that's probably not the right place for me, so I won't even bother calling them.

Ryan: But the law of large numbers tells us that, only 16% of those customers are not buyers, that the remaining balance of those customers are absolutely buyers. Some are just going to be infinitely harder close than the laydowns, right? There's also 16% of those buyers, thereabouts, depending on each market, it shifts a little bit, not a lot that couldn't finance a hot dog, right? So, you're not going to win on 32% of cases, no matter what. What you can win on is, the remaining 64% or 68% of the population that you have to work harder for now, because they don't happen to be in the 7% sliver of customers that are instantly demanding to buy your thing today, trying to shove their cash in your face.

Mick: And the solution is not to run a commercial that says, do you have good credit? Then I have products and services for you.

Ryan: That’s exactly it, right? It's not what you say, it's how you say it that attracts not only the right customer but the right customer mindset. Because let's all agree, we're all transactional and we're all relational in different types of purchases.

If it's a professional service, or if it's a home service, it is almost always going to be a transactional purchase until you've otherwise given them a reason for it to be relational. Do you want to start the relationship and the relational messaging before they get to Google and you into their house? Or do you want to start the relational message when you arrive at their house? 

You've got so much more of an advantage if people feel right about you coming in and are already predisposed to see you as the empathetic competent solution provider, who's hoping that you're going to throw the same virtue signals when they show up to their house and deliver a convenience that has them saying yes today. That's where the real win becomes. And ultimately, we have to find fascinating ways to do that in marketing. 

One of the biggest things that I learned about becoming a Wizard of Ads Partner, as a sales guy, and as a transactional marketer, was there is a huge difference. There is a monstrous difference between what marketing is and does and says, and what sales is and does and says. I very often made that mistake prior to understanding what Wizard of Ads teaches not only at Wizard Academy but teaches that we teach our clients and employ in our strategies as we build things out.

Mick: And your experience in the automotive business, and there's probably no category of business that understands the importance of good sales and good sales techniques than automotive. Which is why they had people like you training people all over the world, for sales in the automotive world.

But when it comes to automotive marketing, boys, there's also no better example of marketing that was clearly designed by the sales manager. Product, service, price, line through the price, discount, feature, benefit. Like, everything that the salesperson cares about is pretty much the only thing that you see in the market.

Chris: But then don't be surprised when that guy shows up at the dealership and wants to, well, what else can you give me out? Can you give me a discount on this? Can you give me a discount on that? How come nobody comes in here and just says, I'll take the premium model, and yeah, give me all the bells and whistles and how much will that be? Sure. Here's my check.

No, of course, they're going to haggle. Why? Cause that's what all your advertising was. Yeah. I can get you that for only $49. And if you act by this Thursday, we'll give it to you for the employee's price. And then it's like you set the stage for that.

Ryan: You do. Look, these are self-inflicted wounds, right? And that's what we're trying to circumvent in good marketing, which isn't table stakes. It isn't offered. Sometimes, it's offers, but let's create elegant brands, protective offers, brand integrity, and driven offers. That said, Hey, here's the relational way that we solve this problem that may also sometimes happen to appeal to the transactional mindset as well.

Knowing that those two wolves are both inside our heads and we have to choose which one to starve, but we're very often fattening up the transactional wolf in this particular case.

One of the biggest things that I discovered in doing an analysis with DataTurk, which basically taps into the Service Titan Data in-home services was, it was actually higher than 50% higher average tickets coming from club memberships or those people who were acting in relational ways, who demonstrated a form of trust with the companies. When you're getting 50% higher average ticket, you're getting close on the first set, you've already paid the incremental expense of your fixed operations off of the smaller ticket. There's disproportionate profitability out of appealing to the relational customer. That means that you don't need as many leads as you do spend the appropriate amount of time in closing the leads that trust you.

Now, is that to say that you're going to kiss some frogs along the way? You absolutely are. But in some cases, we're the frog and we don't realize it. And we need to realize that we do actually have to pass the test before we actually get the chance to engage the client through a sale.

Mick: And you build your plan based on the typical answer, not the exception.

Ryan: That's exactly it. So, an interesting little, contentious topic here. The tug and pull of marketing versus sales and good leads versus bad leads. A good lead, is what we call, a high cap. It's a higher conversion, average sale, and profit. But it's not as simple as you get a minute and I'll close them down because almost always, the salespeople aren't actually closing them down.

And even if we sent them a person with a truck full of gold, they'd let the customer walk. So, we do all have a responsibility to play for this to be a winning recipe. It's not just a one-sided conversation.

Mick: Except that marketing is always right and sales is always wrong.

Ryan: So, a contentious conversation as we try to reconcile sales and marketing, very likely some remaining unresolved childhood traumas, and probably from both departments, I would suspect. Coming up, the riveting conclusion of this episode of Advertising In America, stay tuned for three ways to win the hearts of those high-cap customers, back in a moment.

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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: Is there a way to attract good leads and sufficient volume with offers that make you look generous and abundant rather than cheap?

Yes! It's not only about telling fluffy duck stories or having a fluffy duck on your truck wrap, but it's not what you say, it's how you say it. And that's what matters when protecting your brand identity. Will you get more good leads when you start telling an impactful story at an effective frequency? So, people know, like, and trust you before they need you? You betcha!

Can we find ways to be the brand of choice, making it easier for sellers to sell and buyers to buy? Yes! Think about the one big thing that you'll do that moves the, who gives a shit meter? Yes! Think about the one big thing.

Think about the one big thing that you'll do that moves the, one who gives a shit meter the most on the goods and services you do sell. Then figure out how that one big thing feeds your buyer's needs to elevate their status or become the most convenient solution available before, during, and after the sale.

Until next time. Thank you for tuning in and we hope that the hate mail starts piling in soon. Mick is getting a complex and Chris is getting shingles.

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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. 

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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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“Bonding” is falling in love with a company, a product, a spokesperson, an outlook, a belief system. This bond of love inevitably manifests itself in a tangible way. And then again. And again.

A bonding ad is about the customer.
A direct response ad is about the offer.

Direct response ads trigger immediate action.
Bonding ads do not.

The results of a direct response ad can be measured immediately. The public either buys what you’re selling or they don’t. This is how you know whether or not the ad is working. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to build your company on direct response.

Bonding ads build customer loyalty.
Direct response ads do not.

Hi Roy,

I have a client who started his radio campaign a few months ago running a low frequency schedule. He is already starting to see the success of his campaign both through website visits and actual inquiries from potential clients. In the beginning his creative was written by us and read by him. He sells life insurance. My client is now concerned with measuring the effectiveness of each ad. He is trying to determine which ads are generating the most website hits and inquiries. He has stated:

“With any direct response ad the trick is to determine wording based on the effectiveness of the ad. If the testimonials are driving the most hits, we should be pushing those. I want every campaign I do to be measurable. Without being able to measure each ad’s effectiveness we are just shooting in the dark. If I look at my website hits for instance, I can see that yesterday I only had 7 hits but on July 8^th I had 39. What ad played on July 8^th to garner such a response?”

Any advice on how to explain why his radio campaign is effective without needing to measure each individual ad for its effectiveness?”

Jon

Jon, the success of a direct response ad is determined by the attractiveness of the offer made to the customer. What offer can this life insurance salesman make? Keep in mind that the offer must be compelling enough to get a person to take immediate action.

This insurance agent’s best hope would be to use radio as a promotional vehicle for content marketing. What insights, solutions or valuable information might he publish on his website and talk about in his radio ads that would cause listeners to immediately visit his website to read it? Without this kind of “content” as bait, his direct response campaign on radio is likely doomed.

Business people are attracted to direct response ads because they want their advertising to function like a gumball machine. “You put in your money and you crank the handle and out come the results.”

In theory, direct response marketing is tidy and scalable and predictable. “Put in a penny and you get one gumball. A nickel gets you five gumballs. Give it a dime and ten gumballs emerge. A quarter? You guessed it: twenty-five gumballs.”

The problem is that this gumball machine called “advertising” never functions quite like it should. Sometimes you crank the handle and get a huge gumball. Sometimes you get a tiny one. Sometimes you get nothing at all.

Even when you’ve found an offer that generates predictable, scalable results – such as the response to that “content marketing” offer we described earlier – you’ll find these results will erode over time. The longer you keep pumping coins into that gumball machine, the less well the machine will work. The gumballs will keep getting smaller and smaller until you finally go broke.

No direct-response ad campaign has ever worked long-term.

Each offer has to be new, surprising and different. And then you must say, “But wait. There’s more! Order now and we’ll include at no extra charge…” This is called benefit stacking.

Remember Columbia House? They did $1.4 billion in 1996 as a result of direct response marketing. Nineteen years later, Columbia House filed bankruptcy. Their 1.4 billion fell to just 17 million in total sales. In other words, the size of the gumball coming out of their “predictable, scalable direct response machine” used to be 8,200 percent bigger.

You could argue that what killed them was the emergence of the internet, but your argument won’t hold water. If Columbia House had built their business around the customer instead of around the offer, they would have become iTunes.

Google just told me iTunes is trending to do $5.03 billion this quarter; more than $20 billion this year.

Apple built iTunes through bonding, not direct response.

The reason gumball people don’t like to invest in bonding ads is because it’s like flying on a commercial jet. You hear a roaring noise as the plane begins to rattle and shake and unsustainable amounts of fuel are consumed and OH-MY-GOD we’re approaching the end of the runway! The client shouts, “This sucks. I don’t like it. Shut this thing down and get me out of here.”

I weep at the number of advertising flights I see aborted. All that money invested and the twitchy little bastards never even left the airport.

If you can find the courage – and fuel – to embrace a long-term bonding campaign, sooner or later you’ll experience a moment called “liftoff” when everything suddenly gets smooth and quiet and the nosecone of the plane tilts sharply upward.

You’re pushed back into your seat as you climb.

Wow. You can see forever from up here.

Goodbye Columbia House.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and let's create those mind-blowing ads.  

You own a business.
You believe in your company.
You believe you deliver a better experience than your competitors.

Is this confidence based on your intentions, your goals, your beliefs, your values and your personal commitment to your customer’s happiness?

It is? Uh-oh.

Judging yourself by your intentions isn’t a danger among friends, because a friend knows your heart even when your actions are inappropriate.

But it is a real and present danger in business.

We judge ourselves by our intentions but others judge us by our actions.

What happens when a prospective customer makes contact with your company? Do they meet your best employee on that employee’s best day? Of course not. They meet your average employee on an average day. Or worse, they meet a below-average employee on a below-average day.

And then you are confused by those negative reviews.

Sad, isn’t it? Your intentions and motivations and personal commitments never quite made it to the party.

Wouldn’t it be great if your employees were consistently delivering the experience you’ve always believed in?

I want to help you make that happen.

The process is called “message integration.”

The key is to take what’s in your heart – your highest and brightest and best intentions – and bury those intentions deep in the hearts of your employees.

Frances Frei, that most beloved of Harvard Business School professors, says,

You can’t change a person’s performance until you first change their beliefs.”

Simon Sinek, in the most popular of all TED talks, says,

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact, people will do things that they believe.”

Simon Sinek agrees with Frances Frei and I agree with both of them. I’ll bet you do, too. Yet most of the people I’ve met who adored that Simon Sinek TED talk did exactly the wrong thing at the end of those magical 18 minutes. They drew concentric circles, pointed to the middle one and said, “We’ve got to start with Why.”

And each of these fine people walked away from that exercise with something that felt like a fuzzy and ambiguous “unique selling proposition” or worse, a high-tone mission statement filled with words like “honesty,” “integrity,” and “value.”

Right now I’m in the middle of making a video detailing HOW to implement the advice of Frances Frei and Simon Sinek. It’s a delightfully simple and effective technique and I’ve decided I want you to have it.

I’ve also decided I don’t want to be perceived as hanging onto the coattails of Francis Frei and Simon Sinek, so I’m not going to make my video public. Instead, I’ll be sending a private link to all my Wizard of Ads partners and then to all my clients and then to all the alumni of Wizard Academy. Then I’m sending it to everyone who has ever made a cash donation – no matter how small – to our school.

I’m going to request the Wizard Academy donor list from Vice Chancellor Whittington on Friday afternoon, October 15. And then I’ll be sending that private link. (You still have time to get your name on the list.)

It really is a marvelous technique. Chances are, you’ll replace all the content on your About Us page with the results of this exercise.

And that will be the smallest and least important of its uses.

To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.