Show Notes
In this episode of the CAS podcast we are helping you get set up to create a successful marketing campaign. As a custom apparel business owner, your success in marketing not only depends on having good ideas, but also executing those ideas to make sure you have measurable success.
Stage 1: Make a Plan
– Define your Brand – what is your business personality? One exercise would be selecting 3 words that describe how you want to be seen to your customers.
Examples:
Professional – Funny – Masculine – Feminine – Edgy – Witty – Artistic – Soothing – Rustic – Retro – Mature – Jolly – Glamorous – Graceful – Rebellious – Youthful – Urban – Country – Vintage – Active – Intense – Lush – Inspiring – Religious – Hip – Fun – Timeless – Contemporary – Casual – Athletic – Classic
Do you have a plan / strategy for what this marketing will do? Specifically.
What is your GOAL
Brand awareness
Sell a particular item
Drive people to your event
Get people to buy from your website
what kind of customers will you bring in?
What is your audience?
What is a number of customers and revenue you want to gain?
Where do you want to deliver your message?
Facebook
Google Search
Print
Local Advertising
Organic Search
Boards/Newsletters/Hand-Outs
Outbound Sales – Knocking doors
What will the message be?
Coupon / Promo
Let people know your business exists
Offer free consultation
Advertise specific designs / styles
Does this align with your brand?
Be sure your marketing aligns with your business personality. is your message and delivery method lined up?
Consider your message and if it makes sense.
If you have edgy / rebellious brand… it might not work well with a message designed for making corporate apparel.
If your brand is feminine and glamorous … marketing to a soccer team might not work as well.
Location matters too
Local youth sports.. bulletin boards / Hand Outs, YES
Paid google search .. NO
Skater t-shirts – Facebook, YES
Church bulletin board, NO
What is your Goal?
Set a number of sales, revenue earned, number of new customers. Essentially answer the question.. “If i can earn $X then i would do this marketing again”
Stage 2: Set Up
– Creative
Do you need art? Images? pictures? Video? How will they get done? What are the specs?
– CTA
What do you want your prospect to do? Visit website, call you, attend an event.
– Offer
What is the specific offer? Why are they going to follow through with your CTA? Coupon, deal, special, freebie
– Shareable
Get the best bang for your buck. Make it shareable… website, social, email sign up, facebook page like, etc.
Stage 3: Create
– Sketch it out
Briefly sketch it out on paper/computer. What will it look like? is it just text? Have an idea of what your marketing content will look like. a concept.
– Well Designed
Your art should meet requirements of ad needs. Always overshoot on quality, you dont want poor quality in your design, art, pics, etc. Dont DIY if not in your skillset
– Matching pieces
Be sure your images, colors, fonts and word styling all match. If your images look casual, be sure your wording/brand is. If it feels corporate, dont wear flip flops in the video
– Free of Typos and poor grammar
Stage 4: Execute / Test
Usually this is a stage where you take your first shot (or shots) and see how it works out. You aren’t always looking for a massive win, but signs that this is the right direction.
If you plan to advertise in every local park for sports apparel, start with one and see how it works.
If you plan to advertise on Facebook, start with a couple of ads with different offers or images and a small budget. Once you see its working, bump up the budget.
Step 5: Revamp or Scale Up
Two things may have happened here:
1. Marketing landed somewhere between terrible failure and below your goal. If this is the case, revamp your ideas. Try something different. Try a different offer or goal.
2. SUCCESS – if this happened don’t mess with it! Spend more, scale it up, and keep an eye on it until it reaches max potential.
Transcript
Welcome to the Custom Apparel Startups podcast, your best source for information, news, tips and tricks to get you off the ground running, and earn success with your custom apparel decorating business. So, get ready to soak up some knowledge!
Now, here are your hosts, Mark and Marc!
Mark S: Hey, everyone! Welcome to episode 94 of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. My name is Mark Stephenson, from ColDesi.
Marc V: And I’m Marc Vila, with Colman and Company. Today, we’re here to talk about planning your first successful marketing campaign.
Mark S: I think it all starts with quality promotional products, like the one that I’m drinking from now.
Marc V: Well, I one-upped you!
Mark S: I see that. You’ve got an actual CAS mug. That’s the hierarchy here, is I have to write on a red Solo cup, with a dry erase marker. And Marc Vila knows how to use the equipment, so he does it right.
Marc V: This mug is sponsored by Digital HeatFX, so go to DigitalHeatFX.com, and you can see how the mug was made, along with tons of other things.
Mark S: In our shirts!
Marc V: Our shirts! The shirts we’re wearing are sponsored by Digital HeatFX, as well. So, thank you to Digital HeatFX again, for sponsoring this show.
We named this episode Planning Your First Marketing Campaign. Then, I changed it at the last minute, to Planning Your First Successful Marketing Campaign, because I want you to listen to this episode if you’ve done a marketing campaign before, and now you no longer do them.
Mark S: Yes, because odds are you were not successful.
Marc V: Also, if you’re running marketing campaigns right now, and you feel like you’re doing okay – maybe you publish a couple little ads somewhere, or you feel like you’ve spent a bunch of money and it’s not going anywhere, maybe this is a great revisit.
Mark S: You know what I would love to hear from you is, – so, we talk to people all the time, that do different things. I guess what I’d like you to do is differentiate between “I just boosted a Facebook post about my business,” versus a successful marketing campaign.
What are the differences between doing a thing, and doing a campaign?
Marc V: Okay. Trick questions coming here! I would say that when you just throw some money at something, you’re betting a little bit on luck. You’re betting a little bit on luck. You’re betting a little bit that you happen to be in the right place at the right time. You happen to be delivering the right message, if it works.
Yeah, I’ve done stuff like that in the past, where I’ve just said “Gosh, I like this post.” I throw $20 on it on Facebook, and all of a sudden, I get 100 comments. Cool! I’ve also done it and I’ve gotten less comments, likes, reactions, interactions than I had with a free one.
Mark S: So, it’s not really the amount of money. Is it the amount of things involved? Like do I have to have more than one ad, for it to be a campaign?
Marc V: It’s the effort. It’s the thought behind it, I would say. It’s the thought and the plan behind it. That’s the purpose of this.
Mark S: Yeah, I think that’s it. It’s the plan.
Marc V: Yeah, it’s the plan. It’s the intent from the beginning, to do it.
Mark S: Yeah. I know we’re doing a lot, before we actually get started. But I did a talk last night on being successful in Facebook advertising. The point that I made during that was, the last thing you do if you want to be successful, running a great Facebook ad campaign, the last thing that you do is open up Facebook.
Right? Because all of the planning and stuff takes place in advance. Once you’re in Facebook, you know what you’re going to do.
Marc V: You’re executing.
Mark S: “I love this picture. Here’s some text. Here’s the picture. Where’s it going to go? To my web page. I don’t care where.” And then, you’re done. When you start off, you’ve got to map it out.
Marc V: Yeah. It’s a bit of like if you’re at a concert. The last thing you do is walk on the stage, to perform. You’re in your studio. You’re doing it all behind the scenes, getting everything ready to go. Then, you step up on stage, for the show.
And that’s what going to Facebook Ad Manager is, is you’re getting up for the show.
Mark S: Or you walk into a biker bar. And then -.
Marc V: There’s this lady you’ve been eyeing, and -.
Mark S: Stop it! Stop it!
Marc V: Alright. Let’s go ahead, and we talked about what this is going to be about.
So, step one, stage one, is the beginning. Kind of just the making of the plan. That’s the first step. I’ll talk about the first thing, and we’ll go from there.
Mark S: Sounds good.
Marc V: So, define your brand. What do we mean by this? What’s the personality of your business? What does your business mean? If your business was a person, how might you describe this business?
Mark S: That’s a good way to look at it. I really like this, because first of all, if you’re in business, you already have a brand. And we’re not talking about your logo, necessarily. We’re talking about who you are, and your business’s approach to the marketplace. You’re got some great examples in here.
Marc V: We use words. One exercise that you’ll often do, when you’re getting your logo created, for example, or your website created; an artist might come to you and say “Use three words to describe your brand.” Because your brand is not a tangible thing. Your brand is like a personality.
Mark S: Right.
Marc V: You have to describe a personality, compared to how you look. So, you could say “Dark hair and dark eyes.” That’s different than “Energetic and bubbly.”
So, some example words we have here, and if you go to the YouTube and you watch this, you’ll see the full list of words that you can use.
“Professional, funny, active, intense, lush, inspiring, religious, timeless, contemporary, glamorous, graceful, retro, rustic.” And a bunch of other words like that.
Mark S: You know what your image is. So, if you go to Yoga five times a day, and you sell Yoga wear, then guess what your brand is? The personality is things having to do with Yoga.
Marc V: So, words you might describe it with would be “Healthy, youthful, athletic.”
Mark S: “Stretchy.”
Marc V: Yeah, “Stretchy.” That’s not on my list.
So, that’s the first thing you do. You pick your three words, so you know what your brand is.
Mark S: Yeah. The idea there is that once you know, once you have these words surrounding your brand, it makes it really clear, kind of what happens next. It helps you stay on track. It helps you stay on track, through the whole process.
Marc V: It makes sure that the words you’re using in whatever marketing campaign – and this is true for everything. It doesn’t matter if it’s a radio commercial, a Facebook ad, a flyer, a brochure, phone calls you’re making, door to door knocking. All of it has to surround what is the image you’re going to portray out, while you’re doing that.
So, you’ve got basically a definition of your brand, and you can make it into a sentence, or you can do just a few words.
Next is having a plan and a strategy. The strategy is, what’s the goal? What is the goal of this marketing?
Mark S: Start with the goal.
Marc V: Start with the goal.
Mark S: So, why are you engaging in this campaign?
Marc V: Actually, that’s really good.
Mark S: You could just say “Because I want to sell more stuff.” But that’s not really – you have to have something specific in mind. Maybe your goal is, you’ve got some good ones here.
Maybe you want to sell something specific, like you’ve got a new warmup jacket for Yoga. Maybe that’s a specific item you want to make sure people are aware of. Maybe you’ve got an event coming up, like you are – we’ll just go with the Yoga theme. Like you’re participating in a Yoga conference, and you’ve got a vendor booth, where you’re going to sell.
Well, you want to let people know, so you want to campaign behind that. There’s some really good audiences here, some really good goals.
It could be that you’re trying to land new corporate customers. It could be that you’re trying to land a specific type of business, you’re trying to sell a specific thing.
Marc V: Yeah. Expanding to a new area, a new territory.
Mark S: Whatever it is, you’ve got to kind of envision the thank you page involved in that campaign. Like “Thank you for what?” “I want to say thank you for buying my doodad, for giving me cash, for signing up for my list, for coming to my event.” Something.
Marc V: Yes. Everything with this, really why we’re doing all this is yeah, you want to make more money. You want to improve your business. But you’re trying to think of what’s the goal of this specific type of campaign that we’re going to be running?
Some things we listed here:
Brand awareness. Brand awareness could be one where it’s not necessarily that you’re looking to make the phone ring and take a call right there. But you want to make sure that your brand is really well-known out there, amongst the people you’re talking with.
So, if we are doing something, like there’s plenty of these adult sports leagues out there. I see them all the time.
Mark S: Yeah, kickball and whatever.
Marc V: Yeah, kickball and hockey and all of that stuff. I saw something at the ice rink, and it was – all it was, was the logo and a little tagline of the company who did all of the custom stuff to all of the players, the league players’ stuff. So, if you wanted to get like your name on the helmet, like a sticker, if you wanted to get – I think they sold the uniforms, as well. The names, everything.
It was really just them, right by the door, before you walked in. That sign that they paid to do is a brand awareness. They want everyone going in and coming out of the game to recognize that brand, and associate them with the uniforms.
It’s not a direct sale. But when they go into the shop or they see a table set up, “Oh! That’s the company right there.”
Mark S: Right. Basically, you’re softening them up. You and I go back and forth on things like logos and branding. The one thing I would suggest is that if this is your first campaign or your second campaign, unless you have a war chest of investment cash and long-term marketing plans, I would not do specific branding campaigns, until you’re an established business.
Because for me, that’s a little bit of “Let me get to the point where I’m making money, and I’m on my own. Then, I’ll try to take the next step.”
Marc V: Yeah. Brand awareness is a very long-term campaign. So, if you are going to pay $200 to have your sign up at the hockey rink, that’s fine. And you sign a year contract, $1,200 a year, just know that that $1,200, you might not make it back, specifically, and you’ll never know if you did.
Mark S: Right. The time that I would say that brand awareness is key is if you are doing a longer term strategy on Facebook. You know, where the first ad that you show somebody is just about you and your brand, so you can send them another ad right after that, so they’ll recognize your product, your brand. They trust you a little bit, by the time they get to the second one.
Marc V: Right. “Oh, I’ve seen them before.” We do that all the time, when we buy stuff. You’re faced with two choices. They’re the same price. The products look similar. “I know that one. I’m going to buy it, just because I know it.”
Another campaign goal would be to sell a particular item. This would be if you designed a new shirt, and you’ve got an audience. You’ve got people out there to try to sell to. You designed a shirt. You want to sell that to them.
One specific item, or a series of items, that it’s specific. So, you do handbags and you monogram them, you are marketing specifically to sell this handbag, with a monogram on it.
We’ve got driving people to your event, as you mentioned.
Mark S: I like that.
Marc V: Get people to buy from your website. You’ve got a website where you sell a whole bunch of different t-shirt designs. You get people to the website, and when they get there, you expect a percentage of them to walk away, having bought a shirt.
Mark S: Yes. The only thing I would suggest there is that you are at least somewhat specific.
Marc V: Yes.
Mark S: In other words, if you’re in the Yoga business or the wedding business, that you make your message clear, that those are the shirts that you’re going to see, in the advertisement. Or you can even be more so, like let’s say you’re into the adult sports leagues. If you do an ad for your website, “Come by! Kickball shirts!” Then, send them to a page full of that.
Marc V: Yes, full of kickball shirts.
Mark S: We hardly ever send somebody just to ColmanAndCompany.com, in general. We send them to the embroidery page, or something like that.
Marc V: Yeah, exactly. So, you do the same thing.
The next one – then, there’s some other questions here, kind of that have to do with the goal. And it’s a little bit of dealing with your brand, too. But what kind of customers do you want to bring in?, should be a question you’re asking.
Are you doing corporate wear? Are you doing impulse buys? Are you trying to get a full team? Are you trying to get the entire rink to buy from you?, is a different campaign than “I’m trying to get one mom to buy a fan shirt.”
Then, with that comes what’s your audience? That’s a similar question. Who is it? Is it owners of companies? Is it parents? Is it students? Is it players? Who is it? Think about what your audience is.
Next? What’s next in line? What have you got?
Mark S: I like this. What you have is “What is the number of customers, and the revenue you want to gain?” What I’m going to turn that into is, what is your specific goal, and how will you measure it?
Marc V: Okay. How will you measure the goal?
Mark S: Unless you’re in the pure branding space, you really want to be able to associate, in my opinion, the cost of creating and executing a marketing plan, with specific results, as much as possible.
Marc V: I agree.
Mark S: We’ll never do a Google ad, for example, that I can’t track to “This is how many sales it got me.” Because that goal is going to inform everything else that you do.
Marc V: And we’re always going deeper into that, too. One thing that we talked about over email a little bit, in the past couple of days, is we have some ads that we run on Google, and people come to see our product. Some people will just buy the product right there. And we know that they come from the ad, and they’re buying the product. We can see that.
Other folks engage with us in Chat. Then, they chat for a while. They maybe end up on a phone call. They go back. We never know that the ad actually engaged in that conversation, and turned into it. So, we’re trying to track that, a little bit.
These are complex things you don’t have to worry about, when you’re starting your first campaign. But it just shows that everything that you want to do, you want to be able to associate this campaign with some money.
Mark S: Yeah. “My goal is to sell this new Yoga jacket.”
Marc V: Yeah. How many of them do you want to sell?
Mark S: I bought an initial order of 24. I’d like to sell out of those. So, I’ve got 24 Yoga jackets. I have this much money to invest, and I’m going to know, because maybe it’s that this is the only time I’m going to talk about these jackets, is during that campaign. Which means that everyone that buys one is a result of your advertisement.
Marc V: So, it’s like a $50 jacket. $1,200 might be what this is worth to you. And you’re going to double your money, so $600 is the amount of profit you’re going to make on this order. Maybe you’re doing a little $50 sponsorship in their newsletter, that’s going out to everybody.
In this campaign, it costs you $50. You’re hoping to get $1,200 in revenue. $600 is profit, so $550 is how much you’re going to have made from this little ad. And if it works -.
Mark S: You’re going to do it again. You’re going to spend twice as much.
Marc V: So, I think that will dive right into, where do you want to deliver your message?
Mark S: Of course, this is – I like this approach, rather than saying “I want to do a Google campaign. I want to do a Facebook campaign. What do I do?” You’re starting with what you want to accomplish, because different methods of marketing and advertising campaigns, the choice that you make has to fit the goal that you want to accomplish.
Like when I was talking, I was thinking about Facebook ads, and you said the newsletter. That’s just a much better idea.
Marc V: Because I think that you’re going to spend more in Facebook, getting the ad to work, because Facebook takes some time to learn. You’re out of your profit range.
Mark S: Yeah. You’re absolutely right. So, how you deliver your message, that’s why it’s the second thing. You’re going to set your goal. You’re going to pick your item, branding, whatever you want to do. You’re going to figure out how much money you have to spend. You’re going to make sure that you know how to track the results, or you are making a conscious decision that you won’t do it, unless you can track the results.
And then, now you’re going to look at “What’s my menu of ways that I can accomplish that?”
Marc V: Sure. If you would have said you had 200 jackets, Facebook might be the way to go. Because that one studio, how big is this studio?
Mark S: Good point.
Marc V: They probably have less than 100 customers.
Mark S: Could be. I mean, my customer is the United Yoga Front of America. It’s a militant Yoga crowd.
Marc V: Is that really a thing?
Mark S: Yeah.
Marc V: Okay, cool. I like it, then.
Mark S: It is now! Okay, so where do you want to deliver your message? Or let’s change that, and let’s say, what’s the best place for you to deliver your message? Of course, if you’re not already into or not comfortable with one of these platforms, you have a choice to go get comfortable, pick a new product, or kind of force that square peg into a round hole.
Marc V: Yeah. And that’s not the way to go.
Mark S: Right. So, we’ve got the options that we’ll put in the show notes, as well. But we’re talking about Facebook. That’s one. Google search, personal favorite. Print. Describe one print. Talk about some more print opportunities.
Marc V: Print opportunities, they’re typically niche, in one of two ways, I would say. Either to a very specific group of people, or to a very specific location.
Mark S: So, you’re not talking about Yellow Page ads.
Marc V: No. You don’t want to do anything like that. A newspaper ad, maybe if it’s like 70-year-old men drinking coffee. Maybe the newspaper ad might be the way to go. But really, it’s that local like newsletter that gets passed out at the Yoga studio.
Mark S: Yeah. Everybody picks it up.
Marc V: Everyone picks it up, or they’re passing it out to everybody. And you know that all 100 people that go there over the course of the week, are going to get handed this piece of paper, and there’s going to be a little thing, “Get your jacket,” type of thing. That’s a great little print.
Mark S: Or maybe like if the Parent Teacher Association does an informational flyer or something, that all the parents read.
Marc V: Yes. It gets stuffed in every backpack. That’s a great place to do it. It could also be – there’s lots of weird little things, too. There’s the real popular restaurant up by me. They do the menu thing, so everyone sees it. And some of these are relevant. Like the one is “Free A/C check.”
So, people are sitting there. Their A/C is not cold, when they left the house. It’s why they’re going out for breakfast, and they see it.
Mark S: Do they have a Gastroenterologist listed? Because that’s how I would advertise.
Marc V: Probably! So, those are some print. It could also be trade publications. If you deal with martial arts apparel, there are martial arts magazines and trade associations.
Mark S: Yes. They’re all terrible, by the way.
Marc V: The thing is, people get them. They also now associate it usually with an email campaign and an online advertisement, as well, and a Facebook post.
So usually, a lot of larger print comes with other stuff.
Mark S: It’s a package deal.
Marc V: And then, the print does overlay into local advertising. If you get the opportunity to make a TV commercial, where you get to yell a lot, I think you should do it.
Mark S: If you can get the guy that owns the small car lot, that’s doing a bad commercial at 2:00 AM, to wear one of your shirts, I think that’s a winner. Or to wear your Yoga jacket. That would even be a bigger win.
Marc V: That could actually – like there’s that Kia dealer up here. Everyone knows who they are. I don’t even listen to the radio, hardly, and I know who they are, because they’re everywhere. But if you can get a guy like that, “Hey, I’ll uniform your whole staff, if you say my company name on your commercial,” it might not be bad.
Mark S: There you go! The next thing I really kind of keyed in on is you said organic search. This is a very long-tail smart campaign. What that is, that means that you wouldn’t do that with anything that you’re testing, or that’s brand new. This is a long-term strategy, to build your brand, to sell one of your core products, or to get exposure on a regular event.
Marc V: Like if you do – like one thing I remember we talked about last episode, you liked a lot. There was that little My Little Pony fandom out there. If you sell to the -.
Mark S: I woke up in the middle of the night and I said “Bronie!”
Marc V: Yeah, Bronie. If you sell to the Bronie crowd, and I remember that Pegasister is the woman version. But if you sell to this crowd, and you make this type of apparel, this is a long-term thing, probably, for you. And this could be for anything.
But dedicated fans, you have good designs, and you sell them online. An organic campaign for you would be to make sure that if somebody searches “My Little Pony Fandom T-shirts,” something like that, that you’re right at the top of that organic search, because you’ve got products online, articles you’ve written, videos.
Now, for years to come -.
Mark S: I’m looking for a classy way to make a registered sex offender joke, when you talk about that. There’s no way to do it, so I’m not going to. But that is a good example, because that’s a very niche market.
It could have legs. It could be a long-term thing, because My Little Pony has been on forever. So, what you could do, some things that you might do for an organic campaign is you could map out, “Once a month, I’m going to do a video about my My Little Pony apparel, and do a good description. And I’m going to write an article about it. Maybe I’ll profile a customer, or I’ll do a feature on how I do it.”
“So, when someone is searching for that, they’ll find the article, they’ll find my video, and then they’ll come to my website and buy my stuff.”
Marc V: And typically, once it gets established, it lasts a long time. So, this is a campaign where it’s harder to say “I want to sell 100 shirts by this organic search.” It’s a little closer to the branding, where you say “I want to sell 100 shirts a month, in a year from now, based on -,” and you’ve got to do research on this stuff.
You have to know how many people are searching online. If this is your first campaign, you could definitely jump into that. But I always try to say get a small success, first.
Next one, I put bulletin boards, newsletters, handouts, a little bit of the print type of a thing. But that’s very local. That type of stuff works in this type of an industry.
If you sell to parents of high school sports and stuff like that, and at the football game, if you get permission to put a flyer on every car, and you have the permission to do that, you’re going to do that. They’re going to come out of the game their kid just won, they open it up, and it’s like “Why aren’t you wearing a hat to the game, to support your kid? Get them on sale, normally $24.99, for $19.99, if you call tomorrow.”
Stuff like that will get you that little local business, and it’s good for branding and all of that.
The last one I wrote here was, outbound sales or knocking on doors. It’s sales, but I crossed this one over into a little bit of a marketing campaign, too.
Mark S: Okay. Tell my why.
Marc V: Because sometimes, the outbound sales, and we’ve talked about this before, that you know that when you walk in the first time cold, into a business, with your business card and a sample or something like that, and you say “I make shirts. I would love to make some for you. Please do that,” it’s usually not “Yes! 20, right now!”
Mark S: Okay. I buy that.
Marc V: It’s like in person, handing and saying “I want you to keep me in mind for next time. I’ll follow up with you.” So, it’s a little bit of branding. It’s a little bit of advertising.
Mark S: I’ll take it.
Marc V: I like that. I think that’s another method, and we know that it works for our industry.
Mark S: Especially since most people are terrified to do that, so you’re going to be the only one!
Marc V: You’ll be the only one! Okay, so what’s next?
Mark S: Next, you’ve got, what will the message be? That’s almost like what’s your lead magnet? What’s your offer? That’s what makes the difference between kind of a branding campaign, I would say, and a standard marketing campaign, is the offer. Because you’re trying to get people to do something immediately, or reasonably soon.
In the example you just gave, just kind of naturally, which is great, you put the flyer on somebody’s windshield. “You’re going to get a good deal, if you call tomorrow.” So, the strategy was “I’m going to put these flyers on, because I want to sell this item. I want to sell it to these people. This is how I’m going to do it.”
So, the flyer is how you’re going to do it. What’s going to make them pull that trigger is going to be that offer. You’re going to get $5 off, or you’re going to get a free widget, or you’re going to get free training or free shipping, or something like that.
That’s kind of the message. When I think of message in this context, I’m thinking of offer.
Marc V: Yeah. I agree. Again, the reason – I guess why I thought of message, is if you are doing like a brand awareness, or you’re doing an organic search, you might not necessarily have a specific offer. But you need to be thinking this through.
That’s why I think this is the third one. By the time you get here, you’re determining, is the message just so people know who I am? Is the message an actual offer, a coupon; buy one, get one free? Trying to sell something?
Some other messages we put were the coupon or the promo, $5 off the hat, buy two shirts, get a hat for free, type of thing. Maybe the message is just letting people know your business exists. So, that flyer might be “All the shirts and uniforms you saw in there were provided by -here’s the company.”
That’s one part of it. If you’re going there, you’ve still got to put something tangible.
Mark S: That’s a pure branding strategy.
Marc V: I still think you put something tangible, if you’re doing a local type of a thing like that. You say “If you want some, come here.”
Mark S: “Come in and mention the team’s name.”
Marc V: “And get a free gift with your purchase,” whatever it might be.
Mark S: I forgot that most of them can’t see me move my hands. About 30% of our conversation, since between us, Marc Vila and I make up an entire Italian, because we’re two halves. A lot of the conversation happens with our hands.
Marc V: I put a message could be offering a free consultation. This is a business one or a sports one. You say “Listen. What I’ll do for you is I’m going to bring shirts out. I’m going to show all your staff, get your opinion, let everyone try things on. And if you guys like it, and you think I can offer you new uniforms,” or whatever it might be, “Then you say yes. But for now, I just want to be able to come out and meet you guys.”
Mark S: Man, this is just such a great idea, because it gives you that – you’re now differentiating yourself from the competition. You are positioning yourself as an expert.
Marc V: Yeah. That’s great about it.
Mark S: It might be, especially if it’s sports, “Do you know about the new materials that they’ve come out with for sports jerseys? Listen. I just got three new things in. I’d love to come out and show them. You guys can test them, and talk about what the differences are, and see if you want to make that your next order.”
You’re no longer the t-shirt person. You’re the one that knows about their uniforms.
Marc V: Yeah, the apparel expert, exactly. Yeah, I think the free consultation works for sports, businesses, restaurants, anywhere that’s got uniforms. You go to a restaurant, and say “There are stains everywhere here. I’d love to give you a consultation, and tell you how you can stop that from happening.”
Mark S: “It’s disgusting!” You could just say that.
Marc V: Everyone has all black shirts. And then, advertise specific designs that the styles might be. So, if you’re making Bronie t-shirts, and you’ve got this one style right here, this rainbow dash t-shirt.
Mark S: And your mom lets you out of the basement to do something.
Marc V: Well, you know. Yeah, you’re advertising a specific design, and this design is on sale. It’s brand new. It’s a new shirt. “Get it while they’re hot. Get it while they last. Limited offer. On sale now. Clearance.” Whatever they might be.
Mark S: What reason are you going to give somebody, to do it now? “Brand new. You can be one of the first. It’s different than before. It’s on sale. It’s two for one.” It’s now perfect for you, for some reason. Whatever it is.
Marc V: Seasonal, as well, whether it’s holidays or temperature.
Okay, great. Now that you’ve kind of gone through this, you’ve gone through these. The question you ask is, does everything you’ve done align with the brand?
Mark S: That is really important, because I’ve mapped out an email on a landing page, for some of our products here – I think specifically it was the CAMS machine, and when I looked back at it, I’m just like “That really isn’t who we are. That really doesn’t match the ColDesi brand.” I don’t even remember what it was, but I had to start over.
So, you go through this whole process of designing a campaign, and then in the end, you do a gut check. Because the worst thing that you can do is put something out there that doesn’t match you or your business.
Marc V: Also, it doesn’t match the audience. Both of these things line up.
Mark S: That’s a good point.
Marc V: So, if you’re trying to expand out to get that, like sports apparel, but you’ve been making Yoga stuff for the past three years, and you’ve got this Yoga brand. You figure you put your logo, your colors, you’ve got a little design, you’ve got it all set, and you stick that up by the people going to play hockey, it’s a different audience of people.
You’re trying to mix your Yoga brand with the “I make hockey stuff” brand.
Mark S: They don’t sell chai at the hockey rink.
Marc V: No, but they have beer and wings. And that’s actually what they advertise, when you walk into the hockey rink.
Mark S: Yeah. So, think about if you walked into a Walmart, and they had this really rare high-end produce, for like $50 a pound. It would just be weird. It would just be jarring. You would immediately be able to tell that it didn’t belong there. It belongs at Whole Foods.
So, it’s the same kind of thing. That’s what you’re looking for, is like you put. If you have an edgy or rebellious brand, if you have a Yoga style brand, if you’re the cheer mom, if that’s your brand – if these are the words that you’re associated with, make sure that what you end up with after the process, still matches.
Marc V: Yes. And if you’re trying to do something that’s outside of your normal brand, then you make an adjustment. Either you come up with a secondary brand – that’s kind of how it is. Like the ProSpangle equipment, the branding on that is much different than the DTG branding, because DTG is much more technical-minded, a little more edgy, very modern in the looks.
And ProSpangle is very bling, and cheer wear and spirit wear, and all of that.
Mark S: In general, different people buy them. And they have different purposes and different goals. So, ColDesi has to brand each one. The ColDesi brand is kind of like it sits over everything. But you’re right, the ProSpangle brand talks to these people. The DTG brand talks to these people.
Marc V: Yeah. So, you could do like Yoga fit is your one brand, and then now, you really want to get into this hockey league. You come out with like sports edge, is your second. And now, your business can be Yoga fit and sports edge.
You know where I’ve seen something similar to that happen? If you go to the mall, there’s that store, Xpress. You’re familiar? Xpress was a ladies apparel store, many years ago. Then, they brought in men’s apparel. It was not doing well, even though the apparel quality was really good, because it was a feminine brand. Guys weren’t going in there to buy apparel.
So, they extracted the brand out, made Xpress Men, a little edgier, a little more masculine, came with a second store. Now, you go to the mall, there’s Xpress and Xpress Men.
Mark S: Yeah, that’s good.
Marc V: They’re still there, 10 or 15 years ago, whenever that started, you still see these Xpress stores around.
Mark S: But I can’t shop there, because all they sell is skinny jeans.
I like that. Now, the other thing that you could do, and I’m just going to say this for fun, is you could make fun of yourself, going into these other markets. In other words, if you have the Yoga brand, and you want to go into ice hockey, then you could just say “I know this is dumb, but I make the best ice hockey fan wear that you have ever seen!”
Marc V: Yeah. “What’s the Yoga girl doing in the ice hockey rink? Go and find out.”
Mark S: Yeah. “Why is she doing Yoga with a hockey stick?” It’s a good brand. We could get somewhere.
Marc V: Somebody take it right now, before Mark Stephenson buys the URL.
Mark S: I will. YogaHockey.com.
Marc V: And then, a little bit on locations. A lot of this stuff kind of crosses over. If you’re going to sell, when you’re talking about your brand and where you’re putting it and where you’re advertising, make sure it all matches up.
If you’re selling skater t-shirts, was the note that I made, Facebook is probably a cool idea. You can probably get a lot of people into skating. I would say, actually, skater, like skateboard. I know we just talked about ice stuff.
Mark S: Good point. I knew what you meant right away.
Marc V: If you make skateboarding style skater gear, Facebook might be a cool place you can find a lot of those people. Is the church bulletin board the right place? There might be a couple kids.
Mark S: It depends on your church, but probably not.
Marc V: Yeah, probably not. So, either way. The same thing might be if you’re advertising specifically for that church apparel. Why are you going to go to Facebook and reach all of these people? Go right to the bulletin board, where all of the people who go there are going to go.
Now, the last one. We talked about the goal, but we need to finalize this again. What’s your goal with sales, revenue, number of new customers? The question is “If I earn this much money, I’ll do this marketing campaign again.” Right? So, “I need to earn $1,000, or I’m not going to do this again.”
Mark S: Yeah. Me being strictly math about this, depending on how much effort. The intersection is spend, effort and profits. So, if I can spend $1,000 and make $100 for no effort, then I will spend as many $1,000 as I have, if I have an unlimited amount of money.
But if I spend $1,000 and I don’t make any money, it doesn’t matter that there’s no effort. If I can make $100, but I have to really work my butt off for weeks, to get that $100, it’s a no.
So, you’ve got to kind of look at that, like is this the best use of your money and your time? And the only way that you can do that is if you have your goal mapped out, and you can say for certain what’s happening, or what happened.
Marc V: That makes a lot of sense. Also, these are when you go back to some of the old podcasts, and you consider customer lifetime value, and things like that. Maybe you’re doing something where you get the hockey family to buy some fan gear from you. But you know, from having run the Yoga business, that if you get somebody to come one time, they’re going to wear those clothes out, and they’re going to come back to you.
So, you know “Typically, my average customer is buying at least five pieces of apparel. So, if I can do a campaign, and maybe I’m just breaking even on the first shirt they buy, but they’re probably going to buy five more, times 100 people, it’s a bunch of money.”
Mark S: You’re okay.
Marc V: So, the math can get tricky, but you just want to really pay attention to it. This is where there’s not a specific formula for it. You just have to really think about it.
Mark S: Or there is a specific formula. Once you get to a certain level, you will know. Like Marc Vila knows all of you out there, what your lifetime value is. You’re a Colman and Company customer? Believe me, we know exactly. We’ve got a great estimate of it, so we can say “Okay, as long as you become one of us, we know that it’s going to be worth it for us, in the long run.”
And you just need to be able to do the same thing.
Marc V: It’s important to pay attention to that stuff.
So, now that we’ve got it, we know it’s good, we have a goal. It’s all lined up. We need to set it up. This is where you’re stepping into Facebook. This is going into Facebook a little bit.
Mark S: This is the work. Honestly, I would still – I do a flow chart on a piece of paper. You know what I mean. I’d say “Okay. Here’s where they’re going to start. They’re going to see my ad. Then, I’m going to meet them in person. Then, I’m going to call them up afterwards.”
So, whatever that process is, you know that you’ve got a campaign kind of laid out. Now, you need to look at this. You set it up, and make sure that everything jives, and that you know where everything’s going.
Marc V: Okay. So, the flow could be, step one is you’re designing some art, that you’re going to print out. You’re going to take those prints, and you’re going to bring them to the football game. You’ve got permission to put them in a bunch of different places. You put them there.
Then, the call to action you put is to call tomorrow. Then, on Saturday, you’re going to measure how many. If this is a Friday night football game, Saturday you’re going to measure how many calls you got, and how many sales you made. Then, that’s kind of the end of your flow, right there.
Mark S: Yeah, and here’s the important part. If that’s your flow, you have to make sure somebody is there to answer the phones on Saturday.
Marc V: That’s why the flow is important.
Mark S: I’ve got a good example of that, if you want to hear it.
Marc V: No.
Mark S: Okay.
Marc V: I do, please!
Mark S: We don’t see that many good advertisements, because there’s not that many out there. So, what I did see was, in my Facebook feed, there was an a picture of an ugly air conditioner, really terrible. And the ad was from a local A/C and plumbing company. They were just actually getting into the A/C business.
They said “Hey, you can win a free air conditioner this year. Send us your picture. Send us a picture of your air conditioner. We’ll pick the ugliest one, and we’ll give you a free one!” It was great. A really captivating picture. Maybe I’m in the market for an air conditioner. I take a picture of that. I do all of this separate.
I upload it. They take me to a nice page where I can do all of that stuff. There’s a nice thank you page. It’s great! I give them my name, my phone number. It was two weeks ago. I haven’t heard anything since. So, they had that top part of the flow going. They did all of this work, but they forgot to have somebody working on Saturday, to answer the phone.
That’s what we’re talking about. That’s why you’ve got to map this stuff out.
Marc V: Also, if you’re going to send somebody to an area of your website, you want to make sure, obviously, that page is working correctly, it’s functioning correctly, it does everything you want, all of these things are done. It’s just part of the flow.
These are all the simple things. Mistakes get made all of the time, in marketing, where they send somebody to a link, but they don’t make the page, and it’s a 404 error. These are all things that can happen, so you want to make sure.
Or I’ve gotten plenty of times, the email comes through, and it’s a dead link. They forgot to actually put a link in the email. So, you click here, and it goes nowhere.
Mark S: To an old page or something like that. Those are usually my campaigns.
Marc V: So, the flow is to make sure that you’ve mapped it out, so you can check off each box of every step, and you know how it’s going to work, and you’re prepared for that.
Mark S: And you’ve got kind of the steps right here, right? You’ve got the creative.
Marc V: Yeah, creative. So, do you need art? This is where – I know how to do this. You open up Microsoft Word, and you go to the clipart section.
Mark S: No, stop it! Stop it!
Marc V: So, no. Do you need art? Are you an artist? Do you need to hire an artist? Is the art going to be for a printed sign? Make sure that if you’re doing it, the art is designed for a printed sign, so it looks good when it’s nice and large.
Do you need pictures? Do you need video? Do you know how to do those things yourself?
Mark S: And will it match your brand?
Marc V: And will it match your brand? So, go through all of that. Understand it all. If you’re going to take out – if you’re going to do a print ad, you’re going to need to know what are the specs for the print ad, before you make your art.
And you’ll be surprised. I know people who do online advertising and print advertising, and they say most of the time, the art they get is not compatible or good for it. Then, they end up charging a fee for fixing it, or you miss your deadline, and you don’t get the ad printed.
Mark S: You guys, our customers that are listening, that are in the t-shirt business, you know this, because people say “I need t-shirts for my company, as part of the event.” And they send you a .jpeg off of their website, of their logo. It’s like one inch by three inches.
Marc V: Yeah, the smallest one.
Mark S: Then, they’re upset, because you have to charge the an art fee. So, don’t be that.
Marc V: Don’t be that person. And then, you’ve got the next step. You’ve got your creative, then what’s your call to action? What do you want your prospect to do?
Mark S: That’s really important.
Marc V: Visit the website, call you, come to the event? Of course, if it’s branding, just recognize you.
What’s the offer? What’s the specific offer? This is stage two. We are literally writing it down and setting it up. In stage one, your idea – the offer might not be specific in stage one. It just might “I want to do like a BOGO type of a thing.”
In step two, it’s actually, what is the BOGO, and how are you wording it?
Mark S: Yeah, and that’s really important, the how are you wording it? Because if they’re going to click a button, especially if they’re going to click a button, there’s a lot that goes into that. Like how are you going to motivate somebody to click that button? It’s not just “Learn more, buy here.” There’s a lot of options. The call to action is important.
Marc V: Then, the last one we put here is making it shareable.
Mark S: I like that one.
Marc V: Yeah. I think that’s great.
Mark S: It usually gets left off the list.
Marc V: That is just, sometimes it might be – there’s lots of cool things you could do. If it’s print, you could have two coupons. Right? So, they can give one to somebody.
If it’s an email, you can put a message on the bottom “And don’t forget to forward this to other fans who might not be on our email list!”
If it’s social, obviously, that’s easy to make it shareable.
Mark S: I’ve got a good one for the email.
Marc V: Okay.
Mark S: “You don’t go to those games alone! Forward this to who sits next to you!”
Marc V: That’s great!
Mark S: See?
Marc V: And those are the actual words you want to use. Hit the rewind 30 seconds button, and write that down.
So, make it shareable, whether it’s website, social, sign up, whatever it is.
Next is the actual creation. We’re sketching it out, we’re drawing it. You’re actually designing it piece by piece, to making sure it’s ready to go.
Mark S: Yeah. I’ve got a white board in my office, that is always full of boxes and arrows, and things written in it, that I cannot read.
Marc V: And during this stage, this is where you start getting technical. So, you should know what your brand colors are, and what fonts that you’re willing to use in your brand, and all of these things, because they’re going to be fairly technical.
If you’re going to send it out to get designed, like say if you’re going to get an online ad designed out, and you’re going to send it to a designer, you’re going to want to include in that email that you write that person, in your order form, “Here’s my logo. Here are the colors that I use. Here are the fonts that I prefer to use.”
These are all part of your brand packaging.
Mark S: Be your ideal customer. Especially if you make custom t-shirts, then these are the things that you want people to provide you, when you’re doing something. So, if you’re having an ad created for you, or your graphics created, then you want to make sure that that’s true, too. Everything that you want done, make sure that you do for whoever you hire.
Marc V: Yeah, because someone is going to come to you and say “I want some shirts. I just want it to say ‘Play Hockey.’ That’s what I want you to write on it.”
Mark S: You do it in Olde English.
Marc V: Yeah. “What color? What kind of font? Do you want a block font?” Different things like that. So, get it all together, write it out. Now, you’re exactly done. By the end of this stage, what you have is the final product that you are going to put online, print, share. And this stage isn’t done, until every step is done.
Mark S: Right. That means you’ve got the process written out. And that means that you’ve arranged for somebody to be there on Saturday, to take phone calls. And you’re ready for your graphics, you’ve got your messaging in place, you’ve got your CTA, what you’re going to do.
Marc V: Your website’s done. If you have a coupon code for your website, it’s programmed and tested that it works. Everything is done, by the end of this stage. Also, free of typos, free of poor grammar.
Mark S: Unless it’s intentional.
Marc V: Unless it’s intentional, yeah. Free of things that don’t align with your brand. Re-read it. This is also a great time to sleep on it.
Mark S: Oh, yeah.
Marc V: Sleep on it, look at it later.
Mark S: That’s a good one.
Marc V: Also, this is something I go back and forth with. You own this business. It’s your responsibility, on how this message looks. Everybody that you know is a marketer. Everybody thinks that they’re better at marketing than you.
So, you’re going to create something, and send it to somebody, and share it with somebody. And some people are going to say “Cool! Love it!” Then, other people are going to say “I wouldn’t use that word.” So, it’s fine to get that feedback. If ten people tell you “I wouldn’t use that word,” alright. There’s a pattern developing.
Mark S: Or if there’s someone, like I know someone.
Marc V: Me?
Mark S: No. Whatever I show to this person, their first instinct is to pick out what’s wrong with it. So, that could be really useful. You just have to be prepared for that. That’s what you’re looking for.
Marc V: Also, be prepared for – here’s two things; what you’re going to deal with and how to get past it.
So, “I want to share this with you, and I wanted to get your feedback. I’ve got an opinion on it. I want to hear your opinion. And I’m going to share this with a bunch of other people. Then, I’m going to kind of do it democratic, based on the vote, on how people say. Which one do you like better?”
Or “What do you think about it?” You share it, and “I don’t like that at all.” And you do like it. You talk to a couple of other people, and they like it. And when you print it, you get to tell your wife or husband or – because sometimes it’s going to be somebody close you show it to, that says they don’t like it.
“I showed it to like eight people. You got outvoted. So, I’m running with this one.” Even if you’re not doing that, I think it’s okay. But I still think you should ask five people. And if five people don’t like it, maybe switch it up.
Mark S: Or you could tilt it and say “You know what? 95 of the 100 people I showed this to loved it. Why don’t you take a look?” That’s the way to preface that. I don’t want to tip the scales.
Marc V: I think it’s great to get some honest feedback from people, but it’s a dangerous game to play. Because people are going to stick things in your head. If you’ve done everything in the front end, which they have not, and you come up with an ad, probably there’s a good shot that it’s good. There’s a good shot at that. So, don’t get torn down too much, if you ask one person.
Mark S: But I’ve got to do a little PSA here. I’m a member of a bunch of different marketing groups, a lot of entrepreneurs in different areas. This one woman came on and said she’s got this website and this product, and these classes and things like that. And she had something else that she wanted to do.
She already had like a couple thousand people on her email list, several thousand people in her Facebook group, and she’s got a great product. She’s going to launch a course, and she shares that with her husband, who just runs her into the dirt. Like “You don’t make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why would people listen to you? You’re just this and you’re just that. Nobody is ever going to buy that.”
And she was already a pro. Do not let people run you down like that, especially if you’re just getting in this business. I don’t care if it’s your parents or your spouse or whoever it is. If you’ve got somebody like that, and you’re in this process of doing an ad, don’t show them.
Marc V: Don’t show them. No way.
Mark S: Don’t show it to those people. Don’t hit the weak spot, and like “Oh, what are you working on?” Just blow them off. Don’t involve them, because you are either a professional, or once you spend this money, you will be a professional, because you’re trying to make some money with this. You need to make sure that your opinion is valued, as well.
Marc V: And if you have somebody who yesses everything.
Mark S: Also somebody to avoid.
Marc V: Like if you go to your mom, and “I love it, honey! I love it!”
Mark S: I used to do that all the time! I have a very fragile ego.
Marc V: Yeah. I still send stuff to the people that will say they’re going to love it, and I know they will, because I still want to hear that. But then, I also try to send it to people -.
Mark S: Then, he sends it to me.
Marc V: You want honest feedback, is really the optimal thing. If you have three people that are going to honestly give you feedback, “I don’t like that color, but I love this ad,” type of thing, then that’s good. And you don’t have to take their advice, but you’ll learn. The more you do it, the better you get at it, I think.
Also, you’re going to do it and everyone’s going to like it, and it might not work. That’s okay, too.
Mark S: That kind of works us into the next section, which is execute in test. I don’t know if you knew this, but most of good marketing now is testing. Like I don’t decide anything . I let Facebook and Google decide.
I’ve had things that I loved, that I’ve put in Google ads, and it’s awesome. I worked for hours on it, and in about three days, it’s obvious that nobody else agrees. So, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to just move on.
Marc V: Yeah. I re-did a video that I didn’t think – I didn’t love it. I was just like, there’s one lady standing by an embroidery machine for 30 seconds. Why does anybody care to look at that? So, I just cut her out, and then ran both ads. The one with the lady standing by an embroidery machine doing nothing for 30 seconds, people watched that whole video!
And the one that went right into making the hat, people were skipping out on. So, for whatever reason, people liked seeing the machine and the brand and the friendly face. Maybe that ten seconds or whatever it was, they got to digest what they were about to see. You can’t predict that stuff.
Mark S: So, the moral of that story is do everything we just said. Get other peoples’ opinions. Make sure it’s good. Make your best decision. But then, if the marketplace is telling you that everyone that you’ve ever met is wrong, they’re wrong! That’s just the way it works.
Marc V: What I put here is give it a shot. It’s great if you have it just blow out. Like you want to sell those 24 jackets, and 24 are sold, the night that you start passing out those flyers at the Yoga studio. Great!
Maybe you sell 19. You almost sold all of them. You missed out on five, but that’s a good move. What could you do better? Do you need to change the message a little bit? Change the offer? Maybe look at all of the other factors that are involved.
Mark S: The audience.
Marc V: The audience, yeah. It’s a holiday weekend. Not as many people were at the event. There’s a lot of things to consider. So, look for those wins that are heading in the right direction. You advertised it on Facebook. You had 200 you wanted to sell. You sold 125. That’s good! How do you get to the 200?
You tweak your ad, you change your image, you change the words you’re using, you change the offer. Maybe you raise the price, and add a coupon.
Mark S: Yeah. It is nutty, what works. It really is nutty. We’ve had things years ago, that when we would first come out with a supply item, you’d run a test on two different items. And the more expensive one sells a lot more. People just assume that it’s a better product, because you’re charging more.
So, don’t think that just because if you have a jacket for $50 that you tried, and you didn’t sell that many, that you have to try it for $30. Try it for $60. You know what I mean? Try it for more, too.
Marc V: What’s great about that, especially in apparel, when you raise the price on apparel, and any item, when it’s a more expensive item, you can afford to put more detail and quality into it, too. So, maybe you can offer that “if it washes off,” guarantee. Or you can offer everyone is going to get initials somewhere, put on it. You get to offer these extra things, so it’s great.
Now we’re talking about you’re going to execute. Part of the executing is the testing. You’re looking for patterns of wins. If it’s a complete failure, you know it’s a complete failure, you want to try something different.
The next one, last step, is revamp or scale up. I think those are the only two things you do. It’s never give up. Give up is not the option.
Mark S: That’s a good point. Now, give up may be that you no longer really push that item.
Marc V: Yeah, sure.
Mark S: But revamp could be that you add something to that item.
Marc V: Or maybe just revamp is “I’m not going to do the jackets. They don’t work. I’m going to go for hoodies, or I’m going to go for pants, or I’m going to go for bags.” So, revamping is sometimes just changing what you’re offering.
Your marketing landed somewhere between terrible failure or below your goal. That’s where you’re revamping. It’s either just nothing happened, it was terrible, or you missed your goal. Your goal was to sell 24 jackets, you sold 19. Between failure – zero jackets – and 19 jackets, is the same plan; revamp.
What can you do differently? Do you need to advertise in a different place? Do you need to have a different offer?
Mark S: I was just thinking of that. Is it a different product? Is it a different advertisement? Is it a different audience that you send it to? Is it a different price? Is the copy different?
Basically, what you’re going to do is tweak different parts of the process that we just went through.
Marc V: Yeah. The next time that you hand out that flyer after the event, have a different headline to it.
Mark S: Different color paper.
Marc V: Yeah, different color paper. Maybe the first one was focusing on style, and looking good. When you look at it, maybe you realize that not too many people cared about looking good. You know, you see people with hair messy, and sweaty.
Maybe they care more about comfort. So, “Be comfortable when you leave the studio. Get a hoodie!”
Mark S: That’s a nice pitch! It like it.
Marc V: Thanks! I just thought of it.
Alright, step two, the other one, is scale up. That’s if you have success. So, a couple of things here. If you’re successful, if you sell all 24 hoodies, don’t mess with that campaign. Your flyer worked, your brochure worked, your message worked. It worked exactly how you wanted.
Don’t try to go in there and make it better. It already worked. Don’t mess with it.
Scale it up. Find another studio to go to. Buy more of them. Whatever it might be.
Mark S: Basically, you’re going to do more of what you did, to be successful. You’re going to do it in more places, you’re going to do it more times.
Marc V: Or spend more money.
Mark S: Spend more money on it. If it’s a Facebook ad, what we normally do is if we get an ad that works, we spend a little bit more money on it all of the time, until it doesn’t work anymore.
Marc V: And that’s what you want to do. If what you’re doing is you do the menu at the restaurant, and you’re like “Oh, my gosh!”
Mark S: First of all, if that works, call me! Because I’m going to want you to prove it.
Marc V: But whatever it is, if it works, you do more of it. You do it at more places, you buy larger ads, whatever it might be. We talked about the Penny Saver thing. If you put it in there, and all of a sudden, you’re getting small businesses calling you up to make t-shirts, “I’m doing it in this zip code. Let me do it in this zip code, too.”
Mark S: Wait! I just thought of a scenario where the menu thing might be very effective.
Marc V: Alright. Let’s do it!
Mark S: You’re running your t-shirt shop, and your specialty is in stain-resistant clothing, and you’re right next to an outdoor barbecue place. And you say “Look at the barbecue sauce on your shirt right now! Come get it replaced for $15.”
Marc V: That’s not too bad. I’ve got a better one.
Mark S: Probably not, but go ahead. We’ll let you guys decide.
Marc V: You’re in the same scenario, barbecue place, and you’re in the same plaza as them. “Really full? Walk it off! Come down the road, and check out our cool t-shirts!” You do a little drawing of the little pig with the X on its eyes, and an arrow. Then, you show the three doors down, and then the t-shirt shop, with a smiley face.
Then, you show people, “After you go eat, just walk, and come see our shop!”
Marc V: I will say that your visuals were better. And the only way that we could combine the two is if you specify “XXXXXL shirts available.” I think that would work!
Alright, that’s enough of that!
Marc V: Yeah. We did everything.
Mark S: We covered everything. We’re going to put everything in the show notes, because you’re going to need them. You’re going to want to listen to this again. Definitely, if you’re going to do your first marketing campaign or your first actual marketing campaign – not just an ad that you decided to run at the last minute – then, go through some of these steps.
I think it’s really valuable, and I think you’ll have a better business, because of it.
Marc V: What’s the email address for the podcast?
Mark S: Host@CASpodcast.com.
Marc V: If you have something that you’re working on, if you want to send us your plan, your images, your art, whatever it might be, we’re not going to just say it looks bad, or we’re not going to just say it looks good. We’re going to give you our honest opinion, if this is something we would run, and if we would change anything.
You should do that, too. Just getting a couple extra opinions is nice.
Mark S: That was all absolutely true, except I will tell you if it looks bad.
Marc V: Oh, we will tell you, but it might not be bad.
Mark S: It might not be. Alright, guys. Thanks very much for listening! This has been Mark Stephenson, from ColDesi.
Marc V: And Marc Vila, from Colman and Company.
Mark S: You guys have a great business!
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