Making Your Marketing Effective
David Baer, The Prepared Group
David is a veteran direct response marketer who started his career selling classical music subscriptions online at the dawn of email marketing. Since then, his copy and strategic guidance have earned his employers and clients millions in sales.
Through his consulting work, David has served clients in industries ranging from Theater & Opera to Wine to Health & Wellness to Professional Services.
David hosts the podcast, More Perfect Marketing, where he discusses the importance of creating marketing systems to achieve consistent and predictable business growth.
David, along with his partner Ken Cook, runs the marketing strategy firm, The Prepared Group, which licenses a marketing strategy consulting process to marketing agencies and service providers.
Together they co-authored the book “Systematic Advisor Marketing: How Financial Advisors Can Strategically Attract, Convert, & Retain More Clients." In addition, David has authored two books on small business email marketing.
moreprefectmarketing.com
www.marlanasemenza.com
Audio : Ariza Music Productions
Transcription : Vision In Word
Marlana
David Baer of The Prepared Group is a veteran direct response marketer whose copy and strategic guidance have earned his employers and clients millions in sales. David has served clients in industries ranging from theater and opera to wine to health and wellness to professional services, is also an author and the host of the podcast More Perfect Marketing. Welcome, David!
David
Hello! Thanks so much for having me.
Marlana
So, first of all, define marketing for us, because I know sometimes there's a little confusion for people about what marketing exactly is.
David
Sure! I think there's a lot of definitions, the ones that I tend to gravitate toward. And it really depends on the situation that I'm in, the way that I'll describe it. But it's really the mechanism for helping somebody who needs a solution. It's the mechanism that you use to help them determine whether your solution is the right one for the issue that they're dealing with, the problem that they have, or the desire that they want to fulfill.
Marlana
Love it. Okay, so then how do we make our marketing more effective?
David
Okay, well, that is a big question. And I think part of the ways that I would answer that is really, to go beyond what we mean by more effective, what are we trying to ultimately accomplish in the business, and that might be more revenue, it might be a larger client base, it might be that we want to simplify the business that we have. And depending on the goals that we ultimately have for the business, that's going to define how we make it more effective. And the sad truth is that this is a part of marketing and the professional marketing world that often gets overlooked, even by those who are marketing professionals, and that's the challenge. So, I'm kind of on a mission to undo that and help people think a bit more strategically about what am I actually trying to accomplish with this marketing, so that there's less waste and more effective and efficient marketing?
Marlana
Yeah, because you know, you are the first person I've ever heard, say that to basically start with the end goal in mind, and it will affect everything else that you're doing, which baffles me, because that seems to be the most logical way to start.
David
It ought to be, but you know, we're in a society where we're looking often for quick answers. And I think that we've trained ourselves to look for a simpler solution. And what I've just proposed here, it's more involved, it's more complicated, and a lot of us don't have or don't want to have the bandwidth to do the necessary work to really figure out the types of things that are going to be most effective in their marketing.
Marlana
So, is the approach different if we are a solopreneur versus a small business versus a large company?
David
Oh, yeah, I would say to a certain extent that there's more complexity, the larger the organization, and there are exceptions, there are large organizations that do have a very simple structure, right? They deliver one thing, or there's very consistent process in place. But for the most part, yes, there is going to be more complexity, the larger you get, the more stakeholders that are involved, the wider the range of types of people you can serve.
I'm getting in the weeds here, but let me explain what we mean by this quickly. Most businesses have no business trying to market to everyone. I'm sure this is a concept that most of your listeners have heard at some point, right? If you're marketing to everyone, you're marketing to no one. What I mean by this is ultimately you want to be as specific and directed in the messaging in the specific solution, the specific problem you're trying to address. Let's take an industry, I've worked a lot in financial advisors, okay. You cannot easily speak to a brand-new married couple or a couple that is about to have their first child in the same way that you would speak to someone who is very close to retirement and hasn't made the necessary plans to, you know, live out their years and not have any money worries. And so, what I mean In by more complexity and marketing, it may be a simple business, but you may have more opportunities to speak to all of those different audiences. And because you have to speak to all of them differently, you may choose Okay, well, I'm going to start with one, and I'm going to get that up and running. And then I'm going to move on to the next and move on to the next move on to the next. That's no different, regardless of whether you are a solopreneur, or whether you are a large organization. Most businesses, regardless of size, however, fail at this.
Marlana
So let me ask you this, because it seems easier to carve out a niche or a target audience and things like that, if you are a business, per se, but let's say you are an artist, or something along those lines, where perhaps the problem you solve isn't as clear, or a musician whose and the problem you solve isn't as clear, how do you effectively market that kind of a service?
David
Okay, so if you're an artist, you're very much in the same boat as any business that is really trying to market to someone around fulfilling a desire rather than solving a problem. You might see this in the travel industry. Well, I used to be an arts marketer, right, I used to sell classical music subscriptions as a marketer. And, you know, I wasn't necessarily solving the problem of somebody's lack of access to performance, or to the beauty of the experience, right? What I was really marketing was about fulfilling the desire to improve oneself or to educate oneself or to, to create a new experience, right? So, there's a lot of personal development kind of psychology built into the types of marketing that artists might consider.
Marlana
Interesting!
David
And look, there's also a business involved here. Very often, you have to think about the mechanisms of the business. So is an artist marketing directly to the end consumer, or the marketing to the middleman, you know, in a gallery, for example. And so, there's some positioning that you have to think about as well, because you need to approach it as any other business approaches it, which are what is going to move me closer toward making that sale.
Marlana
Got it? So, I know you talk a because this is a lane that you travel very well. And I know you talk about effective copy in your marketing. So, what role does that play? And how do we make it more effective?
David
Well, I think there's a few things to think about. I was just talking about tapping into the psychology of the person you're trying to get in front of. And remember that at the beginning, you asked me about, you know, what is marketing? I said, it's the mechanism to connect the desire and what you have to offer? Well, we tend as consumers, when we're looking for something or when we know we have a problem, or we know that we have really the problems that we have, from a marketer's perspective. I would say they're more symptoms, right? We don't know that. You know, though, my trouble sleeping, right? isn't really that I can't sleep it's really that I have anxiety or it's, you know, that I drink too much too late in the evening, and I'm getting, you know, waking up all night because of that, right?
As the people who are selling the solution, we might know that, but we can't start there. In our discussion of, hey, I got a solution for you. If you want to, you know, help resolving your sleeping trouble. Well, just drink less take my course on how to you know, that's not what we do. Right? We need to think about where the person’s mind is at, at the moment in time where they're going to be willing to listen to what we have to say. And then we can move them from that point to where we inevitably want to introduce our opportunity or solution or service etc. copywriting is a key part of that and understanding a what they need to be hearing and be what you need to say in order to move them are, you know, mostly carried out through the mechanism of copywriting.
Marlana
Okay, because it seems like we may know what the solution is, but it's not the solution that people may believe that it is. So, you're need to take them on a little bit of a journey to get them to what the solution really is, is that correct?
David
So let me give you an example. In our business, we now train marketers to think differently to think strategically as opposed to tactically, right. So, somebody who might have been in the business of selling Search Engine Optimization, or Facebook advertising services, we now help them approach this by saying, Okay, do you really need to be doing search engine optimization, or Facebook ads, I may not end up serving you. But I'm going to now guide you through the process of thinking through where all the revenue opportunities are in your business, what the right way to connect, etcetera, might be. One of the things that we teach them about is this concept of symptom versus problem that I've just demonstrated a moment ago, but the story that we give them to relate to their clients, and we give them lots of examples, because this is a conversation every business owner needs to hear is okay. Imagine you have a headache. And you have two solutions that are that are, you know, put in front of you by experts, right? One solution is Oh, take this aspirin, it'll, you know, it'll help your headache go away. And the other one is, well, let's crack open your skull and do some brain surgery. Because clearly, you know, there's some problem in there now. One of them is right, one of them is probably wrong, right? But how likely is the person with the headache? To raise their hand, say, Oh, yes, crack my head open, please. Right? That may be the right answer. But it's not presented at the right moment in time for that person to reset receptively say, Yes, I'm ready to move forward with that. We need to inch them along until that presents itself as the right answer logically in their mind.
Marlana
So let me ask you, this is an effective approach to tackle their symptom and then lead them into the root of the problem. Because that, to me, is kind of what you just illustrated, okay, the headache is the symptom of something, but it may not be the root of the problem.
David
Yeah. So, we have another business that we are co-owners in, which is a marriage coaching business. And we do exactly that, in that business. Our partner who runs that really is focused on Well, we know that you're in a situation where you are, you know, a month or less away from divorce. And you really want to find a way to solve and save the marriage. And then what he presents behind the curtain, once they say, Yes, I desperately want to do this is something that is unexpected but makes a lot of sense to them. And it taps into an age-old principle in marketing, that I think is, you know, runs across the board. Again, no matter what size no matter what type of business, whether you are an artist, or whether you are selling widgets, it's that we buy on emotion. And then after we buy on emotion, we justify using logic,
Marlana
right? So, should we be thinking then in terms of funnels, per se, where the first thing that we put out from a marketing standpoint is addressing the symptom, but then we go through to the problem we really solve?
David
Yeah, and you know, you bring up the word funnels, and that's a word that I think has captured people's minds these days in terms of like, you know, going to a website, entering your name to get some free gift, and then you get moved through a process. And while the medium may be new is, that's the process that we've gone through for years, whether it's attracting somebody into a storefront, and then having a conversation that moves them in a certain direction or responding to an ad in a newspaper. That is really what you're describing when you're saying, Well, we start where they are, and then we move them to the next place that that is going to either help them determine Yes, this is for me. No, this isn't for me.
Marlana
I looked at some of your copy and things like that. And I know you talked about that there's three funnels that every business should have, what are those?
David
those are really all about what I was saying earlier, we need to figure out what we want to accomplish with our marketing. And invariably, many businesses are looking to a attract brand new customers into their business. And so that's funnel number one, we have a funnel that is intentionally designed to move somebody who is already a customer into a recurring customer, or some other sort of upgraded customer. And there's lots of different ways that that plays out, depending on the business. And then the third funnel is really about building mechanisms for referral. So, the most expensive investment in acquiring a customer is acquiring a brand-new customer, the least expensive for pretty much any business. The way to acquire customer is to get a referral or get a recommendation or an introduction from somebody who is already a customer of yours, who's a champion of yours. And they simply are asked, Hey, can you go find other people like you? And so those are the three distinct funnels that I think really almost any business could benefit from?
Marlana
Which one do you think is the most overlooked?
David
I think both. The second and the third are incredibly overlooked. The first one is the most obvious, and the one that everybody really focuses on, which is I need new people all the time, where's that, where's the next new person? And to a certain extent, businesses think that they have a process in place to orchestrate referrals to manage that. But in fact, most don't. And here's the evidence on that. Whenever, back in the days, when I was at networking events, you know, we would have lots of people say, Oh, I don't need marketing. And since when I was a marketing service provider, so they wanted an excuse to run away from me. I don't need marketing; my business runs on referrals. And so, my answer would be something along the lines of oh, that's great. So, tell me, how does your referral system work? And they would start telling me and, you know, usually it was something along the lines of Well, I do good work, and people appreciate that, and therefore they refer me. And then I would follow up with oh, so there's some form of, you know, sort of documented process that you and your staff go through to ensure that you get referrals? Is that correct? How does how does that work? No, no, but we're just good at it. And people refer us. Oh, so it's opportunistic. And then it's not consistent is what you're saying? Right. I think, where most businesses lie right now is they think that they have something in place to actually get those referrals, but they lack consistency in that lack process.
Marlana
Let me ask you this, when you are a solopreneur or an independent entrepreneur? How much do you believe should be automated in your process? And how much do you believe should be personal touch? In your process? What do you think either one helps your marketing, or your referrals more?
David
Yeah, I think if your business is built on personal relationship, that the personal relationship should always be at the forefront of the way that you're doing your marketing. However, that doesn't mean that it can't be aided or assisted by automation. Here's what I mean by that. You might have a system or a mechanism to follow up with people on a regular basis based on how long they have been in a relationship with you the first time that they bought from you or, you know, the first who knows if the first encounter that I had an anniversary of their first purchase from you, for example, right. And you're not going to be able to remember all of those things and put them all in a you know, a diary and stay on top of it. So, automation could help simply by having a database that tracks Okay, the first time they bought from me was, you know, November 13. And I want to reach out to them a month later, six months later, a year later. Let's send myself a reminder the day before, or let's put something automatically on my calendar. So, it's an activity that I am then going to absolutely engage in and So its automation supported, but manually fulfilled.
Marlana
Makes sense. Let's say, I am starting out in an industry brand new people don't know me from a campaign. What is the most effective way to start? Because I know people will say, oh, we'll just throw a bunch of ads on Facebook or do this or do that way? What's the most effective way? Really?
David
To start a little let's dive into a specific industry? And we'll try to walk through it. Because my answer ultimately is known who your audiences? Yeah. Okay. And, and that's a tricky one. That's a scary one. I was talking about this earlier in terms of well figure out the first one, and then you can move on to the second one. Well, what are what are the ways that you figure out the first one? Now, you've asked about artists and creatives. And, and so you know, one of the things that we want to think about in an industry like that is, alright, where is me? Where is my art ultimately going to end up? And where what sort of business do I want to be building here? Okay, it might be that I want to, you know, do something at scale, and have the ability to reach as many people as possible, right, that's a very different business from, I want to do every project, you know, has a bespoke creation that only one person is experiencing. And there's a certain type of individual who can afford that, who's going to appreciate that, etc, right. And so all simply by starting there, we've already narrowed it down in different directions that we then can get deeper and deeper into. But I think that that's the critical place to start. And by the way, you can get it wrong, and then start over, but doing the research that's necessary to figure out, alright, to whom am I going to be speaking? Who am I going to be putting myself in front of, I think is going to save so much time.
Marlana
Yeah, you know, and I hear several times in this conversation about niching down and knowing who you're speaking to, and it always baffles me to a degree. I mean, I understand that people are always afraid to leave money on the table somewhere or things like that. But it always baffles me why people find it so hard, when really, it's a business grower?
David
Oh, absolutely! And look, I've been using one example, which is all about the who the audience is. Now, there's a different way of approaching this, and it's, how am I going to position myself with my specialty? And then ultimately, that's going to appeal to a certain population, who may or may not have anything in common except their desire for that specific service or solution. Right. This is, to a certain degree, I think the business that you have is set up that way, right, you work with very different types of clients who might have different needs for your service. But the service is very, very clear. And what it's delivering in terms of, you know, it's not for everybody, in fact, it's not for most people, right.
Marlana
And also, to with the service that I deliver, the desire of the people that I'm delivering it for is all the same. So, it's knowing what their end goal is, like you've been saying and what their desire is, and fulfilling that. So, what are your top recommendations for any business that is looking to grow?
David
Well, again, I think that there's a lot about the end, you know, keeping the end in mind, starting with the end in mind, because, again, growth is a word that doesn't mean anything until you put a clear definition on where you want to get. And, you know, for some of the clients I've worked with over the years growth means Can I personally extract myself from the day to day activities in this business and delegate a lot of the stuff to other people, for other it's, I want to be able to afford to take that specific vacation, buy that second house, buy that boat, be able to pay for my kids college, right? And so, there's a very personal achievement that they want to be able to get out of the businesses proceeds. So, I think that that's really where you need to start. And frankly, most businesses, forget about that, and instead apply numbers to the answer. And numbers are going to be determined by identifying that thing first. So, if it's, you know, I'm doing a lot of work that I don't want to be doing in my business, because I want to focus just in this narrow area. And I need somebody else to come in, well, what are all the things that you don't want to be doing? And don't need to do but need to get done? Well identify those, and then let's put a price tag on what that's going to cost, right? And then we say, Okay, well, we need to be able to add this much to the bottom line on a recurring basis, how are we going to do that, that's ultimately the advice I would give is figure all that stuff out, because it's going to ultimately give you a much clearer path to what you need to do, and avoid wasting a lot of time and energy on stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with where you want to ultimately go into business.
Marlana
And let me ask you this, do we have to have social media marketing as part of our plan?
David
Do we have to have social media marketing? The answer is no. Is it appropriate for certain types of businesses who have certain goals? Yes. But we got to figure all the other stuff out before I could answer the question about whether it's appropriate for a given business.
Marlana
Right. And which just goes to show too, that just because it works for one person doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to work for you, even though they're promoting this course, or that course, or do this or do that. Because you have to determine, like you said, what your goals are, who you're speaking to all those kinds of things and work backwards,
David
we started this conversation talking about the fact that there's a sort of a misunderstanding about how to approach marketing. And I think to a certain degree, the marketing advertising industry is responsible for that, because the way that we buy and sell marketing is through, hey, take this course, it'll teach you this tactic, or somebody from a newspaper or radio station approaches you. And because that's the only thing that they sell is advertising on their particular channel. Right? They're convinced that that's the solution. What we don't typically have in the marketing world is a trusted adviser the way that we do in the legal world or in the financial world. And I think that, that if we simply approached our marketing, which is at the core of how we bring the financial stuff into the business in the first place, that we would really be thinking about it quite differently. And so, we need to sort of untrain ourselves around the focus on the tactic, and retrain ourselves to think, all right, what are we trying to achieve? And what's the strategy to get us from where we are now to where we want to be?
Marlana
And I'm just going to ask, because I'm gonna guess that you probably cover some of this on your podcast. So, tell us a little bit about your show.
David
Sure, the show is called More Perfect Marketing. And I do have a lot of things to say on the subject of strategy, systems, and marketing. And I invite guests onto the show, who are often tactical experts, but who incorporate a strategic approach to the way that they carry out their tactical activities in marketing.
Marlana
Wonderful, I have to check it out. So, with that, David, I just have four final questions for you.
David
Absolutely!
Marlana
Okay. What is the best piece of advice you're ever given?
David
This is advice that I heard from Brian Kurtz, who's mastermind I've been in for a couple of years now. And it's basically if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.
Marlana
Agreed! Share with us one thing on your bucket list.
David
Gosh, there are so many destinations in the world that I want to get to related to wine. I've been to most of the major wine growing regions in the world. But one that I absolutely want to get to at some point is the Canary Islands. Just off the coast of Morocco. It's a fascinating extreme wine growing region and unlike the typical vineyard that we think of when we think about Napa Valley or someplace like that. It's so windy there and so hot that each individual plant is in a crater, and it’s incredibly labor intensive to farm there and I've just been wanting to go there for a long, long time ever since I learned about it.
Marlana
Sounds fascinating! So, when the toy companies finally get around to making an action figure of you, what two accessories will it come with?
David
Well, I already revealed one which is it's going to be a wineglass or wine bottle. Wine is a big part of my life. And the other big part of my life is theater. And so, they'll probably be a playbill in my other hand,
Marlana
love it. And the last one, how do people find you?
David
Oh, well, that's easy. They can find me by using my name davidbaer.me.
Marlana
Perfect! Thank you so much, and thanks for being here.
David
Thanks. This has been a treat. Thanks for inviting me on.