The Truth About Marketing

Podcast Transcript

Mike Miller?

Today, we’re gonna give you the truth about marketing. Yes, the truth the absolute unvarnished truth?

Shelly Miller?

Oh unvarnished? Yes, great word for today. I love that. Yeah, unvarnished

Mike Miller?

truth. Exactly. And I don’t know, I don’t think we’ll be stepping on any toes. But it’s just, it’s just important for you to understand some things about marketing, that if you don’t realize you’re going to waste a lot of money. You’re not going to get results. And it’s going to be hard. Very hard. Going to be a house of pain.

Shelly Miller?

Yes. And a source of pain. Yes.

Shelly Miller?

And a lot of invested time that got you nowhere. Right. And don’t do that. Don’t do that. No. You know,

Mike Miller?

my suggestion is refrain from the pain.

Mike Miller?

Yeah.

Shelly Miller?

Okay. Refrain from the pain. Oh,

Mike Miller?

yeah.

Shelly Miller?

We’re on a roll already. Just got started.

Mike Miller?

30 seconds in. And we’re killing it. Yes. So yeah, I love it. So basically, the thing is, is that marketing looks really sexy from the outside. Now everyone’s like, Man, you can make a lot of money you can get, you know, you can set up funnels and get business 24. Seven. make money while you sleep. Oh, yes. while you sleep. You’re on the beach drinking mai tais.

Shelly Miller?

Yes.

Mike Miller?

?And you check your phone, and you just made $75,000

Shelly Miller?

Yes. 75,000.

Mike Miller?

Yeah, it’s a great, wonderful story. That can happen.

Shelly Miller?

But very rare. Yeah.

Mike Miller?

But the odds, you know, yes. I mean, well, let me put it this way you can make that happen. You can absolutely make that happen. But on the way to that. A lot of work. A lot of work. Yes. You know, like, so much work more work than you even can imagine. Because the the thing that content marketers always say just about content marketing, is you constantly have to feed the beast.

Shelly Miller?

Oh, yes.

Mike Miller?

You know, it’s like, all the time. You’re like, it never stops. It’s just okay. It’s Wednesday, I got to do this podcast. Oh, it’s Thursday, I got to do another blog post. Oh, it’s Friday. And this whole time, you’re like, what am I going to talk about? Right?

Shelly Miller?

Yes.

Mike Miller?

Um, so when you go down that road, and we’re just talking content marketing, when you go down that road? You You can’t stop? Because you have to be consistent.

Shelly Miller?

You do you have to be consistent. And it gets hard when you are trying to get that going. Yeah. And you realize all the work to be consistent, right. So most people stop. And then it just basically, all of the work that they have done is just waste.

Mike Miller?

Yes. And isn’t that interesting? It is because I’m, you know, like, how many clients have we known who’ve started and stopped a lot. But it’s like, it’s almost like, and really this is the the truth about marketing. It’s like smoking or stopping smoking. Right? Because you can’t except you’re starting marketing, you’re not quitting it.

Shelly Miller?

Right? You’re gonna get confusing here. Yeah,

Mike Miller?

I’m sorry. Basically, all I’m saying is you can do it for like three weeks, and then all of a sudden, it’s just two years later, two years has gone by and you’re like, didn’t we used to do marketing?

Shelly Miller?

That’s true.

Mike Miller?

You know, because you it’s, it’s hard to be consistent. And consistency is the key. If you’re not consistent, then you might as well not even do it. It’s better not to probably,

Shelly Miller?

I think so. Yeah. I mean, it’s really unfortunate that a lot of us were sold on, you know, the beginning of marketing and the internet, which was you can do this one thing and just like you said, overnight, you’re gonna be sitting on the beach and look at your phone and you made $75,000 you know, so they glamorized it, if you will, to make it sound like just this one thing will do this thing for you. Right? And Never mind that. The one thing was sending out an email. So what about the list? What about all of the things you need to know, to be able to do that one thing? right? Exactly. So it wasn’t one even that wasn’t one thing. Right? It didn’t happen overnight.

Mike Miller?

No, I think it’s like, it’s the culture like the four hour workweek started with now it didn’t even start. It was like before day in candy. It was before Gary Halbert, like money making biz op opportunities, you know, have been around for a long time. And they sell the dream. Yeah. And it’s a beautiful dream. It really is. And I’m not saying that if I didn’t have a product, I wouldn’t, at least I think I would be more fair about about it, you know, I wouldn’t like I wouldn’t put lipstick on a pig. Right. But I would, I would tell you, you know, straight. But I would also say that, you know, without this, whatever it is, you know, you’re you’re missing out, you’re losing out if you don’t utilize this right tactic or whatever it is. And that’s the other thing is that marketers can only sell tactics. That seems to me, like all they ever really sell even though it’s like, we have this whole system. And what’s the system? It’s the business building system. Okay. How do you what is the business building system? It’s one postcard every month?

Shelly Miller?

Yes.

Mike Miller?

Right. Yes. It’s that’s the system. And you could call that a system. But really, it’s one postcard every month. It’s it’s a tactic.

Shelly Miller?

It is a tactic.

Mike Miller?

Yeah. So that’s really what we’re saying is that marketing is not sexy. It’s a lot of work. At the end of the day, it’s just a lot of work. And the entrepreneurs that we’ve met, who will want to utilize marketing in their business. They don’t want to do the marketing. Right? Right. No, they understand the magnitude of what needs to be done. Right? Exactly. And they, they enjoy marketing, and they know what needs to be there. But they don’t want to do it, they have other things to do. They have, you know, a business to run. And they really want to just so entrepreneurs usually think about leveraging other people’s time and knowledge. Right, they make money off of leveraging other people’s time and knowledge. So they want to delegate it to experts, and then hold their feet to the fire. That’s how you make money. It is I mean, so

Shelly Miller?

if you try to do everything your your business will, will suffer, you will never reach your goals of you know, to that future of selling it. Yeah, because there’s just frankly, not enough time in the day for you to run your business, run your employees and do the marketing and do the accounting and do you can’t do it.

Mike Miller?

Right, exactly. You know, like, we were talking the other day about building a house. I know, I could build a house. You know, there’s a lot I can do. And I’m not that strong. And I would need help, obviously. So, but do I want to?

Shelly Miller?

Do you have that much time

Mike Miller?

Yes? Do I want to spend my you know, a chunk of my life? like think about that? Really? Who would you have to be in order to be able to build your own house? nowadays? I mean, my grandfather did it. But he was a pilot for Delta Airlines. So he had like, four days off at a time. Yes, you know, so that’s when he was able to do it. But I don’t know how you would have to be wealthy, really wealthy, to be able to build your own house,

Shelly Miller?

and try to run your own business and have the day to day of everything else going on. Exactly. You’re not a builder and that’s not your profession, right. That’s

Mike Miller?

not what I do. You know, I make my money some in another way. You know, it’s so I need to focus on what I’m good at, even though I could do it, should I do it? Because it could probably be done better by experts. And then I would have all this free time. And I would only I would enjoy the the house. I would enjoyed the benefits. But I wouldn’t have had to, like kill myself to make it happen.

Shelly Miller?

Right or lose your business because you had to spend all of your time at the house.

Mike Miller?

Right? Exactly. Built Exactly. And that’s what marketing is like too. So it’s it’s you know, it’s sexy. We want to make it marketers want to make it look sexy. And it is fun because It’s fun to see your cash register ring. It’s fun to see people coming in and leads coming in. That’s, that’s what that’s the that’s the sexy part.

Shelly Miller?

Yeah, that’s the, that’s the sizzle.

Mike Miller?

That’s this is all right. That’s the sizzle. But the steak part is a lot of work. And a lot of a lot of hours and hours go on thinking and doing and testing and rechecking and verifying and analyzing, and, you know, it’s like,

Shelly Miller?

a lot of work.

Mike Miller?

Yeah, it’s, it’s still a lot of work.

Shelly Miller?

And so if you want, if you have that much time, just like Mike was mentioning the house, if you have that much time to spend. Great, and you want to do it. But also remember, it’s not just that upfront time of all that magnitude of hard work that you have to do upfront. It’s what Michael mentioned, first, consistency. So do you have the time to learn it all? And to do it all at the beginning? But then do you have the time to continue with it? Because if you just do it once, you just wasted time? Yeah, you have to be consistent as well.

Mike Miller?

Yeah, you do? Absolutely. If so, basically, when you say I’m going to do marketing, you’re making a commitment. This is like a child, right? Just like a business is like a person. I mean, legally, it’s, it’s a person,

Shelly Miller?

it’s an entity,

Mike Miller?

and you have to keep it you know, living and so and existing surviving. Marketing is much the same. It’s like a child that you now have to care and feed for constantly, it doesn’t stop. And they have to have shoes every six months. Alright, I’m going, I’m going too deep into that, that metaphor. So there’s a couple other things that we want to say that’s really the the meat of this podcast. But there’s a couple other things, we wanted to say that if you don’t do, right, or if you don’t think about then then you’re gonna suffer. And we’re telling you the truth about marketing. So these are the things that you need to know. You know, the first thing is that it looks sexy, but it’s a lot of work. The next thing is that you can’t make a prediction on marketing. Until you, you’ve done it enough to know that if you spend $1, you’ll get $4. back, right at the first at the very first you’re spending $1. And it’s Hope you’re living on hopium.

Shelly Miller?

hopium. Yes.

Mike Miller?

Because you just don’t know. And because you don’t know. And, and this is, you know, what was the old Arnold Schwarzenegger, listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth, something like that. Anyway, alright, I’m going,

Shelly Miller?

I’m sorry, I can’t help you there,

Mike Miller?

I’m getting weird. You have to. So if you want to get leads, and make sales, then start with sales. Sales is the fire marketing is gasoline. If you will,

Shelly Miller?

yeah, that’s how it works.

Mike Miller?

Exactly. If you need to do if you need sales today, then get on the phone. Because that’s gonna be your fastest way to get business, it’s gonna be the hardest way, you’re gonna, it’s gonna suck, you’re gonna hate it, but it’s gonna be the fastest way. So realize that if you don’t have a solid sales program in place, then you can’t do your marketing, because you can’t make predictions on marketing until you’ve done it enough to know the results you’re going to get.

Shelly Miller?

Right. And that’s another reason why it’s hard to do marketing yourself a good marketer. They’ve already tested this, and they have already made predictions based on all of the campaigns and strategies that they have put out for clients. Right now. I have heard, you know, some MSP saying, well, I’ve had marketers and I’ve haven’t made anything for marketers, right? Well, my argument for that is this. There are there are good marketers out there. There are ones who don’t know what they’re doing. Yeah, that goes with any business just like you as a managed services provider. You know, there are bad msps out there. Yeah, and I know it because i’ve you know, we’ve been talking with some that. I went out to do an assessment and stories. We’ve heard stories and the passwords are that customers domain name, you know, like that’s horrible or pass. Word or password? I mean, that’s it’s an It’s horrible. But that doesn’t mean you’re that kind of MSP. It means there are bad msps out there. Well, the same with marketers, right? There’s good and bad marketers.

Mike Miller?

Yes, exactly what they’re doing, and some don’t, yeah,

Shelly Miller?

and a good marketer will have these predictions, they’ll be able to tell you, when we’re when we implement this. And this many postcards, or emails, or whatever it is that you’re doing are sent out, or how many call sales calls you make, you will get this many deals from or this many leads from it. So that’s another reason that takes a long time to learn. And if you’re trying to do it yourself, you have no other data to look at. So you’re just going to be spending time and money. Yeah, test.

Mike Miller?

Yeah, exactly. And, and that sucks when you’re spending a lot of time and money, and you’re not getting any results.

Shelly Miller?

You know, so cuz you’re constantly wondering how much more time and money do I have to put out? Yeah, to get results, so I can predict what I need to do. Exactly. That can be a long time.

Mike Miller?

Yeah, it can. It can. And, you know, unfortunately, there’s no real good way to know which marketers are good and which are bad. You just have to, you know, do the due diligence and, and choose wisely. But it’s, it’s extremely important for you as an entrepreneur, to delegate your marketing to someone and hold their feet to the fire to deliver results.

Shelly Miller?

Yes. And that’s taken care of with a contract with an agreement. You know, what am I going to get for what I give you, right?

Mike Miller?

Yes, exactly. And, yeah, that mean, and the other thing is, is that if you decide to do it yourself, you’re gonna make mistakes, because it’s a lot of trial and error. And you’re gonna, you’re gonna waste money and time, you know, like, expect it. You know? Yes. So, the next thing that is like, if you don’t do this, you’re gonna fail. Like, there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it, if you don’t, okay, I’ll tell you what it is. If you don’t know who your ideal client profile is, if you don’t know who your ideal client is, and target them specifically, then you’ve lost before you’ve begun, because so really think about it this way, just think about having a list. So if you go out, and you get a list of businesses that have between 10 employees, and 30 employees, and they’re all in my area, so they should all want my services. But then you get that list, and you go, Wow, here’s a massage parlor. Yes. You know, yes. And, and a nail salon. And the grocery store, you know, like there’s, that’s kind of, you know, far out there. But it’s actually true, like when you buy a list, and you go through that list 30% of its junk. So how are you getting your list of people to target? That’s the first thing. The second thing is, even if you have a list of let’s say you choose. You want to work with dentists. Right?

Shelly Miller?

Yes.

Mike Miller?

And you want them to be between 10 and 50 employees. So that, you know, because that fits your your niche. And that would be ideal. Yes. Right. You should say I choose dentists, between 11 and 50 employees. Once you do that, when you get that list, you’ll realize that Dr. Smith used to be in business. Right? He’s no longer in business. Dr. Jones, the data is wrong. So really, he’s only got, you know, seven employees, which makes a big difference. And then and then there’s other things like even in that list, even after you clean the 20 to 30% that are junk, right? Then that list has probably still has three categories of businesses in it.

Shelly Miller?

So let me just back up. So what you’re saying here is you need to know your ICP, because even when you know them, this is one reason yes, even though you know them, when you pull a list, they’re still going to be trash in it. Yeah. So if you don’t know who your ICP is, basically, it’s just all a bunch of trash. Exactly.

Mike Miller?

That’s what I mean, you’re wasting your money, like you’re instantly throwing money away. Yes. Because Because you’ve, you’ve added people in that aren’t your ideal client.

Shelly Miller?

So you’re going to spend a lot of time and or money, yes, calling them, emailing them, emailing them, adding them to marketing, automation, email, automation that is sending to people that you shouldn’t be sending to. And

Mike Miller?

even God forbid you do sales letters and postcards and do like six of them before you realize that they don’t even exist as a business.

Shelly Miller?

Right. Right. Happens all the time. Yeah, I mean, if you think that, that all that won’t be me. Well, that’s also another point where you’re going to be in trouble. That’s everyone.

Mike Miller?

Yeah, exactly. There’s no list that I’ve ever pulled in, I pulled a lot of lists for a lot of different industries. And there’s no list that I’ve ever pulled that wasn’t like, only about 60%. Quality,

Shelly Miller?

right? Well, even purchase lists have issues. A lot of the time.

Mike Miller?

Yeah, yeah. Like you could choose like your association, the Association of the people that you’re targeting, you could buy that list, and still, you’re gonna find junk leads in it junk names. So anyway, if you don’t know who your ICP is, and you don’t know everything about them, and you don’t know their problems and challenges and why they would buy, not just from you, but but what they’re really looking for. And then you have to go okay are like, because some buyers buy because they’re aspirational. They want to they have goals, and they want to meet these goals, right? They may be a, you know, types, alpha males, you know, or something. A specific type who is driven to, to excel driven to succeed. But then you may have people who are another type of ideal client who is afraid of what would happen if they didn’t keep the foot on the gas? Right? So it’s like they could be you, could you what I’m trying to say is there’s many different reasons motivations, belief systems, thoughts, reasons for purchasing challenges, problems, you need to know all of them and you need to know the major ones that your ideal client profile is suffering from or needs help solve. Yeah, yes, exactly. So finally, last thing we wanted to say was that, um, so her brother came down one time and we fished the Chattahoochee. And he had like, these really nice lewers Yeah. lures I was going baits, no, lures. Yes. Really nice. lewers. But we found cans of corn everywhere. And we kept casting, but we we didn’t get anything. And he goes, You know what, I bet you that? That it’s corn, that these fish, love corn. Ah, and we didn’t have corn. So we caught no fish. Well, the same thing happens when you’re marketing.

Mike Miller?

You great analogy? Yeah, no one is interested. This is from Wendy Weiss. If no one’s interested, then you’re not saying anything interesting.

Shelly Miller?

It’s hard, but it’s the truth.

Mike Miller?

Yeah, it is. And it’s so true that basically, if you if you go that that marketing thing I did didn’t work. It wasn’t it wasn’t the tactic he used likely, unless you’re doing something weird. Like Val pack. But

Shelly Miller?

that’s not weird. But yeah,

Mike Miller?

well for this industry it would be. So where was I basically, if you’re not saying anything interesting, then nobody’s gonna be interested. And so it’s not that it’s not necessarily the tactic you’re using. It’s what you’re saying. Which is goes back to why you need to know your ICP so much,

Shelly Miller?

right? Because if you The more you know them the, the more you know, the problems that they’re having. So one of the things that, you know, we all know that a couple of things that we all need to do to market is you have to have a webinar. Yeah. And you have to have a lead magnet. Yeah. Well, if you’re, you know, you’re advertising and you’re putting your you know, you’re advertising those things for people to download or come to your webinar. Yeah, and you’re not getting any downloads and you’re not getting anybody subscribe sign up for your webinar, right, then it’s because they’re not interested and the topic. Exactly, it’s that is not anything that they are having an issue with or care about. Right? So, again, as the business owner, when you have all this stuff to do, how much time do you have to devote to make sure that you make something that’s magnetic, that’s something that’s extremely sexy and attractive to your ICP, and then create it, and then do it, you know, so you’re gonna either have this lead magnet that you know, a lead magnet doesn’t just take a minute, run it to you, because you want it to be magnetic. So it needs to be sexy, it needs to answer a question, put something in their mind be something that they’re interested in. Same thing with your webinar. So are you willing to devote all of the time so now you’re not only a marketer, you’re also a copywriter? Yep. And you’re going to sit down and spend you know how many hour weekends or evenings after you’ve already done everything in your business each day.

Mike Miller?

Yes

Shelly Miller?

to write a lead magnet, right? And and to research it and make sure that the topic is sexy, and that your ICP wants? Or how about a webinar, you know, lots of people don’t like to get on camera, they don’t like to do a video. So to, to get past that, to write something, and to get out there in front of everybody and hope that it’s something they all want to hear about. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of invested time for you work effort. A lot.

Mike Miller?

Yeah. So, you know, maybe you would rather go out to dinner,

Shelly Miller?

yes. Or take a walk or Have a nice weekend and the sun instead of Oh, my gosh, I’m trying to do the marketing myself. And I have no idea where to start. And so I need a lead magnet. So

Mike Miller?

you know exactly what or I know what I’ll do, I’ll buy a 12 week course. And then every week, I’ll have an hour call and they’ll go over a topic. And then that topic, I’ll I’ll get it together because I’ll know, you know, in week three, they’re going to tell us how to write a lead magnet. So I’ll be all I need to That’ll be all I need to do. And then in week four, I’ll do a webinar, and then that’ll be all I need to do. And and I would not it’s not the case,

Shelly Miller?

it’s not the case, it’s not the way that it is. And you know, just like I just use, you know, our audiences, industry, it didn’t take them a second to learn how to, to be certified, to know what to to know what to check for to know what tools to buy, also, to be educated, oh, you know, sometimes monthly, sometimes weekly on the new things that are out on the new on the new products that you need to use on the new viruses or you know, that are that are being unleashed this week. You know, who knows? So, like you a good marketer has the same things they have to do. Right? It takes time. So, like, I wouldn’t think that I should take care of my own. My own my own cybersecurity myself. I don’t have time, I just don’t have time. I have customer data. I have all kinds of things. I have a business to run. And you know, that’s how it has to go. Exactly. Yeah,

Mike Miller?

I’m not gonna I’m

Shelly Miller?

not gonna do it myself.

Mike Miller?

I’m not gonna do it myself. I’m not

Shelly Miller?

the expert. Nope. And I don’t claim to be and you shouldn’t either. You should let an expert help you with your marketing. Bam.

Mike Miller?

That’s it. That’s it. And that’s all we’ve got for you this week. So as always,

Shelly Miller??we’ll see you next Thursday.

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