Jonathan:
The question is, what are the absolute worst types of marketing? What should I not be doing? I’m gonna give you three, kind of off the top of my mind.
The first would be, have you ever had that experience where you get a business card on your door and so someone literally made the effort to walk through the street, put a business card on your door, and it’s the size of a business card? It has the company name, their name, and a phone number. Some incredibly minute number of those will work, but the majority will not. It’s not … There’s not enough space to tell your story, to tell why you’re different, why the prospects should care about using your company. There’s no information that you could communicate on that small piece of paper.
My suggestion would be … I think it’s one of the worst examples of marketing in that you make all this effort to go put it on all these doors. You have to walk the streets. Spend just a teeny bit more money, like two cents more per marketing piece and you can have a whole postcard, brochure, marketing piece that goes on the door that’s got color and copy and tells a story and the benefit, what’s in it for the client, why you’re different, all the things, the questions in our mind, it answers those things.
The business card, to me, is one of the absolute worst things to do. Good for you if you do that. Great, but spend the extra two or three or four cents per piece, which is the cheap part of marketing. The labor to get the marketing out or the ads, that’s … the spend on the ads, that’s the more expensive part. The print is cheap. Tell your story. Write good copy. Invest in quality printing. Invest in some amount of color. Invest in good card stock, because the labor you’re spending to get those little business cards on doors is significant. Get something better on the door. That’s number one.
Number two, referrals. Referrals are awesome, but seriously, how many companies say, “I grow my business through referrals?” I’ll tell you what that means. That means we’re growing really, really freaking slow. If … It’s like, “Great.” 10 years from now you’re gonna wake up with a cool business. 20 years from now you’ll have an interesting business. You should grow by referrals. I’m not knocking referrals, but I have to put it on the list as one of the worst forms of marketing because it’s generally the only form of marketing. Frankly, referrals is pretty close to the best kind of marketing.
The problem is, if that’s your only type of marketing, then your competitors are gonna railroad you. They’re gonna run all over you. You’re gonna be this big and they’re gonna be that big if they’re doing other forms of marketing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking referrals. That is some of the most effective kinds of marketing or types of marketing. It’s phenomenal. If you’re getting lots of referrals, kudos to you. That means your customer service and your quality are above average. They’re great, but it’s too slow. Even if you knock it out of the park, you’re hitting home runs every day with quality and customer service, your referrals are too slow.
You … I love to think about this analogy. There’s this line. You start in business on day one and you’re growing, growing, growing. There’s a … There’s somewhere on that path of … it’s called burnout for you. You’re mentally exhausted, physically exhausted. There’s a burnout phase. You’re looking for escape velocity or something like that where you grow the company before you ever hit that line of burnout.
The majority of everyone in the business just … their line of growth crosses somewhere over the burnout line. They experience it and then they never get big. They never grow ’cause they’re burned out. How can you be an awesome leader, how can you be the guy to your company, how can you be the coach, the mentor, when you’re past burnout phase? You can’t. You gotta grow the company fast enough that your growth never intersects with burnout. Generally, to me, if you’re saying, “We grow through referrals,” well, that means you’re gonna cross right through the burnout phase. It’s too slow. You gotta be doing all the other stuff, Facebook, pay-per-click, SEO, print, door hangers, maybe postcards, all kinds of other stuff. That’s why I put referrals on the list even though it’s a kick … it’s great … it’s a really, really, really good form of marketing, but it’s just one of eight forms of marketing that you should be doing.
The last one I put on the list is copying your competition. It’s how I started. I didn’t know anything. I was clueless. All I knew to do was look at what the competition was doing. Everything I did where I copied the competition sucked, didn’t work, failed, made me think marketing doesn’t work, made me think the industry sucks, makes … made me think that I could never build a business that I wanted to build. Then, when I modeled other people and other industries that were phenomenal marketers and I applied their concepts and everything I was learning from them to this industry, then we excelled. As a result, we ended up becoming one of the bigger companies in the industry. It was because I didn’t copy the market.
I’d encourage you not to copy the market. I’d encourage you to, of course, watch my videos. I’d encourage you to watch really proficient marketers. I would encourage you to say, “Who is actually doing it versus just teaching?” The vast majority of everybody is doing nothing more than reading books and reciting information on YouTube or reading books and chart … and becomes a guru that sells you their consulting services. Who’s in the game? Who’s in the middle of building big companies right now? Who’s building five, 10, 20, 30, 40 million dollar companies? That’s who you wanna hang out with. That’s who you wanna emulate. Some dude that wrote … read a book and then wrote a book or read a book and then charges $2,000 a day to do consulting, great.
Are they gonna get you where you wanna go? Some guy that did it 40 years ago and is now consulting, do they know what’s going on in the world now? No. Look for people that have built big companies, that … don’t be scared of somebody that built a big company and then they had trials and tribulations and it failed or it didn’t go right or they didn’t achieve all their dreams. They’re almost the best people to talk to. Who is in the game today? Or who has been in the game in recent history that went through all forms of hell, built a big business, maybe even failed? It doesn’t matter ’cause those are the people you wanna hang out with.
Somebody just writing books, somebody just regurgitating information, I could go watch 20 YouTube videos, I could read 30 books and then I could copy all their stuff and turn it into a webpage and sell you stuff. That’s not the way to go. Most of the … I deviated a little bit from this copying the industry concept, but copying the industry, you’re just basically copying a lot of people that don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re all … They just … It’s not working. Maybe eight percent of the companies in the US are over a million dollars a year. The odds are, you’re copying some dude that can’t even get his business past a million dollars a year. Is that who you wanna take advice from? Then the next level from there is, half the consultants don’t know what they’re talking about because they haven’t been in the game for 20 years. Or, they have never been in the game. Who’s been in the game? Go listen to those people. They’re gonna cost you more money. Who cares? They’re gonna get you where you wanna go 10 times faster. Those are the things I’d think about.
Number one is the little business card sucks. Go bigger. It only costs a few cents. Then, the next one is referrals, awesome, the greatest way to grow your company. If you’re getting tons of referrals, that means you’re a stud. Good for you, but it’s too slow. You gotta do more. Number three is just paying attention to what everybody else is doing, copying what they’re doing, and the stats and the math says everybody else doesn’t know what they’re doing so you’re copying all the wrong people. Go find the best of the best, the best experts, the guys and the gals that are in the game, they’re running their thing or recently ran their thing and are teaching how to build it or talking about how to build it. Copy them. They know what’s going on and they’re current. That’s my advice. Good luck.
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