"Can I Call One of Your Clients?" - Advertising and Marketing

Us humans are funny creatures. Someone will take a pill because an ad during their favorite sports show says they will lose weight overnight, or, this new fitness fad or gadget is the magic cure they've been looking for to make them look like Arnold, "just send in your 3 easy payments of $29.95 and you'll live forever looking like this supermodel!" yet when we sit down with a professional one to one to learn about their business product or services we are often way more skeptical and sometimes even unreasonable and ask questions that seem to make sense, but are often based in a false reality or are simply learned questions that help us feel proud that we knew how to challenge the other person. Some people just have that "fighting spirit," right? And by the way, I am ALL for critical thinking and asking questions, genuine curiosity has fueled me for a long time and is a trait that I believe is extremely critical for growth and success, it's just important that the questions have enough perspective alongside them to be helpful and not harmful. While asking questions I great, asking he right questions or having the right perspective is far greater and can save us a great deal of anguish.

I've been in advertising and branding for over 8 years at the time of writing this and during those 8 years I've spent a lot of time educating myself, learning from those around me, and personally serving hundreds of business owners as personal clients while working with hundreds but probably more like thousands of people who serve small business owners across North America and sometimes I chuckle at the things that come up in conversations or sales meetings, with one of my favorites being about references, such as "who can i call with the same business as me that also did this" or "who else advertises with you so i can call them?" Seems smart, but in actuality, it's not, so let's discuss it.

"Who can I call as a reference?" This question or some might even call it a "sales objection" ALWAYS cracks me up. It seems logical, but truthfully it just isn't. Do you think Coors Light called up Budweiser and said "hey how's that super bowl ad working for you?" hahahaha no way! And even if they did, do you think the response would be "oh it's fantastic you should try it, especially since we are competitors." Now sometimes maybe the person asking to call their competitors or other similar businesses in the same area, maybe they are seeking feedback from similar businesses in other markets, but that doesn't make sense either - it's a different business operator/owner how do you know they do a good job of running their business or want to share any of their best trade secrets like how they advertise? They could even think you're looking at expanding into their area, even more reason to guard the secret sauce!

Too often decision makers are asking "will this work" when they should be asking different questions. Of course advertising works, this is why it's one of the largest industries in the world. The real question is "do I understand the science of advertising around frequency and consistency in front of the right audience in the right format for that audience, and simply basing your business or personal decisions entirely on someone else's experience is a surefire way to be set up for disappointment. Regardless of what they say, how do we know they understand marketing and advertising at all? There is no requirement to study it before you get a business license (maybe there should be?)

Let's go that route though, and say they tell you it's the best thing since sliced bread and is a lead-generating machine for their (insert business here) "real estate brokerage." Ok now what do you do with that knowledge, decide to buy? Great, your expectations are through the roof but what happens when you enroll in the program and it's not quite the same lead-generating machine as the reference you received, you'll be disappointed. But what if it's still really great because thousands of people are seeing your ad, your campaign is generating word of mouth which isn't trackable, driving people to your website, creating familiarity and trust with your business but you're sitting there waiting for the phone to ring thinking about it ALL WRONG. And because the thinking is wrong we opt out only to notice 4-5 months down the road that extra consistent trickle of business we had is nowdiminishingg, "hmm must be the economy" nope, it's the unseen value of great advertising. Making decisions on bad data or lack of context for the decision is like getting a false positive covid test. You think it's something it isn't, and now you pull out of the big event not realizing things were good and fine the whole time.

In another scenario you talk to the reference and they say their experience was awful and "it didn't work." It doesn't make sense to make a decision based from that either. What do they mean "it didn't work?" It didn't match their expectations? They thought it was going to be something different? They thought it would fix their whole business model, staffing problems, website issues, or any other number of organizational challenges they may or may not have been having or they thought that tracking phone calls was a legitimate way to gauge something? (It's not and read some of my other articles as to why, but simply put Gary Vaynerchuk has a great quote "What's the ROI on relationships?" to help business owners understand how terrible this whole ROI conversation is these days especially around "now now now" in the long term game of business). Let's think about it this way. Do you have the same food preferences as all of your friends and family? Likely not. Have you ever had someone tell you a type of food or restaurant is not very good, only to realize you might like it or maybe they are just being negative at that time or are generally even a negative person? Guess what, same thing happens when it comes to getting business references because people are people. So at the end of the day, throw out this idea of "calling on someone's clients" for you to base your decision from, but I also know this leaves a void of "well how the heck do I make a decision?" I have other articles on this, so the short version is when it comes to advertising you only need to know 3 things. Is the audience the marketing/advertising is targeting right for you? Not just the right potential buyers, but the right people who can when they become familiar with your business or see your ad repetitively also spread word of mouth, recommend you to others, and just generally make you part of the right conversations so your business reaps positive rewards? That's number one. The second thing is, do I understand how the media works that I'm buying into? You don't need to be an expert, especially on the technical side (I have run so many ads and sponsorships and I don't know how the local high school printing press works for the football program but I know people see the ad and like it), but instead ask does it make sense why people will read/look at/engage with the media you are about to buy? You want more eyeballs on your ad so the eyeballs need to be there. And the third one is simply "how much should I invest in this?" Unfortunately, some people overspend when trying something new, but what's more common is people underspend OR even worse they have this all-or-nothing mindset that "if I can't afford the big version I'm not getting any part of it. It's ok to start small it's better to do that and increase your spending later than to simply sit on the sidelines. As a business owner you can't afford to just be a spectator when it comes to advertising. Doing something is better than nothing and if the person or rep you're working with is compassionate and understanding, you should have no problem letting them know what you can afford.

Hopefully now you can see why I think the idea of getting references for buying advertising is so silly. There are some things in life where absolutely I want references or maybe to get some opinion, but at the end of the day my experience is really based on my understanding, desire, and reality and reality is probably the toughest one sometimes because it requires a lot of understanding and context to especially when it comes to advertising to actually keep it very simple. Great things are often simple, make your advertising decisions that way, "simplify to amplify" and just look at who is it going to, is it a legitimate media source, and how much do I spend to start and you'll find over time your advertising is like having an extra person working for you spreading the good message of your business.

Derek LaCrone

www.humanderek.com

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