Unveiling Marketing Mastery: Ryan's Secrets to Customer Influence and Brand Success

Unlock the psychological secrets behind successful marketing strategies with Ryan, the mastermind from Wizard of Ad's, in our latest episode. We guarantee you'll come away with an arsenal of insights to influence customer behavior and bolster your brand's resonance. From the essentials of building trust to the art of creating an unforgettable character like Billy Ray for Drain Magic, this conversation is packed with real-world examples that illustrate the power of authenticity and entertainment in advertising.

Prepare to rethink everything you know about connecting with consumers as Ryan and I dissect the importance of aligning your business's values and convenience with customer expectations. We share enlightening stories, like the shift from aimless promotions to targeted messages that catapulted companies forward, and discuss the strategic timing of offers that turn lukewarm leads into hot prospects. Whether it's heating services or accounting firms, Ryan's expertise shines a light on leveraging service cycles and reducing acquisition costs through smart, value-driven communication.

Finally, we give you an exclusive sneak peek into an upcoming book co-authored by Ryan, which promises to revolutionize the way businesses approach scalability and ease in sales. This episode isn't just a treasure trove of marketing wisdom—it's a launchpad for anyone ready to elevate their brand and make a lasting impact on their industry. Tune in for a session brimming with strategies, laughter, and a deep dive into the power of simplicity in messaging that sets you apart from the crowd.

ryanchute@ryanchute.com

https://sellingrevolution.com

http://www.ryanchute.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

Welcome to the Successful Life podcast. I'm your host, corey Barrier, and I'm here with, I mean, ryan, shoot, what's up, buddy, how you doing. I'm good man. I'm pretty excited about this conversation, ryan, before we get started, a lot of people may know who you are, but maybe some people don't, so could you just give us a quick overview of who Ryan is and what?

Speaker 2: 1:18

you got? Yeah, for sure, I'm a Wizard of Ed's partner, I'm a strategist there, I'm also a person who goes out and does some business development for the group, and we find good companies to pair in with really good teams. My main objective is to make sure we have the right fit for people and that we put teams together that are going to be incredibly successful at growing people's businesses and the service space. We have professional services, we have residential home services and we do retail and automotive as well. So we're across a fair broad range of different channels, different strategies for different things, but all serving the same purpose.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Which is pretty interesting because you know, we hear you got a niche down. But is it safe to assume I mean this pure assumption, it sounds like it, you know, if you're helping a company with their marketing, the same principles apply. Is that safe to assume or no?

Speaker 2: 2:25

Yeah, listen, the thing that I learned when I was traveling around the world doing marketing and sales training for the last company I was with was that cultures and economies change but psychology doesn't, and the reality of it is is that we're going to have things that are true to psychology every single time, because they're true to biology and to neuroscience and to all of those things that chemically happen to get the responses and the reactions and the things that we want. Now the tactics and strategies change. We certainly don't employ the same strategies and tactics for an automotive dealer as we would for an air conditioning company.

Speaker 1: 3:04

Sure, but you're right, psychology is psychology, and what makes my brain light up about a car probably makes my well, I don't know if it makes my brain light up about an HVAC unit, but if I'm looking for an HVAC unit, then probably the same things, the same neurotransmitters fire. Would that be safe to assume?

Speaker 2: 3:26

Well, some of the same chemicals are going to fire and they're going to fire for different reasons, in different ways. For example, with an air conditioning system. If you had to replace your air conditioner today, you'd be begrudgingly doing that. You're not saying, hey, great, I wanted to spend 10, 15, $20,000 today. You're saying I have to do this to kind of maintain a certain standard of living, that I'm not willing to compromise, and that purchase is done begrudgingly.

Speaker 2: 3:56

And you put it in either in the best light or you put it in the worst light and you're going to be of two different minds. You're going to be of a very transactional mind where all boxes are the same and I really don't care what I get, as long as it's the cheapest. That's the transactional shopper mindset. And then there's the relational buyer mindset where they say, no, no, my time is worth more than my money. I'm going to pay you extra a premium for the convenience of making this go away, not just during the sale but after the sale. I want the system that's going to last the longest so I don't have to deal with this again for as long as possible.

Speaker 2: 4:32

Now you're buying a car, you might feel the same way my dad's shirt does he's like if he could buy a car at the Dollar General, he would, but when it comes to the roof that he puts on his house, he's very particular about that. So we all have transactional, relational mindsets on different things. It's really about what matters to each individual the most, and often that has to do with where they are psychologically. Are they in a surviving mindset or are they in a thriving mindset? And when we can simply identify those as sellers, we have a lot better chance of convincing them, using the language of the dog, about what the dog actually cares about.

Speaker 1: 5:19

So all right, so your messaging has to be two different types of messaging, right? So you've got to have messaging for your customers and then you have to have messaging for your customers customers. How does that differ, would you say so?

Speaker 2: 5:38

when you say the customers, I'm assuming you're talking about Wizard of Ad clients versus their clients.

Speaker 2: 5:46

We look at it from the inside out and ultimately what it comes down to is, first and foremost, we need to know what's true about our client right. So if we don't understand the truth behind our client, what makes them tick in a genuine way that they can sustain because that's what they would naturally default to then it's not going to work. And that's probably one of the biggest strengths that Wizard of Ad brings from a marketing perspective is we're not interested in telling a story to get more leads through the door, whatever works. We're only interested in telling the true story that's going to actually get them in the door authentically, so that when they receive that service and or product, that it matches right, because that's the only way to get it long term.

Speaker 1: 6:33

Sure. So when you say the truth, I mean, obviously I know what the truth means, but I guess it could mean different things than different people, right? So when you say the truth and by no means am I asking you to throw anybody out of the bus, that's not what I'm asking at all but I'm curious an example maybe of what would be more along your idea of what the truth would be to get a Wizard of Ad's client in the door, opposed to a tactic someone else would use.

Speaker 2: 7:04

Sure. We actually fired a client this is about four years ago now who said look, we want to tell our clients, all of our customers, that we can get any basement renovated in three days. No matter what, come hell or high water, we will get it done in three days. And we said, well, can you get it done in three days? I mean, yeah, sure. So we go okay and we start to craft a message around three days and as we pulled and looked at the data and everything else, there wasn't a chance in the world that they could get it done in anything less than seven days. And the average for them was about three weeks. And when we brought that to them, they said, you know, yeah, it's usually three weeks, but we could definitely do it in three days if we had to. We said, we can't do that. And they go that's what we want you to say, because customers don't want to wait three weeks. We said, well, you're going to have to get somebody else to write those ads, because we're not interested in lying to people.

Speaker 2: 8:06

And that's just one of many, many examples. Most of the time it's not done with that kind of intentional manipulation and misleading information. Most of the time it's. You know we do care for our customers. A great example of that is my client and friend, dylan Rucker Allheart. He is a guy who introduced me to AMRAD, turbocaps and the five-year warranties and everything else. And he's like Ryan we don't even sell the cheap ones, because the cheap ones you're going to get are just going to be problematic. There's much higher chance of them breaking down and we're charging a premium. We're here in California. We have to charge a reasonable amount because we're going to back it up with a five-year parts and labor warranty. We're just going to make the problem for the customer go away completely, full stop.

Speaker 2: 9:01

And that was a really powerful moment for me and for us and ultimately that was something that we were able to wrap our messaging around, because he's standing for something when it's harder for him than it is for the customer. Right, the customer has to pay that money. But the customer's not going to be happy paying 200 bucks for a capacitor. They're not going to be happy paying 900 bucks for a capacitor. Now, he's somewhere in between that. But at the end of the day, it's okay that they pay for it because they're getting a superior service, a superior product and less problems, not only today, but tomorrow and in the future. He's not just solving the time problem, he's also solving the energy problem. That comes up with what the customer is considering when they're considering a purchase. Do I want to buy the cheapest thing or do I want to buy the lowest priced thing? And the lowest price thing is usually a lower cost of money, energy and time over time.

Speaker 1: 10:06

So that's interesting because you know you. I appreciate you explain that. So, as a marketing firm or company, I would imagine that a lot of people that are in the marketing business also struggle with the ability to make sure they get a return for their customers, right? So, in other words, what I'm saying is my guess is based on the information that I see people raise in hell about online is that sometimes there are promises that get made. For example, we can get you X number of leads for X number of dollars every single month, 12 months out of the year, no matter what happens, right? We all know that's a BS line. We all know that that's probably not true. So how do you combat, you know, when someone says hey, ryan, like you know, you said you could get me XYZ leads, but this company over here is telling me that they can get you know three times as many leads. How do you handle that?

Speaker 2: 11:19

Yeah, being Wizard of Ads, we're blessed not to be mired into the nonsense of digital marketing. And look, there's 10,000 digital marketers for every Wizard of Ads partner. It's a very rare scenario and what they're talking about is finite end result stuff. They're talking about X equals Y and the reality of it is is, you know, anybody can get you 10,000 leads this month, but how much do you want to spend? Right? Getting 10,000 leads at the right price and being able to handle it through capacity is a whole different story than getting 10,000 leads. Getting 10,000 quality leads, right? Those relational customers that we talked about a moment ago, who care about their time and making the right decision, not the transactional shopper who's looking for the cheapest price come Heller High Water. Well, the reality of it is is that those leads aren't infinite, and a whole bunch of those leads who need your thing today already have a person that they've or company that they've decided on. So you're dealing with a very minute segment daily of any specific kind of demand. Wizard of ads focuses on both being digitally present for when that demand comes but, more importantly, having them know, like and trust you before they need to go to Google, because if they know like and trust you before they need to go to Google. They bypass Google altogether and just go to your website and that doesn't cost anything, right from a from a paper click, cost per acquisition kind of standpoint. And we've had clients who've dramatically dropped their their total cost per acquisition as a whole down.

Speaker 2: 13:05

And and when you start looking at not spending money on a whole bunch of buyers who haven't decided on who they want to deal with, you don't spend as much money. One of our clients just recently they'll do. They just finished doing $60 million last year and they spent less than $2 million in their total marketing budget top, top to bottom, including our branding, including our fees, including all the digital spend, all of the market assets, the whole mass media, by $2 million for $60 million in revenue. You know that's a drain that a lot of companies want to get to. Now $2 million is still $2 million. If you're a $3 million company, that's 66% marketing budget not going to happen.

Speaker 2: 13:54

You have to be more in a gorilla warfare thinking in your in your thinking. Gorilla marketing in your in your thinking. You have to be more smart with your money. What most people miss in this, in this whole equation, is that it's infinitely less expensive to talk to the masses through radio and television and and these repetitious type platforms. Infinitely less expensive than it is to go chasing leads for today's customer, who don't care about you in the first place. Right, instead, get them to know, like and trust you so that your little tribe will come to you and shop with you and then they'll demand you grow and you grow at the pace of of their demand, because you're doing the thing that you said you'd do.

Speaker 1: 14:39

That's time consuming, right, that's time consuming, I would imagine it, more time consuming.

Speaker 2: 14:44

It's time consuming to build a brand in year one, and it's time consuming because one you didn't have a brand before. At best you had name recognition. And look we've. We've taken on a hundred million dollar companies who thought that they had a good brand and we blew them out of the water. And it's not because they didn't have name recognition they certainly had that. People knew their name. But the difference between name recognition and and being a household name is that knowing your name is one thing. Having a brand means that they actually care. And if somebody cares, they're not going shopping around, they're just buying from you. It's your, it's your lead to lose. So that's that's what we we need to manifest, and it doesn't come from spouting out offers and and everything else. It's. It's really about entertaining people. You know, with ads that don't sound like ads.

Speaker 1: 15:35

That's a great point. So give me an example of an ad that doesn't sound like an ad and then an example of an ad that sounds like an ad, just to paint a picture for everybody.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Yeah, so we've. We've got a, an amazing client out in Philadelphia not Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, and they have a company called Drain Magic. We, we helped name their company and and develop the characters and the whole bit. So what we created in that particular instance was was a foil, it was a, was a fake character called Billy Ray, billy Ray Hull Diggin, and this, this company, is a, is a trenchless company. They, they do nothing but trench work, trenchless work. So they don't, they don't dig holes, they never will dig holes, and they were effectively an unknown company and they were called trenchless before their, their old name.

Speaker 2: 16:29

And we got rid of that because, of course, customers don't understand that they have a trench problem. They understand that they have a drain problem. So we put the pain at the drain and then we express that pain at all these different ways. Well, every single ad. For the first half of the ad we have crazy ass Billy Ray screaming over a diesel engine truck and talking about how amazing the last hole he was was. You know it was like he loves digging holes and it's hilarious and I can I can send you a copy of the ad so you can play it for the folks here. But it's. It's one of those things where there's so much fun and entertainment in it that there is nobody within a hundred square miles that doesn't know who this guy is. And Billy Ray doesn't even represent the brand. The second half of the ad brings calm and peace back to the, to the reality, and saying you don't need that, you need this and we can express anything we want. This is called a random entry.

Speaker 2: 17:32

Now there's elements of that where somebody's gotten a quote and they know that they need to get a quote for a trench and they don't want to do trench because they don't want to rip up their prize winning azaleas and their and their concrete so or disrupt their street for the next three to five days and block it all off. So what are they doing? They're, they're looking for other options. Well, billy, billy Ray's whole digging isn't the guy, because that's the antithesis of it. We want to go to the, to the guy who solves that problem, which is the second half of that. So, boom, they go off to drain magiccom and they get a quote.

Speaker 2: 18:05

But that's not always the case, right? I mean they're not mostly second quote kind of companies, customers. A lot of the time there's like I've got a drain backing up. So the second half is explaining that drain, that's backing up, that you know if you're standing in your shower in a pool of water, that's a, that's a slow drain, slow drains or clog drains, and just introducing an idea of that we can get out there at any time to solve your drain problem. We pair that in with a lifetime drain membership and now they've locked the the that market up in its entirety until such time as they need a drain replacement and ultimately that's their primary core business.

Speaker 1: 18:48

Okay, so that makes. That makes sense. So I'm going to just take a wild guess here. Would you say that a bad ad would be a $49 drain, clearing or clean, whichever one you choose? I know they're too different. I know there there are differences in the two. I don't know exactly what it is, but I do know there is a difference and so it's the the loss leader. How do you feel about that?

Speaker 2: 19:16

Well, it's it's. I'm not going to pick on that ad as the $49 offer, the $29 or the $19.99 offer is a bad ad, so much as it is an invisible ad. The moment that that ad has finished, within somewhere in the realm of about seven seconds, people are going to forget that that ad ever existed, right? So when you're thinking about how do I make my ad dollars work harder for me, well, you can spend your money on stuff that instantly disappears out of a customer's electrical part of their brain, right, completely gone. It does not matter, because you're not relevant to a thing that matters to them right now. They're not out there as a rule, shopping for drain problems, right, shopping for Jain solutions? They might be if we were doing Lulu lemon pants or a brand new car or some other kind of consumable good, but that's not what we sell in home services. In home services we're selling the grudge purchase externally. It has to be triggered. So something has to break first for them to register it as necessary. Until such time, let's entertain them and have them like us so that when it does break, they immediately associate us with that thing. Right, and that's where you win. So a bad ad is is an ad in which you say something that is 100% irrelevant to the person at that moment in time and never gets past electrical memory into chemical memory. A good ad compounds right, which is why you have to have a combination of of offers and branding, and the offers can't sully the brand image. If your offers are, for example, 49 bucks off, oh, next week it's 29 bucks off, and then the guy down the street does 17 bucks off or for it, and it's like, and it just kind of goes down to zero. You might as well just do zero, charge full price or charge nothing. Don't waste your time playing the cat and mouse game of being the lowest common denominator, because that's not what customers care about.

Speaker 2: 21:19

There comes a point where you're suspiciously cheap, not reassuringly expensive, and that's a big deal. We want to make sure that we denote what we're going to deliver as a whole service, and the clients that we work with exclusively are selling their products for a premium. You know there's only two reasons why a person will actually buy something at a premium price. Now, I don't mean a more expensive piece of equipment for more money. I'm talking about equipment for equipment. Somebody's going to pay this much. Somebody's going to pay this much. The only reason you pay extra is two reasons exclusivity, which we don't have in home services, right, we're not selling Gucci bags here, and if we were be weird. And convenience. Convenience If a customer is buying something and paying extra for it, they're paying for it to go the pain to go away faster, right? So they're not just looking for it to go away faster, but to stay away for longer. So I will pay you for convenience at a premium. Everyone else is just overpriced.

Speaker 1: 22:26

So yeah, that makes sense. So I'm gonna throw something at you. I just had a conversation with the guy yesterday and I was I mean, I've interviewed a lot of people in the industry, over 200 people and in some, most of them at a pretty high level, but this guy really, really impressed me. He said he said when we started our company that the name of the company is six and fixed Okay, kind of a strange I thought kind of a strange name for an HVAC company. And so I asked him, as we were talking, I said so you got to tell me like what, why did you name the company six and fix? He said well, we guarantee that we get someone to your house if you call before 6 pm Every night. And I said so you're telling me, if I call your company at 550 pm, you're gonna guarantee Somebody's coming to my house that day. He said a hundred percent.

Speaker 1: 23:24

I said how did you feel like, how do you meant, like, how did you get to that solution? And this is where the I was really tripped up and I think you'll appreciate this. He said dude, when we started, the company was named something else, whatever, I don't know what he said. He said we dumped a bunch of money into marketing not shocking, a lot of people do that aimlessly and he said we were getting nowhere. He said so we did focus groups to figure out what our customers really wanted. And I was like you got to be kidding me. Like that's, like I know what a focus group is. I don't know how many people in the trade know what a focus group is, but like that was really really really smart and my guess is you know, I know that Roy started his company before you joined, but my guess is he had a very similar, probably, method of figuring out what people want. I could be wrong about that.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Yeah well, a lot of trial and error, a lot of experience, a lot of, a lot of innate understanding of of the human condition Roy is is quite, quite literally a genius and Studies things at a level that they'll go well beyond the average human being. Ultimately, yes, all of that stuff has come out over the last 40 years in one fashion or another, but it does really boil down to, you know, three kind of key fundamentals money, energy and time. You know People are going to fixate on money as that measuring stick until such time as you articulate a savings in time and or energy. And energy is a positive and negative right. We're, our brains are our, our, our intake of information Quite, literally dozens and dozens and dozens of times Every second, we're scanning our world for pain and pleasure, risk and reward, the classic kind of duality of life, from from the, the, the Central brain that's really just out there to protect us through fight, flight, freeze and and ultimately, well, that has tampered over time because of our environment. For the most part, we're very much acting in the way that we've acted for a hundred thousand years. So, ultimately, what does it boil down to it? It boils down to understanding exactly what that that smart gentleman or lady figured out, and that's that convenience is the thing to get rid of my Negative resonance, my negative energy, and get back to at least a baseline, if not a above a baseline, of happy I'm. I need that more than I need anything else. I'll give you money to make this go away.

Speaker 2: 26:15

Right, their promise is baked into their name, which is which is clever. I wouldn't say it's the the the best way to pull off brand strategy in its entirety, but it is a good brand strategy that has certainly served them because it's baked right into their name. It's certainly baked into a brand promise which is deeply powerful and and I have an awful lot of respect for what they created there. Roy did a very similar thing when he came up with the name one hour heating and air for Jim Abrams and John Young, and the one hour promise Was a bit gimmicky but at the same time, it was a thing that you could latch on to every single time so that the person could Connect the dots when the trigger happens, which is the fundamental element here, when we think about home services versus Lulu lemon pants right it's.

Speaker 1: 27:11

I think it's very similar to what dominos excuse me, what dominos used to do exactly, yeah, I mean it's a less or it's free, right.

Speaker 1: 27:18

I don't think they do that anymore, but there that was something that, in turn, emotionally, you could, you could latch on to, because there's a possibility that may be 31 minutes late and if the 31 minutes late they're gonna give you the pizza. So there's a little bit of a gamble there, but it's one people were willing to take, whether, I mean, I guess, the, you know, I liked the pizza. Maybe I don't know if it's a good pizza, if it's not a good pizza, but that 30 minutes or less really put them on the map, and I think that's what we're talking about here. Well, it's?

Speaker 2: 27:53

it boils down to something that one of our other partners, manly Miller, was talking to Roy and I about at dinner one night, and he started off as as Manly Miller does, who's just an astoundingly brilliant human being, and he says you know, your beliefs are worthless. Alright, here we go. What do you mean, manly? He goes well, think about it. Your, your beliefs, are completely worthless because you can just Exchange them for whatever is the most convenient at the time. I can, I can believe that justice and mercy are both true statements. Right, if I'm, if I'm the murderer or the accused murderer, I want mercy, and if I'm the, if I'm the victim's family, I want justice. Right, that's the easy those. So that's what I believe. Right Now, what's what the difference between beliefs and values are? Is that value is what you do when it's hard. Right, a core value is only what you do when it was hard to do it, when it was against you. So I have a client who has a value of if we don't show up on your install day on time Ie 8 am so that you know that things are gonna get done right and speedy and all these things we're paying you 500 bucks Now. He has yet to have to pay 500 bucks, but we are waiting for the day that something goes sideways, for him to have to pay 500 bucks, just so we can make an ad about him paying 500 bucks. Right, and the reality of it is is that he's inflicted a consequence upon himself. This goes right back to to great offers. You know you look at some of the offers that that a Wizard of ads partner will create. When, when we strategized Offers last summer for our clients, the the strongest offer that came out of the gate for replacements wasn't $1,500 off of every unit, that's. That's invisible, like you might as well have just screamed it into the air on the top of a mountain. No one heard it, right? No one cares that you offer 1500 bucks off every unit. When we change that to, we're gonna give you $1,500 off of your unit today if we can't get it installed today.

Speaker 2: 30:08

Now we started attracting, instead of attracting, transactional customers looking for the cheapest price. We started attracting relational buyers who are looking for the install today, and the consequence of you not being able to do it because it's not in stock or we're booked out or whatever the case might be, is $1,500. Now you're not getting me out of bed for 250 or 500 bucks off. But you got my attention at $1,500 off. Now who else does it attract? But the transactional shopper is like, oh, you don't need to, don't need to install that today, you, you do that tomorrow. You're like, all right, well, we're gonna have to give you $1,500 off. They're like, well, if you insist, you know, nice. So when you're trying to cast a net, let's cast the net to the two people who are actually going to hear the thing.

Speaker 2: 30:54

Right, this is, you know, the whole, the whole classic conditioning thing that we we saw with Pavlov's dog and Ivan Pavlov Is an exercise in branding Study. Right, when we make the dog salivate, we win. If we don't make the dog salivate, we lose. Our ads end up being the bell that we ring. Whether there's meat paste there or not, we're ringing the bell, they're salivating. When that actual Requirement comes for the customer in an externally triggered grudge purchase, they salivate instantly. For us, this is all a psychological chain that we're building over time and that's why you said a little earlier takes time to build up that brand.

Speaker 2: 31:42

It does, because one they need to hear your ad to, they need to care, it needs to actually register.

Speaker 2: 31:47

That's usually after the sixth time They've heard the ad. Three, they need to start liking you and then, for something has to break. Now, if your purchase cycle is two years, guess what you have to do? You have to run your ad for two years for that momentum to build up, to go from general Early adoption to mass adoption right, we call that the hockey stick. And that happens at about 12 to 15 percent of the marketplace Hearing your ad consistently enough and them being in bicycle moment and choosing you over choosing others. So, yeah, it takes time, and the longer your purchase cycle, the longer it takes. Hvac is a bit easier that way, because there is that, that notion that there should be a couple of touches every year, but a lot of the time most customers don't think like we do. You know, you should, you should be out there twice a year, every year, servicing your air conditioning unit. Well, they're like I'm gonna fix it when it's broken, right, and not until then, right, because that all costs money.

Speaker 1: 32:53

That's right. And why should I have you come out twice a year when it's gonna break any way? Right, it's gonna break in ten years anyway. I might as well just ride it out, and you know. And it's certainly a way of thinking. I think a lot of people probably think that way.

Speaker 2: 33:06

Yeah, and that's that's what I love about this, this industry. I love about the professional services industry, be it LASIK eye surgery or or accountants. You know most accountants just do a terrible job at figuring out how to keep themselves busy. But there's four major events that happen in an accounting season at any time that you can keep your accounting firm busy with. Most focus on one to it most For the. But when you start realizing there is a breadth of service here, all we have to do is let people know that this actually exists. Their worlds change because they've just basically doubled their revenue stream.

Speaker 1: 33:45

Fascinating. So so okay, um, that, the size home services company that you typically what is a sweet spot for you guys? Or if there is a sweet spot and maybe there's not, but my guess is, what kind of revenue should an HVAC or plumbing company be doing in order to dial into such a Process like you're talking about? Because this, this is next level Marketing. I mean, if anybody's listening, listen to to Roy talk like the guy is a hundred percent brilliant, like it's pretty ridiculous how smart they do it is. So I don't. I mean, if I were to listen to this, not knowing, I would think this is probably gonna cost a fortune because it sounds like you get results, you know, uh, majority of the time.

Speaker 2: 34:39

Yeah. So that answer is broad, in three different categories, three different ways. So there's kind of six variables at hand here. One there's three different market sizes that we look at. There's the primary markets, kind of your top 25, 50 cities in America your secondary markets and then your tertiary markets, predominantly rural or secondary rural markets. So you can market like a big dog in a rural market, pretty quick, pretty cheap, right. But you can only grow so big in that market, right. If you stick a shark into a bowl, the shark will grow the size of the bowl. You stick them in the ocean, they get pretty big. So LA is an ocean, right. If you're a $3 million company in LA, you either have to be very well resourced or you have to play a different strategy more gorilla marketing, more grass roots, more backyard. So there's the three sizes of markets, but then there's the three sizes of businesses. We typically chunk it up into kind of under $3.5 million, $3.5 to $10 million and then $10 million plus companies, and every single one of those are companies that we are happy to serve.

Speaker 2: 35:52

I've worked with startups, small companies. I've worked with companies who want to invest early in their brand. You know I'm happy to work on a naming for a company for free. If they can't afford me, I'd much rather them go into market with a good name and to remember that we took good care of them when they didn't have any money. And we're not greedy, we're all very successful people. We're not really worried about the small stuff. We're looking to play the adventure game. We're looking to really help businesses grow, who have the right disposition more than anything. So it's not how big you are, it's one.

Speaker 2: 36:32

Do you have a budget that you can spend to spread a little bit on digital, a little bit on branding? We don't need to spend outrageous amounts of money to get started. If you're in a big market, it's typically more expensive and you're typically a larger company to do that. You know, in Phoenix we're looking at a small $2 million operation and we're saying you're probably going to spend 10,000 a month in just mass media and another $20,000 a month in digital. That's $30,000 a month, 360 a year.

Speaker 2: 37:06

That means that $2 million company really should be aiming for three and a half to $4 million revenue stream by year end to hit that 9, 10% marketing budget goal and, based on the plan that we've put together, we believe that that's completely achievable. Concentrating their dollars into a smaller targeted market, but making that targeted market. Here are a message 100% of the way and liking us 100% of the way, rather than spreading it too thin and having a whole bunch of people just know us a little bit, but never be convinced. Never moving it from electric to chemical. When we start living in the chemical, we win.

Speaker 1: 37:49

All right. So that actually leads me to my next question. Okay, so if a company is just opening up, let's say and I see this a lot, I see where I'm in Raleigh, north Carolina so if a company we're going to open up in Raleigh, north Carolina, you might see their ads 50 miles away. 60 miles away, it seems like to me that you would. And again, I'm not a marketing guy, so I don't know the answer to this. But my guess would be wouldn't it make more sense to market in a much closer area, to service a much closer vicinity? For two reasons One, I would think it would be more cost effective. And then, two, if you've got, let's say you've got a handful of vans, five vans. Well, if you're marketing in a condensed area, then your vans are going to be seen in that condensed area, which is another form of marketing. So would you agree with that?

Speaker 2: 38:59

Okay. So there's yes and no, and yes, and here's why Most people think marketing is where am I marketing? And they're thinking instantly. The very first thing is what channel am I on? Right, Most people start marketing in, particularly digital marketers, where channel takes precedent over message. Well, we don't believe that. We have proven for 40 years that your strategy is the first thing you start with, not your channels. The channels are the last thing that you deal with, because it's not the channel that makes the media work, that makes the message work, it's the message that makes them, the channel, work.

Speaker 2: 39:38

So, first things first is what do we want to say, how do we want to say it and who do we want to say it to? Well, when we have a message that matters, which is far different than most of the messages you hear out there, most of the messages are we wear booties and do good checks and have well trained technicians, and that's the same nonsense that everyone else is saying, and you might as well just not say it. You're wasting your money. You have to say something about you that's personal, that's real and that stands you out. You have to talk about what that distinctive thing that you're doing in your marketplace is, even if other people are doing it and not saying anything about it, that matters, right? One of our clients stays open till midnight 70 days a week. Well, you have to tell people that when you do, that's the core message. That's that one big thing. Now what is that saying in a bigger sense, it's saying that we're going to be inconvenient to ourselves to be convenient for you. And when you can be convenient to the customer, that's a core value. And when you have a core value, the only thing that is of value is the thing that you bring as value. So if it's a belief right, I believe in justice and mercy, Great, cool. You can interchange that to whatever is convenient for you. But if I say I value this, I value your comfort and convenience over mine, we're going to stay open till midnight every single night to take care of you. We're now saying that's the thing that you can actually value. And the customer innately, subconsciously goes they're my people, because they're going to come out if I need it. Now, do they do a whole bunch of calls? No, at 11 o'clock at night? Course not. But do they articulate that they do? Absolutely yes, and ultimately what that boils down to is showing, not telling a person that you matter more than the other options that are out there. So that's just one example of it.

Speaker 2: 41:39

When it comes down to it, digitally, you should be showing up where you want to service the most. If you choose to do mass media, there's no wall that stops the radio from playing 50 miles out. It just it plays. But when you're paying 0.004 cents for that person to hear your ad a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a penny for them to hear it, who cares? Because that person might have someone who lives in town next door to you that says man, my water heater just broke. What do I do? Oh, call these people Right, and that's, and that's the difference in those two things.

Speaker 2: 42:25

What's what's being lost?

Speaker 2: 42:27

There is, what are we actually trying to achieve? And ultimately, if you're trying to grow your business, do I want to have someone call my business who's knows me, likes me and trusts me? When I show up to their business, they're going to buy from me on the first sit at a higher average ticket and profit. Do I want that customer? Or do I want to send my customer out to the conveniently located near me? That is so transactional that all I'm going to do is spin my wheels and not make any money and actually lose money showing up at their house. Give me the guy that's 38 miles out of town who says I'm buying from you today. I love you guys all day long, Right, Sure? So it is a bit of this balancing act, and if you're in LA, that's a different strategy and a different approach than you are. If you're, you know a straight shot 38 miles out, because now you've got a billboard driving for 38 miles to all of those people as well saying, yeah, we're your local guys who will service your local area.

Speaker 1: 43:32

I think billboards, you know, speaking of billboards, I think they work, but I think to your point, you know, if you're in an extremely condensed area like LA, I think they work. But I wonder, actually, I don't wonder. I know people that companies that hear. You know people in LA talking about how great billboards are, but they're not in LA. So they go by a bunch of billboards and I'm like, but you're not, you don't have people sitting in traffic in front of those billboards. You have a bunch of cars going by 80 miles an hour and I'm sure it's still effective, but it's not as effective as I'm sitting in traffic looking at the billboard Right.

Speaker 2: 44:10

Well, I guess it really boils down to every single different strategy and marketing that's got any kind of legs to it works. It's not the billboard that works. Again, it goes back to this idea of the channel is the thing that's working. The channel has nothing to do with it. The channel is just the vehicle, the mechanism in which you said the message is the message that worked, not the billboard. Right, it's also the message that didn't work. On a billboard, for example, if you have more than eight words on your billboard, you're not saying anything. You may as well have just put up a black piece of parchment and let people drive by that, because you're not adding any value to it, because no one cares. Right, billboards are very strategic in their nest and in their need. We never run a billboard campaign unto itself. It's a passive marketing channel. So a passive marketing channel is. It's there, you see it, and you kind of just drive by it and if it's relevant to you at that moment in time, you can call or do whatever. What you need to pair billboard with is an intrusive marketing channel. So an intrusive marketing channel you have. Radio is a great example of that, same with streaming services and Spotify and podcast advertising and all these other places where you can, you can have your ads play.

Speaker 2: 45:38

The reality of it is is that when I say something and I've said something, that's a koac. A koac means that eventually it ends up being a radio. Eventually it ends up back here in the chemical part of the brain and I hear it on the radio and then I can't get it out of my head. You know hundreds of songs and the lyrics and rhythms to those songs that are a koac. Right, you do not want to know those songs necessarily Something you do but now you're in LA, traffic rocking out to Taylor Swift and you know every word. And you don't want to know every word, but you do, and it's because they've embedded in. Right now.

Speaker 2: 46:14

If I had one of the lines, or the starting of those lines, to that Taylor Swift song on a billboard with Taylor Swift in it, and it's just the first three words to it, you would instantly start singing that thing in your head, right, and you wouldn't be able to get it out of your darn head and you'd be like dang you, taylor Swift. What did you do to me? Right, you're just messing with my mode, joe. That's what we're doing with home services and auto dealers and accountants all over the country, because without that your mechanism didn't work Right. All you have is a bunch of crap on a board that no one cares about, and what's the point of that? It's to think that that's an effective advertising medium or mechanism unto itself is what we call a hope strategy, and the reality of it is that you're hoping that you might get a call or two off of it for your 93 or free, when you're just wasting your money and time Really.

Speaker 1: 47:20

Is it safe to assume? I'm a neuro-logistic program practitioner, so I'm curious if the eight words specifically work or less. Is it because our brain kind of shuts off after that eighth word or we dismiss it because it's confusion potentially?

Speaker 2: 47:45

Yeah, it's Don Miller, who's wonderful marketer, guy Storybrand. He talks about burning calories to figure out what the heck it is you're talking about. And we deal with this when we're naming companies and creating brandable chunks and taglines all the time, and it really just boils down to how hard are you making the person work to figure out what it is that you're talking about. If they're two, three words in, they're out. If they haven't figured it out, if the congruency of the words and the imagery don't match up, they're out. It doesn't make any sense to them.

Speaker 2: 48:20

So we need to make it real easy and tap into things like the familiar. To tap into things that you know are familiar but don't know why. We do that all the time, and that's an astoundingly powerful mechanism to say something or do something so outrageous that it stands above the competition, because your competition isn't just your other industry compatriots, it's all the other things that will take money away from you. Right, if it costs money and they rather spend their money on that than this guess what they're doing Spending it on that because you've got to grudge purchase. Yeah, they are condition or can wait. We're going on vacation to Disney. All of these things are competing for those limited discretionary dollars, and nobody thinks that they're spending discretionary money on an air conditioner or a hot water tank or any of these things. They're spending money they don't have Right Because no one ever budgets for it.

Speaker 2: 49:25

Right, that's just not the rules of the universe. The rules are we're going to spend that on other, more important things and, oh geez, that thing broke.

Speaker 1: 49:33

Right, that's a great point, you know it. Also, to your other point it takes it. Not only does it take the money side of it, but it takes mental energy. And everybody's clamoring for eyeballs, everybody's claiming for your mental energy. And so if I, if I feel like I'm wasting, if you can't catch my eye with something that is, you know, a ridiculous sign or ridiculous words, that catches my brain, but it's something just kind of mundane, you just I don't want to spend my energy on that. Yes, it's not going to stick.

Speaker 2: 50:13

Right, entertainment is the currency of a too busy public and you know, we're just not going to convince people that we're just gosh darn good. Stand up good people in the marketplace that are lovely to deal with, right To the average consumer, we're a dime, a dozen and that we're all interchangeable. Right, it's, just replace one for the other, it's, it's. I'll go down the list until somebody answers the phone and then whoever promises to get out to me the quickest for the least amount of money wins. Well, ultimately, if we continue down that track of trying to convince people through, you know, a weak branch play, then we're going to lose because we're not seeing anything that stands as above the crowd. The only things that we can do to stand above the crowd are to stand for something Right and to to not bore them to death.

Speaker 2: 51:08

People tune out. There's no such thing as an attention span. There's no such thing as an attention span. There's no such thing as an attention span. I can't say that enough. We just have to leave out the boring bits. Stop saying stuff about your business that no one cares about. Terrible ads or about you and your business. Great ads are about the customer and their lives. People care about themselves 100%.

Speaker 1: 51:34

It's like. It's like a guy going into a house and explaining all the components of the unit. The customer does not care about the components of the unit. What problem are you solving? The components are not solving the problem. You got to figure out what is important to me, and it may be different for one customer to the next. That's a good question. But if you can figure out what pain you're solving for me, you're going to win, because most people don't do that.

Speaker 2: 52:07

The clients that I have that are the best-selling companies out there as far as sales people go absolutely in every way do not. The word seer is not a word that is allowed to be spoken. It's like Voldemort. It's just not a word that's used. Annodes and all of these lingo-y things that you think justified these little energy graphs of showing people justifying why you'd spend more on this stuff. If you're doing that, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong because you're answering questions that no one has asked. Ultimately, the customer doesn't care about any of those things, and I've watched it in action. In fact, it was a little bit disappointing as a sales guy for me to see how mundane and boring it actually was in the process, because I'm thinking where's the razzle dazzle, where's the sizzle, where's the salesmanship? They're like no, no, we're just going to tell them the brass tacks.

Speaker 2: 53:10

Here's the four things that matter the most. Everything really is hinged on two things. That's it. It's astoundingly powerful like astoundingly powerful when you eliminate all of that clutter that no one cares about. No one cares about your business. If you're trying to convince them of it in your flip out book, when you're doing your hour and a half long presentation. You're doing it wrong. These things do not have the same kind of power that you do by advertising it and having them know, like and trust you, for when you show up and that part's already done your website has done that little blip about you that matters about us page. The customer at that stage is going they're my people or they're not my people. If they believe that you're their people, it's your sale to lose. Just don't talk about all the junk that no one cares about. Everything that we talk about in advertising is the identical same information in selling.

Speaker 2: 54:16

Now our approach is different. The strategy is different when you get to selling. Selling is more nuts and bolts. Advertising is much more about feeling. They serve two purposes, they do two different things and they are two completely different sets of words and structures that you follow. That's one of the biggest things I had to learn as a sales guy stepping into the Wizard of ads in 2017 was I'm not going to do good advertising with my teams by trying to sell and use sales words. I'm going to do effective advertising when we have Billy Ray from Billy Ray's whole dig and screaming at you over his diesel engine and giving all of his one-star Yelp reviews and thinking that they're all five-star Yelp reviews and thinking they're amazing. That's the kind of thing that gets them into the door. The thing that gets them over the curb to decide on it is to sell. That's a different set of skills and a different set of expectations that happen in the house. They're over the phone.

Speaker 1: 55:23

It's reducing friction, reducing friction At every point. Yeah, you and Roy are coming out speaking of friction or friction less. You guys are coming out with a book shortly. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Speaker 2: 55:43

Through the last six years, seven years of research, spending time with Roy and growing and developing within the Wizard of Ads framework. Wizard of Ads themselves touch on three major components. They touch on the strategy, the big strategy, both digital, online, offline messaging and how to put it all together. Strategy the creative copy, which is arguably the most difficult piece of this whole equation. And the media buy. One little tiny segment is the thing we're doing to a business. Business has a lot of moving parts to it. In that time I spent a lot of time just really figuring out what are the things that are causing friction within the business. It boiled down to effectively nine different parts plus mindset, so 10 in total. We started writing. I started writing an outline for the book and breaking it up into its 10 constituent parts. Then Roy delved into it and really fleshed out those ideas in depth and said there's a book here. It's really important for us to do this book because it's an opportunity for us to go beyond marketing.

Speaker 2: 56:59

One of the most prolific statements quotes that I've ever heard and believe in was by David Packard of Hewlett Packard. He says marketing is far too important to be left to the marketing department. I take that mindset, when you think about it, is sales, is advertising, is culture, is brand, is lead gen. It's all of these things. Ultimately, marketing is communication. Communication comes with friction and without friction. The more friction we add to any constituent part makes it more difficult for us to do our job. Our job is salespeople. Our job is business owners. Our job is CSRs. Our job is customers. If we can create an environment where we can one, identify the problems and where they come up and then reduce the friction in each one of those constituent parts one we can create a business that is infinitely more scalable. Two we can create an environment where it's easier for our sellers to sell and our buyers to buy. We do that from sales and marketing standpoint, which include product and pricing structures straight through to the structure of your business.

Speaker 2: 58:18

Roy theorized about 20 years ago something called the 12 languages. What he theorizes is that there's 12 different ways that the brain takes in and reconciles information. We use the 12 languages as a filter to allow us to really understand whether or not we're communicating in the way that needs to be communicated or whether or not we're breaking that communication rule. Our eyes take in information, but our ears take in more information. Most people don't realize that your audio will take in five times more information than your visual will and that it lasts five times longer. What this all boils down to is if we can use the 12 languages as a filter to determine whether or not this has got friction in it or it is not, then we can improve upon that. Examples of that show up in.

Speaker 2: 59:23

Compensation is a great example Compensation. We think we're motivating our guys and what we're doing is keeping them heavily in survival mode where they're willing to do things that they wouldn't otherwise be willing to do to get the sale. Lie sheet steel to make the sale. If that's okay with you and your business, then we don't want to have anything to do with you. It ultimately boils down to really making sure that their compensation has them acting and behaving in the way that we intended when we built this whole thing.

Speaker 2: 1:00:05

We didn't come into it thinking, hey, we're going to lie sheet and steal our way to the top. We're coming into it thinking I can deliver good services at a good value and garner a premium price for delivering on convenience and possibly exclusivity. Hopefully I can do that at scale by eliminating a bunch of stuff. If we can eliminate a bunch of stuff, then we can actually make it easier to run our operation, which means we can scale more.

Speaker 2: 1:00:40

We look at absolutely all of these different aspects and create ways to reduce friction in your business. Like I said earlier before, we have these different sizes of companies 3.5 million, 10 million, 20 million, 50 million, 100 million. All of these things create new layers of friction. As you get bigger, as you add more people into the mix, you're going to add more friction, more friction points. Ultimately, it comes down to how do we reduce friction in your business, in your life, in your relationships, and you're going to get way further ahead than if you're hitting a ceiling or slowing down, not getting enough leads, straight through to getting too many leads and disappointing people. Straight through to how do you pay your people so that they're going to do the things that you want them to do, not the things that you wish they wouldn't do, and on.

Speaker 1: 1:01:46

Great. That's a great point that makes completion and friction and reduce the friction for the customer right, Because if the customer doesn't have friction, they're going to buy way quicker. 100%, Ryan, dude, I know we're getting close on time. I really have enjoyed this conversation, as I knew I would. You just brought a tremendous amount of information today and I can't thank you enough. When will the book be out?

Speaker 2: 1:02:14

We're anticipating. March is our launch date at ryanchutecom. You can sign up now for news about the pre-launch and get your name in. You can also find me at wizardofadscontractors that's my niche site specific to home services. We do have one for services and retail as well, but those are the ones that kind of give you a little bit more of a lowdown on what we do, some examples of our work and the opportunity to see if it's something that might be useful to you.

Speaker 1: 1:02:48

Dude.

Speaker 2: 1:02:49

I really appreciate you, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:02:51

Thank you, corey, this is fun, it's awesome.