Links Mentioned in Episode

• Kevin Dieny LinkedIn
• Relevant post on Reddit r/marketing

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Kevin Dieny: Hello, and welcome to the Close the Loop podcast. Today, we’re gonna be talking about the best marketing advice, according to Reddit, which is a social, sort of a online community network. Uh, it’s a website that is mostly crowdsourced user generated content or user sourced content. Basically what Reddit is.

[00:00:19] Kevin Dieny: If you haven’t heard of that, if you wanna know more about it and go to reddit.com and look up what is Reddit or, or see what’s on there. Um, a lot of times people haven’t heard of it. It might be like a generational thing, but, uh, it is one of my favorite websites. And on there in the marketing community, a user asks the question, what’s the best marketing advice you’ve ever received.

[00:00:40] Kevin Dieny: And a lot of people weighed in and this post got a lot of people sharing. Okay. Here’s a quote, here’s an adage. Here’s a thought, here’s an idea. Here’s something that I received that I found really helpful or impactful to help marketers or help businesses with marketing. So I was gonna, I decided to go through, this is a little bit of a different type of an episode to go through some of those things of.

[00:01:05] Kevin Dieny: Share them. They’re not, none of ’em are my advice, but I will talk about the advice. Maybe why, you know, there’s something to it. Maybe why there’s more that you need to understand about it. Add some context and just to focus this episode entirely on marketing advice for your business. So marketing, right.

[00:01:22] Kevin Dieny: What is that? Why do we care about marketing advice? Well, marketing has the potential to do a lot for a business, not just in generating leads, which is generally the conventional way it’s looked at or to, you know, put a commercial in the super bowl. Marketing can do so much around helping a business, reach its goals.

[00:01:41] Kevin Dieny: You know, what is your business goals? What are you trying to do with your business? Can marketing help. Most likely. So that’s what we’re gonna be talking about. The other thing about advice, right? Advice. Isn’t always helpful. so even though there could be a piece of advice, a marketing advice specifically isn’t gonna be is every piece of advice gonna be great for your business.

[00:02:01] Kevin Dieny: Doubtful some pieces of advice have to be used a certain way. It could be the opposite where, you know, if you don’t follow this piece of advice, there could be a chance that things go wrong. When marketing doesn’t go. What does it look like? Well, it looks like excessive spend wasted, spend wasted resources, get it gets in the way marketing processes that don’t do anything.

[00:02:20] Kevin Dieny: They don’t provide any value. They just waste time. People who feel like marketing has never worked or can never work. That’s sort of what happens when marketing doesn’t do a good job when marketing doesn’t do what it could be when it doesn’t fulfill its potential, everything could be. Could go sour, everything in business, everything in life, right.

[00:02:38] Kevin Dieny: Has a chance that, that there’s something that goes wrong with it. So in marketing, that’s usually what you’d expect to see. When we’re talking about Reddit again, this was a post that someone else posted, and this are other people who commented on it. I found it and thought, wow, this is interesting. It’d be kind of cool to talk about.

[00:02:54] Kevin Dieny: There’s also an underlying idea here, which is, is there value in you sharing your advice in communities or online or with others or in events or. You know, mentoring or helping. So the other thing I’d want to, and we’ll, we’ll get to this probably closer to the end, uh, mention is the value in sharing the value in providing advice, the value in listening to the advice of others, right?

[00:03:17] Kevin Dieny: There’s a lot of not just meek or humble ideas there, but there could be something valuable in, in it, for you in taking things that have been successful for you, or even taking your failures, taking anything that you’re trying to do and sharing it and having other people share their opinions. And obviously.

[00:03:34] Kevin Dieny: Every business is unique. So that’s one of the aspects of this episode we’re gonna really talk about and focus on is that advice is advice, but how does it apply to your business? How does it become a practical thing to help, you know, your business improve its marketing or its growth or its agenda or what you’re trying to do with your business?

[00:03:51] Kevin Dieny: So let’s dive right in. We’ll go with one of the one of the pieces, the very top. So Reddit is organized by ranking, right. So when someone says, ask the question, what’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever received. Someone could post and say, here it is. Well amidst, all those, you know, comments or, or posts that people are commenting on.

[00:04:15] Kevin Dieny: There has to be a way to know, well, which one is maybe the more popular ones, maybe which ones are more divisive, which ones happen more recently like date? So the default, I believe sorting system of Reddit is by rank, which is other people have voted that this. Submission, this comment is really good. So it goes up right.

[00:04:33] Kevin Dieny: And so it’s organized by how much other people like it. So it’s like a crowdsourced in a way, right? So someone posts, this was the number one highest ranked submission. In regards to that question of best advice. It says when your copy or brand speaks to everyone, it actually speaks to. So I’ll say that again, when you’re copy or brand, when you’re messaging, right.

[00:04:56] Kevin Dieny: When it speaks or tries to speak to everyone, it actually speaks to no one. So this is an interesting piece of advice, right? Because this has to do with how a brand, how a company, how your company positions itself. If you say, well, could my company sell to. Maybe, but you might be, you might say, well, you know, if I’m a roofing company, I really only can do service and sell to people who have roof.

[00:05:22] Kevin Dieny: So that again, narrows it down. You’re not really speaking to everyone. You’re speaking to people who have a roof. Now you might say, well, but not every person owns their roof, or it has the ability to do updates to their roof. So then you’re like narrowing it down even more. Okay. Well, what people can have their roof worked on when.

[00:05:39] Kevin Dieny: You get too generalized, too bland, too broad with your targeting. And they’re talking when they say like, when it speaks to everyone, um, when you try to talk to everyone and treat everyone, like they’re a potential customer, you ignore that someone maybe was a past client or past customer. When you ignore that this person had a rough time in the past, maybe they had a bad experience.

[00:06:00] Kevin Dieny: People want to be treated as uniquely as possible. When you treat someone like everyone else, it sort of devalues that Interac. So, this is probably one of the top rated advice because it’s something that is fundamental, right. So fundamental marketing tips or ideas in marketing that sort of are timeless that seem to persist across most industries.

[00:06:24] Kevin Dieny: Most businesses. Those are like the deepest sort of truss of marketing, like the, the fundamentals of marketing. And this might be close to a fundamental, and I would say probably why it was so upvoted or most ranked, you know, in the suggestions is because it is something that can apply to a lot of businesses.

[00:06:42] Kevin Dieny: And it is a very. Kind of concept that applies that is almost never not true that you wanna speak to people as personally, as you can, is an objective of marketing. Now, I think the most obvious other example of this is if you’ve ever been home during the day, Sick or whatever, watching TV and turned on.

[00:07:05] Kevin Dieny: You know, this is maybe back in the day TV and you found out, wow, there’s just lots of commercials for like wheelchairs and for the life alert devices and, um, for like a, a R P and all kinds of stuff like that. and, you know, when I was a kid, I’d watch that on TV and be like, man, staying home from school blows because there’s nothing good on TV to watch while you’re at home.

[00:07:27] Kevin Dieny: You know, now there’s Netflix and all kinds of stuff, but man, back in the day, you were stuck to whatever was on TV channels. And that’s because the marketing, you know, was taking sort of the statistically more often than not the people who are at home are probably older, probably retired people who are staying home, you know, during the day, all day, that’s probably the most people who are watching TV during the day.

[00:07:46] Kevin Dieny: So let’s. Since that’s the audience, let’s put these kinds of ads. Now, if you’ve ever seen an ad that doesn’t align with you at all, it can be annoying. It’s very annoying. It’s one of the reasons why marketing has the reputation of being so frustrating, you don’t wanna see ads that have nothing to do with what you want or what you don’t care about.

[00:08:03] Kevin Dieny: You just want to get, you know, ads are getting in the way of the content or whatever it is you want people really don’t like commercials between their shows because of the reason that it’s getting in the way of, you know, watching their. It becomes, you know, if they want to go to the restroom, they can just pause and go.

[00:08:19] Kevin Dieny: They don’t wanna have to be forced to take a, you know, two minute free minute or whatever it is, break to watch a bunch of ads. That’s why. Marketing at its best. Its possibly best is like a unique experience for every single person. Now that becomes impossible. And, and here’s why if you try to market specifically to each an individual person, it becomes insanely expensive.

[00:08:43] Kevin Dieny: Imagine that you’re about to send a bunch of postcards, right. And you’re like, well, I’m gonna send it to the, the most recent hundred customers that I had. Well, would you. Or create an ad individual copy an individual post mailer that talks about what that customer maybe purchased or bought talks about them talks about the experience you had with them mentioned something that they brought up, maybe it was a school or a movie or something that happened in a conversation with your team or with your, you know, Salesperson or with your rep or with your technician or with your staff, or if, if you’re a dentist and they came, they come in and your patients leave, you know, anything you talked about while they were in the chair.

[00:09:20] Kevin Dieny: Can you imagine putting that into each individual direct mail piece? That’d be insane. It would take forever take a long time. It would take a lot of your time and you’d say, well, is this worth it? At some point, personalization in marketing sort of has to back off a little bit, and it has to meet the business where it can afford to spend the resources.

[00:09:40] Kevin Dieny: Now a business that has almost no ability to spend any resources at all is gonna have probably a little bit more generalized type of marketing, a little bit more speak to everyone type, but you could still try to make it as specific as possible. Like I mentioned, with the roof, for example, , you know, someone doesn’t have the ability to do anything with their roof.

[00:09:57] Kevin Dieny: Probably not worth sending them if they don’t even have a roof. So I’ll be not worth sending them any marketing or doing any effort there. So you can try your best to try to put your marketing, your messaging, your best foot forward, but it has to kind of align with your customers. So that’s why I think this one is really good.

[00:10:14] Kevin Dieny: Now here’s the second one using pain points at a customer’s point of view, to understand their experience better. So I’ll say it again, using pain points in a customer’s point of view, to understand their experience better. So this gets at, you know, why do we care about what our customer’s experience is working with us?

[00:10:37] Kevin Dieny: What are they trying to solve for when we sell them something? So let’s pick an example, right? So let’s say that this, it is a summertime and this person’s air conditioning just went out and it’s. And they are just like, wow, this is unbearable. I have to fix this. I have to resolve this. I can’t wait. I can’t put this off for four, three or four months until the cooler weather comes.

[00:11:03] Kevin Dieny: I have to fix this. Now this is unbearable. This is something that this are words that maybe like the customer may be maybe experiencing. They may go, this is bad. I have to figure out if this could be fixed. I have, I don’t, I’m worried about the cost. Someone strange or different or someone I don’t know is gonna have to come to my house to check it.

[00:11:20] Kevin Dieny: You know, what’s that gonna be like? Are they gonna come when I’m available? When, when I’m at, do I have to take a day off work for this to happen? Uh, gosh, like, you know, do I, is this gonna be something where, you know, maybe my warranty covers this, there’s a lot of worries and concerns. Maybe do they take card?

[00:11:36] Kevin Dieny: Do they take a check? you know what I’m saying? There’s a lot that goes through a customer’s mind and that experience. And then that. Five minutes. It may be different than the next 10 minutes of their experience. Being able to understand, okay, what is the problem? Pain points are things that are, what is the customer or the patient, or the ideal prospect suffering through.

[00:11:55] Kevin Dieny: What’s like something that’s really painful for them and it, and yeah, it’s like the heat in this example and it’s discomfort, but it’s also cost uncertainty, confusion, fear, anxiety. All those things. So how is a business gonna take advantage of that? How are they gonna help those problems and solve them?

[00:12:14] Kevin Dieny: I’ve obviously even heard marketing described as all marketing is, is satisfying needs at the end of the. So like to a customer, that’s what it’s trying to do. So those are needs that need to be met. The better a business understands the pain and, and the experience of its customers. The better it can try to position itself to solve them, which is why I think this one at number two is very important or ranks up there.

[00:12:36] Kevin Dieny: Really high understanding. A customer’s point of view is helpful, especially when you craft marketing, you could say things. We position ourselves to help customers so that they don’t have to take the day off. Or we have very, we have lots of available, lots of availability at all different times of the day.

[00:12:52] Kevin Dieny: Some of the things that we can do allow for us to come and help you. With people who have mass and are protected and are secured and are background checked or, or there there’s lots of things a customer may have anxiety about. So you can consider mentioning those or positioning them. Now here’s the thing.

[00:13:09] Kevin Dieny: Most of these advices have a limit or have a, a point in them that becomes an issue. Let’s say you come up with a list of like all the things I just listed and there’s at least eight of them. Eight pain points right there. Should I put all eight solutions in one? Can I even fit all of those into a single ad and ad has to capture someone’s attention.

[00:13:29] Kevin Dieny: It’s what it, that’s what marketing or an ad, maybe a, a post direct mail, something that is positioned itself in front of a customer and customer visitor potential customer, right. Is all the messaging, all the visuals. So can you communicate all eight of those things succinctly without confusing them and still position yourself in the right way?

[00:13:48] Kevin Dieny: You may say here’s all the things we help with, but it doesn’t actually say what you actually. You know what I mean? Like, it’s very easy to take this too far. Maybe you focus on one or two of the top pain points or two or three, or, or the ones that best align with your business and focus on those. And so that’s what you become your reputation is that’s what you become really good at your unique, let’s say value.

[00:14:10] Kevin Dieny: Your unique proposition can come out of the types of things that, that your types of customers are dealing with. I’ve heard of dentists who. Their main marketing pitch is look, we use gas. Like we help people who have anxiety about the dentist. That’s the thing we do the. and anyone who has issues or anxiety with the dentist has fears about that can go, Hmm.

[00:14:31] Kevin Dieny: I’d rather go to a dentist like that. Maybe spend a little more than one that I’m terrified and, and worried that they’re gonna judge me or say something or, or when I see, you know, the tooth drill or scraper, I’m gonna freak out. Those are the types of things that really can set a business uniquely apart.

[00:14:48] Kevin Dieny: And that’s why I believe this one. Number two is pretty, pretty high up there and pretty important. All right. So here’s number three. Customers are now marketers customers who leave a review who like comment post, but tags shares, et cetera. They’re more like user generated content now. So there’s a little bit to this.

[00:15:10] Kevin Dieny: It sounds a little confusing, but here’s basically what I’m hearing here that customers generating content for a business could be considered the, the next wave of. That’s pretty important. Reviews are a really good example of this, right? If customers are leaving reviews and talking about your business, other customers will see that.

[00:15:30] Kevin Dieny: And that’s sort of like marketing other customers. Look at reviews more often than not, especially when they’re looking at a business. Well, how is this? How are other customers. Finding this business, what are, what experiences are other customers having with this business? You know, are, are they saying things that would scare me away?

[00:15:46] Kevin Dieny: Like for instance, some customers may be saying repeatedly, you know, they’re more expensive, but they’re worth it. They’re more expensive, but they’re worth it. But if you’re very, very price sensitive, you may say, whoa, you know, I just can’t. I have to take more risk. You know, I can’t, I can’t be all on quality.

[00:16:00] Kevin Dieny: I have to take a little more risk. And so I have a cheaper price, things like that happen. And they guide the customer in their research phases of deciding who’s gonna be the one they call or who’s the one that they give a chance to. You may see a couple reviews where it’s like this business is really hard to get a hold of.

[00:16:17] Kevin Dieny: And you say, you know what? I don’t care. I have lots of time. I’ll just call them over and over again. But if someone else may be like, look, I have just 10 minutes at lunch to call a business, get something booked. And then I go back. So I really need this to work. So that might scare them away. Right.

[00:16:30] Kevin Dieny: There’s lots of unique things like that. That can come from user generated content. You can ask people to. Leave a review. Great. You ask people for testimonials recorded video testimonials. You could take pictures of job sites, uh, pictures of, you know, your dental practice, pictures of your business, what you know, what your employees are doing.

[00:16:49] Kevin Dieny: Uh, your employees can share, you know, I love working here, this great experience. It helps you with hiring. There’s a lot of potential for, let’s say, a business to generate. On a different way than they’ve ever done before, which is considered user generated content. It’s very interesting. And it’s sort of daunting cuz you’re like, well, how do I how do I get a, a customer to, you know, get on video?

[00:17:12] Kevin Dieny: How do I ask them for a review? How do I do any of this? And that’s pretty daunting. Honestly, it’s, it’s tough. It’s also, you know, you’re like, well, does my plumbing company have to now be sort of like a production company? Do we need to have cameras and video? And I need to train everyone to take pictures and ask permission so I can, you know, posts on social media or post out there here’s, you know, a successful job done or put it on my websites, like some recent projects or how do I prove to people that I am, what I say I am, which is a lot of times what content’s all.

[00:17:44] Kevin Dieny: And that’s, that’s difficult to get to. So that’s one about this, like yes, user generate. Content’s amazing. Is every business able to pull that out of their pocket every single time? Is it really that easy to get? Yes and no. Right. Like some businesses have a great reputation and, and have a good relationship with their customers.

[00:18:02] Kevin Dieny: And it’s not so bad. So that one is so powerful, but also ha can be very difficult. And when it’s like, well, maybe just once a year is enough. I don’t know, you know, the, the wave of user generated content. It seems to be that it’s satisfying the needs of consumers who are researching and the more the merrier.

[00:18:21] Kevin Dieny: Right. The more reviews they see the more responses to reviews. They see the more videos, testimonials, images, experiences shared. The more sort of raw experiences that they’re seeing are really leading to consumers being like, this is, this is so much better than a business that doesn’t do it at all, or doesn’t do it as much and it helps ’em stand out.

[00:18:42] Kevin Dieny: So how important is it to stand out? You know, that’s the difference? More customers and less higher quality customers and less quality customers typically. So it could be very impactful for marketing. All right. So now we’ve gone through three. Okay. So now I want to touch on. You know, there’s something about, I haven’t mentioned, which this was advice posted by random people on the internet, into this question on Reddit and other people.

[00:19:10] Kevin Dieny: Again, random people, again, voted that some of these suggestions and pieces of advice up to the top. So if you think about it, Can we really trust any of the things, any of the advice from random strangers on the internet? Right? It sounds a little bit sketchy. , here’s the thing, right? Whenever I’m going through anything, any piece of advice I’m trying to help you understand my take on it, but it’s also really important.

[00:19:33] Kevin Dieny: You have your opinion on it and what you think advice from other people, whether you trust it or not sort of like. A trust limitation you that you may have. Is it possible you can learn something that you didn’t know before from someone totally random on the internet. Sure. But the world, the internet, especially is just over stuffed with advice.

[00:19:53] Kevin Dieny: So how do we figure out whether the advice is important, worthwhile, helpful, right? Not just gonna waste our time. Like I’ve, um, something happens a lot of times when, um, companies go to an. Or they read a book or tend a webinar, right? They go, they hear something new and interesting, and it’s in this great environment.

[00:20:11] Kevin Dieny: And everyone’s like, yeah, this is amazing. This is helpful. Like, this advice is fantastic. This will help me transform my business. And then they come back, they come back into their business, they walk in and they maybe share that with their team or they think about it a little bit. And then they, they kind of feel like maybe it’s not as good as I thought it was, you know, or six months down the road, they look back and go, why didn’t I.

[00:20:31] Kevin Dieny: No, why didn’t I do anything with that advice? It seems so helpful. And so good. Why didn’t I apply it? why didn’t I do anything with this advice? It’s because advice. It’s sometimes really hard to apply. It’s also, you know, some things just help us feel better. Some things are not our advice that we hear and just sort of confirms our confirms, like exactly what we were thinking, what we thought.

[00:20:54] Kevin Dieny: So it’s like, yeah, this is great. I feel better because it just confirmed what I already knew. so. That’s why advice can be sort of difficult and hard to weed out and, and really, really valuable or good advice. You have to take it and go, how does this really apply to my business? How could this change my day to day?

[00:21:10] Kevin Dieny: Right? My week to week. Month to month, can this even help me improve my goals? What’s the cost to get this going? What are the requirements they may say, follow these five steps and your business will double in, in, you know, in a year and you go, oh, wow. Double. That sounds great. But you look at the steps and the requirements are just things that you can’t do.

[00:21:27] Kevin Dieny: You can’t have, you just can’t put into practice. So that’s sort of how we should be evaluating advice as. And I think how a business can sort through some of the craziness, there’s a ton of books on business, right? , there’s a lot of events, a lot of, um, speakers, influencers, people out there that can guide your business in the right directions.

[00:21:46] Kevin Dieny: But how do you really figure out what’s great from what’s just mediocre. That is very difficult to do. So with that, we’ll kind of go right into the next one. Number four, new customer acquisition is the goal. So think of retention as a way of paying for. I’ll read that again, new customer acquisition is the goal.

[00:22:08] Kevin Dieny: Then think of retention as a way of paying for it. So this is sort of similar to that. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, uh, idea that keeping a customer is a lot cheaper and a lot more valuable than trying to find new customers co so retention is holding onto the customers. You’ve already worked hard to.

[00:22:32] Kevin Dieny: Right. So the goal is oftentimes let’s get new business in here. Let’s get more new revenue, more, you know, sometimes a bus, a customer doesn’t need your services again for a while. So let’s get more nuance. That’s that’s a lot of times probably the most common goal in a business in, in its use of marketing is in finding the filling its new revenue.

[00:22:54] Kevin Dieny: New customer stream, new acquisition, right? How do you get new acquisition of anything in your business? So that’s, that is often the goal. So, but what you do with those customers you acquire, or what you do with the leads, you get, what you do with the opportunities you have, you know, you work so hard and spend so much to get this person on the phone or get this person to set an appointment with you or get this person in your office or, you know, or get this project paid for.

[00:23:21] Kevin Dieny: And you’re finally there. And then. What, what happens does the ball drop and that could be so much worse cuz you have to total up all the resources spend up to that point, right? Maybe this person was a customer in the past and they come back and you treat them like they’re just totally different and new again, that could, that’s a lost opportunity right there.

[00:23:43] Kevin Dieny: And so. Focusing. I, I, it almost sounds to me like this, one’s focusing on segmenting segmentation now for marketing purposes, segmentation is when you take groups of your consumers, prospects, clients, anything you separate them into more homogenous, very similar groups. Like all the clients, all the prospects, all the leads everything’s separated, right?

[00:24:04] Kevin Dieny: Maybe clients that, uh, had six months ago, clients that you just finished a project last month, and you may have maybe messaging, marketing, something designed for that specific. And so each group you make, you’ve decided I’m gonna message them or have a unique messaging, positioning something for that group.

[00:24:21] Kevin Dieny: You know, like maybe this group is for these types of products and this group is for that type of product. So that’s what segmentation is. So this one is all about, you know, this, this one, when you know, new acquisition is your goal. So new would be new leads, new business, something like that, maybe selling a new product.

[00:24:35] Kevin Dieny: If that’s the goal. Also, it’s equally important to wonder, not only how are you gonna get them to that goal, but what are you gonna do with them after you’ve done? Are you gonna turn them into repeat customers, stuff like that. That is also very important. And probably why this one has voted so much is that if you just focus on one segment, right.

[00:24:52] Kevin Dieny: And ignore all others, you kind of do so at your payroll. So that’s fascinating. And that’s also a very common marketing foundational concept. I’ve heard that a lot. So that’s a good one. Number five in most online businesses. Attributing revenue based on last click is like allocating sales to the left and right doors of your shop.

[00:25:16] Kevin Dieny: okay. I’ll say this one again. Cause some, I wanna make sure you understand what it is. Some of these are like more than a sentence in most online businesses. So online businesses, attributing revenue based on last click is like allocating sales to the left and right doors of your. . So this is a little bit more of a complex one.

[00:25:35] Kevin Dieny: So let me, let me just break it down for you. What it’s trying to say is if you are attributing revenue back to like a channel or a campaign, if you’re saying this campaign drove this revenue, anytime you say this thing did that, right? Cause and effect, let’s say this ad that we ran two weeks ago is what led to this sale today.

[00:25:56] Kevin Dieny: What it’s saying is if you look at just the last thing the consumer customer did, then you’re misattributing it. You’re doing it wrong. So let’s say you ran this, you ran an ad a month ago, and then you ran an ad a different ad two weeks ago. And then you ran another ad today. And let’s say from the ad today, you got a couple signups and you thought, wow, the ad we ran today is so good.

[00:26:18] Kevin Dieny: So great. right. But it could be, this person saw the. A month ago, clicked on the ad two weeks ago, clicked on the ad again today, but converted today, right? So that’s the miss and mix and problem and issues all wrapped up in attribution. So one of marketing’s greatest struggles, one of its most difficult and hardest to solve problems in all of marketing is being able to say.

[00:26:48] Kevin Dieny: I put a dollar in here and I got three, five, $10 out over there. That’s it that’s like the hardest thing to do because it’s because consumer behavior is so crazy. Is it the direct mail piece that you sent to their home? The thing that really caused them to want to do business with you. Right. That’s always very difficult.

[00:27:07] Kevin Dieny: Some people think, well, none of the marketing is having really an influence, so I don’t do marketing at all, but that’s also not true. Right. It’s very, very well studied. Scientifically proven that there’s a saturation effect that marketing does have an influence. In fact, it can be great. There’s a lot of robust research and insights into the in fact, an influence of marketing and it’s, and it’s high.

[00:27:32] Kevin Dieny: It, it impacts people’s E every aspect of people’s lives. There is a lot of opportunity in marketing to influence a business, and it, it can be tr it can be traumatic. So the funny thing about this one, right last click is, is making, is allocating sales to the left and right doors of a business, because, you know, it could be the ad they saw.

[00:27:52] Kevin Dieny: And then their friend told them about it. They looked online, saw the good reviews were like, okay, now I’m willing to go down to the business. So all those things have had influence. They get to the business and they go through the doors and someone’s at the doors. It’s like, aha. The doors are . The, the doors is what got them in.

[00:28:06] Kevin Dieny: Right. Um, that’s why it’s, it’s making it kind of a funny joke about it and also describing how silly it is to say that the last thing someone did is the entirety of all the impact and influence marketing has had on that. Right. That’s equally silly but it’s a little more complex, cuz it requires some understanding which hopefully you have now about why last click attribution can be silly.

[00:28:31] Kevin Dieny: Now it’s still important. It’s sort of like, uh, something that’s interesting to know. But it’s not the end all be all, you know, in terms of like, if you pour, if you have a hundred dollars and the last thing someone did is come to the doors, just be like, wow, I’m just gonna make my doors really fancy instead of spending money on the ads and everything else that brought them to the doors.

[00:28:51] Kevin Dieny: I’m just gonna spend all my money on the doors. Cuz that’s the last thing they did. So you have really fancy doors in your shop, right? That’s why it’s, it’s a sort of a metaphor of attribution and taking in considering things incorrectly, by the way, last. Is the terminology for when you take the last thing that someone did in attribution, in a marketing touch or influence and give the allocation of, you know, this is what caused that this, this door is what caused the revenue, right?

[00:29:19] Kevin Dieny: There’s other models like first click what’s the first thing they did. There’s other things like let’s give value to all the things they did. There’s lots of different types of modeling for that. And that’s why it’s one of the struggles of marketing. And one of the things that is most difficult to solve.

[00:29:34] Kevin Dieny: Every by default everything’s last click because it’s, it’s very clear. Here’s the last thing, you know, you saw, if someone come through the doors, you’re a hundred percent sure they did that. So that’s why it’s, it’s generally the default attribution model, cuz it’s accurate. Right. We can see that they did that.

[00:29:50] Kevin Dieny: We may not be able to see all the things they did before because of privacy and other issues. And we don’t know, and we may ask ’em what, you know, when they come in the store, well, what brought you here today? And they go, I Don. They forgot or they don’t wanna tell you, you know, , you know, if you ask someone on the phone, how did you find us or hear about us?

[00:30:06] Kevin Dieny: Like they, this is gonna say something or say, I don’t know, you know, like most often they, they’re not gonna remember everything they did. So it’s very unreliable in terms of things to, in terms of the entire marketing mix to associate that. Um, so anyways, that’s why that one is very interesting and probably why it’s a reminder why that one is, you know, voted.

[00:30:24] Kevin Dieny: Fairly high hundreds of people voted on these types of things. So why people thought this is a good thing that everyone should know. Let’s stop for a second again and go, okay. So far, is there anything that could be applied to your business? Or what you do, you know, or, or consider like, how is, is there any similarity to anything so far, any piece of advice that you’ve heard that you’re like, that’s pretty good.

[00:30:47] Kevin Dieny: Or maybe it’s something you’re like, that’s garbage that has nothing to do with me at all. So that that’s really important. Be. Be thinking about like how this applies to you. And then the next thing is, there’s a question I’d have, right. Is it good for a business or someone let’s say someone’s about to start a new business to be really dependent on the advice of other people?

[00:31:08] Kevin Dieny: Like if they just start a new business, they’ve never done that before. They don’t know all the mistakes that they’re going to make. You know, like if they were to say fast forward me, 30 years, you know, that wiser. Older experienced version of themselves, of their business is gonna know what has a lot of learnings and failures and successes throughout the time.

[00:31:26] Kevin Dieny: Right. And also there’s just a different timeframe. Someone who started a business 10 years ago, you know, is gonna ha had different struggles than, than med business that starts out today. So how dependent should we be on advice? Right people. Some I know of people who soak up everything, they take all the advice to the full extent they possibly can all the time.

[00:31:48] Kevin Dieny: And there’s a problem with that. Some advice doesn’t make sense anymore. It has to be applied to this business and does it, it has to be applied to this situation. Can it be. Another area of issue is someone who ignores all advice. someone who’s like, I’m just gonna figure it all out on my own. I’m not gonna take any advice from anyone else.

[00:32:05] Kevin Dieny: I’m just gonna figure this out. I’m tough enough. I’m strong enough. I can handle it. And there is an issue with that as well, because there is value in wisdom and experience some other people. It, it varies and you have to be able to just. Dilute down or filtered down. Okay. Here is the gems in what I’m hearing, you might read an entire book on how to run a business and only take out a couple things and go, you know, I got a few things out of this and I think that that’s perfectly fine.

[00:32:29] Kevin Dieny: So the idea that we want to be not entirely dependent, but still have, you know, leave the doors open, like still stay humble and meek and, and keep the door open for, to learn something because we don’t know everything. That’s what this is all about. I don’t know everything at all. , I’m sharing my opinion on some of these things to tell you, like, you know, this is how I’m seeing it, but there’s lots of very interesting things that can come out of sharing, uh, advice that you have with other people that may go, you may say here’s an experience I had and they go, this is great.

[00:32:59] Kevin Dieny: And you talked about this and that, but you know, while you were saying that this other thing popped into my head and it has nothing to do with what you said, but it’s gonna help me. You’re like, well, that’s great. , I’m glad it helped you, even though it has nothing to do with what I said, you know, things like that happen, so, okay.

[00:33:12] Kevin Dieny: We’ll go to the next one. This one’s about content content without reach is like building cathedrals in the desert. Again, content without reach is like building cathedrals in the desert. I love how some of things are written. This is great. Okay. So content right. Is blog posts, videos, uh, web website pages, website articles, a webpage that helps people with a calculator.

[00:33:41] Kevin Dieny: Let’s say like, figure out how much, you know, something’s gonna cost a tutorial. You may post on social media. That’s content. So content but making content, but without reach right, is like building cathedrals in the desert. So what’s reach. That’s reach is describing the people, the eyes, those visitors, those targeted people that you want to read it to consume the content.

[00:34:06] Kevin Dieny: It’s sort of like another way of describing this one is like baking all this great food without anyone. To experience it or taste. It is like throwing all the food that you’ve made right into the trash. That’s kind of what it’s saying now. There’s still value in making content. So it’s not entirely true here.

[00:34:24] Kevin Dieny: It, it’s just making the distinction that if you don’t have a purpose for the content that you’re producing to reach people. To be able to put this content you’ve made in front of people. That’s a problem. So whenever you make content, you’ve got to have a plan and how this is gonna reach the people you want to, to reach you.

[00:34:40] Kevin Dieny: Don’t just go, wow, we’re gonna make the best video ever, but then never publish it. So anyone can actually see it, right. Just stays in a flash driver on your computer. That’s a waste that’s wasted. So that’s building a cathedral in the desert. Like you may have this amazing palace, but no one will ever be there or go there.

[00:34:54] Kevin Dieny: Cause no one can, no one, no one even knows that it’s. So content without some spend or without efforts to help that content reach the right people is waste. And the most common place that this shows up right is, is from experiences in the field that come back into marketing. So for instance, let me, lemme explain this someone.

[00:35:18] Kevin Dieny: Who works in the field, maybe a sales person, maybe someone who’s a project manager, a coordinator, someone who deals directly with the customer or whatever, they may go out, talk to, or have an experience with them and go, man, this customer said, it’d be really helpful if we had this, you know, we had a video showing them how to do this.

[00:35:35] Kevin Dieny: And so they come back and tell marketing, yeah, let’s make this and marketing makes it and says, here you go. Now, anytime someone says, you know, do you have a tutorial on how to make this? You can share it with. Well, what sometimes happen is they don’t remember. They have the video, you know, they forget about it and, or they don’t get asked about it for a long time.

[00:35:52] Kevin Dieny: And then the video literally goes nowhere. Uh, you look at what happens on a lot of calls to your business. And it may say, you know, I was looking on your website, but I didn’t see any pricing. I don’t know how much things cost and you go, Hmm, let’s put this on the website or let’s put this let’s, let’s give a link to the people on the phone so that they can share this.

[00:36:08] Kevin Dieny: And then what happens is those people forget about the link or don’t know where it is or , it never gets shared, or it never gets found, or the pages aren’t easy to find. And so the page gets, you spend all this time and resource to make the content, and then it goes nowhere. You know, in marketing it’s it just feels terrible to put time and resources research to get everyone approved on checking everything off, you know, and making sure this thing looks good.

[00:36:33] Kevin Dieny: It’s on brand. It’s gonna be helpful. You put a lot of time into this and then, uh, no one, no one sees it. No one knows anything that’s going on with it. It’s a complete bust. So that happens way more than it. Unfortunately. So if it was me, I’d put this one a lot higher um, this one was really good. Probably one of my favorite, you know, content without reach is like building cathedrals in the desert.

[00:36:58] Kevin Dieny: Probably one of my favorite pieces of advice, especially for, for companies who are wanting to, to make more content, but really haven’t thought through, well, how are we gonna get eyeballs on this content? Right. all right. Next allocating marketing budgets between channels hiring staff, buying stock are all about taking risks with cash.

[00:37:17] Kevin Dieny: Learning how to mitigate risk. As you grow will tell you how to proceed. So why is this one marketing piece of advice? Read it again. It’s kinda long allocating marketing budgets between channels hiring staff. Buying stock are all about taking risks with cash market. Like, it’s all about taking risks with cash, to some extent.

[00:37:34] Kevin Dieny: So learning how to mitigate risk as you grow will tell you how to proceed. Here’s my take on this one. It’s saying that marketing right is a risk. There’s some risk in marketing. You could be spending that money elsewhere. So why would you spend it in marketing? Well, cause marketing has the potential to take a dollar today and give you four, five, $1,000 from that single dollar.

[00:37:55] Kevin Dieny: You know, maybe not tomorrow, but down the road. So it’s an investment, right? So risk reward is basically the, the adage for investment. So the higher, the risk, generally the higher the reward, but in marketing, it’s not always exactly the way it is as a business investment of its capital into marketing.

[00:38:13] Kevin Dieny: It’s hoping for. Right. as much as it can hope as many as well as it can hire the best people, the best agency, the best support, you know, put its best resources and processes and capabilities into marketing. It’s hoping that every dollar and every bit of resource it puts in there, that the processes will turn into a tremendous multiplier of value at the.

[00:38:35] Kevin Dieny: So that the return on their investment will be substantial. Cause otherwise they could have just taken that money and invested it somewhere. You know, it’s like, oh, I could put this money into place for 10%. So you think about it? You’re like, well, if I could put it over here for 10%, then from marketing, I need at least.

[00:38:48] Kevin Dieny: Let’s say 11 or 12 or 14%, you know, depending on the type of risk it is or the type of return that is possible there. So those are just economical things. It’s probably more suited toward the owners and business owners than anyone else. Cuz it’s trying to convince them to just put some capital, some cash toward marketing than to put it somewhere else now.

[00:39:09] Kevin Dieny: That’s not just marketing that has to apply to every department, right? Every department has to be considered whether it’s ROIs and there are profit centers, which are things like marketing, where you put money in and it’s expected that the money you put in will grow. And there are also things that are set up like cost centers.

[00:39:25] Kevin Dieny: A cost center in a business is anywhere you put money in and you don’t expect any money to come back, but it’s like an essential operational cost. Sometimes I I’ve heard accounting is, is viewed this way, right? The business has to be able to collect cash, you know, receive it and make payments and then be able to deposit it.

[00:39:40] Kevin Dieny: And someone needs to keep track of that. And their goal is not to, you know, somehow swindle it into much more money, you know, like in a legal sense there. Expected to just do that function operationally. And there’s nothing tied to their, you know, take this dollar from the customer and print two out of it.

[00:39:57] Kevin Dieny: It doesn’t work like that. It’s just keeping things accurate and accounting for them. And that’s why that that department is oftentimes looked at as like a cost center, but an essential, right. That’s usually what cost centers are. They’re essential. Otherwise, why would you have, why would you even do it if it’s just a dump, if it’s just, you know, money is.

[00:40:13] Kevin Dieny: Literally poured into fire. So that’s not what’s happening. Uh, in a cost center, profit centers are ideal the way to set up departments, not everything can be set up that way. The actual goal of that department, the key performance, the measurements, everything around that department is set up to be profitable.

[00:40:29] Kevin Dieny: The dollar in, you know, you spend it on, you have to total up your labor costs, operational costs of that department. Everything, you know, the total investment in has to be less than the return from them. That’s a profit center. That’s what it’s trying to say here, I believe is that marketing has to be looked at as an investment and as a profit center, there’s a lot of risk there.

[00:40:49] Kevin Dieny: Yes. That’s not be, it’s not kid ourselves, but there’s a lot of potential return, except especially when people who, you know, you employ people who know what they’re doing, and there’s a lot of like intelligence, capital, or wisdom or experience capital a lot. Like, like the advice here, there’s a lot of value in people with experience coming in and being able to help your business grow.

[00:41:09] Kevin Dieny: Next one, it’s a quote. And I like this one. Quote, the second you try to sell something. You’re doing it wrong. Close quote. I’ll read again. Quote, the second you try to sell something. You’re doing it wrong. Close quote. this is a very good, almost like something you’d put on, on a post-it note on your computer.

[00:41:31] Kevin Dieny: Whenever you’re about to write anything, don’t make everything in that you say a sale. Before someone’s willing to buy, they have to see the value and the other thing they have to. So have you ever heard of no, like trust, right. So they have to know that there’s value. They have to like who you are and they ultimately have to trust that the risk or that the return that there’s some confidence in achieving whatever it is with, with what they’re buying from you.

[00:41:55] Kevin Dieny: Right. So if they’re buying. DEC clog of their pipes. Right. Do they know that you can do that for them? That there’s value in that? Yes, because their, their drain is probably clogged. And do they see that you have the equipment and that you’re, you’re capable and you’ve been around for a while? Yes. Do they like you?

[00:42:11] Kevin Dieny: Maybe not yet, but they want to, right. They hope that, you know, the experience you provide is helpful as courteous kind is, is. Give them the assurance that, okay, this people know they’re not just scamming me. , you know, they’re not just like running a drain clog scam or something. And then trust is what comes at the end of the day.

[00:42:31] Kevin Dieny: Sometimes after they’ve purchased and they say, okay, yeah, these guys did. Do what I asked them to do in the way that I wanted and expected. And so that’s why a lot of times a business comes down to like providing its value first in the sales later. And it’s a, it’s a positioning, you know, if you say, buy this versus here’s how this helps you.

[00:42:49] Kevin Dieny: It’s a very different, you expect a different reaction you’ve ever been sold to hard. You know, that it’s kind of an uncomfortable situation. You feel like you’re being. Right. There’s peer pressure or that there’s like, you feel like you’re a idiot. If they don’t do what they say or you don’t feel cool if you’re not wearing the latest thing or there’s lots of weird ways that sales makes it stamp in a negative way.

[00:43:12] Kevin Dieny: Now it could be very positive. Generally sales is in a positive way. The best way I’ve heard sales described is we’re helping people. That’s it. That’s what sales is. . So how do you help people? Well, you understand their needs, their problems, their struggles, and then you help them. Right. And, uh, as a sales for any company, you only have a few options to help them, but if they’ve come to you or for, you know, if there’s anything, any opportunity there, you can sniff it out without it coming across.

[00:43:40] Kevin Dieny: Like you’re just there to, you know, dig in their wallet and get out. . That’s why I like this. Okay. Um, an expensive an because of time. I’m just gonna quick, like name a few more because these ones are getting down to the less ranked ones and just say a few things and then we’ll kind of close out. So next one is follow up.

[00:44:02] Kevin Dieny: That’s gold without following up. Even the customers may forget that they need something from. Very important to follow up, right? A one touch, one call, any kind of single interaction close is very likely in, in very possible in a lot of businesses. But if you follow up, if you retarget, if you remarket, if you, you know, have follow up calls, follow up interactions, the chances of you getting that business goes up a lot.

[00:44:25] Kevin Dieny: Brian dice from digital marketer has a quote that says the company that spends the most to acquire the customer win. If you think about that, you know, oh crap. I don’t wanna spend the most, but when you win the customer, you win it and other people lose it. So there’s value in that. Right. So following up is very.

[00:44:43] Kevin Dieny: Next talk to your customers. Next one, which even goes along with it, you are not your customer. So talk to your customers. You’re not your customer getting to know your customer and their pain points. Like we mentioned earlier. That’s why these things tie in is very, very helpful. And if they say something, sometimes a customer will say something you’re like, I’m gonna use that quote on the website.

[00:45:04] Kevin Dieny: or I’m gonna put that in the video, or that’s really powerful. I bet I’ve heard that before. You know, things like that. Customer research. Very hard to get sometimes and, and feels difficult. But again, just like we mentioned earlier, there’s value. Um, I like this one. You can persuade your customer to the degree.

[00:45:22] Kevin Dieny: You understand them? I’ll say it again. You can persuade your customer to the degree that you understand them. So persuading a customer is valuable, right? you want them to take an action? There’s something you want them to do. So how do you persuade them to do that? But you do that best and you understand them better and where they’re at in that moment.

[00:45:38] Kevin Dieny: That’s what helps you. And that’s very valuable for marketing. Obviously it’s a crystal. Marketing’s not a crystal ball. There’s no silver bullet. There’s nothing here. That’s gonna. A hundred extra your business, just in and of itself, it has to apply to your business and you won’t know everything. So you have to, you know, yes, you wanna be exactly and know exactly where your customers are at, but you’re not going to.

[00:45:58] Kevin Dieny: You’re gonna know maybe. Right? So you do your best. That’s that’s a lot of what marketing is, is trying testing, applying over and over again. So I love this one, blame, anything that goes wrong on seasonality , uh, blame the problem on something else, right? Anything that goes wrong in marketing? Just blame it on something.

[00:46:18] Kevin Dieny: That’s uh, unhelpful, right? When you don’t know when you don’t have the feedback or the knowledge of what really happened, maybe a seasonality was the cause um, but it’s also possible that, you know, there’s other things that went wrong. So just leave it at that last I’ll just say this is the last one. All right.

[00:46:35] Kevin Dieny: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. And I think this is a good one to end on because marketing, when, when you try to do everything in marketing perfectly, you’re wasting time. Don’t do. Right. The only time I can possibly see that making sense is like a super bowl ad. You have one chance to get it right.

[00:46:55] Kevin Dieny: And so in that sense, it’s gotta be done really, really perfectly get one chance. But a lot of times a business can deploy and ad a social post something, and then say, okay, maybe this worked and maybe this didn’t, let’s try something else. Or let’s deploy an EB test or let’s, let’s just ask people what they think of this before we run it.

[00:47:15] Kevin Dieny: Things like that is how marketing really should be done. If you put a ton of resources, designing something without testing at first, it could go wrong. Okay. so just test something, simply just put the bones together and get it out there. Just get things out, get things made, get things going, and then you have the opportunity to learn from them.

[00:47:31] Kevin Dieny: And then all of a sudden, you, you arrive at a really near perfect version of their marketing and you can. And then after that you take your learnings and apply them in another thing. Go forward. That’s how it’s done. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. So that’s a very good one to end on again, advice from other people who we don’t know, complete strangers post it on Reddit.

[00:47:52] Kevin Dieny: So that’s where I got this. If you’re curious about Reddit, you should go check it out, go look it up, go see what it is. A lot of these are tactics, so they have to fit into the complete business. Marketing plan that you have in and of themselves. They’re probably not that amazing, but some of the things that I mentioned today in the marketing advice could be very helpful for a business where that does align, if it can align.

[00:48:11] Kevin Dieny: So really figure out when and where you can apply any piece of this advice to your business. And you’ll be better off, or maybe as a marketer, you know, maybe some of this, all of this you’ve heard before. So I’d say to all. If you have advice, if there’s something you’d really, really like to share something you find, you know, here’s a piece of marketing advice or business advice that I’ve heard that’s really helped me.

[00:48:32] Kevin Dieny: I really encourage you to share it. Put a video together, maybe go comment on, on this somewhere. Anything you can do to, to take any information, knowledge and share it, cuz it’s so valuable in sharing it that other people can benefit from it. And that it helps you. Because we don’t know everything. Right.

[00:48:51] Kevin Dieny: So let’s keep pushing forward and keep trying things. Thank you for listening to the close loop podcast. I’m your host, Kevin Dieny and I hope you stay tuned for next time, thank you, bye.