Avoiding Top Marketing Mistakes: Shiny Object Syndrome, Strategy Commitment, and Effective Follow-Up our NCBI February Luncheon

Welcome to Struggles: Navigating Challenges, Together – the podcast dedicated to exploring the common hurdles entrepreneurs face across all industries and discovering strategies to overcome them. Whether you're grappling with scaling challenges, navigating business struggles, or looking for leadership tips and financial management advice, this podcast offers a wealth of real-world stories, expert insights, and practical solutions. Join host Sarah Blasey as she converses with industry experts and seasoned entrepreneurs, uncovering the keys to turning obstacles into opportunities.

In each episode, we delve deep into relevant topics such as entrepreneurship, business struggles, and effective management practices, providing you with the tools and knowledge to succeed. Listen in as guests share their personal battles with shiny object syndrome, the importance of commitment to marketing strategies, and the invaluable role of relationship management.

In this episode of the "Struggles" podcast, our luncheon host Sarah Blesi is joined by panelists Chris Inman, Brian Butkowski, and Phil Vedda to discuss common marketing missteps that can hinder business growth. They explore themes such as shiny object syndrome, where businesses overly chase new trends like TikTok without strategy, and the importance of committing to and learning from a marketing plan instead of abandoning it prematurely. The guests emphasize the need for critical metrics and analytics in evaluating the effectiveness of marketing efforts and highlight the significance of following up with existing clientele to foster continued business growth. They advocate for a structured, repeatable approach to marketing and stress the value of personalized, direct engagement with potential clients. The episode encourages listeners to develop meaningful marketing strategies, establish accountability systems, and nurture professional relationships for sustained success.

[00:00:00] Accountability Partners and Objective Perspectives
[00:00:29] Introduction to the Podcast
[00:00:37] Major Marketing Missteps
[00:01:43] Understanding Shiny Object Syndrome
[00:02:39] TikTok and Demographic Alignment
[00:03:08] Questions Before Committing to Trends
[00:04:01] Importance of Strategy Commitment
[00:06:50] Importance of Metrics and Call to Action
[00:09:04] Sticking to a Marketing Routine
[00:10:40] Importance of Proper Follow-Up
[00:11:19] Success in Building Client Relationships
[00:13:24] Leveraging Referral Programs
[00:14:28] The Power of Personalized Follow-Up

Join us on Struggles: Navigating Challenges, Together, and let's turn our struggles into stepping stones towards success. Subscribe, listen, and share to keep the entrepreneurial conversation alive. We'd love to hear from you—reach out with your own stories of challenges and triumphs, and perhaps even join us as a guest on a future episode. Let's continue this journey, learning and growing together.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, business struggles, leadership tips, scaling challenges, financial management.

Transcript

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It does help to be that accountability partner or that objective third party look at things. Sometimes you're so in it or they're so in it that they have blinders on and they might not know who their most profitable or most rewarding clients really are. That's one of the things that I find super important. And sometimes you do have to look outside yourself when you need that help. And it could be a friend, it could be a colleague, but just even kind of thinking through that and understanding that, yeah, you know, I can't market to everybody. It's not going to happen. Welcome to another episode of Struggles presented by ncbi, the podcast where we navigate challenges together. So what we're going to really be talking about is the three missteps that really hold some people's, some businesses marketing back. And so let's just get in number one, shiny object syndrome. So how many here thinks that they should be on TikTok as soon as they heard about it? That's what happens. People hear about this latest marketing trend, they immediately jump on it and they spend effort and hours in revenue jumping on something new without actually figuring out if their ideal client is on that platform. How many people here have a newsletter that seems like nobody ever opens? That happens. Now, the idea is maybe the newsletter wasn't your right audience, but you hear other people getting great success off of it. So the idea of this shiny object syndrome is you hear about somebody else having great success on it, so you immediately jump on it without actually building your own strategy. And you leave back something that you are doing in your marketing behind before maybe it even took off and became successful. And you just keep jumping from object to object to try to find that one magic bullet. Do you think is going to change your business? You have anything to add, Brian? Yeah, the one thing that I would add is being critical about knowing your audience can make all the difference. One of the questions that I'll ask people as they have new shiny objects they're looking for is what problem does this solve? Or who can benefit from this shiny object, especially you in your company if you can't benefit, if you can't benefit your customers or clients, it's obviously something that might take a little bit of Runway to actually take off anyway. So if you can look for the smaller wins, the tighter wins and make sure that your audience are the ones that are winning the most, that can help you and prevent you from getting that shiny object syndrome and really spinning your wheels and falling off and falling short when obviously there's things that could be done in a whole lot better way if you weren't focused on something that maybe wasn't the right thing for you. Awesome. No, I think you guys both nailed it. The one thing I'll comment on TikTok is, you know, we did jump on that, and we started making the silly videos to try to get views, but it didn't go anywhere because they were views from outside of Ohio. You know, probably a very different demographic than who our client is. So all the time they took and us, you know, spending on it didn't really result in anything. So not a shiny object that, you know, we should have jumped on. We had some fun, though. So I got three things for you to ask yourself before you jump on something as a new trend. Does this align with your goals? Does whatever that TikTok word, does that align with your goals of how you want to market your company? Do we have the bandwidth to execute it properly? TikTok, to really be successful, you need to put out, like, three videos a day. Do you actually have the bandwidth internally to pull that off, or do you even want to put the money to hire somebody to do that? And the third option for me that I would like you to ask yourself is, what's the opportunity cost of shifting focus? So if you shifted your focus from what you already have going on to this new trend, what are you going to lose, and what could you gain? So those are the three questions I recommend you thinking about before you jump on some new shiny marketing trend. Thank you, Chris. All right, next myth that we may see out there. So one of the biggest marketing mistakes that I see all the time is not committing to a strategy long enough to learn from it. Too many businesses try something once, don't see immediate results, and then pull the plug before it has a real chance. But marketing is a test. It's about using the data you have, making tweaks, and refining the formula so that when you do find what works, you can confidently spend money and get the ROI that you're looking for. So, quick show of hands, who ordered the steak today? A lot of people getting steak, right? So as a kid, I remember when, you know, we'd be at a steak place like Outback, and I'd order a steak, and the waiter would say, how do you want your steak cooked? And I had no idea. So I looked to my dad, and he would say, oh, medium well. So, you know, what steak was to me was something that was kind of tougher in texture, needed a lot of A1 sauce, and you knew you had some chewing to do, you know, but as an adult, you try different cuts of steak, different temperatures, and you really learn how you like your steak. And once you figure it out, you can enjoy steak the rest of your life. Well, marketing is the same way. If you try something once and it doesn't work perfectly, you don't quit. You test, tweak, refine until you find what delivers real results. So kind of my expertise is around direct mail. And what we can do with direct mail is we can a b test to find the right formula. So what that might look like is maybe on our first postcard we're going to ab test different creative and, you know, maybe we try to tell our clients if their goal is to get people onto their website through the QR code, we'll make the QR code bigger. But they might be hesitant to do that because it takes up too much real estate. Well, if you a B test it and you let the data speak for itself, so then after you do that, you've got the results, now you can go and throw another variable at it. So that might be timing. With direct mail, are we going to get better results if it delivers over the weekend? Or maybe we're going to get better results if it delivers during the week. So again, you have more data you can use so that by the third time you've got real data that you can count on, you can spend money confidently knowing that you're going to get the ROI that you're looking for. So marketing, it's not about throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks. It's about committing to a process of testing and improving. So next time you think about pulling the plug on a marketing strategy because it didn't work perfectly the first time, ask yourself, did you really give it a chance? Or are you just chewing on a medium well, sirloin thinking that's the best steak can be. Brian, Chris, Anything. Can I go? Yeah, all right, I'll go. So he mentioned like three look at metrics and look at the analytics of things. So for Me, for example, YouTube and social media videos, we can all go back to the office and record a ridiculous video of the accountants dancing to some ridiculous music video of some sort. And it would get tons of likes on your social media. People would find it funny. But does it actually move the needle for your business? Does it even matter? No. So I think that everybody in their marketing plan needs to figure out what their CTA is. What is your call to action? What do you want them to do? So that you can actually get into your funnel. So, for example, if you do have a video that you're trying to educate your ideal clients and your prospects about something in your business, and the end call to action is sign up for our webinar, well, actually figure out if people are signing up for the webinar. That's the metric that actually matters. Not how many people like it, not how many people comment, but how many people are actually following through and getting into your sales funnel. Marketing seems fun and all that, but at the end of the day, we're only doing it to grow our business. And that's the purpose of marketing, is to generate new leads and new clients. So measure the things that actually matter. And that's how does this piece of marketing material actually grow your business? Two quick things. One, I really like what both of you guys are saying on this. And just to follow up with what Phil was saying, I think the idea of that super simple quote, it's not success or failure, it's success or learning. And I think as you start any of these, whether it's a shiny object syndrome new thing or something that you're fully committing to or trying to fully commit to making sure that you're on point and it's going to be something that matters to your business and it's measurable to some degree that you do have that call to action or something that you are trying to measure and make sure that you do learn from it. And then that way you can obviously build much better as you go on. And the only other thing that I like to say about the not fully committing, it really does help to have an accountability partner when you're doing different types of activities that maybe you're not always doing or you need an objective view, somebody that's not inside the organization to truly give you the opinion that matters. Hey, this is moving the needle. This is not moving the needle. Hey, it looks like it's working slowly, but it's actually working. I think those are some of the things that can really help. And having that workout body or that accountability partner can make all the difference. An advisor or coach really does matter. That's one of the things that I do for a lot of my clients. Good job, guys. I'd like to add one more thing on there. Create a repeatable system. Have it. So, like every Thursday, I'm going to spend a half hour on my marketing materials. I'm going to look at what we have going on. I'm going to create new content. I'm going to do whatever it takes. Put that into your calendar, if it's in your calendar to actually do marketing, you will actually accomplish it. If you keep putting it off, you will never do marketing to grow your business. I think as business owners, we all fall into I got things going on at home, I got employees telling me things, I got clients coming at me. But if you actually sit down and say, this is the time that I'm going to be doing it every week, I think that's how we actually accomplish our marketing goals Even better. BOM Image appreciates the opportunity to sponsor this podcast. Bomb Image provides brand firepower, precision targeted brand messaging and visual identities, empowering small teams in the professional services space to attract their most rewarding and profitable customers. We work hand in hand with our client partners implementing our unique set of processes, focusing on listening, raw objectivity and accountability to help them present a more impactful brand story. Our passion is inspiring clients to create their bomb image. Brian, do you want to continue on with our third marketing? Sure. The third one. Again, a lot of this stuff isn't rocket science. It's just making sure that we have a plan in place. But the one problem I see a lot of times, many companies leave money on the table simply just because they're not properly following up. I can be guilty of this myself at times, too. And one of the questions I often ask to anybody I'm talking to that's trying to grow their business is who's the easiest to sell to? And my answer typically is someone that has already purchased from you. And I found that building and maintaining these relationships with these clients and customers is absolutely paramount to actually developing that strong company brand and again, building revenue. Many times these things can fall through the cracks when there aren't those systems and processes in place. So again, kudos to you, Chris, for talking about that. And again, it's paramount to committing to something fully. And again, I'm guilty of some of these myself. But it doesn't need to be difficult. We need to carve out time to do those things. And doing the rhythmic or periodic outreach can take many forms. I mean, newsletters are one. You mentioned that obviously. Simple emails, where they're product emails, sales emails, simple greetings to people, following up with people that have done business with you and greet them. Happy holidays. Simple notes can make a difference. And really these can be created and executed fairly easily. So going back to what Chris was saying about, hey, can you execute these things? Do you have the bandwidth? A lot of times solopreneurs can do this or you can find people on your staff that can create these things efficiently and utilize your resources to make sure that you're following up. And even the tools that you need to utilize to make these things happen, they don't have to be expensive, but they are critical to monitor, to track, to have metrics and really make sure that you're following up properly. And again, CRMs are one of the easiest ways and I guess the crucial aspects to creating the success you can have because you want to make sure that you know, when you followed up, is your team on top of things? Are these people in your ecosystem, are the relationships actually building or are they getting stagnated? So I've actually been developing, developing a CRM platform for myself and my clients and looking forward to some big things in 2025 to really help my clients and myself to really properly follow up. So I might add, you know, it's easier to sell to people that are already working with you, what that might look like for someone like us. We have a lot of different products and services that we can sell. So cross selling. But maybe you're a business that doesn't, you know, maybe, you know, like Ken over there with Pristine Clean. Who's doing that? Pressure Washington. If that's the product that you have, well, then from there can't you sell like a referral program to those customers? People like doing business with people they know, like and trust. Well, you already have their trust. They like you. So you create that referral program so that they go and find more clients for you. All right, I'm going to deny that I ever said this, but I work in the digital world. But there's nothing better for the beginning of your relationship with a new client than personalized when you meet them at an event like this and you actually get an introduction from somebody that already works with you. Yes, we can all create unlimited content, but they now say it takes 26 points of contact content now for some businesses to actually develop a relationship with their potential clients. It is so noisy out there in the world when it comes to content. So when you think about when you're producing content now to get out there, it's for the people that you've already met. Because when you meet somebody at an event like this, gather their business cards, connect with them on LinkedIn, send them an email and say, hey, I would love to get coffee with you or have a virtual call. Virtual calls have changed the way that we meet new people now in so many ways. There's one great positive out of COVID we can all probably agree upon is we don't have to leave our office to have a 15, 20 minute conversation. So when you're getting these type of things, you must have a process and a personalized process. This is a email that I'm going to send to them and then you're gonna connect with him on LinkedIn. So figure out what your follow up is for your new connections as well and repeat that process. Figure out what is the best process and rinse and repeat. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Struggles presented by ncbi, where we navigate challenges together. Don't forget to subscribe, listen and share this podcast with with others who might benefit. We'd love to hear about the struggles you're facing or have overcome, and we'd be thrilled to have you as a guest on a future episode. Let's continue this journey together.