We’re going to court! Marketing court.
There’s an overwhelming amount of marketing advice available on the internet - but not all advice is worth your time.
This week on the S.O.B. (small owned business) Marketing podcast, Vivian and I are sharing our 3 step strategy for evaluating marketing advice and deciding if it’s worth your time. We’re talking evidence, credibility, and context.
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to SOB Marketing
03:51 Marketing HOT TAKE: Marketing Advice - A Pig In Lipstick??
09:34 Putting Marketing Advice on Trial
25:08 Marketing Advice Trial Results
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Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Chelsea: Well, well, well. Hello, Vivian.
Vivian: Hello. You're back again.
Chelsea: Yes, I'm back again, and so are all of our SOBs.
Vivian: Hey, SOBs.
Chelsea: Hey, it's good to hear from you guys. Today we have a great conversation. We're going to court.
Vivian: Yeah, believe it or not, you're on trial. You are on trial today.
Chelsea: No, they are not on trial. Marketing advice is on trial. Today we are talking about all the marketing advice out there and how as a small business owner you can look at it and say, this is worth my time, or I shouldn't listen to this person.
Really, at the end of the day, we're talking about whether marketing advice is legit or not and how to decide.
Vivian: Yeah, and you guys we're pretty passionate about this particular topic just because for one, we know you're inundated with all of this information. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to put information online, just be like, have at it. Just all the stuff. Let it be available at your fingertips. Then you spend literally eighty percent of your time like, should I do this? Should I not do this? Is this going to benefit me? Then you go down these rabbit holes where you're like, I really should just not even try this.
Chelsea: Should not even touch this. Well, and I think a big problem is a lot of marketing advice out there contradicts itself. Yes. Someone tells you to do this, the other person says, absolutely do not do that. So how can we tell whether marketing advice is worth your time? That's what we're talking about today.
Vivian: Yeah, and if you need just a little bit of a carrot to stick around, we're actually going to give you a framework. Okay. So three simple things that you can do in order to pass every piece of marketing advice out there through this filter so that way you can decide if it's something you want to take on. We definitely don't want you to think that we're poo pooing on people. We're not.
Chelsea: No. Yeah. So here's the-
Vivian: I mean, maybe I am sometimes, but not this time. I'm not. I got opinions.
Chelsea: That is very true. Before we get started, Vivian, I do want to say, now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of bad marketing advice out there and things that you should just straight up not listen to. But a lot of times, it's just that that marketing advice won't work for you specifically. Remember, every business is different. What works for you might not work for someone else, and what's working for someone else probably isn't going to work for you. So again, we have a framework to decide whether you should take the time to listen to that marketing advice.
Vivian: Now I am going to do the hot take today as opposed to Chelsea.
Chelsea: Because she has opinions, remember?
Vivian: I've got lots of opinions because I'm in my 40s and that's just all we do, is all day long just opinionate. Okay.
My marketing hot take is today is a lot of the marketing advice out there, I feel like, is a little bit like a pig with lipstick. What I mean by that is she's a pretty little thing and you're not getting the full picture. I feel like what it is they try to present facts, things that actually happened, you know, the way they got to be successful, the way they ultimately got to make all these sales. They put lipstick on it by simply giving you the abbreviated version. They're not giving you all of the factors, all of the nuance in their storyline. It's not necessarily because they're doing it intentionally, I think. I think it's because they understand that in order for people to buy whatever they're selling or whatever advice they're putting out there. We like a good storyline. That storyline follows a very simple arch, which is basically kind of like the underdog thing, meeting some type of resistance and then overcoming it. Almost deciding to quit, but then not, and then finding success on the other end of it. Very clean cut storyline. That's not how any of life goes. That's definitely not how business ownership goes. If you're a business owner long enough, you will learn that very, very quickly. It's just, you know, one thing after another that you're having to overcome. So I say all that to say just remember what you're getting out there as far as advice for how to run your business or how to promote your business is a lot of times a very, very abbreviated version and lots of things are left out.
Chelsea: Yeah, I love that. So, Vivian, do you want to go ahead and get into the framework? I think we based this off of court.
Vivian: We did because I love me some Judge Judy and People's Court. If you grew up on Judge Judy, you know what I'm talking about. Okay. We love that she had a firm hand, right? She dealt out very good advice, life advice. She was also very fair in everything she did. She liked to tell people that they were idiots a lot, and I love that.
Chelsea: Vivian, I have something I need to tell you.
Vivian: What? Confession time?
Chelsea: Yeah. I don't think I've ever watched a full episode of Judge Judy.
Vivian: Yeah, and I think it shows.
Chelsea: Whoa.
Vivian: I think you could use some Judge Judy.
Chelsea: You want me to go on Judge Judy.
Vivian: If you guys, leave it in the comments below, tell us do you think Chelsea could benefit from watching a little Judge Judy Justice?
Chelsea: Justice. Okay.
Vivian: Before we get into the framework, I do want to cover it, but really quick, can we please talk about what could potentially happen if you're taking, why is this important? What could potentially happen if you're taking marketing advice from the wrong people or the wrong source.
Chelsea: I don't want you wasting your time and money. At the end of the day. That that's where I am, at least. That's the biggest deal for me. If you're taking marketing advice and you're spending time, you're spending money, and it's not working, but you're looking at it and saying, well, they had success doing this. I must be doing it wrong. It's probably not the issue. The issue probably is that the marketing advice itself just wasn't for you. It's not what's going to work for your small business.
Vivian: Well, and for me, I'll be honest, outside of the money and the time, I think it affects your sanity. Because it feels like you're banging your head against a wall. Why is this working for everybody else minus me? Also I think that then leads to not trusting yourself to make right decisions in your small business. Therefore it affects your self-esteem. We want you guys, part of the big thing that we say around here is the reason that we cover these topics is we want you guys to feel confident in the decisions that you are making. That is a big deal. Anything that's going to deteriorate that confidence over time, I'm not a fan of. Just know it affects a lot more than just you wasting money on maybe a campaign that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. The last thing I will say is I'm also not a fan of making things harder. Well, yeah, in my personal life, I feel like I always have to. For some reason I have that personality where I take the long route to get from A to B. We don't want you guys doing that. We feel like it makes it unnecessarily harder on you to run a business while having this whole other life outside of your business if you're taking the wrong marketing advice.
Chelsea: No, absolutely. It can snowball into becoming a bigger problem than just, I lost some money on a campaign that didn't work out.
Vivian: All right. So Chelsea, let's go ahead and say what is it as she had mentioned, because we love, I love Judge Judy so much and Judge Million. Okay, you guys, People's Court. She's the Hispanic one. Do you know who she is? The Hispanic one?
Chelsea: I think so.
Vivian: You gotta watch her too. She's good. but Judge Judy's the OG. If we were having a trial for every piece of marketing advice that you see out there, that you read, that you listen to, that you watch. If you run it through this filter, what are the three things, Chelsea, that every trial has?
Chelsea: Okay. So evidence, witness, and then we'll get to a verdict. So let's start with evidence, right?
Vivian: Yeah. So the evidence is anytime you hear something or something's recommended, we want you to go out there and look. Is there any data? Are there any numbers available that you can actually look to see if it's true and if the data is actually supporting what they're putting out there? Is there a case study that has been done or written about, or are there actual real results behind this claim?
Now I'm going to tell you, I'm really good at sniffing this out pretty quick. The results part of it. When I have somebody online that I'm watching that says, I made two million dollars in one month doing X, Y, and Z. There are a couple things I always think to myself. First of all, does this person actually expect us to believe that? Being that you have uploaded all these other videos that I'm sorry, just doesn't kind of match what you're saying. You have to look and research and be sure that you're picking up on other cues outside of just what the person is verbally stating. Some ways that you can do that is, if it's somebody online and that's the only place you follow them, you've never met this person in person, go on their website. Look and see what kind of clues that leaves you there. Do a quick Google search. See what kind of information is out there. For a lot of these people, you can find what their net worth is. So if someone's telling you for the last 10 years I've made two million dollars, this and that, well, there's got to be some information out there kind of backing that up. You can't just throw stuff like that out and run a business that large under the radar.
Chelsea: Absolutely. I feel like this is kind of starting to bleed into witness as well. Which is our second step. Second component of a trial. It's focusing on who's making the claim and are they credible in your situation. I think the "in your situation" part is very important.
Does the witness, does the witness understand where you're coming from? Is there marketing advice specifically for someone in your situation?
Vivian: Yeah, I think the interesting part of this, we stick to giving SOBs, small owned businesses, advice. Part of the reason we feel like we can speak to that is because we have worked with larger budgets but also smaller budgets. I can tell you personally, I feel like I understand because when I first started doing this whole marketing thing, it was not for companies that had these extensive million dollar budgets. It was from building something from the ground up when you have a very, very shoestring budget to work with and you're having to think, what are some guerrilla marketing tactics I can use?
Even looking at like something as simple as postcards, how can I try to make this affordable in a way that I can start to see some results quickly? That means we can reinvest and be able to do larger marketing campaigns. I think those are all the things that small business owners run up against that's very different from a company that is kind of outsourcing to an advertising agency or anything. You just approach marketing very differently.
Chelsea: Absolutely, and from my perspective, I don't want to say I never did like big brand marketing, but I have spent my marketing career solely focusing on small businesses. That's why we are credible witnesses because our entire marketing strategies, all the conversations we have are specifically for small business owners. Now, if a Fortune 500 CMO wanted to listen to this podcast, absolutely I'd love that you're listening to it. I really don't know if they would get the advice they're looking for from us. I don't think they would.
Vivian: Yeah. I mean, I think the only, the one up there that we certainly could have is for sure that we stay on top of these marketing topics way more than some people do. I feel like we're a little nimble in that sense. Like we're on top of it. We're reading a lot, we're looking to see what kind of new things are out there, Google reviews changing, all that stuff.
Chelsea: Google's new AI ads.
Vivian: Exactly. So there are things they could potentially learn. Stay on top of. The only thing is, to your point though, in with what we're talking about here, we want you guys to just understand, and Chelsea I know you have you and I have had this conversation before. Where you've actually told me the thing that people don't understand sometimes is that, look at what the person's actually selling. So talk about like the guru that's...yeah.
Chelsea: So on social media, I don't know about you guys, but when I'm on our business page and I open up the Explore page, all I see constantly are these marketing gurus selling their ebook on how to sell or selling their...not platform, their- what's the word I'm looking for? Their course, selling their course on how to sell, how to grow your Instagram. That's a big one. How to grow your Instagram.
These marketing gurus, their target audience is businesses.
Vivian: It's you.
Chelsea: It's you. Your target audience is a consumer. The way that you sell to a consumer versus to a business is very different. I mean, that's the difference from B2B marketing and B2C marketing. Business to business, business to consumer. They're classified differently, and that's because the way that you do marketing, the way that you market to your target audience is going to be different. So, how helpful is their advice when they say, look what I've done. I've made all these sales.
Vivian: Yeah. It depends on now if they were from the approach of let's say I had a- we used plumber in the one of our recent episodes as an example. If I was a plumber. I had my small business and I grew that plumbing business to eventually, let's say, a hundred employees. Then by all means, when I'm out there speaking to you as a fellow plumber, and I'm like, I'm going to teach you step by step how I grew my plumbing empire, and I'm going to teach you how you can do the same thing, getting plumbing sales and all that stuff. Very different because it shows he has experience in the thing that you're doing. Also it's the place he has been to the place where you're currently at. The difference in that is maybe this Instagram person that's pitching you a course on how to grow your Instagram has never sold a legit product. By legit product, I mean they're selling a product. An ebook is a product, so is like a framework, but maybe they're not you who's trying to sell your crochet animals at markets.
Chelsea: At farmers markets.
Vivian: Yeah. So just remember that you want to collect, like we said, collect as much evidence as you can. Look for data, look for information that's out there that's going to indicate whether or not what they're saying is factually true.
Chelsea: Also something to consider. Look at where their marketing advice is budget wise. I don't want you guys taking marketing advice that's going to blow your budget just because you're like, well it's definitely going to work. Yes, the phrase you need to spend money to make money is valid and you should be investing in your marketing. That does not mean you go all in on a piece of marketing advice. This isn't a casino.
Vivian: Yeah, I mean.
Chelsea: Just saying, don't go all in.
Vivian: Judge Judy would say, You're an idiot.
Chelsea: Well, what I was going to say is you're going against our marketing advice, which is never put all your eggs in one basket. You gotta have multiple marketing strategies going on, or marketing initiatives.
Vivian: That's right. If anything, that's just smart. Diversifying is smart and then that way you can test. So we're not saying that eventually, and the way we like to approach it is if you're out here testing different things, once you have the data back and you're looking to see what the results are, if you want more of those results, the good ones, right? Maybe your billboards aren't giving you as good results as you want, but your postcards are, then great, take some of the money from the billboards, put it in the postcards, and then eventually maybe you can just decide not to do billboards anymore and just do the postcards. But we want there to be logic when you're making these decisions.
Chelsea: Can I say something else Vivian?
Vivian: Yeah.
Chelsea: I also want you guys to just...I don't want to sound mean, but just like think about it. If a piece of marketing advice sounds insane and you're like, that's not going to work, and that's I'm worried about doing this, but this person did it and it worked for them, so maybe I should do it. Maybe you shouldn't. If something makes you uncomfortable to an extent. I'm not saying uncomfortable, you don't want to be on video. I mean, in the social media marketing age, there could be ways that you discover that you can still create content without being on video, but that's like a different level of uncomfy than what I'm talking about, Vivian. Does this make sense?
Vivian: Like if it's making you stretch too much?
Chelsea: Well, okay. I have an example. Guerilla marketing can get a little iffy. A piece of marketing advice that I saw that I was like, I don't want people doing this. Putting flyers, not flyers. They were creating cards that kind of looked like things. Like if you were a baker, you create a card that looks like a cookie. You put the cookie on the car, on someone's car. Then when they open it, it has all your business information.
That makes me feel iffy. Now I am a woman. If someone leaves something on my car, I'm not touching it. Could that have worked for that person? Yes. Could it work for you? Yes. I'm not going to do that. It makes me uncomfortable. So that's what I'm saying. If something makes you uncomfortable to that extent where you're like, I feel like it would make my consumers uncomfortable, or I just don't feel comfortable doing this, you don't have to do it.
Vivian: Also, what makes me uncomfortable is-
Chelsea: Also don't do anything illegal. Just saying.
Vivian: I don't want anyone...that requires me going to like a parking lot and actually putting stuff, touching somebody else's car, touching someone else's property. That's just yeah, I hear you. So if you have things like that where you're like, could it work? Yes. Could it get eyeballs? Yes. Is it something I want to be doing? Do I want to put myself in a position where I'm having to lift people's windshield wipers, put something underneath, and then maybe that person's walking up and-
Chelsea: The person who posted this video, this is an actual thing that I saw from a marketing influencer. They were putting it in the side mirror too.
Vivian: Oh no, no, no. Well, and not just that, but did you happen to read the comments?
Chelsea: No.
Vivian: I wish you would have because I guarantee you-
Chelsea: But there was a-the same influence. I don't remember who, this was years ago, y'all. But I still remember this because I remember thinking "bad idea". They were also going into stores with their business cards and leaving them inside products that related to what she does. Now the comments in that one was like, mmm, you're getting a little...like you're going to get kicked out of a store. You're going to make people uncomfortable. Yes, it's guerilla marketing, but it's taking it a little too far.
Vivian: I think I kind of remember something similar where it was someone going into like a TJMaxx or something and putting it underneath a candle or something like that, right?
Could you be doing something else with your time to promote your business that probably would get you further ahead? Yes. So there is so you're always butting up against that.
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Vivian: Chelsea, based off of when someone's looking at the evidence and the witness, what are the three verdicts that we could come up with? So when we're ultimately deciding do I want to take this marketing advice, what are the three options?
Chelsea: Okay. So we've got guilty, dun dun. Not guilty and mistrial.
Vivian: The guilty is going to be if it's false, if it's something you just don't even want to attempt.
Chelsea: If it's illegal.
Vivian: Yeah. If it's illegal, throw it out. Just okay, guilty. Not guilty, solid advice. The advice that you want to actually follow.
Chelsea: You're like, I listen to SOB marketing, they're smart. I'm going to follow their advice.
Vivian: I'm always going to.
Chelsea: Not guilty.
Vivian: Not guilty.
Chelsea: We're not guilty.
Vivian: The other one is going to be a mistrial. That is simply just going to be whenever perhaps you don't have enough data or enough information, or you're like, you know what, it's worth testing in a small way so that way I can see if it's going to pan out over the long run.
Chelsea: Remember, we're little scientists as marketers. We want to test things out and see if they'll work. Absolutely.
Vivian: So can we do maybe just a quick run through of this as an example, Chelsea. Let's say, do you know who Gary Vanderchuk is?
Chelsea: No.
Chelsea: Okay. Gary V, he's a big guy on social media. At one point, he helped his dad run a liquor store or a winery, and he took advantage of YouTube very, very early on, massive growth from the wine stuff. Then he went on to open media companies and stuff because ultimately that's how he got his success. So he understood, what do you call it? Just like social media and all of that. So now he's got media companies. But Gary Vanderchuk, one of the things if he were to come out, and I think he actually has before and said, you need a post three times a day on Instagram. If you're if you're looking to grow your Instagram, you need to post three times a day. Walk me through these steps on what ultimately you would decide.
Chelsea: Walking through the steps. Well, first let's look at the evidence. So he did grow his father's business. He now has multiple media companies. You said he grew on YouTube?
Vivian: He's big on all of the socials.
Chelsea: Okay. So he's big on socials. Okay. I would also, to be honest, look at how much he posts.
Vivian: Which he does post a lot.
Chelsea: So is he following his own advice? Now, the only place where I have a little bit of pushback is he also, this is now what he does, correct? All he does is give marketing advice. Is it realistic for you or for me as a small business owner to be posting three times a day? Is that something that I would be able to do? Yes, there is evidence that it would work. Would it work in my specific scenario as a small business? He's not running a small business. He has a very large business at this point in time.
Vivian: Yeah, and that's the other part, if I may interject. When you look, he's got an entire team. He has a videographer-
Chelsea: Well, and that's what I was going to say next.
Vivian: Who follows him everywhere, who gets B roll or captures footage of him talking that they can repurpose. So he does have a team videographer, someone who's managing his social media, actually uploading his videos and all that.
Chelsea: So that is the only place where I'm like, what is plausible for him might not be plausible for me. I'm going to be so for real. I cannot post three times a day on Instagram. We probably do have the content to do that, but the time that it would take me to find, edit, make sure it's clean, write all the captions, everything like that three times a day, that's an insane amount of time. That's not something that I can plausibly do. Now I can take his advice and cut it and say, you know what, I can't do three times a day, but I'm going to do once a day. So I can edit the marketing advice.
He's not guilty. I think this is a mistrial in my opinion.
Vivian: This is a mistrial.
Chelsea: This is a mistrial because I'm going to take a small piece of it and I'm going to try to work that into my marketing strategy. But I can't just take it on the way he suggested it.
Vivian: Yeah, and I think with any piece of advice, the other thing you have to think about is, what the ultimate goal is. He's talking specifically Instagram growth.
Chelsea: Well, and that's the other thing. He said to grow your Instagram. Are you trying to specifically grow your Instagram or are you trying to get more sales?
Vivian: Yes. The other option is when you have a mistrial like this and you're looking at it and you're like, okay, I already know I can't commit to doing three times a day. Like you said, you say to yourself, I do think the consistency in posting daily might pay off for me. But then take it one step further and say ultimately my goal is not just to get eyeballs because you're not trying to be an Instagram influencer. You're trying to make sales. My goal is to create good content that attracts the right person, right? That they're going to be able to relate to and ultimately they're going to want to buy from me. That's just a little different than the advice is out there, but this is the logic we want you guys to use. This is the framework we want you to kind of think about whenever you see anything floating around out there. The last thing we want you to do is be overwhelmed by everything you're seeing out there. As Chelsea mentioned early on in this episode, there's a lot of stuff, contradictory advice out there. It's not for lack of people, it's not that people are right or people are wrong. People are sharing what worked for them, which could be entirely different than what is going to work for you.
Chelsea: That is why we want you to follow the framework because it's not about being right or wrong. It's finding what's going to work in your specific scenario.
Vivian: Absolutely. So Chelsea, I think that's it for the episode today. We hope that this was a topic that is going to be useful for you guys. We hope you feel a little better about the fact that maybe you feel confused when you see things out there.
Chelsea: We want you to feel good about being confused.
Vivian: Yeah, we want you to feel good about feeling confused.
Chelsea: Feel good about feeling confused and then walk yourself through it.
Vivian: Happy to help you guys too if you ever want to drop marketing advice that you're seeing out there in the comments and just ask us our opinion. We're happy to answer that and we'll reply to you in the comments. Don't forget to leave us a review. If you leave us a review, we'll highlight you in one of our upcoming episodes. We'll read it out loud and give you a shout out. So be sure that you also leave us the name of your small business so that way we can shout you out and perhaps even your website.
Chelsea: Yeah. And you know what? Go be the best SOB you can be.