#027: Which Marketing Strategy is Most Effective

Overarching Marketing Strategy vs. Message Strategy: How to Choose Media and Craft a Winning Message

Matt Willis explains that growing a business requires two complementary strategies: an overarching marketing strategy (big-picture plan based on business realities, buyer behavior, reducing friction, and alleviating customer fears) and a message strategy (choosing words and stories that build emotional connection). He argues strategy answers what to say, where to say it, and how often, and discusses key decisions such as whether demand can be stimulated (internally triggered purchases) versus needing to be top-of-mind for externally triggered events. He contrasts targeted media (e.g., PPC, direct mail) with mass media (e.g., radio), noting the high cost of bottom-of-funnel unbranded keywords and the benefit of building relationships and capturing branded search. He compares direct-response offers with branding for long-term trust and margins, then outlines message strategy principles: assess assets and challenges, use “business problem topology” and “unleveraged assets,” and learn from what has worked historically.

00:00 Marketing Strategy Overview
00:56 Why Strategy Matters
02:30 Demand Triggers Explained
04:17 Targeted vs Mass Media
06:50 Mass Media Example
08:52 Direct Response vs Branding
10:28 Message Strategy Basics
11:34 What You Have to Work With
12:45 Topology and Hidden Assets
14:26 Case Studies and Wrap Up

Who should we interview next?

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Transcript

Matt Willis 0:00

Welcome to two a million and beyond. This is Matt Willis, which marketing strategy is most effective? Understanding strategy. Growing a business requires two main types of marketing strategies, the overarching marketing strategy and the message strategy. Let's start with the overarching marketing strategy. This is the big picture, a plan that considers the nuances of your business, industry, consumer behavior, the buying style. It's about reducing friction for customers and identifying and alleviating your customer's fears. Once the overarching marketing strategy is in place, the message strategy focuses on crafting the best words to build an emotional connection with your audience, often through story. Part one, why you need an overarching marketing strategy. Running a business without a marketing strategy is like embarking on a road trip. Without a map, you might eventually get where you're going, but the journey will likely be way longer and more expensive and more stressful than it has to, and full of unhelpful detours. A good marketing strategy answers three essential questions. One, what should you say? Two, where should you say it? And three, how and how often should you say it? Here are a few foundational questions. When building your marketing strategy, can you stimulate demand for what you sell? Can you reach the customer easily at the time of purchase? Can you win the customer's heart before they need what you offer? Can you use media to effectively target the customer? Should you do direct response or branding style messaging? Is trust important? In what contributes to building trust? Do we target transactional or relational shoppers? Since this is just a brief podcast and not a full book. I'll speak to a few of these questions, and if you want more guidance on them, you can email me at MattWillis@wizardofads.com. Let's start with can you stimulate demand purchases are either triggered by an external event or an internal desire. For example, a plumbing company cannot convince a homeowner to hire them to fix a sink that isn't broken. And a moving company cannot convince a homeowner to move. The goal of businesses who sell products or services that are externally triggered is not stimulating demand, but ensuring customers think of you first and like you the best When the triggering event occurs. For products with internal triggers, those driven by emotions, desires, or ego, you can actively stimulate demand. This requires addressing three main points. One, why should they buy? Two, why should they buy now? And three, why should they buy from you? A few more examples to drive this home. An engagement ring is an externally triggered purchase. A Rolex watch is internally triggered. The engagement ring. It doesn't matter how good the deal is, they're not going to buy unless they're ready to propose. Whereas the Rolex watch is more about identity. Shoes on the other hand, can either be internally or externally triggered based on the customer. Some customers could be internally triggered to buy Air Jordans while other customers could be externally triggered when the hole in their sole of their shoe gives way to pavement. So the next question, can you use media to efficiently to target your customer? Customers often turn to Google during the zero moment of truth, or as Google puts it, ZMOT. If they don't already know or trust you, you'll be competing with others who are willing to pay top dollar for leads. The solution. Reach them before they get to Google. Media generally falls into two categories. There's targeted media and mass media. Targeted media is narrow reach at a higher cost. Mass media is broad, reach at a lower cost. Targeted media such as PPC, search ads on specific sites, oftentimes targeted direct mail. Tends to be much more expensive than mass media on a per impression basis and serves a different purpose. Since bottom of funnel, targeted media like PPC is expensive. It's wise to become decreasingly dependent on unbranded keywords as you reach your first few million in revenue. Instead, focus on building relationships via mass media. Then capture leads with branded keywords, which tend to cost only a few cents per click. Purpose number two, for targeted media to engage a very narrow subset of the population. Can you create a quality, cost-effective list of every person who could conceivably buy what you sell? If yes, leveraging targeted media could be a great approach. If you serve multiple industries, have multiple decision makers and or influencers targeting efforts become impractical. Quick side note, if you have a great list broker, please let me know. From my experience, buying lists is not worth the money, which makes building a list remarkably labor intensive and expensive. Now back to it. Is social media a form of targeted media? In 2022, meta, Facebook and Instagram settled with the Department of Justice over accusations of their targeting, leading to discrimination, to prevent fines and further legal trouble social media companies no longer effectively target, thus making them function much more like expensive mass media than targeted. Now let's shift over to mass Media. If you can feasibly sell your product or service to a base that's too diverse or large to build a list, mass media can be a great option, even though it will reach people beyond your customer base, it's cost effective enough that it makes sense to reach those who influence your buyers too. For example, a funeral home would typically do well to skip the pre-need or funeral planning mailers targeting senior citizens instead opting for mass media for a few reasons. Number one, while each mailer would cost between$1.50 and$5 or more per person, radio, for example, can reach the same person three times a week all year for less than$1. Number two, funeral decisions are typically made with the influence of a spouse and or family member. While a flyer only reaches the decision maker, and even that's a maybe, radio can influence all parties. And number three, radio can keep the funeral home top of mind all year. A mailer isn't likely to keep them top of mind longer than it takes to get to the wastebasket. Well, the example I used is for funeral homes. My guess is this is probably pretty relevant for your business and industry. In the written version of this podcast, I've included a chart that shows the attention weighted cost per reaching a thousand people across different media types. What you read is that while you could target one lead one time via pay-per-click for$6.96 cents in the home service industry. You could alternatively reach 1000 people for 40 cents with radio with such a vast price difference. You can see why mass media even makes sense as a primary media for marketing business with a semi narrow niche. Should you do direct response or branding style messaging. Direct response Marketing focuses on generating immediate action, whether to purchase or to simply reach out. It requires a compelling offer with scarcity and or urgency to be effective. Direct response marketing can be effective for internally triggered purchases as the offer can give the customer an added reason to buy. Now, it is less effective for external triggers if you cannot come with a strong. If you cannot come up with a strong offer that aligns with the customer's trigger is scarce and or urgent and doesn't compromise your product or service, then direct response marketing is probably not for your business. Branding, on the other hand, builds long-term trust and loyalty. By creating an emotional connection, you ensure that customers choose you before even considering competitors. Okay. Branding is a great way to avoid competing on price and to maintain high margins. You can learn more about these two messaging styles and other episodes so I won't go too much into that. Now, by answering these seven questions, you'll have the components to create a phenomenal strategy, telling you where and how to market. The next step is creating a message strategy that will capitalize on what you learned in your overarching marketing strategy to ensure maximum impact. So part two, message strategy. Even the best marketing strategy can falter without a strong message. Think of a strong message strategy as a sharp chainsaw that makes cutting through the noise easier, faster, and more effective. So what is message strategy and how do you create it? If you read The Art of War, the renowned book on wartime strategy by Sun tsu thinking you'll get the strategy to win any war, you'll be very disappointed. Instead, sun Tsu gives us principles based on what do you have to work with? What has worked in the past across time and context. What unrealized opportunities do you have? Knowing the principles of these three questions, you can create an optimal wartime strategy no matter your circumstances. Message strategy is such, is message strategy is much the same. A good message strategist, like a wartime strategist. We'll start by asking what do you have to work with to share a few examples? If you have a family owned business, you may have an engaging origin story. If you have excellent customer service, you may have a strong marketable guarantee. If you have passion for your customers, you may have a compelling spokesperson. If you have a military background, you may have an admirable moral compass. And if you have a mission beyond yourself, you may have a purpose customers will rally around. On the flip side, if you have high turnover, you may have a weak culture. If you have low close rate, you may have weak product or process. And if you have poor reviews, you may have weak processes to request reviews from happy customers. The results of assessing what do we have to work with will yield two primary categories of insights, challenges, and opportunities. You fix challenges and capitalize on opportunities in a similar fashion. Remember, sun Sue's approach to strategy number one, what has worked in the past across time and context? Number two, what unrealized opportunities may we have? In business, we use the same concepts but with different names. Number one, we call it business problem topology, and for number two, we refer to it as unleveraged assets. Business problem topology is the process of overcoming challenges or implementing opportunities by looking at examples from other businesses and industries. For example, Henry Ford reduced the time to produce a car by 90% by reverse engineering the pig disassembly line as the assembly line for his cars. This was business problem topology. What about identifying unleveraged assets? This allows you to turn hidden strengths into competitive advantages. An example of this is a B2B client of mine who moves heaven and Earth to satisfy their customers. Okay. By turning what they already do into a guarantee, they can stand out from the competition while easing the fears of potential customers. That is identifying an UNLEVERAGED asset. To begin implementing business problem topology and identifying unleveraged assets effectively. Study what's worked in the past and why. Once you know why, you can implement with confidence as you'll have the why as a guiding principle. When my business partner Roy Williams was looking to endear the public to an HVAC company, he identified that Dewey Jenkins had similar personality traits as Andy Griffith, since he knew Andy Griffith and Barney Fife's relationship was loved by the public. He created similar characters in their marketing campaigns, and it worked. Charlotte, North Carolina fell in love with Mr. Jenkins and Bobby and the company exploded from$20 million to over$100 million. That's business problem topology, and identifying an unleveraged asset. Strategy is using the past to predict what will work in the present. If you don't know what has or hasn't worked in the past, how will you avoid wasting time and money on things destined to fail? If you don't know how to leverage what you have to stand above your competition, how will you grow? The Wizard of Ads. Partners have learned these and many other principles while growing many hundreds of businesses from a few million dollars in revenue to over$50 million. And the beautiful thing is, everything here is learnable and the Wizard of Ads Trilogy by Roy H. Williams is a great place to.