Transcripts
Hi, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, Kevin Dieny, and today we're going to talk about
Speaker:strategies of unscalable marketing.
Speaker:I guess I should say, I'm going to be talking about it.
Speaker:So when we're talking about an unscalable marketing plan and unscalable marketing
Speaker:strategies, we're often talking about the opposite most of the time, right?
Speaker:We're we're usually talking about scalable marketing strategies.
Speaker:And by that we mean, if we throw some more money at it, right.
Speaker:If we can prove that the ad is working when we budget, I don't know,
Speaker:$50 a day, a hundred dollars a day.
Speaker:What happens if we were to double that budget or triple that budget or 10 X or
Speaker:a 100 X that budget, by increasing the scale and the magnitude of that ad, are
Speaker:we still going to see the same results?
Speaker:And that's what we're usually talking about when we say scalable marketing.
Speaker:Because we want to create marketing that scales, because that way we initially
Speaker:start out a campaign spending a low amount of money with lower risk, right.
Speaker:Investments, risk.
Speaker:And then over time we've proven, okay.
Speaker:If we increase the budget, we're getting more or an increased amount,
Speaker:maybe a slightly diminished amount.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, if we can incur, if we can spend the
Speaker:most amount of money we have to get the highest ROI possible.
Speaker:That's what we'd like to do.
Speaker:I mean, just sitting on the money, we could use cash in other ways,
Speaker:but it may not have the same return.
Speaker:It may not lead to growth for the business.
Speaker:So today we're talking about all about growth, but how is it going to come from
Speaker:marketing strategies that are unscalable?
Speaker:Scalable marketing is generally done by a process, a repeatable process
Speaker:that can be done without a person getting in the way as the bottleneck.
Speaker:When you can flip on a switch and suddenly spend two or three times more
Speaker:and you haven't done anything, right.
Speaker:Like I just changed the budget number, and all of a sudden the ad went from
Speaker:spending 10 a day to 100 a day, so it's scaled and I haven't had to do
Speaker:much, other than adjust the budget.
Speaker:That's what we're, that's scalable.
Speaker:So what is this unscalable business?
Speaker:What are we talking about?
Speaker:So unscalable, means something about it requires a person, requires manual,
Speaker:requires the process itself may have elements of it that are repeatable
Speaker:or that are mechanical or automated.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, it's still functionally moving
Speaker:along because it's manual.
Speaker:So the most a person could possibly do, right.
Speaker:You could think about it like, well, how many phone calls could
Speaker:a person possibly taking a day?
Speaker:Well, it might be close to like a couple hundred or something like that maximum.
Speaker:There's not someone who is able to answer 10 phones at once, right.
Speaker:It doesn't exist.
Speaker:There's a natural limit there and it's pretty low when we're talking about what
Speaker:people can do, how people can perform.
Speaker:Now, there are extraordinary staff.
Speaker:There's extraordinary people out there.
Speaker:Just like we have the Olympics that can do things that no one else can do.
Speaker:And in some sense, they might be better than the automated process,
Speaker:uh, at doing and executing things.
Speaker:But humans are still, are still subject to risk, to flaws, to errors,
Speaker:especially with repeatable tasks.
Speaker:There's problems, that's why a lot of times the assembly lines at
Speaker:companies may start out with people.
Speaker:But over time as the company grows, they may shift from someone who screws on the
Speaker:caps to a robot that screws on the caps.
Speaker:Because it can go all day, all the time, all night all the time, and people can't.
Speaker:So unscalable is the stuff that people have to do.
Speaker:And let's say that there's quadrants.
Speaker:So they're scalable on one end and like a Punnett square.
Speaker:On one side, it's how scalable it is.
Speaker:And on the other dimension, it's how repeatable it is, okay?
Speaker:So a scalable and repeatable campaign is what most marketing is all about.
Speaker:I would say 80%, 90% of marketing probably falls into marketers
Speaker:wanting to be able to find something that works and then crank it up.
Speaker:So that it performs at an extraordinary level.
Speaker:Even when you spend more, it's making 5 X or 10 X its ROI.
Speaker:That's usually the dream, the goal, the ideal.
Speaker:Now, scalable, but not repeatable.
Speaker:It is sort of like the conundrum.
Speaker:I think some people have debated whether this even exists.
Speaker:So it, it probably does.
Speaker:And by that, I mean, it's an opportunity for an entrepreneur, right?
Speaker:So something that's scalable, but not repeatable is something where
Speaker:maybe a tool hasn't been invented quite yet, because it hasn't been
Speaker:able to make it repeatable, right.
Speaker:It hasn't been able to make it so that it can perform that
Speaker:function, every single time.
Speaker:Because maybe there's a time constraint, seasonal limit.
Speaker:I don't want to get too complicated in this, but basically scalable
Speaker:and repeatable go hand in hand.
Speaker:And so you want that and then there's the unscalable side.
Speaker:Okay, so an unscalable and repeatable strategy is something that still requires
Speaker:a person to do, but it's something they could do over and over and over again.
Speaker:So like taking phone calls.
Speaker:That is a good example where someone's sitting there and doing
Speaker:the same kind of activity, but it still requires a human to do it.
Speaker:So we're talking unscalable requires the human to do it and
Speaker:repeatable like the phone call.
Speaker:Now, unscalable and not repeatable that would be obviously problematic.
Speaker:So we want to stay away from, again, you want to stay away from the
Speaker:non repeatable stuff in marketing, because anything that you can't
Speaker:repeat, it's once and done and gone.
Speaker:Now there are campaigns, there are things like that where it's like, Hey, look, I
Speaker:only have one chance to get this right.
Speaker:Has to be perfect from the beginning, but generally that's not quite marketing.
Speaker:That's more like a perfectionist.
Speaker:That's more like striving for perfection and it leaves no room for testing.
Speaker:It leaves no room for experimentation.
Speaker:And leaves little room for feedback, and for learning.
Speaker:You kind of just throwing it up in the air and hoping you get it right.
Speaker:So that is not really marketing.
Speaker:Marketing is less about taking those extreme hopeful chances and more
Speaker:about iterative learning over time, experimentation, testing stuff.
Speaker:Anyone can just throw something up in the air, right.
Speaker:I can flip coins.
Speaker:So we in marketing in your business, you've gotta be after
Speaker:things that are repeatable.
Speaker:So this episode's all about the repeatable stuff, but still done by people.
Speaker:Now why, why are unscalable marketing activities typically ignored?
Speaker:Yeah, they can't be scaled, but they tend to be costly.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Hire someone to, you know, pick up the phone, costly.
Speaker:To hire someone, to write letters to every client, new customers, costly.
Speaker:And so businesses jump in and outsource that kind of stuff, but it's still a cost.
Speaker:And so sometimes at the end of the day, it's like, is this worth it?
Speaker:So a lot of unscalable marketing activities just aren't worth it,
Speaker:because we're generally after a pretty solid return on the stuff
Speaker:that we want to do in marketing.
Speaker:And if we get too heavy in unscalable stuff, then we may grow to a
Speaker:point, but then we're not able to, to grow at a scalable level.
Speaker:So there's got to be, I think, is my opinion, a mixture of the
Speaker:unscalable with the scalable strategies that you're running.
Speaker:So I think we should be very picky about the unscalable stuff we're doing and the
Speaker:activities we're doing, because that is more costly, therefore it has to work.
Speaker:We need it to be repeatable because we want to see if maybe
Speaker:we can tune this to make it work.
Speaker:Very few marketing strategies work right off, right off the bat, right.
Speaker:You turn on the campaign, an ad or anything, something
Speaker:you're going to learn, okay.
Speaker:We've got negative keywords to add.
Speaker:We've got to trim down this audience.
Speaker:We've got to change this ad, the copy.
Speaker:Something's not working.
Speaker:And that's how it works.
Speaker:Every time you do it, you've got to try and test something else to
Speaker:see if it's going to get better.
Speaker:Their campaigns that we all run should hopefully, over time, be
Speaker:improved, you know, one bit at a time.
Speaker:In email you may think, well, maybe the sending time is off.
Speaker:Maybe the list isn't as clean as it should be.
Speaker:Maybe I'm not segmenting my emails as well.
Speaker:Now, what does an unscalable activity feel like?
Speaker:This is a really good question, right?
Speaker:Cause it, it obviously it's done by a person, but generally an
Speaker:unscalable activity feels like, man, if I just had more hours of the day
Speaker:more time in the day than I would, I would spend it doing X, Y, and Z.
Speaker:What is X, Y, Z, right?
Speaker:What alternatives are there?
Speaker:What are you forced to do manually?
Speaker:And you can't just hang it up on an automated solution.
Speaker:Now sometimes like business may be like, look, I'm tired of doing this.
Speaker:I'm just going to outsource that.
Speaker:That's still keeping it unscalable, it's just outsourcing that.
Speaker:And maybe your time is more valuable than, what they cost.
Speaker:So you're just like an operating cost at that point.
Speaker:So another thing is unscalable activities, can be dialed down by
Speaker:performing the activity less, and dialed up by performing the activity more.
Speaker:A person doing it more.
Speaker:And the 'repeatable-ness' of it is that.
Speaker:It's important to really get specific here.
Speaker:Answering a phone call, the phone calls, never going to go the same every time
Speaker:we've talked about this, how different every call is after the first 30 seconds.
Speaker:So the first 30 seconds, maybe a very, very, um, repeated, nuanced script.
Speaker:But then after that, there's going to be conversational pivots and
Speaker:turns that, take that conversation, you know, any which way.
Speaker:It's not that the call itself is repeatable after 30 seconds.
Speaker:It's not, because you're not going to say the same things,
Speaker:but what is repeatable, right.
Speaker:Are, there's probably not going to be more than, let's say 10 or 15 objections
Speaker:to any businesses, products and services.
Speaker:It's probably a pretty slim list.
Speaker:Like obviously price is going to be an objection for every single
Speaker:service unless you're offering free services or something.
Speaker:But still there, there still may not be a cost of price.
Speaker:It may be a cost of time.
Speaker:So cost or price or something is always an objection, always.
Speaker:So while, answering that may not come at the same position in the call may
Speaker:not come at the same time in every call.
Speaker:A question would not be asked the same way, and you may not want to
Speaker:answer the same way, the basics are.
Speaker:There's an objection of cost in our business.
Speaker:How are we handling that?
Speaker:That is still repeatable.
Speaker:You can still rehearse that.
Speaker:Get that down to the point where you're like, I know how to answer this.
Speaker:No matter how it comes at me.
Speaker:Now, it's become a repeatable part of my unscalable answering phone calls.
Speaker:So that's why it's still really important to know how this stuff is broken down.
Speaker:So there's lots of ways that anything can be broken down into
Speaker:just repeatable blocks of processes.
Speaker:and specifically in a phone call.
Speaker:So how does marketing, how does the marketing strategy influence that, right.
Speaker:So the things that come up a lot in calls can be, if we see that through
Speaker:scoring, it may be an interesting pivot for marketing to be like, well, Hmm.
Speaker:What if we answer that question in the ad?
Speaker:What if we put that on the landing page?
Speaker:What if that's one of the blurbs that's on the landing page?
Speaker:So, instead of having to ask that, cause obviously that's on the caller's mind.
Speaker:Now the marketing has positioned itself so that these callers have a better
Speaker:chance of having known the answer.
Speaker:Now, if you splash every ad and every marketing message with the
Speaker:15 objections, you're going to have no room for anything else.
Speaker:There's lots of ways to influence the unscalable side because
Speaker:the unscalable side is going to be smaller numbers, right?
Speaker:If someone's only taking a hundred calls in a day, every missing
Speaker:one call is 1% of the calls.
Speaker:Of the hundred calls, 50% turn into appointments, missing
Speaker:one could mean an appointment.
Speaker:Missing one could then mean losing a customer.
Speaker:You know, that's big, that's a big deal.
Speaker:So if marketing can influence the calls, the callers, the
Speaker:quality of that coming in.
Speaker:Especially before it hits up against an unscalable activity, then
Speaker:marketing's doing a huge favor to them because they're not wasting time
Speaker:on bad calls or things like that.
Speaker:Now evergreen is a great term used for content, that is scalable.
Speaker:So let's say you make a video, webinars, or something, but it's really only going
Speaker:to be valuable to people for a few weeks.
Speaker:Think of like a sports game.
Speaker:Everyone wants to watch that sports game live, right.
Speaker:Very few people are, are going to want to hold off from seeing the big game
Speaker:until two weeks, three weeks later.
Speaker:People who watch something way after the fact that it's aired in
Speaker:sports is very, very low numbers.
Speaker:So why is that?
Speaker:That's because everyone wants to experience it live together.
Speaker:They don't want to, you know, not know if they're big fans, so people
Speaker:don't care about sports, but if you are a big sports fan, generally,
Speaker:you love watching the sports live.
Speaker:So evergreen is making content designed for anyone to watch it at any time and
Speaker:still get a lot of value out of it.
Speaker:Like who would want to watch something that's recorded six months ago?
Speaker:Well, there's certain types of content people would want to watch like that.
Speaker:Like TV shows, movies, people watch them decades after they
Speaker:originally aired because the content itself is still relevant to them.
Speaker:Making videos is oftentimes unscalable because it's costly and have to be edited.
Speaker:A lot of human editing going on there.
Speaker:A lot of times the first videos you make you're like, these gotta be evergreen.
Speaker:Meaning that they're going to always deliver relevance and value, even
Speaker:if I use this video six months from now or a year from now.
Speaker:Cause you may say, oh gosh, I don't want to be making a new video every week
Speaker:or every month or something like that.
Speaker:It's, it's costly.
Speaker:So in the content world, evergreen is considered the
Speaker:scalable side of content, right?
Speaker:In live, one time, real-time content, you can only consume at one time
Speaker:or at the time that it aires is definitely the unscalable side.
Speaker:But that doesn't necessarily mean that evergreen content is the only
Speaker:way to drive demand or drive value for a business to drive growth.
Speaker:There's plenty of one-off, one-time, launch only like, look at, look at sports.
Speaker:It's a huge market entirely around unscalable, right.
Speaker:They had every camera angle possible.
Speaker:Every, you know, they have tons of people talking about it.
Speaker:Everything's going on.
Speaker:Everything's all about the moment.
Speaker:And so when you think about how can my marketing content add a
Speaker:splash of unscalable or how can it not a splash of scalable.
Speaker:For the scalable think, evergreen.
Speaker:For the unscalable think, well, how can I make this so valuable
Speaker:and so relevant, so important for someone to watch this right now.
Speaker:When they do right now, that that has got to answer that question, right?
Speaker:It might be something where it's like, look, I'm going to
Speaker:offer this Black Friday deal.
Speaker:This is a one-time thing for another year.
Speaker:Not going to see it.
Speaker:It's going to go off one time for a limited period of time.
Speaker:And you may devote a lot of resources to making your marketing, your ads, anything
Speaker:like that, to capture the interest that's around that seasonal point in time where
Speaker:everyone's like thinking, thinking about what am I going to get for Christmas?
Speaker:So that's kind of how you identify the activities that are scalable
Speaker:and unscalable in your own business too, is, is every, is everything
Speaker:I'm doing evergreen, right?
Speaker:Am I just throwing a website out there and redoing it in three years?
Speaker:Am I just posting social media?
Speaker:Just because I'm told to.
Speaker:What stuff is really driving value?
Speaker:And you're only going to know that if you have a good feedback loop, you have good
Speaker:attribution campaign, you know, recording, monitoring, stuff like that to tell you.
Speaker:And if you can separate what activities are unscalable from those that
Speaker:are scalable, it would be probably pretty fascinating for you to see.
Speaker:Wow, hm, whenever I do something like a live video or a webinar or wherever I
Speaker:post something that just happened today, or I take a picture of the job site or,
Speaker:you know, a holiday party or something.
Speaker:That there's some good interaction, there.
Speaker:There's some good engagement there and get people engaging and talking.
Speaker:And whenever I run a special offer thing, that's the only time people
Speaker:come in or, you know, you can probably take a look and see how your
Speaker:unscalable and currently scalable activities are working, performing.
Speaker:So, and that's also kind of how you evaluate right, how
Speaker:much influence they're having.
Speaker:When it's, when there's a human part of the process, you do need.
Speaker:Evaluate the cost of that as well.
Speaker:I mean, it may have greater influence, but it did cost more.
Speaker:So at the end of the day, you're not just, you can't just measure things by
Speaker:their, you know, front end performance.
Speaker:You have to put something on the other side of the scale in terms of cost.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I got all that.
Speaker:I got the great stuff out of it, but gosh, it cost me a lot of money.
Speaker:Like I went to this local event.
Speaker:And I put up a booth and I got to talk to a lot of people.
Speaker:I got four customers out of it.
Speaker:It was fantastic.
Speaker:The booth didn't cost me anything, but it did cost me like a whole day.
Speaker:I did have to go buy a table and I did have to print out some flyers.
Speaker:And if you had total light up, it's like, My cost per lead there, it
Speaker:was actually pretty high or maybe it was pretty low, I don't know.
Speaker:Maybe it did fantastic, but events in person stuff, very unscalable.
Speaker:And it has to be, there has to be a way that you evaluate every
Speaker:activity in your business to see how well it's performing for you.
Speaker:Now as an entrepreneur, you're just like, look my own time, and going to events,
Speaker:or self promotion doing live stuff.
Speaker:There's a cost, but I have to do it because I need to get, right.
Speaker:But as the business grows becomes very important to start looking at.
Speaker:Hm.
Speaker:How much of my stuff is unscalable?
Speaker:The way I grew in the past to get here may not help me keep growing from here.
Speaker:I may need more scalable campaigns, more scalable stuff.
Speaker:I may need more specialized education, more people, more consulting.
Speaker:I mean, uh, an agency, I don't know, whatever you need to then
Speaker:at that point scale, the business is going to be very important.
Speaker:The next big part of this episode that I want to talk about is
Speaker:something that I've done a talk on.
Speaker:Talk at conference on, and I spoke on this and that's intimacy.
Speaker:So, which do you think is a more intimate, a more engaging experience?
Speaker:Okay, so you get to our website and our chat box pops up and says, Hey, would you
Speaker:like to book time or set an appointment so that we can landscape your yard, or
Speaker:you get to a website and someone named Jen says hi, I see you're looking at,
Speaker:you know, our landscaping services.
Speaker:If you have any questions, please let me know, I'm here.
Speaker:You know, I'm actually right here.
Speaker:If you want to talk to me.
Speaker:So let's take a pause here.
Speaker:They're both getting the same information.
Speaker:They're both funneling you down toward an appointment, something like that.
Speaker:Something toward whatever you're after.
Speaker:Now, the bot is just going to be like, Hey, look, I have one purpose, right?
Speaker:My purpose is to get a sale and appointment booked.
Speaker:And if you go through that process, to the bottom it's like, yeah, I did it.
Speaker:I got an appointment, but the goal of the person may be different.
Speaker:Now with the Jen side, they're asking you what your problem
Speaker:is, what your questions are.
Speaker:You could type in anything you want.
Speaker:Jen's going to interpret it and understand what it is, the bots,
Speaker:not going to be able to perfectly understand what your problem is.
Speaker:So that's why the bot has like more guided experience.
Speaker:And on the Jen side, the person's side, you're really able to
Speaker:communicate what's happening.
Speaker:What's going on.
Speaker:The same thing happens with a phone call, phone call, hey, if you're
Speaker:here for sales, press one and IVR right here for support, press two.
Speaker:If you're here, you know, if you want to talk to somebody else, press
Speaker:zero or reception or whatever it is.
Speaker:That IVR that's think of that like the robot experience,
Speaker:that's the scalable side.
Speaker:And that is not intimate at all.
Speaker:That is, it's one of those things you're like, let me just get through this fast.
Speaker:I can't, um, it's not the most rewarding customer type experience generally.
Speaker:So we don't want to, obviously, if you have a conversation with someone who's
Speaker:rude or whatever, probably prefer the robot, but when generally speaking.
Speaker:Someone whose job is to answer the phones is going to be doing that
Speaker:because they're providing an experience for the customer, who's calling.
Speaker:That can't be matched by a robot.
Speaker:We wouldn't want it to work that way, right.
Speaker:They want the first interaction, like the first touch with that customer the
Speaker:first real, real time, intimate touch with that customer to be a lot more real.
Speaker:And that the value of that intimacy, the closer you are to the real time being in
Speaker:right in front of a customer, the better.
Speaker:If every customer had to show up in your store, in your place
Speaker:of business to talk to you.
Speaker:A lot less would, but the experience would be, it would be a lot more telling
Speaker:about how serious they are, how committed they are, how interested they are.
Speaker:How committed they are.
Speaker:How willing they are to, to buy, to spend, to work with you.
Speaker:But that's a pretty big deal.
Speaker:That's how it used to work back in the day before phone calls and everything.
Speaker:Maybe they would write letters.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Anyway, so, at scale we'd love phone calls.
Speaker:We love chatbots.
Speaker:We love, we love everything that helps us do all this stuff at scale, because it's
Speaker:expensive to have a person do all this.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, at the end of this funnel, the business is
Speaker:most often, unless their e-commerce right, is most often positioning
Speaker:a person with the customer or with the potential future customer
Speaker:with the potential future patient.
Speaker:Everything has that human interaction at the end.
Speaker:Generally.
Speaker:Now, if you're on Amazon, right?
Speaker:You're not talking to a person ever.
Speaker:So they cater to that experience of look, you can figure it on your own.
Speaker:You can buy whatever you want on your own.
Speaker:No, one's helping you.
Speaker:So some products and services are that way.
Speaker:Like, they're like, look, you're here, you're out in the cold by yourself.
Speaker:You've got to figure it out like that.
Speaker:They will provide reviews, product descriptions, but if you buy the wrong
Speaker:thing then it's on you, it's like eBay.
Speaker:If you buy it, if you buy a little house thinking you bought a whole
Speaker:house and it arrives in your mailbox and it's just a tiny little.
Speaker:Like doll version of a house.
Speaker:And you thought you were buying a whole one for a steal for 50
Speaker:bucks and you know, that's on you.
Speaker:Like that's kind of as a e-commerce retail buyer, that's sort of on you.
Speaker:Some people don't don't like that.
Speaker:They don't like buying shoes online and then getting them, they don't fit or
Speaker:clothes they'd much rather go in person to a place and try it on physically, really.
Speaker:And the intimacy there is greater.
Speaker:That's a big deal.
Speaker:When the intimacy point happens, it's usually the highest cost interaction.
Speaker:The highest cost conversation in a business is going to be at
Speaker:that point where human beings talking to another person.
Speaker:Because the person on your team is unable to talk to anyone else, while
Speaker:they're talking to that one person.
Speaker:They are a hundred percent consumed by that call.
Speaker:So when they get there, you want that experience to be stellar, but you
Speaker:also don't want to waste you don't want to waste that your call handlers
Speaker:time answering calls that are fake and not real, or, spammy or anything.
Speaker:That's that's, that's frustrating.
Speaker:Obviously you want them to be answering calls.
Speaker:You want leads to be coming in.
Speaker:You want business to be rolling in and that's going to help your business grow.
Speaker:But at the same time, you don't want it to be terrible, horrible experiences.
Speaker:You don't want every person that calls to leave hating you because the
Speaker:call handler was rude or something.
Speaker:So that, that conversation, that intimate point is so vital to do well.
Speaker:A lot of what we do is all based on this concept of the intimacy of a
Speaker:customer is paramount in marketing.
Speaker:When someone sees your ad and they click to your website and then they
Speaker:click around, that's all happening without someone guiding them.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:If, what, if you can position the chat bot there to be like, Hey, how are you doing?
Speaker:But if you can position of someone who finally decides to call say
Speaker:hi, I'm putting a face and a name and a voice to this, this, this for
Speaker:the first time, that's gonna leave a big impression on that visitor.
Speaker:Just because you build it that way, doesn't mean it's all
Speaker:going to work out that way.
Speaker:You have to create an operational system that feedbacks to you,
Speaker:whether it's working or not, right.
Speaker:Every unscalable activity is very costly.
Speaker:So if you don't have a feedback system telling you how your call
Speaker:handling's going, how your chats are going, they're handled by people.
Speaker:How any human things going, the feedback loop on that isn't giving
Speaker:you the answers you need start there.
Speaker:Cause that's so costly to operate in a business without having
Speaker:any feedback loop whatsoever.
Speaker:It's a big deal.
Speaker:So another thing to consider when we're talking about what
Speaker:strategies, what unscalable strategies should we be looking at?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:What should we do?
Speaker:That's going to be the last pivot here.
Speaker:What strategies should I be running?
Speaker:So look at your competitor.
Speaker:What unscalable marketing activities are they doing?
Speaker:Are they going to events?
Speaker:Are they putting up billboards?
Speaker:Are they, you know, standing around twirling signs on the corners?
Speaker:Are they calling out?
Speaker:Are they, you know, how has the process of them calling in.
Speaker:Visit their website.
Speaker:What kind of stuff do you think they're doing?
Speaker:Are they promoting?
Speaker:Are they running ads?
Speaker:If you go to Facebook, you can look up any brand, any company on Facebook and
Speaker:you can see if they're running ads.
Speaker:You could see what ads they're running, it's called the ad tool, ad library.
Speaker:So if you want to see if they're running ads on Facebook, you can go there.
Speaker:With Google, you can't quite see that there are tools I'd recommend.
Speaker:There's a tool I recommend that I use called SpyFu.
Speaker:It will give you a, a good ballpark of what ads, uh,
Speaker:and other businesses running.
Speaker:I think you can even go for free and just see like an example of
Speaker:one, if you want to S P Y F u.com.
Speaker:SpyFu, uh, they're great company for that.
Speaker:To doing some competitive research.
Speaker:So things that you'd really like that that are really good ideas
Speaker:to improve is what I mentioned it.
Speaker:Phone calls, monitor, score, record, you know, get alerts
Speaker:when you miss an opportunity.
Speaker:Like that handles the phone call that could be for sales support, anything.
Speaker:You could consider call centers, things like that to help offset that.
Speaker:Outsourcing, uh, things like partnerships are also unscalable.
Speaker:You may have a deal where you're a business that, that specializes in,
Speaker:let's say plumbing during the day, but very special kinds of plumbing.
Speaker:Like let's say, old homes or something like that.
Speaker:You may say anyone who calls in the middle of the night.
Speaker:You may say, oh, okay, anyone who calls for not that kind of service.
Speaker:You may say, wow, I'm getting a lot of people just because
Speaker:I'm inherently a plumber.
Speaker:I'm getting a lot of calls for services.
Speaker:I don't like to offer.
Speaker:I don't prefer to offer, they're low margin for me.
Speaker:My guys are more skilled.
Speaker:I need these higher margin jobs.
Speaker:I don't want to be sending them out in the middle of the night.
Speaker:Cause that's not, you know, that's not the business, I am.
Speaker:My business runs with these margins at this way.
Speaker:So you may say, Hmm, what if I have a partnership with another plumber
Speaker:who is, who is specialized in the 24 7, simple plumbing, uh, that's their
Speaker:margins, that's their business type.
Speaker:What if we partnered up and they all send the calls to them that are
Speaker:insufficient, that are not ideal for me.
Speaker:And they will consider sending the jobs over to me that are not great for them.
Speaker:Maybe there's a partnership there.
Speaker:Maybe there's another way you can partner with another type of business altogether.
Speaker:You can complete more jobs because they're doing something
Speaker:and you're doing something.
Speaker:Partnerships or unscalable, they're repeatable, but they're unscalable because
Speaker:they require some agreement in place.
Speaker:There's still things around it.
Speaker:There's still a lot of checking to make sure everyone's complying and
Speaker:everyone's still happy and good.
Speaker:You're, you're still delivering value to the customer and they're happy that
Speaker:you may not provide the service, but you're giving them a recommendation
Speaker:from someone that you prefer, you trust to do, perform the service.
Speaker:You're still helping them, which still at the end of the day, that customers
Speaker:can be like, wow, that was great.
Speaker:If I ever have a, you know, an old plumbing job or a specialized
Speaker:job, then I know who to call or I know who to recommend.
Speaker:That's partnerships.
Speaker:I mentioned before events, webinars, things like that, live webinars,
Speaker:especially on the unscalable type that, that provide a lot of value.
Speaker:There's tons of people trying to do this, do it yourself, plumbing online, right.
Speaker:Trying to do jobs online.
Speaker:And so if you've make a whole channel devoted to, you know, how
Speaker:to do this and that, on YouTube.
Speaker:That could be huge, for people in an interesting way
Speaker:to get your name out there.
Speaker:And all it would take is, you know, someone record what they're doing
Speaker:in a home and get permission by the owner, the homeowner to do so, or
Speaker:maybe for a discount or something.
Speaker:You can put those videos on your website.
Speaker:People might be like, okay.
Speaker:Yeah, this guy really wants to help do it yourselfers, but obviously when things
Speaker:go wrong, they know who to call, right.
Speaker:Something like that.
Speaker:If you really want to tell a story, like on your website,
Speaker:it's the content, the messaging.
Speaker:Maybe seen by a lot of people, but creating content, creating a
Speaker:way that you can tell your story.
Speaker:It may be an unscalable process to get it done.
Speaker:There might be a video, an interview.
Speaker:You may have to write some stuff in person.
Speaker:Like you may have to write it.
Speaker:A compelling story.
Speaker:A compelling messaging is usually done by a person at the end of the day.
Speaker:Handwritten letters to clients and customers, favorite customers
Speaker:after big jobs, you know, thanking them for their time or anything.
Speaker:Or, if a patient had a rough time.
Speaker:You may have like five letters, you know, templates, you have, you may open one
Speaker:up, change a few things and then, you know, send it off to that patient to say,
Speaker:Hey, you know that you had a hard time.
Speaker:I hope you're doing well.
Speaker:Some people have, might be like, wow, I've never gotten a letter like that from my
Speaker:dentist before that could be a big deal.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Taking that time, even though it's a template taking that time to write it or
Speaker:change it or update it, unscalable, right.
Speaker:So unscalable strategy there.
Speaker:If you do things in house, generally, it's going to be considered,
Speaker:unscalable, if you're like, Hm.
Speaker:I like a social media person to help me everyday.
Speaker:You know, post pictures, post things, get the word out.
Speaker:I've seen a lot of businesses do really well that way expand
Speaker:their reach, especially that.
Speaker:And then asking a customer to, to leave a review, to give you
Speaker:feedback on their experience.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Very unscalable.
Speaker:Now it's unscalable, especially because your end of the day, your customers,
Speaker:your patients, whoever's coming in, you know, your, your jobs are not at
Speaker:tens, thousands hundred thousands, like degree changing overnight, you
Speaker:know, and you're getting however many jobs or however many patients you're
Speaker:getting, it's fairly unscalable, but.
Speaker:If you can, you know, not every person that don't leave a review or
Speaker:leave you 50 or a hundred reviews, they're going to take the time to
Speaker:write maybe one or two and that's it.
Speaker:But reviews can be a big deal for a business.
Speaker:Other people are going to see it trust you more.
Speaker:It's it's really hard to get reviews.
Speaker:That's why, you know, asking for them in an unscalable way
Speaker:is frustratingly difficult.
Speaker:You can train your team, your staff.
Speaker:I dunno everyone in your company, if people on the phone to be, to remember
Speaker:to ask, and it's hard to follow, you know, remember to ask every time
Speaker:or remember the right moment to ask after someone's upset and yelling.
Speaker:Maybe not the best time after someone's excited and happy,
Speaker:it might be better, you know?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:It's important to consider that unscalable marketing activities at a business have
Speaker:a pretty high ability to generate an influence revenue, to influence growth,
Speaker:just like scalable activities do.
Speaker:And they shouldn't be discounted.
Speaker:They shouldn't be tossed out just because they require a person to do.
Speaker:Just because they're unscalable in that way.
Speaker:And obviously anything that's not repeatable.
Speaker:You're going to have a lot of chance involved there, right.
Speaker:But if you can make something repeatable, even though it's done by a person and
Speaker:it's still, you know, ROI positive, look it's worth considering keeping that, or,
Speaker:making sure it's still a part of your overall plan, your overall marketing plan.
Speaker:So if you can identify, unscalable marketing strategies and scalable
Speaker:ones that you're already doing or new ones you'd like to try, maybe
Speaker:from the suggestions I gave you.
Speaker:Then I think that will really set you up in a place where you're, you're both
Speaker:running strategies, but also you've got to be considering how they're being measured,
Speaker:how they're being tracked, right?
Speaker:The feedback loop like episode one, how that's all giving you
Speaker:information, you need to do it better.
Speaker:And then once you do know, okay, these activities, marketing, sales, otherwise,
Speaker:whatever it is, unscalable or scalable, this is the return I'm getting.
Speaker:Then you have a very good case to say, okay, I'm going to stop these,
Speaker:or I'm going to do these right.
Speaker:You're after growth, you've got to be after more profit.
Speaker:So it, it means trying things constantly cutting things out that don't work and
Speaker:pushing, putting more gas to things that do work until they hit a ceiling.
Speaker:I have never seen any marketing strategy that, that didn't hit a ceiling.
Speaker:And just because it's unscalable, you might think, well, this is only
Speaker:going to impact like 10 patients or a hundred patients, right.
Speaker:If the potential is there, even if it's small, it could still
Speaker:be a positive thing to do.
Speaker:It's just gotta be evaluated by someone in the business and owner,
Speaker:a leader in the business who can see the whole, the big picture.
Speaker:And then finally, the last thing I'd want to mention here is the intimacy part.
Speaker:So, what are you doing?
Speaker:What is your business doing today to improve the quality of the
Speaker:one-to-one human to human interactions your businesses is having with
Speaker:customers today, with patients today?
Speaker:How are you improving that?
Speaker:Because that is such an important part of any business, right?
Speaker:How will the customer interacts.
Speaker:The experience of the patient, the customer, the consumer that they have with
Speaker:your business is really going to pave the way for the future in a way, in a way that
Speaker:it's okay to make mistakes in the short term, but in the longterm, you have to
Speaker:be progressing in a customer centric way.
Speaker:Your customers are going to tell you how well things are
Speaker:performing that you're doing today.
Speaker:You have been doing in the past.
Speaker:It may not be the golden ticket to know what you need to do in the future, but
Speaker:it is going to tell you how well things are working that you've been doing.
Speaker:That's really critical and really key.
Speaker:I'd say give unscalable marketing a shot.
Speaker:Give it a try.
Speaker:Look at it, measure it, track it.
Speaker:Don't throw it out the window, because you know, there's a lot of bottlenecks.
Speaker:Like you can only do it in, you know, one at a time.
Speaker:Writing a letter of one at a time, but there's value there.
Speaker:It's worth trying.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:Uh, I've done it.
Speaker:I've been surprised and shocked by it.
Speaker:I never thought I'd be an advocate of unscalable.
Speaker:I just love the scalable side, especially in I'm a, you know, I'm a digital
Speaker:marketer at heart, so everything there is all about scalable, but
Speaker:the blending is where it's all at.
Speaker:It's what it's all about.
Speaker:So I really appreciate your time.
Speaker:You can find me on LinkedIn, you know, comment, let me know if you
Speaker:have any feedback on this episode.
Speaker:I'd love to hear it and good luck with the unscalable marketing.
