Meet your customers where they are

Meet your customers where they are

Marketing isn't about forcing your audience to come to you. It's about understanding who your customers are, where they spend their time, and how to reach them with the right message at the right moment.

In this episode, Jeremy and Nick break down the Four M's of Marketing — Market, Medium, Moment, and Message — and explain why getting each one right is critical to building an effective marketing strategy. They discuss how businesses can better understand their ideal customers, avoid wasting money on the wrong audiences, and choose marketing channels that actually make sense for their goals.

They discuss what this means for business owners and marketers:

• Understanding Your Market — Why defining your ideal customer goes beyond simply targeting "homeowners" or "businesses," and how demographics, income, property type, and specific needs can help you narrow your audience.
• Choosing the Right Medium — How to evaluate different advertising platforms and channels based on who they actually reach, rather than simply choosing the medium that sounds the most appealing.
• Being Where Your Customers Are — Why businesses shouldn't expect customers to adapt to their preferred channels, and instead need to identify where their ideal audience already spends their time.
• The Importance of the Moment — Why you can't always predict when someone will need your product or service, making consistent marketing and multiple touchpoints essential for staying top of mind.
• Creating a Clear Message — Why your advertising should be simple, clean, and easy to understand within seconds, especially when audiences are constantly surrounded by competing messages.
• Avoiding Waste Marketing — How targeting everyone can quickly drain your marketing budget, and why businesses need to eliminate audiences that are unlikely to become customers.
• Learning From Your Customers — Why interviewing your best customers can reveal where they spend their time, how they found you, and whether your current messaging actually connects with them.
• Building a Diversified Strategy — Why putting your entire marketing budget into one channel can be risky, and how multiple marketing touchpoints can work together to build awareness and trust.
• Auditing and Optimizing — Practical steps businesses can take, including reviewing their data, talking to customers, and optimizing the channels that are already proving effective.

Whether you're building a new business or trying to improve an existing marketing strategy, this conversation offers practical insights into identifying your ideal market, choosing the right channels, creating stronger messaging, and staying visible until your customers are ready to buy.

Discover why effective marketing isn't about being everywhere or spending more. It's about being in the right place, in front of the right people, with the right message, at the right moment.

Your Brand, Your Back Yard with Jeremy & Nick

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello listeners. Thanks for tuning in to Your Brand, Your Backyard Podcast. I'm Jeremy Rentz. And I'm Nick Matheny. This podcast is centered around being a business owner, removing chaos, and replacing it with strategy, vision, and clarity. How to build a business, but more importantly, how to build your brand in your backyard.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

So if you're just starting a business, rebranding or expanding, or if you're a marketing professional, a business major, or all of the above, this podcast is created for you. So let's dive in. Turn up the volume. It's officially showtime. That's right. In this episode, we break down the golden rule of modern marketing. Meeting your customers exactly where they already spend their time.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Stop trying to force your audience into preferred channels. Instead, learn how to audit customers' behavior. Select the right platforms and deliver contextual messages that drives conversation. So, Nick, today's episode is really about focusing in on strategic marketing efforts in the form of the ability to meet our customers or our clients or the consumer where they are. And I think it's really important that we understand the certain mediums and the methods and our messages. We're going to talk a little bit more today about the four M's of marketing and such the importance that we cannot forget these four M's. So I'm excited to dive in today. So Nick, let's get at it.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yeah. Well, I think it's it's really important because if any one of these four is off, it really has a major impact on the success that a business has. And you know, it's so frustrating when you feel like, man, I'm I'm doing all this work, I'm spending all this money and all this time and taking our eye off of other projects. Why is it not working? And and so that's really what we want to do is break those things down. So let's dive into the first one today, which is the market. So understanding who your market truly is. Is your market residential? Is it commercial? Is it industrial? If is it institutional? You know, a lot of business when they're new, like I'll take anybody as a customer, I don't care. I just need the jobs. Um, but you realize that you can't be a you can't kind of grow your business doing everything, right? There's too much. So let's talk, Jeremy, a little bit about understanding really what that market, let's say, for example, you're doing the residential market. Well, there's lots of different sections within the residential. So why don't we dive into that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, and when you when you create your business, and and one of the most important things that we have talked a lot about in previous episodes, Nick, is the business plan. And that is our opportunity to take time to say, this is what I'm doing, this is why I'm doing it, whether it's my product, my service, my widget, but more importantly, this is how I want to grow. I have a vision for my business, and from time to time we're gonna have to pivot that. But you have to understand and identify your market. And in this example, was residential. And so if you are a painter, a plumber, a decking company, a you know, hot tub and spa, it doesn't matter. If you are targeting a consumer that is in the residential homeowner space, well, that's your market, right? But then you break it down even further into do you want to get into specific demographics, right? Income levels or home values. And now we're getting really, really targeted. Uh but again, this episode is about how can you meet your client, your customer, your patient, where they at? So that is the market. So elaborate on that and and how can I hone in? So if if I'm that painting company, if I'm that plumbing company, and I'm starting my business, or I need to kind of rework my marketing strategy, my business plan, what else would I want to consider there, Nick?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Well, I think there's a couple areas to look at. I think sometimes people think, well, they're they're homeowners, but they don't differentiate between people that actually own a home, live in an apartment, have a condo. They see them all the same sometimes. And I'm like, well, those people need different things. A retiree in a condo needs different things than somebody starting out in a condo. You know, so if you're a landscaper and you're and you're just saying, hey, these are all people that have, you know, they all live here, let's hit all of them with advertising. Well, that's gonna be really that's a tough battle because people that live in condos generally don't need landscaping that's taken care of. And and so I think it's really starting with that concept of really relating to again, it what are the demographics, right? Some businesses thrive dealing with people socioeconomically that are on the lower end of the spectrum. And you know, you think of a Dollar General or uh, you know, dollar, you know, any of those type of Dollar Tree type stores. Um pizza. Yeah, I mean they're they're going for that. And uh even in the in the you know food sector, right? There's some brands that are designed to be very cheap, ramen noodles and you know, Campbell soup and things like that. They're designed to be kind of that lower end, and that's nothing wrong with that, but you have to know who your who your clientele is. Then I think the second thing we have to go to is, and I see this all the time. A business owner comes up with an idea. Hey, this is what I'm gonna go after, and then they stick their head in the sand and say, This is my program, and everybody's gonna adapt to what I want. Well, sometimes you hit it right, and there actually is a market for that, and that market you know gravitates towards your message and it goes exactly as planned. Sometimes they reject that message. You've you've misread the room as a business owner. You thought, man, I thought there'd be huge demand for this. But then when I actually started talking to that group of people, I realized they actually didn't have an interest in that. And so it could be, hey, we've got to then keep the same clientele base, but change our messaging, or maybe the messaging's right, the market's right, etc., but we'd have to tweak it to what demographic, right? Either older or younger, maybe a little more money or a little less disposable income, etc. And so that's where we want to go with the market, really understanding all of those concepts.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

So, Nick, you touched on some really good points. One of the things that really came to mind is when it when we're talking about market, I instantly you gave examples of residential, right? So targeting, am I targeting homeowners, right? Single family homes, am I targeting condos, town homes? And you know, for landscapers, those don't make sense. For roofers, you know, when you have an HOA, a townhome, a condo, they take care of, you know, your exterior. So as that landscaper, as that painter, it doesn't make sense. So, you know, our listeners have heard us reference waste marketing, no waste marketing strategies before it. That's a prime example of yes, I'm a residential painter or a landscaper or a plumber, but that doesn't mean that I'm gonna, you know, flood the market and target every single quote unquote home buyer, homeowner, because again, I have to eliminate targeting those those townhomes, those condos, because now I'm paying for that audience that will never do business with me. So, sure, on paper it checks a lot of those boxes as as targeting homeowners, but you're a hundred percent correct. That is a prime example of waste marketing. Nick, let's touch on the medium, shall we?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah. Well, I think before we go to the medium, there's one one quick fun little story I want to talk about, and it's the story of this is it deals with the market. You know, I think all of our listeners, I'm sure, have heard of ScrubDaddy, you know, very famous brand. It's been out there, but most people don't know the story actually behind ScrubDaddy. It was actually originally designed by a mechanic to use in the mechanic shops, and the original version was square, but then they kind of turned it to circle because they found it fit their hand better. And then what they did is they found, well, it was easier to hold if you put a hole in the middle, it was actually easier to hold on to it while they were working on it in the mechanic shop. And then they decided actually two holes was better if they did this, and then they were like, Well, you know, we can use this, we can put a hole here, it'd be good for cleaning our you know, our fingernails because they're all greasy and dirty. And and so they kept adjusting it, but when they first came out with it, nobody bought it. They pitched it, they went to a bunch of places, and everybody's like, Yeah, I don't need that, whatever. I've got shop rags and we're fine. But once they adjusted it a little bit, and then all of a sudden they put the smiley face on, and and actually the owner was at a something else, and he saw something that had little kids' toys that had the smiley face on it, and he looked at it and something clicked, and then it, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, we got to just change the market who we're going after and how we position this. He was actually at home doing some light cleaning on some furniture at home and some patio furniture. It was like, oh wow, I'll just grab that, and he was using it there. He's like, Oh, that worked kind of well, and then that's what kind of started the thing off. Goes on to Shark Tank, and now it's like a massive company. So that's an example of the product was a good product all along, but who they were trying to market it to, who it was trying to the good the the clientele going after didn't really buy into it, but there's other people that did. So that I think that's a really important one that we probably should throw out there. Yeah, um, where you have to be really flexible and nimble as a as a business.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, you have to be able to, you know, call that audible, right? You've got a great start or a great concept, but something's not quite clicking. So what can you do to slightly pivot? Maybe not, you know, start with a clean slate. Uh he's got a you know great foundation, but then just pivot in that market, in that audience makes all the difference in the world. And so having the f the foresight to be able to see that is is huge. So the medium, you know, I think I think this is extremely important, Nick.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah, I mean there's so many different things out there. It's not like the old days, like I remember when I was growing up TV, we had like you know, ABC, NBC, CBS, and you had like maybe the public broadcast, and if you're lucky, you got the religious channel. Now there's I mean there's hundreds of channels, right? And they're very, very, very specialized. Well, the opportunities for ways to market a business are now also very broad. There's so many different things, there's so many specialties. It it kind of reminds me, you know, one of the the clients that I'm working with right now in my consulting business, um, you know, they do uh they do installation or they they're a wholesaler uh for multi-use windows. So when they put in an apartment building and it's got the retail on the bottom, they're I shouldn't say they're they're a uh distributor. And so we started doing some research and starting calling different professional organizations to see if there was opportunities there. And you talk to one, they're like, nah, this is kind of who we are, and I'm like, yeah, that doesn't really make sense. Then you talk to another one and they're like, Well, yeah, it's called the General Contract Association, but here's really what it is, and then they start digging deeper, and then you can look at it and go, wait, that kind of makes sense. So even though they all are interrelated in the building industry, some of them actually made a lot of sense for that company, and some of them didn't make any sense at all. So we've got to be able to sort through realistically what are those vehicles and what are they designed to do. Not what do you want them to do, what are they designed to do.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah, and when I think of the medium and all of the options out there, it is so overwhelming. It is no wonder why so many business owners have a tough time making decisions because you have to gather all of the facts, all of the information, and then you have to sift through the noise. And then you have to be able to say, okay, I think this is right, and I think this is wrong, or this is right, and this is wrong. And it is so complex, it is so challenging from the various parts of TV, and it's not just TV nowadays, but you have streaming option, right? Is that a good fit to be in homes? Because you can't fast forward it, you can't pause it, and you can't continue your show, right? OTT. We've talked about OTT before, but for some people that's a great option, but for some, it simply doesn't make sense because it's going to they're going to geofence, you know, zip codes in cities and and counties, and maybe you don't want to target all the homeowners that that that OTT uh would display you in front of, right? So you got to be able to dig deep into this medium and really especially you know with a newer business or a smaller business that has a more limited budget, right? It's like when you sit back, what do I do? I don't even know where to begin, Nick. There is so many options, and then let's touch on the whole digital world and AI, should we?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, and and I think the noise that you talk about, Jeremy, comes from the reality of when when people are selling advertising, they're doing just that, they're selling their product, right? And so most companies, not all, but most companies go in and they go, hey, we're the best thing since sliced bread. You should spend all your money with us. So whether you're talking about TV people, radio, magazines, newspapers, digital billboards, it doesn't matter. Everybody is kind of presenting their product in the best possible light. And the problem is that I see is that business owners don't know what questions to ask. And if you don't know what questions to ask, you can't ever dig through and as you said, sort through what should I do and what should I not do. And so it makes it that much harder. So let maybe we should talk about what questions we should ask before we dive into you know digital and the AI and all the different things.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah. You know, I think some of the the questions that really come to mind is again, what is the distribution model inside this medium, inside this particular platform? You know, if it's meta, well, the challenge with meta is you can boost, and if you boost, you're getting promoted to everybody or or you know, a significant amount of numbers, but in a massive area. It could be in the entire state of Indiana or Colorado or Illinois, and that might just not make sense. Not to mention, oftentimes it's a pay per impression or a pay per click platform, and those can rack up to be extremely expensive. Hopefully, you can set a budget. Like, I don't want to invest more than $250 a month or $500 a month on this particular one campaign. You need to figure out, you know, if if it's in the print, what is the circulation? What are the zip codes? What are the targeted demographic income, home value? Does that include those townhomes, those condos? Does that include apartment complexes? Because previously, you know, as we started the show, we were talking about waste versus no waste. What else comes to mind with you, Nick?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Well, I think most business owners are they've been trained over the years to ask what's the distribution, what's the cost per home, right? I think most business owners kind of get that. Well, how many does it go to and how much is it per home? It's five cents, eight cents, twelve cents, twenty cents, whatever it is. I think a better question in today's world is okay, tell me about your product. Who is it designed to reach? What makes it stick out relative to all the other products that are designed to reach that same group of people, right? And if a business, if a if a somebody's selling advertising and they can't tell you who their target market is or who it's designed for, right? That's a problem. If they're like, well, our product's for everybody, it hits everything. Well, I don't want to hit everybody. I want to hit people that actually could afford my product, need my product in the in the geographic scope where I work, you know, that type of thing. I I just got an email randomly from somebody, sent me a couple pictures that hey, we had some leaking in our cabinet for uh for my handyman business, and it said, you know, we want to see our our property manager suggested you guys uh they had somebody else look at it, handyman, and they suggest somebody really knew what they're doing with cabinets. And I kind of looked at it, I'm like, I don't that that that address didn't make any sense. So I asked, I'm like, hey, where where are you from? And it was from New Jersey. Now I have absolutely no idea how a property manager got our phone number and my email from New Jersey, but that was a complete waste of time, right? For them and for me. And I think so that's where we've got to really ask them like, okay, so who are you trying to serve? What are you what's the goal of this particular product? How are you how are you making sure that this is happening, right? Or you say you're hitting wealthy people, okay. Well, how what is that? How do you define that? What is that? What do you count as wealthy? You're hitting commercial. Okay, so how many of these people that are gonna be receiving this actually are owners? How many of them are national franchise, you know, whatever it is. And so I think it's more questions like that versus just how many does it go to and what's the cost for home?

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah, and what is my projected ROI? I mean, that is one of those questions that in theory is a valid question, but it is so determined and dictated by various things. What is your product? What is your service? What is your price point? Do you answer the phone? Do you return phone calls? Do you have a website or a Google business page? Right? What is the functionality of your website? Is it easy to navigate if I'm on a phone or an iPad versus a computer? There's all of these factors that that particular marketing strategy or salesperson most likely can't answer some of these, nor should they be able to. Because our job as a business owner, as a as an entrepreneur, as a marketing professional, is to identify the audience and then what are the best avenues to display me in an ongoing, consistent, proactive strategy.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think I think you're right.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

I I just think when when what you were talking about there too is the job of the the the medium is to get exposure, but it's to get exposure to the right group of people. So that's why we have to talk about market first, like we said, right? You've got to know as a business who are you're going after. What what what group of people are you trying to hit and achieve? Then that goes to the medium, which we're talking about right now of okay, and what vehicles will I use to get there? So it's the old uh, you know, am I gonna take a train, a car, a bus, a paddle boat? It depends where you're going, right? Uh if I'm going to Europe, we we know that they're gonna eliminate basically all of those options other than a boat or a plane. And then it becomes functionality and all those type of things. So so I think that's where we get into the media. And again, there's so many options, but I think we have to, as business owners, you have to put the um the onus on you understanding what is out there and how they're different. And if they that advertising salesperson can't give you a good story behind why their product works, why it's better, how it's gonna hit who you want to hit, then I think it's easy to eliminate those, and that helps cut out some of that noise that you're talking about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

And one thing that comes to mind is, you know, a couple episodes ago, we had Brent Garrett, and he runs a very successful HVAC company in North Dallas. He's got uh he's got his book, and he referenced in the show Toma his marketing strategy and what he focuses on is that top of mind awareness. So, what are the mediums that will deliver you in front of your ideal market on an ongoing, consistent, and proactive basis? Toma, right? And the more that you do that, you know, you touched on this, Nick, earlier, and you said, you know, your your marketing budget, give me all your money, right? As a salesperson, like I'll handle all of this. Do you think that's a great strategy to put all your eggs in one basket?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Yeah, I I think that's a terrible strategy.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah. Diversification?

SPEAKER_00 19:33

What's that?

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Diversification, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yeah, it's it's like in anything. I mean, I think that anytime you and I see business deals all the time, they get sold, they're like, okay, I'm gonna drop everything I'm doing, and I'm just gonna do a TV campaign, or I'm just gonna do this radio campaign, or I'm just gonna do this campaign, or whatever it is, or I'm just gonna do networking. And and my reaction when I hear that stuff is I just I kind of shake my head. I'm like, why? If you have a background that says these particular mediums have historically worked pretty well, why in the world would you eliminate those? That's like saying a business, like, okay, we've got five products in our business, and these four are doing awesome. We make a boatload of money. This other one's still building. You know what? We're just gonna drop those four, not gonna do anything with that. We're gonna put all our energy on this other one here that's new. Any business owner would be like, What are you doing? That's your bread and butter. Why would you possibly cut those legs out from underneath you? But businesses do this all the time when it comes to advertising because they're trying to time the market, so to speak, and that's a terrible strategy, just like trying to say, well, one person can do everything. It's just not realistic, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:36

You think about this four legs to a table, right? You've got to have multiple strategies, multiple touch points, multiple mediums, because they all then compound. And then that leads us into this next one the moment. That is the one thing we don't know. And that's the importance of Toma, right? That top of mind awareness for when they enter that moment or what I call that buy cycle.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Yeah, I mean, the reality is guessing where somebody's at in the buy in the buying cycle is impossible to do. There are a few very limited situations where we might be able to say, hey, statistically, like somebody just moves into a new home. There's statistically, there's some certain things they're gonna need to do because they just moved to a new new home. But outside of that, or somebody just retired or something like that, you know, there there's there's some things that you just don't know, and it's a guesswork. So instead of trying to say, well, I'm gonna try to only run an ad on Sunday, uh, or I'm only gonna run an ad for this month of the year, or this you know, this season, what you find is is very successful businesses just say, no, it's gotta be steady and it's gotta be around. The challenge here becomes of how do you have enough budget to do all the things you want to do? Yeah, that's the big challenge, right? And people are like, but I want to be in the big newspaper and I want to be on TV and I want to have billboards and I want to have radio commercials and I want to do this and I want to do this, because the more I spend the more business I'll have, and the bigger my business will be, and the more successful I'll be. But that's actually not true.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

That's not.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

No, that's not how how companies are killing it. They're not just going, I'm just gonna spend more and more and more and do everything. They find the the things that work well for them and then they strategically experiment with other things.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah, you're a hundred percent correct. Like it's impossible to be able to do everything. You can't be everywhere in front of everyone, you know, at every second of every day, as much as we would like to be. You mentioned billboards. That just probably doesn't make sense for so many businesses. Because not to mention the waste that comes into play. I'm gonna spend $3,000 on a billboard on the interstate trying to catch people's attention as I'm driving 80 miles an hour. No. Does that work for some businesses? Sure. Okay, fine. But for the bulk of the businesses to spend that to then back out the waste, back out the number of people who can't afford you, people that don't even live there, and that you know, the truckers that are just passing by, right? The the visitors, whatever the case is, now you have a very minimal targeted audience for this massive budget. You know, it's a lot like direct mail, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah. I mean, look that billboard example. Listen, if you have a restaurant that's at that next exit, a billboard is awesome because they see it and they go, yep, I'm hungry, and it's right here, or it's five miles away. You know, I think the best when I think of billboard advertising, the best company that I've ever seen at billboard advertising, in my opinion, is Buckeys.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Think about Bucky's. When they put this out, some some parts of the country are like, what's Bucky's? I've never heard of that. But if you're from the southern southern states or a lot of places now, they're even expanding into some of the other states. Uh, if you're in Texas, it's uh it's a staple as much as brisket is, I think. But you know, you'll see a billboard that says Buckeys in Buckeys. Yes. But you'll see signs that are like Bucky's only 312 miles away. Right. 184 miles, and you're there. You know, stuff like that. That is brilliant marketing, but then you have to have a massive budget to be able to do that. The average business can't, right? And so that's where it gets it to you. You have to eliminate certain things, say, hey, I don't have the budget right now, I don't have the resources to do that. Where am I at my business? And what are my viable options that I can work with? Because my total budget might be a thousand, two, three, four thousand dollars a month. What are my options? Probably not gonna be just one thing, but how can I do, you know, how can I do four things that are $250 each for a thousand bucks versus I'm gonna go drop a thousand dollars on meta-ads. You might find that $250 very quickly. You go, hey, this one isn't as good. I want to bump this up to $500 and start changing things. That's totally fine. That that's being in the moment. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

And if you've never been to Bucky's listeners, Google it. It's a it's an awesome truck stop. And you might be like, Really? They're talking about a truck stop, it's pretty fantastic. Beaver nuggets. Gotta get the beaver nuggets, the briskets. I always stop in the morning if I'm on a road trip because they hand make their biscuit sausage egg sandwiches right there. They're fresh. So there's a little Bucky sales pitch. Hey, Bucky's wants to be a show sponsor of ours. Uh but going back to what you were saying, if you've got a thousand dollars, you should not spend a thousand dollars on one thing, on Meta, on a billboard, on a on a direct mail campaign, on a local magazine. You've got to chop that up 250, 250, 250, 250, because you're catching going back to the moment. Every medium is designed on a targeted basis or to catch that audience, capture that audience in different moments. And we don't know the moment, which is why we have to, you know, create a multi-prong marketing strategy that touches various people and various markets and various moments, right, Nick?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Yeah, and I think the other part of that that people miss out on is there's a layering effect. So what happens is top of mind awareness comes from not just, oh, I've seen the ad before, but I've seen that that company, I've heard about them before. I don't know where, I just know I've heard about them. And so when you're hitting different things, right, and you're at a networking group and you're doing the the you know, this newspaper and that magazine and you know this this form of digital media, you're just getting that name and that simp, that logo recognizable. And so what happens is when people recognize it, now what happens is when they actually do enter into that buying cycle, they actually get to that point like, okay, it's time to you redo our floors, it's time to you know upgrade our commercial building, it's time to redo all our windows, whatever it is. They've they remember, oh wait, I've heard of this company before, let me check them out. That's what drives them to the website, that's what drives them to the Google searches, that's what drives them to the phone calls. It's not that they understand the products, they just have seen the name enough and they've attached that name to that kind of service, and now they go, wait, I need that service, I've heard of that company before, let me check them out. Now you still have more work to do from there. Doesn't mean you get the business, but that's part of that's the kind of step you're wearing right now.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Yeah, and and the multiple touch points, the frequency, positioning your name, your brand, your logo. I'm now in the buy cycle. I go to your website, I go to read Google reviews. Those are so powerful and so important because that's your conversion. That's how you're gonna take them from the research phase to now okay, I found my company, I found my guy, I found my product, I found my doctor, my dentist, I trust them. I trust them because of frequency. They must be good, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Yeah, I think it's a couple things. So when I think about the message, right? The message we're gonna give in the actual form of advertisement, it has to be clear. Nothing drives me crazier after spending all these years in the advertising world and business ownership than when a company tries to put too much stuff into their ad and they overwhelm it, people don't even understand what it is, or they just try to get cute, and instead of just helping people understand I clean teeth, or I take care of teeth, or a floor guy, or I do HVAC, or we provide commercial cleaning, whatever it is. We've they have to make the message clear. Then what you're talking about, the second part of it is once we've kind of garnered their attention, we've kind of caught their eye, then that's when you get into the Google reviews, what the website actually looks like, it becomes an where it goes from awareness into ooh, they actually have something that would help me as a consumer. It makes my life easier, it makes my life easier. That's all I care about, and I will spend money for that if my life becomes easier. And so I I would break that into two parts. Catching their eye is one thing, and then converting them into an actual viable customer is telling the story of this is kind of what we do, and we can help you.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Yeah, and and that leads us, you kind of insert it into that fourth end with that message. And I I I will caution, you know, with the use of AI nowadays, I do want to make mention that multiple states are actually monitoring various ads, both in the digital and print sense, that are not real, right? They're generated by AI. So you might have a person that has flawless skin and AI generated that for your med spa. Well, you can't use that. So depending on the state that you're in, uh, you might want to look up some uh some AI restrictions there in your your area.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

And there's gonna be more and more and more of that coming because as AI gets more advanced, not only is it a great tool for businesses, but it's also a tool for criminals. And it's a it's a tool for people that are trying to take advantage of scenarios. And so we have to be aware as business, there's probably a whole other topic we could have, but how do you protect yourself as an as a business owner? So you've got to be careful with all of this technology and using it properly, where it can come across as too slick and unrealistic. Um so there is something to be said about you know, just homegrown, you know, simple stuff that that just speaks to someone, it connects with them.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Yeah, and anytime you're trying to deliver your message through, you know, to your market through a specific medium at a particular moment, right, you've got to evaluate those three things when creating the message. Because the message, albeit needs to be pretty similar, pretty consistent, you should have brand guidelines with uh with your logo, font styles, color palette, but that message I always recommend simple, clean, bold, bright, modern, and pictures speak a thousand words, right? So if I'm that painting company and I want to target more, you know, kitchen, cabinet, you know, master bath, I'm gonna display a very beautiful, you know, maybe a before and after, or maybe just the after where I look at that as a homeowner and I say, I want my crappy kitchen to look like that, but I don't have the the budget to completely do a uh you know whole reno or to have new new custom cabinets installed. Well, I have the solution. I can take your crappy cabinets and I can resurface, I can repaint and give you that brand new look that you've always wanted in your budget, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, and I think the rule of thumb is if if you can't look at an advertisement and know within a second of what generally what they do, the ad is failing.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Because most people are gonna they don't read ads, they glance at them while they're doing other things, and then it there it goes through their brain, and then their brain basically says, hey, is this something that's relevant to me or not? And it kicks it into a yes or no category. And then if it is, they go, ooh, what's that? Uh but if it's not, because we're bombarded with advertisements everywhere you turn. Everywhere has media trying to catch your attention. And so our brains have now been figured been configured in a way that we just we see things in in in sound bites, very quick little snippets. So the advertisement has to change to be able to catch attention immediately. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

You have one to two seconds to capture their attention, whether it's in the digital campaign, whether it's in a print campaign. But you're right, Nick, we're being targeted over 3,000 times per day. That is a lot of noise coming at us. And so simple is better. Think about when you're on the uh on the internet and you get those display ads or those banner ads that pop up in front of you, right? Charles Schwab, looking to retire, invest with us. Of course I want to retire. Are you telling me that I should use you, Charles Schwab, if I want to retire? Yes, that resonates with me. Right? Domino's Pizza, hungry for a snack. We've got our new, you know, triple layer cheese with, you know, whatever, right? You gotta deliver that message and hope that that message resonates in that moment, right? Amazon. We see Amazon Prime popping up, especially in the digital world. But when it comes to print, as they're flipping the pages and and reflect yourself as a consumer, what do you do? What do you resignate with, right? What attracts your attention, right, and try to implement those strategies, mirror those strategies, but also research what are your competitors doing? We ever think about that, Nick?

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Yeah, I I think listen, any good business should be looking all the time at what everybody else is doing and and be able to be realistic and say, wow, that they're doing that really well. Maybe I should think about how do I incorporate that into my business, versus like, no, they're my competitors and I can't learn anything from them and I do stuff better than them. Sometimes you look at it just go, wow, they're killing this part, but we're really killing this part. If we can just take a little bit of what they're doing and implement that in, boy, that would be better. In fact, it reminds me, I had a conversation today with my son just finished up his lacrosse season, the all-star lacrosse season. And it was overall great experience. I didn't there was a couple of things I was a little concerned at the end of the season how some things were managed. So I got up the phone with the guy that oversees the whole thing. He was my son's high school coach. And you know, we're chatting, and hey, congrats on the new baby and that stuff. I said, Hey, I just wanted to bring a couple of things to your mind. Overall, great experience, but there was a couple of things that happened during it, you know, during this process that I think you might be aware of and made aware of. And it was interesting as we talked, and they've won multiple state championships. He goes, you know, the biggest change right now, this is our third year in the program. Jeremy said, I realized that I'm no longer in charge of the 50 or 60 kids on our team, but I now have you know f three or four hundred kids they're doing this with across multiple different school districts and towns. And he goes, Honestly, I'm really finding out that the culture that we built is not the culture that's everywhere else. And he goes, I when you're in the thick of it, you don't realize how good you have it until you start seeing these outside things, right? And I think when we look at our business, we can sometimes get blinded to the fact that there's other programs out there maybe that have great things that we could learn from. Yeah. And I think as these other schools start to realize, wow, the way they're doing it over at this school, that's why they've had these multiple state championships. There's a system in place, and that's what we're trying to help businesses do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

And the some of the best, most successful businesses in your industry, in our country, are master marketers. And they have just figured out their 4Ms. They figured out their market, their their choice of mediums and multiple, right? Not just one. We've touched on that. But the moment, right? Playing their message to that moment, right, to bring in that audience to capture their the the attention, to build a name, a reputation, and to build a brand. I want to wrap up, Nick, with a couple of action items or some next steps, you know, for our listeners who are some business owners. And I think number one is audit your data. And this is something that I think should be continuous. Whether it's an every 30-day uh or once a quarter audit, check your Google analytics and really see where your referral and where your traffic is coming from and originates from. Number two, and I think this is really good, Nick, interview your clients. Ask top five customers where they saw you, which app they use, which popular websites are they on. How often are you uh scrolling through Facebook or Instagram? What are some of your favorite TV shows, channels, right? Do you ever listen to the radio? Is it talk show radio? So really gauge where your top customers or clients are coming from. And then the last one, Nick, is optimize one channel. Repurpose an existing blog or post into native content for those top channels that that you're when you interview your clients, repurpose those to that targeted audience or demographic or the median. Any thoughts on that before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah, I I think especially number two, talking to your clients and asking them, hey, it not only what do you list to and those different things, but hey, what do you think of our art? Do you understand what our purpose is as a company? Right? If you're if your top customers can kind of get kick back to you what your motto is or what you're trying to focus on, then you know you're doing something right. But if they have no idea, then you kind of go, okay, we got to work on that, right? We've got to change that messaging. But I think listening to them, you can start to see patterns develop and that will help you with all this stuff, right? And in the world we live in with technology and everything at our fingertips, you have to understand how the system works. What does what does Meta and what does Google and what does LinkedIn and all the different platforms, what do they like, what do they not like? And then, like I said, take those things that you already have that they those those particular items like and just plug them into that. Yeah, I think it's really important.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

Really, really good stuff, Nick. This has been fun. I'm gonna leave our listeners with just a few resources, a couple of go-to books that if you want to take a deeper dive into some of what we're covering. There's there's one, Fix Your Business, a 90-day plan to get back your life and remove chaos from your business. And that's from Melinda Emerson. Uh, that's a great read. Now, Nick, there's classics like seven habits of highly effective people, right? How to win friends and influence people by Derrick uh Dale Carnegie. And how about this one? Good to great. Why some companies make the leap and others don't. So I wanted to just throw those out there. Any any other favorites that you want to throw in there? I'm putting you on the side.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

No, I I think those are great. A fun one is Gary V, uh, you know, kind of the jab jab jab right hook. You know, that that's kind of a fun one. He's got it very, he's very outgoing and and and bold. So there's so many different things out there, but I would agree some of those most fundamental basic ones. I was just rereading some, you know, I've got one right here that I was actually just working on this week. Zig Ziggler's Secrets to Closing Sales. And I read it many times and I started going back through it again, and I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I forgot about that. I used to use that all the time. So there's just so many of the things that are the classics. We always look for the new cutting age. Just do the basics well, promote your business and take it one step at a time.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Well, this has been fun. As always, Nick, it's great to see you. Thanks, listeners, for tuning in, and that's a wrap. Yep. Thanks for listening to the Your Brand, Your Backyard Podcast. I'm Jeremy Rentz. And I'm Nick Matheny. Be sure to like, follow, and subscribe. And tune into the next episode. More great content coming soon.