FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Mick Torbay: I’m Mick Torbay from Wizard of Ads Toronto, and today I’m talking about a giant mistake that your competitors are making, and how you can use their mistake to make yourself filthy, stinking rich.
You can see this mistake in action by asking a business owner a very simple question: “Tell me about your advertising program.”
He will say something like this: “Well, I’m doing some radio, and I have a pay-per-click campaign going on, plus I have three billboards and I’ve been looking into YouTube videos.”
Having such a comprehensive plan has got him blinded to the fact that he has not answered your question. He’s talking about media and not message.
Sometimes he’ll say, “I’m spending $50,000 on billboards, another $80,000 on television.” Thanks for the numbers, dude, but you’re still not actually telling me anything!
To put it another way, when you’re talking about media, TV, radio, Facebook ads, Google ads, email, direct mail, billboard, any advertising medium, when you’re talking about those things, you’re talking about how you’re going to say it. How are you going to say it? With radio. With billboards. With online ads. I’ll say it on my website. On the back of a taxi.
When you tell me how much you’re spending, you’re answering the question how loudly or how often are you saying it. Medium: How are you saying it? Budget: How loudly or how often are you saying it? Those are the questions they’re answering. But, note the glaring blind spot. What are you saying?
The average business owner spends a vast majority of his time and energy focusing on how to say it or how loudly or how often to say it, but puts almost zero attention into what will you say.
When it comes to actually say something, once he’s figured out the medium that suits him best, he will usually fall back on mistake number two, he’s simply going to say what everybody else is saying. We talked about that before.
For those keeping track at home, that’s two back-to-back mistakes business owners are making. Almost all of them, almost all the time. Once you see it, the opportunity to beat this guy becomes clear.
Most business owners are doing the job 100% backwards. They’re worried about how to say it and forgetting the importance of what to say!
I liken this to calling up a building center and having them deliver a bunch of bricks and lumber and nails and screws to your site, and then when it all arrives, saying, “So, what should we build with all this stuff? A house, a barn, an office building?”
When you speak to my partners about our marketing efforts, we’ll tell you what we’re saying and why that message will resonate with the consumer.
Step one: Plan. The goal of the client. Is it a barn, or an office building that he needs?
Step two: The strategy. The drawings. What will this barn look like?
Step three: Execution. The building materials and the workers.
Can you see how there will be much less waste when you do it this way? You’ll only buy the materials you need, and you’ll hire people who specialize in erecting barns, not office buildings. You’ll get a better finished product and you’ll waste less of your money.
How are we going to say it? That’s elementary. How loudly or how often, well that’s just a question of how much the client can comfortably afford. But that’s not important. What you say is everything.
How much effort are you putting into what you’ll say compared to how you’ll say it?
Now, before you saw this, you probably didn’t put much, but not anymore. Now that you know your competitor is doing the same thing, you’ll know exactly how to beat him.
I’m Mick Torbay from Wizard of Ads Toronto, making the world a better place one commercial at a time.