Campaign Balancing Acts

(00:00) Words can mislead. They can. If I go, (growling noise) You know where I’m at. I get it. Yeah, It’s visceral. I can feel it. Caveman project management, Look out for my new book coming out fall of 2025. Welcome to the marketing team at one podcast where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets.

(00:38) Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Eric, what we're crying about today? Man. Well, you know, it's interesting. I'm not really crying about anything specific to my week, but I was I did read a story recently, and that made me cry because it made me think of all the things that I went through as a youngster growing up in this crazy business.

(01:04) I don't really work a lot of these types of clients, and most of them, most of them that I've experienced have been in-house. So I don't have a lot of experience working with those, but I've worked next to people that work with some of these people. And the problem was the story kind of went like this.

(01:19) There was a marketing manager who met with their boss. Their boss had some hopes and dreams for this big, gigantic, successful marketing program, and things were not perfectly clarified along the way. As far as what are the goals and what's the timeline. And so this marketer went in full steam ahead, taking, you know, kicking butt, doing whatever that person could do to succeed in align with, maybe goals that were kind of roughly outlined, but not really very clarified when the project began.

(01:54) Two months in, boss person wanders in and says I got a great idea. Okay, let's scrap that because it's not really going anywhere. It's not really succeeding. I don't see any traction, blah, blah, blah. And unfortunately, because of the disconnect from that leader, didn't realize it, you know, didn't really look into the fact that this probably could have been a successful marketing campaign and this person has put their heart and soul into this project for the rug to be, basically, ripped out from under them.

(02:24) So that brought me tears. To tears? I was weeping, I mean crying. You were crying. I was like NPR story driveway weeping. Like lip-quivering.... Because it just too many like, you worked so hard on that project and you're making progress and you have to get copy, You had to get photography, you had to get that video on Instagram.

(02:49) See, I would go directly to rage. Like. Like, I don't know if I'd cry in that case. Like to put all that work into something. And then just like, then, wait, what? What? We're doing something else now? Yeah. Maybe put it in the boss's shoes. What is the boss thinking there? Like, where are they coming from? Bosses get shiny object syndrome, a little bit.

(03:09) And when they're not as engaged or they aren't as clear with their goals, I think as a marketer, solo marketers especially are left to kind of make up some of the story themselves, make up what is success. Hopefully it resonates with what the boss thinks is success. But oftentimes it's not because everybody is slightly different.

(03:33) And unless you do a good job of clarifying what's the goal? What's the budget, what's the timeframe? Because really, you know, in my experience and yours too, I mean, we both done a lot of marketing campaigns throughout many, many years. And what I think is interesting is we've done small ones and we've worked on basically I would quasi say national.

(03:59) I used to do a lot of cereal box designs. Yeah. And I look at that as kind of national marketing because, you know, there's a lot of mechanics and advertising in play that make those very successful. They're short, they're expensive, and they have reasonable success, you know. Short like, like only two inches high or timeframe-wise? Thank you, yes.

(04:22) Short in timeframe. Because Yeah. Basically, cereal boxes work out a six week cycle if you go. interesting. Okay. They probably try to time it somewhat with how long you have a box of cereal I don’t... I don't know your proclivity for cereal honestly, Mike. And for some people, it's a passion. What about you? Are you? Oh gosh, the last time I ate some cereal, I mean, Backstreet Boys were probably popular.
(04:50) Their first run. Oh OK. the very first time. I was going to say that was like 6 months ago. And it might be even further back. Like New Kids. I don't know. I judge all my phases in life based on popular boy bands. So you're not one of these adults that makes regular meals out of cereal? No, no, not at all. OK.

(05:10) Sorry. That's.. I have no expectations. I don't I go to the cereal aisle, buy cereal for my kids. They're they're aficionados. But I've left those. Would you say six weeks is a good... They get tired of it after six days. So it's like I never really track the patterns of a... They're not loyalists, so to speak.

(05:30) Ah! So you have a bar, a selection. So far. Yes, But I could see how a six week window would be good for that. Because you want to. You're always trying to like, Hey, what's the new thing , capture people's attention as they're walking down the aisle and and stuff like that. You get you work off of a familiar brand element.

(05:48) Yeah. Yellow box, Orange box, whatever it is. But then there's the “Oh, wait, they're giving away a free tote bag. It’s like NPR cereal or something? Yeah. Yep. So that's the shortest timeframe. But there's also like those national that's a national product. Yep. Usually a national campaign.

(06:08) There's all kinds of dollars behind it. They have ad dollars that they throw at these things. TV commercials, you know, everything. Endcaps. They are buying all the best spots in the store. So there's a short time frame there. You're working fast. There's a lot of money involved. It's usually pretty successful.

(06:25) Yeah. Some of those brands have been around forever. So is the budget. The budget really dictates how speedy they can be, right? Because they can put more resources towards it. Right. And so there's a lot more stuff going going on there. Right. Like that. You're just like coordination from everything.

(06:44) Yeah. The thing to clarify, I guess is that marketing programs take a while to time, to plan and they can be successful, relevant to how they're measured and what their goals are of that. And part of the calculation you need to make is how much money are you putting into doing this? Because you can make all kinds of cool things, But we know that if nobody sees it, it's, you know, commercially not that viable.

(07:13) You know, we've had success with some of the bigger campaigns that we've done that we've spent six months planning. We put a six month time frame on the campaign. We put a six month budget on the campaign and signed a lot of contracts to other advertisers, billboards, whatever it is all outside vendors to do this stuff.

(07:34) And so there's a very measured, deliberate path forward because there's a lot of things at play. And those seem to be the most successful, not just because of the money spent, which, I argue, you can regulate how much of that money is spent. the planning and the organization of everything is the real key to the success of those campaigns.

(07:57) Then you've got the other side all the way to the other end. it's more of a brand awareness campaign and it's a more of a drip type style where its keep things moving, keep things current and updated and distributed out to your audience. But you're not spending a lot of money on advertising.

(08:18) You know that the time frame is maybe many, many years. So there's a long time frame for those. And they tend to be a regular budget. There's, you know, it's usually not as high of a budget. It's kind of a maintenance type level budget on those kind of... I like to call them heartbeat. Heartbeat.

(08:38) Like marketing, Right? It's just kind of keeps a constant keep a constant flow of things. Yeah. And the idea with those things is the efforts are kind of cumulative that, that, that your patience will be rewarded by incremental progress over time. Makes me think to a relevant piece of that is how big is that audience? Yeah.

(09:05) You know that kind of an audience is probably let’s argue it's in the dozens of people. Cereal box - Millions of people. Everybody. I used to love the creative brief I would get from them and I would ask them to do some of these packages were: We want to appeal to men and women from ages 18 to 68. Like, alright, so basically everybody? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(09:31) Is there anybody we want to exclude in that case? Who can't buy this? Who are we going to prevent from buying this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not a successful way to go into those things. No. But that's, that's, that's the range of our experiences. I mean it's, it's been, we have an audience of dozens, some of those bigger campaigns it might have been a county or a region or three big cities in Northern California or something like that.

(10:00) So maybe you're talking hundreds of thousands of people for those. Yeah. And those tend to be a little bit like I said, more planned out. They're expensive for sure. But I think, you know, one of the analogies that I like to use in thinking of these things is cooking a steak. You know, speaking my language.

(10:22) Yeah, I know you’re a carnivore. Yeah. Yeah. You love to eat the the red meat, any other meats? I'm actually I like pork a lot. Yeah. Good carnitas? Oh yeah. I don't I don't discriminate really on most of the... But if it takes time. Takes a long time, it's usually better than something seared. Interesting... That's in my, in my you know.

(10:52) Interesting analogy for today’s podcast. Yeah. It takes time. Yeah. You find there is better results. I agree. Yeah. Like, like carnitas like, or like a pulled pork type thing or Yeah. Those things that are like in a smoker for a long time and you let the smoke, like, slowly accumulate and have an effect on that piece of meat when it's done, it's fantastic.

(11:20) I'm even thinking before that you probably soaking it in some sort of Yeah. Organic fluid. Yeah. Depending on the recipe. Yeah. It infuses flavor into it, right? Yep. Yep. So there’s that whole pre-planning stage. Yeah. You got to make that marinade. You got to go get the meat. You've got to put it in the marinade. and you've got to let that set.

(11:41) Yeah. A day, ideally? It’s a long time. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you go, I'm going to go grill a steak. Yeah. Or broil a steak. That’s even scarier.. You must have a really good broiler. I'm afraid to use my broiler. it's really good. And it’s dangerous, and there's usually smoke involved.

(12:01) And there’s people with towels. Doing this with a window open. Those are signs of progress right there. Well, that's you know, that's the difference, though, is that, you know, when you're broiling a steak, you've got to be on your game, man. Every second that thing is in the broiler, you're on it, you're looking, you're observing, you're looking at the flame, you're smelling, you're looking for smoke.

(12:22) There's no prep. You have to run out the fridge and jam it right into the broiler. You know, it's quick, it's fast. It's using a ton of resources. It's, you know, you've got all kinds of energy going to cook this thing. The experience is like 20 minutes long. Yep. Fraction of the time it takes to roast.

(12:41) Yeah. Or marinade and then roast something that your talking about. Yep. There's maybe equal rewards or maybe better rewards depending on your taste. You know, A really good broiled steak Tastes pretty darn good. Oh yeah. It’s pretty intense. Yeah. It's scary, but it's worth the pay check sometimes, you know what I’m saying? Yeah.

(13:01) And it's it's called for sometimes, right? Like you, it fits into the meal planning for your week or month. Right. Like that's a weeknight thing. Right. Right. Yours is a weekend thing. Weekend. Not, not a Yeah. Yeah. Weekend. Yes. Not weakened. Not Yeah. Not that not the popstar. No not, not The Weekend.

(13:27) Yeah. I'm relating this to, like, having a team of people, like, swarming on something to run. Get something done really quickly and knowing that the reward could be really great. But it's, it's time intensive. It could be money expensive too, Right. So you have to have the resources of people and budgets sometimes to be able to do that and that.

(13:51) And it can be a great thing. It could be an amazing, you know, Very successful. Amazing steak. Right. Say, well, on the other side of things, like if you if you're working on the slow burn of that, you know, that uses a lot less resources, right? You're like usually when you're doing a slow cook, you're not cooking it at 500 degrees, you're cooking it at 200, right? So you're using less than half the resources and you're letting the cumulative effects of time.

(14:19) Work. Work its way. Work its magic. Exactly. So so that goes back to like those kind of like. Would you equate the the the big pork roast that we're smoking for a long time that's more of like that heartbeat type marketing type thing that you're talking about? The broiled steak analogy is, is the cereal box project.

(14:38) Lots of resources, lots of money, intense short experience, big bang, boom, it’s over with. You cooked it... You ate it. You’re out the door in 30 minutes. The other two are variations of that roasting of pork. Pork roast - roasting a pork roast? Pork shoulder. OK roasting a pork shoulder. Let's fixate it on the shoulder.

(15:02) That's the best. Yeah, okay, so. So we've got these, we've got the effort, the like the quick burn, the slower, slower burn and both working towards a, towards results. The result is yummy food in this, in this case. Right. But so we're, we're talking about marketing and everything like that.

(15:18) But like, how does, how does that relate to the boss conundrum the the with the shiny object syndrome or whatever. How how do you relate that to to solving the problem with the boss? the takeaways are that it's not a crime to change channels or switch horses in the middle of a race. Really. It's just we have to establish up front that what the risks are, what we're doing, clarify and give things time.

(15:49) And if we can't give them time, we got to give them a lot of resources. And those are the two pieces of the equation. You can do it either way. It's a lot maybe less stressful to have a longer time frame, maybe spend less resources all at once. Maybe drip that out over time. I think those tend to be very.

(16:11) You've seen it, you know, sometimes a marketing or some sort of an inbound or an outreach campaign could take up to two years to come up with some results. I mean, you know, in the Web world, too, I mean, blogs and all those kind of inbound strategies that are organically bringing traffic to your website and the audience to you, that just doesn't happen overnight.
(16:36) And it's really hard to make that happen overnight. You know, you have to have a body of work and the way that SEO works and a lot of the technology that's out there, you really do have to have kind of some patience for some of that stuff. So yeah. Let's pretend I'm the boss. Okay? I've given you this project to work on, you know, and I, we talk, we have it, We leave that, we leave this interaction, whether it's Zoom or whatever.

(17:02) the meeting with a shared understanding what needs to happen, and then we both go to our separate corners, you get working away and everything, right? And then I'm flipping through newspapers and or looking at looking through things. And I see something in Inc. magazine. I'm like, we really need to try that.

(17:23) And I come barging down your door and say, Hey, you know what? You know, I told you last week, we need to scrap that. We need to do this thing right. Like what? Yes, that’s the scenario. How do you how, how do we take what we've learned about our our cooking metaphor and kind of help shape that? Some of it's going to happen.

(17:44) But like what? What would you suggest to try and maybe prevent that or what would you do in that situation? Yeah, I think the most important thing there is communication, because as I was reading the story and remembering, I have my own version of the story, but so many of those issues start to arise when there's not complete communication about all the most important elements of a marketing campaign.

(18:07) And I would say the risk is higher, the smaller the campaign. You need to have a very defined set of questions ready. Have your leadership and stakeholders sign on and commit to timeframes and budgets and goals and have them check in on them more regular basis so that they understand where you're at, But I would also argue that you need to communicate the realities of what it takes to become successful at marketing.

(18:40) Marketing takes a lot of time. People are very leery of marketing. This, you know, it can be twisted and manipulated in a lot of bad ways and manipulative ways. Yeah, yeah. Everybody's aware of it because they're marketed to what did they say... I saw some stat, it was like - we see 30,000 brand impressions a day.

(19:01) I was like - Wow. My gosh, my eyes are getting tired already. Just thinking about that. No wonder I need glasses now. Here’s one now... Yeah. Sorry. I think that it's very shocking to think that just because you do something and I'm coming at it from maybe the stakeholder leadership's position, Hey, we're going to put something out there.

(19:20) Well, it's going to be successful I mean, we’re putting it out there, right? Has to be. Yeah, well, there's a little bit more to it than that. Yeah. Its a much more nuanced thing. Then you can create great things, but if nobody sees it... I think I said this before, it's fairly irrelevant. And in this day and age, sometimes you need to put a little bit of firepower behind some of these things to increase exposure and build into new audiences and really kind of try to expand your outreach as much as you possibly can

(19:48) and get to those other corners of your audience that you may not even be aware of that are out there. so what I'm hearing is you've got you have a there's a lot of set setting expectations before you even set up. Right. Like have have a clear list of questions that maybe leaves less like we're in that call we both have an understanding of things, but if it's all verbal and we don't have a touchpoint of something we can both look at and agree to, we might understand, have different understandings of what's going on.

(20:19) Yes. And so that different understanding could come back a week later. I'm making an assumption on here that like when if you're a small team, you've got one, you're one person trying to do it all and everything. You're not going to have too many of those instances where you've got the quick burn, high resource intensive things going through.

(20:38) So a lot of the things are are more like slow burn type things. Let's say you do the right things and you you communicate with the the boss about like hey, “This this is a six month campaign where we're going to be doing this and this is going to happen every week, this going to happen every month. This is the activities.

(21:01) This is what we're trying to accomplish. These are our goals that we've set for everything. So we've set that in place. We've done all the right things upfront. And I'm the boss again and I still like, hey, we should we should look at like texting people offers. Can you get on that? How do you how do you how do you have that conversation.

(21:20) We’ll do a little role play thing here. But I think I would come back and say, that's a great idea. Let's give it a try. Let's build out a campaign plan around that. But some logistics around it, some planning, some calendaring, see what kind of resources we have. I'm not going to abandon everything else that I've got going on here.

(21:43) We still need to stick to the trail on this goal here. I love the idea. Let's talk about that some more and we'll try to implement that along the way. But don't let that. ...and this is internal now... I wouldn't let that overlap or take precedence over the campaign. We need to have an agreement.

(22:03) Yeah. That the campaign we originally talked about four months ago, we said we would give it six months. What's really trying to give it six months? If we have to refine it or change it along the way, that's okay. And that's actually part of being a good marketer is learning from your data, seeing what's out there, what's getting response and going towards that.

(22:24) That's always part of any successful marketing plan. But having something come in and just replace it is not fair to any anybody, including your audience, I would say. because you're not giving them a chance to kind of learn through this particular channel more about what you are providing. So, you know, it just adds on another campaign.

(22:45) That's what I would argue, that that's great. What are your goals? Why do you want to do it? What makes you think that it's going to be successful? Because maybe they do have some data or some insight that they just learned about, you know, their own outreach or their own audience that they're like, we should try to hit that right away.

(23:01) That's great. Go for it. But that should, you know, a lot of successful marketing takes time. Yeah. If you don't have the time, it takes a lot of money. And most of the social marketers on the entrepreneurs and people out there that we deal with don't rarely have that kind of money. And when they do, it's usually a big decision to go forward with those efforts.

(23:23) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would assume there's something to of just like double checking priorities too, right. Like making sure that they that you have to evaluate to evaluate the ask but also kind of say okay well yeah I hear what you're saying, we've got this thing already rolling and, You know we've we've put some money and effort behind it.

(23:47) We owe it to this thing to keep it going or, you know, like, maybe, maybe we don't. Maybe, maybe results. What would you say about. Well, I'm not getting results. It were three months in. We're not. We don't seem to be getting results. Yeah, I'm assuming that you've done a little bit of homework before you jump into a campaign and understand that there is validity to the effort.

(24:09) Yeah. You need to be confident that where you're going is you're not just pulling some idea out of the clouds and hoping, you know, you need to kind of make some educated, you know, observations if anything like see what competitors are doing. See where your market is. See where your audience is.

(24:27) That’s really important. I mean, you need to talk to your audience where they're at, because very few of them, depending on what you're offering, you know, and that's another thing to think about is that the cycle of the buy, How long does it take your customer to buy your product? If you're selling a product that's service, that's 40, 50, $60,000, I argue it takes them a long time to make the final decision and they're not doing that on a weekly basis.

(24:50) Yeah. But if they're buying a $2 something at the store or, you know, a $4 a month service or something like that, that buying cycle is a lot quicker. Yeah. It's a little more of a faster pace. You can measure the success of that much easier probably than those slower buying cycle type services. Yeah.

(25:11) So as professionals services specifically that's That's a hard thing to just cut back on that for a few months. Yeah it takes a lot of consideration for your customer to make that sort of an investment in you. So that's something that you need to kind of also consider Yeah. is that buying cycle.

(25:29) It is important for there to be very clear expectations on what that hierarchy of importance is, for sure. Yeah. And I realize that they can change if especially if your leadership is comfortable with multiple marketing campaigns to multiple different audiences. That seems like that would be very difficult for a solo marketer to manage in general.

(25:52) Yeah. It’s really nice to be able to just have one or two campaigns that you’re kind of, you know. I think some some smaller companies, that's a pretty good strategy. They've got the Keeping the Lights on drip awareness campaign that's always going on out there, maybe it's email, you know, those kind of things or inbound.

(26:10) A little light inbound touch on that. You can also then run with certain campaigns maybe around events or conferences or something like that, where you can run a little bit more quicker timeframe, and market to a specific something that's going to happen, product launch. Something like that. It's smart to have something like that.

(26:33) At least one of those going. Yeah. Maybe at the same time as well. And then the sole marketer won't be driven too insane by just having to go back and forth between those two. But I think when you start to get into three or four or five and you have multiple marketing campaigns and that one person is there trying to do it, you muddle the message, you muddle the goals.

(26:57) You are, that's a difficult thing for one person to manage. I'm not saying you can’t do it. Yeah, yeah. I’m saying as one person... that is going to drive you a little crazy. I have heard a lot of guidance from a lot of people that if you're if you're struggling or maybe you're starting from ground zero, like maybe you've been brought in as the first hire, as that first marketing team and one that like, it's probably best to figure out like do one thing, do it consistently, do it for a year,

(27:22) don't pollute it at all, like and then see what happens. And then after that year, check in and see what worked and what didn't work. And because it might take that long to see see some results. Right. And so, I mean, you have to be really you have to feel really confident, come into a brand new situation, be able to, you know, put it all out there like, hey, this is going to this might take a year.

(27:45) I'm going to keep working towards that. We're going to keep doing the same thing in the same channel all the time. And we're going to see what what we get out of it. So I, I see that as being like a little bit of a challenge, but that's the reality that's kind of out there too, that you have to kind of balance against, you know, there's that long term thinking of things, right? But there's also the the ebbs and flows of other things that might come about, too.

(28:13) And to manage all those. And I think it's a juggling act, right? I look that brings up the idea of risk. You need to set the foundation, right? That’s what your talking about. Yep. Just set the foundation first. Then you can start to add in the risk element, whether it's those point in campaigns or expensive campaigns.

(28:33) You know, back to the steak broiling. There's a lot of risk when you're broiling a steak. You could burn that thing in seconds, you know? Yeah. Got to keep your eyes on it. And keep it going. But that, that's where measuring what you know, starting off with probably low risk campaigns as the baseline and then moving to slightly riskier things along the way.

(28:57) If your going to add things on and try some different things along the way. I think too, other people are like, well we've spent as much money why isn’t it viral? Or we've done this thing that's really, you know, look at this PowerPoint presentation we did for this conference. Why isn't that viral? A

(29:19) nd I think that people need to kind of... There's so much out there to to compete with the that I've heard that from from to me specifically. But I know that we've worked with marketers in the past who've been pressured to make things go viral. And that's fine if you want to try to make things go viral. But there's a lot of risk with that that most business leaders do not want to take.

(29:40) And depending on what product or service you're selling. There's no room for that, kind of “Going viral” dynamic on any sort of marketing campaign. Yeah, We came into this and we're talking about one very specific boss, and I think we have this idea of, like an entrepreneur who is very motivated, very like, go, go, go all the time.

(30:05) Very... Reads a lot of books, listens to podcasts... Yeah, Yeah. Is susceptible to a lot of like crazy inputs. Right. Me being one of them... So but and everything we've talked about fits that kind of narrative. But if you've got let's see, you've got the other side of it, you've got someone who is maybe, let's say more frugal, let's say that are more like set in their ways.

(30:31) This has worked for a long time. Like why, why upset the apple cart? Like if you're in that situation and you're just dying to try something new, Like what? How would you go about broaching that subject? Right? Like, what would you how would you try and get the decision makers to change their mind a little bit about about the path and maybe consider other options? I'm sure you have some ideas around that too, because I know my I come at it from a brand perspective that I'm always looking and I would think that that person is risk averse, who is risk averse, is worried

(31:07) about tarnishing their brand reputation or something like that. In that case, my suggestion would be to remove that as much as possible by maybe building a slightly different sub-brand or something that fits underneath that that is a little bit more freeform. you know, I've seen you can think of like insurance companies where they'll use little animals or silly characters but you barely remember who they were brand name wise because maybe they've separated it a little bit, or something like that.

(31:40) But that could be one way of kind of stretching your legs as a creative marketer, if you want to get out there and really try to make an impact and prove if that makes sense, And maybe you can speak a little bit to the data side of that because I think that's another part of it that you probably want to explore and use as ammunition to talk to your leadership.

(32:02) Yeah. And make a case for something. I think a lot of it could be like it's almost like going into pitch It's like a shark take pitch type thing, right? Like you're like, Hey, here's here's what I'm seeing. Like, I think there's an opportunity here. Here's some here's some data to back it up.

(32:22) Like, here's what's been working. Here's some things that we've got going on. Here's my idea. Here's how it could play out and then just and do what you can in that pitch to reduce the appearance of risk the whole time. So, like, if you can and I think if you could maybe attach it to like, hey, this isn't going to cost a lot of money, it's not very hard to do, but it is a little different.

(32:45) You might get be more receptive. You're not going to be able to go in there and say, use the shark tank analogy again, you've got this little widget and you're asking for a, you know, $10 million investment for 1% in the company. That rarely happens. That doesn't happen, right? Like, so you don't want to you don't want to amp up the risk all this stuff to to where you know you're Mr.

(33:09) Wonderful is like you're crazy. Get out of here. Right. But if you can do something that makes it a little bit easier, and start. Especially you haven't done it before. Like, do you sit there really easy? And if you I think in that scenario, if you got somebody like that, if you can say, hey, like I'm coming at it from like now matching it up to things I've done before with like tools and stuff like that, like, Hey, here's this new tool that we've got here that I'd love to try out.

(33:35) Now I know it's another tool, but I think what we could do is to make room for that. We have these other things like do the work beforehand and say these are all the other things that we've got going on. We're barely using it or it's or in a marketing case, we're doing all these things and they don't really seem to be working.

(33:51) So we could save some budget here to apply for this budget. It's not going to take much more time, but we could do it on a trial basis. So we're not upset, upsetting the the the tracks that this train is on. We're just going to we're working on something on the side. Let's see how it works if it doesn't work.

(34:08) No big deal. Like examples that come to my mind for something like that are very much centered around social media and short form. Video kind of things. Yeah. I know everybody, you know, TikTok take it for what it is. I mean, that's a powerful marketing tool, that, I think has driven a lot of business awareness for people, and that's one of those low bar things that people have kind of jumped into. And let's just try it.

(34:31) I know that we've had clients that are gigantic, that don't have any presence on TikTok or some of these other platforms that provide that kind of. You know. I don't want to call it SEO, but awareness that all of a sudden there's discoverability around that that is risky, but you don't know because of the format of that short form video, let's say 20, 30 seconds, you could expose yourself to millions of people.

(34:59) And something that's somewhat interesting, you don't have to take huge risks. I know, but you know, the Sacramento History Museum, their print shop, has just passed 1 billion views or some crazy number. Really. They put together a TikTok videos. It's an old gentleman that's just working on an old printing press.

(35:19) Wow. They are completely viral. and I mean it's insane. No risk there, but just a different platform and different format and. I feel like it's very risky to try and expose yourself to billions of people. Hmmm. Thats a good.... Yeah, maybe I need to re-phrase that. I've been warned about that.

(35:39) There's databases of people that with that. That’s right, that one time the FBI had to make a phone call. I remember. Yeah. It was rough. But yeah, no, it's interesting. So like just in, in that case, it's a really simple like you're almost taking a flier on it, right? Like, Hey, let me just let me turn my phone on something I'm doing all the time and put it out there and see what happens.

(36:03) Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, there's a time and a place for it. I'm not saying that's appropriate, but there's a low risk on the financial and timeframe side of it, I guess. So you could say, scheduling side of it... I mean, from from my perspective, every time social media comes up, I think like it takes forever.

(36:23) And and we're not going to like... To do it right. You know? I mean, like, forever. I mean. What does forever mean? What's your interpretation of forever? Forever? Yeah... Oh... When's this podcast over? No, I... Thank you. I think it maybe it doesn't take forever. I've always like I you have to one you have to love it.

(36:45) I don't, I just don't. Two, you have to be like to all the guidances all the hacks of like how to do this and this it's you know, you got to post three or four times a day. You got to interact with people like, like and if I'm a boss and you're telling me that, hey, here's this TikTok thing over here, I'd be pretty skeptical.

(37:08) Like, okay, prove to me it's not going to take too much time. And that this is worth the effort. I can see that. I don't have an answer to that. That's the questions I ask. Anytime somebody talks about social media, I'm like, okay, yeah, I know it looks fun. It really does look fun. But is it is it something that's going to get us the is it going to reach our long term goals? You know, and I think that's the not our forever goals are long term goals.

(37:36) Well, is it again, back to the price point. Are we selling a $40,000 service? I don’t know that I'm going to do that on a TikTok. Yeah. TikTok would be like, get to know Mike, get to know Eric. Yeah. Who would... Not a lot there... Nobody would. nobody. Nobody wants to see that. Yeah exactly... like...anyway.

(37:56) Reach out If you reach out, if you get to this point in the video and let us know that you are watching. So that's what's nice about YouTube is you can see immediately the drop off. Like, “Wait, what did I say there?” And there goes your audience... So I feel like we covered a lot of ground, right? Like you and as we do, meandered a little bit, but like, what are your big takeaways from like, from this if you had to, like, boil it down the TLDR as they say, You mean broil? Broil. If we have to broil this down. Thank you, yes.

(38:31) Sorry about that. Yeah. I think if you're going to boil it down, what you want to do is really just kind of start off with a commitment that's, you know, establish what those goals are and make sure that those are measurable goals that are very smart. We talk about smart goals all the time. Get those down, get people committed to it, and understanding that, yes, they might change over time.

(38:53) That's okay. We can tweak and adjust and we're supposed to based on data and things that we learn. So that's important to keep that. But the overall goal audience, the structure in a sense should stay intact for whatever that agreed upon time frame was established right when things began so that we're not ripping the carpet out from underneath people.

(39:16) And honestly, you know, unless you've got lots and lots of resources, time and money to throw at things intensely, like you're broiling that steak and taking huge risks around that, give it time, be patient. And if you're going to be patient, make sure that there's consistent check ins with data points with the leadership and stakeholders so that they understand where things are at along the way.

(39:40) And you're making changes and tweaks along the way too, so that it is intelligent and that it was intentional in that you're not wasting those resources. Yeah. The other thing is that, you know, be flexible. If there are new ideas that come to light, add those on as separate marketing campaigns with slightly different mechanics, goals, whatever you want to, you know, whatever makes that different, just keep that established as something that doesn't influence the commitments to that initial marketing plan.

(40:12) So those are the things that I would want people to understand so much of it's about communication. So much, right? It's it's all about... I wish it wasn’t. But. It would be so easy if everyone thought like I do. Exactly how perfect would everything be? It would be so much easier. Not even, Not even, There's nothing even close to an army of me, of my clones.

(40:38) No, we’re outliers, Mike. That’s our unfortunate lot in life. You put together something that you think could help in a lot of the things we've talked about. Could you describe that a little bit? Yeah. Thanks. If you go to marketingteamofone.net our website, you can download a free PDF. That is a quick kind of cheat sheet that you can grab really quickly, circle things, check things off, and it should help you get through planning a project and establishing kind of those milestones and those kind of important details that you need to capture

(41:09) immediately when that project request comes in. It's for those kind of quick little brainstorming sessions with your leadership. Not everything needs to be directly right into the computer. Right. Get that, get your hands dirty a little bit with some graphite and paper. Old school, Yeah. I dig that, yeah, for sure.

(41:27) I go fountain pen. Yeah. But then, I’m more modern than you. You’re more caveman. I like to balance things out. I just want to thank you because you've enlighten me as to I think the metaphor is very apt. Fits really good for a lot of different ways. And you've given me my shopping list for today for the weekend Steak tonight. Pork shoulder on Sunday. I’m set.

(41:50) This is going to be great. And cardiologist appointment on Monday. Yeah. Just to make sure everything's all cleared out and you’re good to go. I eat rabbit food in between those things. Just celery, kale, all the... You got to balance it out. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that would make me angry. Most of the time.

(42:10) If I had to eat that regularly. That would just be... But you know what? It's good to do that. Some days I don’t eat anything really. Yeah. Yep. So I'm going to burn up a bunch of resources tonight. Nice. and I'm going to conserve them for the rest of the weekend. I like that. That's a good way to approach life, huh? It really is.

(42:29) You’re living the best life over there, Mike. We are admiring from a distance. It’s beautiful. Awesome. Thanks man. Appreciate it. Thanks, this was fun. Thanks for tuning in. For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the marketing team of one podcast on YouTube, Apple or Spotify Podcast Networks.

(42:47) You can also chat with us on the r/marketingteamofone subreddit, or visit marketingteamofone.net to learn more.

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