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Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch
Each year, business owners spend one trillion dollars on advertising with very little to show for it. In fact, eight out of ten say they are not confident they are getting their money’s worth.
Without throwing money at advertising, how do you grow your business?
Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch is a workshop-style podcast answering real growth questions from today’s business leaders. Each episode will introduce you to the Maven Method, our straight-forward, proven approach for growing a business without wasting money on ineffective ads.
Trade the marketing lies for solid growth strategies so you can reach your big dream!
Join Brandon Welch and co-host, Caleb Agee, each week for Maven Monday and Frankly Friday!
Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch
A Two Word Solution for a $600 Billion Problem
A Two-Word Trick That Fixes 80% of Bad Advertising
Nielsen estimates 60% of ads fail to make an impact. We’ve found it’s closer to 80%. Why? Most ads talk about the company—not the customer.
In this short but powerful episode, Brandon and Caleb reveal the “which means” trick—two words that instantly shift your message from features to benefits, from what you do to why it matters to your customer.
Inside this episode:
The two-word copywriting move that sells
Why clarity beats creativity
Simple tweaks that boost response instantly
If you’re spending money on ads, copy, or content—this two-word trick could save you thousands and make you millions.
Free Marketing Audit: MavenMarketingAudit.com
Maven Method Training: MavenMethodTraining.com
Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer, here:
https://a.co/d/1clpm8a
Our Website: https://frankandmaven.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frankandmavenmarketing/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@frankandmaven
Twitter: https://twitter.com/frankandmaven
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/frank-and-maven/
Host: Brandon Welch
Co-Host: Caleb Agee
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy
Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!
Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here:
https://a.co/d/1clpm8a
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I'm your host, Brandon Welch, and I'm joined by Caleb. Your thumbnail's getting a little boring, AG.
Speaker 2:Are you talking about, like, I need to get a manicure, or no, it's our thumbnails, really Okay. Yeah, see, we both need manicures.
Speaker 1:We are just talking in the studio here. We're like you know what these thumbnails? Because we do these cheesy pictures the one you just saw when you clicked on the episode. Yeah, and they're really getting old.
Speaker 2:And so we need some help. It feels really uncomfortable to do every time. It's like smile, make a face, something that has to do with the episode.
Speaker 1:Yes, here's what we're going to do. Anybody who we're going to do a contest?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Submit an idea for what our thumbnail should be, maybe like a chat GPT, example, and the one that wins we're going to give you a three-month scholarship to the Maven Marketing Mastermind.
Speaker 2:Whoa.
Speaker 1:Whoa.
Speaker 2:Bring it on and a whole stack of books from like our library here. It's like a $750 value plus books, that's like $1, plus books, that's like a thousand bucks plus the millions of dollars you make from the knowledge you get. I mean it's one million one thousand dollars. I think we just gave away I think that's pretty much what we just did hey, rules on that, though it has to be something we can extend, not just an episode. It needs to be like a style we could use multiple times.
Speaker 2:That's the struggle. That's the struggle we our approval.
Speaker 1:That's the struggle we're having. What's the new template? So, maybe you find a Mr Beast, something we should be doing or something like that. But we need ideas. We don't know how to make our thumbnails MoBeta. We need your help. This is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions, so you can eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream, even though we're asking you to help eliminate our marketing.
Speaker 2:It's hard to do marketing and things for yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a lesson.
Speaker 2:That is a lesson. We'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1:It's hard to read the label when you're inside the bottle. That's right. Hey, today's episode is called a two-word solution to a $600 billion problem. Nielsen themselves, the measurers of all advertising, estimate worldwide that 60% of ads fail to drive meaningful impact. What we know to be true from our own research is that 8 out of 10 business owners across America do not believe that their advertising is working for them, and so this is a big, big, big problem. Know to be true, and neuroscience confirms, along with the wisdom of some of the greats, the giants that we've stood on their shoulders, it almost always has to do with the quality of your message. You know that because you're a Maven marketer and you are a Maven marketing podcast listener. But what do we do about that? Very often this can be a complex solution. We think, oh, we have to be really creative, we have to be really prolific with our writing, and I'm going to suggest today Caleb's going to suggest today that is a two-word trick that you can use to eliminate most of this waste.
Speaker 2:Yep, clarity always beats creativity. Yes, and with this, this will make your ads infinitely more clear, if you can do this with them. Yes, and that will sell way more than being completely creative or abstract.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this will connect it, so we built that up pretty quickly. This is a heavy hitting episode today. We're going to do it really quick, but it's going to make you a lot of money if you employ this. And the two word solution that we're talking about is the which means trick. I first heard this from Roy Williams, but I've heard a bunch of copywriters basically use this over and over. And what is the which means trick, caleb?
Speaker 2:It's where you take essentially any promise, benefit, feature that you say in an ad. You immediately follow it with which means, and you need to be able to answer that for the customer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, frank and Maven is a consulting firm that happens to do marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Which means you get great marketing that's paired with actual business results.
Speaker 1:Yes, the new granola bar has two grams of sugar, which means you don't fill up on a bunch of needless sugar.
Speaker 2:You get only the good stuff without all the bad stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can have breakfast without getting diabetes. Yeah, we source our coffee beans directly from local farmers in Costa Rica.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which means the money goes straight back to the person who did all the hard work to grow those beans.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Or which means they are not ravaged with pesticides and poisons to preserve them for years on the shelf, which means you're going to get authentic organic taste right. Authentic organic taste right. So we could do this for literally every product, every service and every industry.
Speaker 1:We have 10 locations to serve you, which means we're never more than a five-minute drive away, yes, and what we're trying to do is show everything in your ad, like ads, by design, are supposed to be. Talk about you, and Roy Williams reminds us bad ads talk about you and your company, but good ads talk about the customer and their life. Leo Burnett, very famous copywriter, reminds us don't tell me how good you make it, tell me how good it makes me when I use it. Isn't that awesome? That's a good one, that's a good one. And then David Ogilvie reminds us the customer isn't a moron, she's your wife.
Speaker 1:So we're talking about getting human, and this little which means, this little two-word bridge back to what's in it for them is so common sense and we all appreciate it when it's done for us, but very, very often and according to Nielsen, $600 billion at a time we forget to do this and it's really just simple, like look at all of your ads. I want you to go to your website. I want you to look at everything you're claiming on your website and sometimes you're literally going to say which means. You're just going to put those little two tricks. Or sometimes you're going to say in your mind which means, and then you're going to write the which means thing and sometimes you're going to say in your mind which means? And then you're going to write the which means thing and then you're going to delete the benefit, or sorry, you're going to delete the feature and you're going to just leave the, which means benefit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so go back to that breakfast bar we just talked about. Yeah, the headline on the website is not we only have two grams of sugar. It's breakfast without the risk of diabetes. Yeah, or something like that.
Speaker 1:Have the risk of diabetes or something like that have breakfast without diabetes or energy to start your day that lasts all day. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Energy without a crash. You lead with what comes after the, which means a lot of times. Sometimes, if you're teaching about your product and maybe somebody doesn't understand it as well, you will need to state the benefit, or you'll need to state maybe a certification or something like that. But that needs to be followed with an explanation as to why I would care, why I, the listener or reader, would care at all.
Speaker 1:What does it mean to me? Yeah, there's an optometry client that is near and dear to us and we've used this a lot of times because they have a lot of vernacular and a lot of really fancy things, and I remember some years back they were excited about this awesome new piece of equipment they got that, like you know, shoots a laser beam into your head and takes this really crazy picture of your eyeball. Yeah, steve, you know, that's exactly what I remember. That's true, right, steve? Yeah, but it's just a really complex thing and it makes this awesome picture of your eyeball and it's like, okay, well, they charge some money for that and that would get your attention.
Speaker 1:So we were like what's in it for the customer? And I mean, when you're talking to really high-level, intelligent people like doctors, they're going to give you all the technical stuff. What we actually figured out is possible with this machine is that you can detect really bad health problems long before blood tests will, very often before even maybe even MRI or something would catch up on it, and so they're predicting like diabetes and they're predicting a lot of really serious health problems with this thing. So it's like detect life-threatening illnesses before they happen through your eyes, and I don't know exactly what the copy of what we used was, but it was something along those lines of are we selling the benefit you were running advertising? If you were spending money marketing your business? You just need to go through your copy, your website, your materials, your phone scripts, frankly, probably your own dialogue about what you're saying.
Speaker 2:I was going to say sales has a big piece in this because I find even when I'm trying somebody's trying to sell me on something. I was talking to somebody today who literally was trying to tell me about their service and I didn't get it. I didn't. I sort of understand, but I don't really understand what it actually, how it actually benefits me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And they weren't articulating it because they weren't giving me the, which means yeah, and, as Donald Miller would say, when you confuse, you lose, yep, yep. So. So it's just yeah. Often it's not that you wouldn't have bought, it's that. Oh, I just, you just didn't say the thing back to me. Yeah, that I needed to hear. So is that a simple episode?
Speaker 2:I think that's. That's as simple as it needs to be.
Speaker 1:I grabbed some other quotes. Some of these were from the Maven marketer, the most effective copy enters the conversation already going on in the customer's mind.
Speaker 1:That's right. You can't create desire. You can only capitalize on the desire that's already there, and that's what we're talking about, which means we'll get you back there. So, probably the shortest episode in Maven marketing podcast history may also be one of the most impactful, if you choose to use it. Go to your stuff, ask, which means Train your people. Have a little sales rally around this idea. Are we articulating how we change the customer's life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, look for features and benefits. That's the thing you're looking for. When you state we have this, we do this, you need to immediately follow it with how that benefits the customer. And when you do that, you're going to change everything about it. You may be able to take out the we do this part and just stick with the benefit for the customer.
Speaker 1:Speaking of that, there is something really cool that we're doing. We have launched the Maven Marketing Mastermind, which means you can get high level collaboration on your marketing for a fraction of a fraction of the cost that you would pay consultants or even our team to do it for you, which means you can eliminate waste in advertising. Which means you can get to the big idea quicker. That's going to sell more, attract more of the customer you want, which means that you're not going to be alone making really scary creative decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a call a session last week with the team that's all the members in the mastermind and people are already growing. We're just over a month we're kind of coming around our second month into this and we're watching sales happen, new customers, new business. It's insane to watch how quickly when you put this effort, when you put this drive you just get together and polish it a little bit.
Speaker 2:Also, it kind of holds you accountable. Having a crew around you, I think a lot of times for a small business owner or a small business marketer, it's really easy to kind of set your own timelines for things or that can be on the back burner. But when you have a group of people, you come and you say, hey, I worked on this, I've been working on this. Here's the result. It helps you acknowledge like, oh, it's like, change these two things and it's ready to go.
Speaker 1:Yes, and then you get the thing out in the world because it's been validated. Yeah, I can speak for my own stuff. There's times you work on something for months just because you're not quite sure that it landed.
Speaker 1:But when you've got people who are smart people, there's a bunch of really smart people in this group telling you hey, it's good to go, caleb, you go, okay.
Speaker 1:So we want you to be in that group too, because we know you are smart and you have ideas that need validated and worked on and polished and you have a business to grow. That's why we're doing this. By the way, all of the things we do with the podcast and the mastermind are just because we are, like bonkers, excited about growing owner operated companies, and we opened up the mastermind so that we could have a little bit more workshop type stuff other than us just flapping our jaws at you. So if you want to join that, it is mavenmethodtrainingcom and you can join. It's a very, very small monthly fee and you will get to join us two times a month, submit your questions, work with other members of the tribe and there's all sorts of other benefits and events and stuff we're going to be doing in the future that you, and only you, will be invited to. That's right, but only if If you're a member.
Speaker 1:If you're a member, that's right. We'll be back here every Monday answering your real-life marketing questions, because marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie. Mavenmethodtrainingcom. Hope to see you in the Mastermind.