EPISODE ONE: INTRODUCTIONS

What is Marketing? How to market properly

09.25.2018 - Transcription by Kristina Hooper

Zachary: Welcome everyone to the first Podcast edition of Straight Shot. That’s right we’ve moved our newsletter and vlogging efforts over to the Podcast format. This podcast will be available on Spotify, iTunes, iHeart Radio, straightshot.net and the Straight Shot app which will be available on your smartphone’s app store. You can go check it out there and keep up to date with everything. We are also going to be on YouTube, so connect with us in whatever way works best for you in your life style. My name is Zachary Bennett and I’d like to welcome my lovely cohost Jennifer Bennett.

 

Jennifer: Zachary, why are we doing this on a Saturday?

 

Zachary: Because we have things to do – posters, brochures, that sort of thing.

 

Jennifer: They’re not going to design themselves.

 

Zachary: Well yeah, this is Jennifer.

 

Jennifer: Hello!

 

Zachary: She’s the art director here at Reformation Productions. She’s also my wife, my best friend, and the joy in our office.

 

Jennifer:  I’m only a joy Tuesday through Thursday and Fridays. Saturdays are good, well they used to be.

 

Zachary: I will tell you why we’re doing a podcast to answer your surly question. As you know, I have a passion for knowledge and for teaching. I believe that there is power behind someone having knowledge. There is power in knowledge.

 

Jennifer: Yes, I know. I know that you do speaking engagements and you teach seminars all around the southeast.

 

Zachary: Right and this is another tool to continue those conversations. Maybe, we can feature some business owners or marketing folks along the way that we meet.

 

Jennifer: Save a little gas money.

 

Zachary: Yeah, it gives us a chance also, you know as an agency, to showcase podcasting just as a marketing tool in general. We’ve done some podcasting before. We helped our friend Mike Sammond over at Business Radio X with implementing video into his internet radio studio. I’ve been a guest on his show a few times (be sure you check him out over at gwinnettbusinessradiox.com, he’s a great guy) but we’ve never really done it ourselves. We already had the equipment here so I thought “hey.”

 

Jennifer: Well you always talk about doing new blog articles for the same purpose, but you rarely have time to finish them like we’ll be out places and he’ll see something that he thinks is really interesting or news worthy.

 

Zachary: Hey, we should write a blog about that.

 

Jennifer: I’m going to run right home and I’m going to write a blog about that. He does and he gets about three quarters of the way through it. Sometimes, he gets all the way through it, but he doesn’t get to post it. The graphics need to be made and the whole nine yards. Not everyone has time to read blogs anymore because their eyes are busy doing other things. Podcasts are a nice way to deliver the same kind of news worthy information or point of view in a way they can multitask. I think that this will be really good for that.

 

Zachary: Well, people can listen to podcasts like you said instead of reading. They can listen to it while they’re working out or while they’re driving in their Atlantic traffic commute.

 

Jennifer: Hours and hours of our melodious voice.

 

Zachary: Plus, a lot of times you and I will have a podcast on in the background while we’re working to try to learn something while we’re multitasking. Multitasking is the way of the future.

 

Jennifer: Absolutely, for those of you that don’t know a little more about Zachary. In addition to being a speaker and a teacher, Zachary also does business coaching for small business owners. You’re even an outsourced CMO and Marketing Director to several of our clients.

 

Zachary: Right, I have a thing, obviously, for teaching. Like I said, there’s power in communication. I believe that the business owners should be proactive in the way that they do things. To be a business owner, you have to have drive and you have to have a certain amount of knowledge. You don’t have to everything, but there’s a lot of things that I think you’d be better off as a business owner if you did know it.

 

Jennifer: As a business owner, you’re responsible to know a bunch of stuff.

 

Zachary: Yeah, I’ve been doing this a long time now. When I was working with the corporate agencies, the context there: they were educated in marketing. You had a VP of marketing. You had a marketing director that worked for those bigger named clients. Bank of America hired somebody that educated and has a college degree in marketing. Once I developed Reformation Productions and started working with smaller businesses, they simply didn’t have that. They were really good at creating this widget or making this sandwich or whatever it is they were passionate enough about to start a business. That didn’t mean necessarily that they had the expertise and the schooling in how marketing works. Helping, teaching, educating really became a big part of what we do at Reformation. Luckily, it’s something that I enjoy and that’s a lot about my story. Tell me about you.

 

Jennifer: My story. Me.

 

Zachary: Yeah because I am out and I talk to these people all the time so they get to hear way too much about me. So tell us a little bit about you because you are the fun one in this pair.

 

Jennifer: I am the fun one I guess.

 

Zachary: You are.

 

Jennifer: My name’s Jennifer. Hi everyone in the world. I got my degree from Western Illinois University. Go leathernecks.

 

Zachary: Chicago.

 

Jennifer:  Well it’s actually in the center part of the state which is in an entirely different place, but yes, I am born and raised in Chicago. I have my degree in theater and broadcasting. I did a lot of stage work when I was a youngster. I specialize in standup comedy actually which is kind of funny.

 

Zachary: Yeah it is funny.

 

Jennifer:  Kind of funny, but it’s mostly just ironic. I developed a very massive case of stage fright at some point, so I desired to be behind the camera as opposed to being in front of people.

 

Zachary: But we utilize that theater degree quite a bit with voice overs and acting and that sort of thing.

 

Jennifer: When I was in college, I was actually a DJ. I realized that I could still be creative and have a good time and not be seen by anybody.

 

Zachary: Which is why you are now behind the mic.

Jennifer: And in front of the camera because we do have cameras in the studio which is super.

 

Zachary: It’s the modern way to do a radio show, didn’t you know? If you turn on the Burt Show, you can also look at their podcast, their app, and you can also see what they look like when they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s exciting to see.

 

Jennifer: You guys don’t need to see what I look like. Trust me. I’m doing you a favor. Anyway, back to my resume.

 

Zachary:  Your story. Your “about you.”

 

Jennifer:   I’m from Chicago. I moved down here to Georgia and love it. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. I mean Chicago is wonderful. The people there are great. The food is amazing. I love visiting my family. I love visiting the city itself. I’m a Chi-town homie for life.

 

Zachary: I do like Chicago pizza.

 

Jennifer: But that’s because you’re human. Everybody likes Chicago pizza. I mean if you don’t like Chicago pizza, we have a problem.

 

Zachary: There used to be a place where we could get it and it wasn’t far from the office here in the Buford/Sugar Hill area. There was a place over near Cumming where you could get Chicago pizza, but it’s gone. Now, the only place that I know of (if you know of someplace else please let us know) Nancy’s Pizza which is in downtown Atlanta, a lot further away for lunch.

 

Jennifer:  They’re from Chicago so you know you’re getting real Chicago pizza. We could do an entire podcast on Chicago food and I am down like Charlie Brown to do that. I moved from Chicago to Georgia and I have been doing marketing for almost fifteen years. I am a graphic designer by trade. I like to design things on a computer for the most part, but I do a little bit of everything as you know. When I first came to Georgia, I got hired on as a marketing director for a company who wanted a salesperson. It kind of broke my heart a little because sales is very different than marketing.

 

Zachary: But people confuse them all the time.

 

Jennifer:  The director of marketing is very different than the director of sales. A lot of people will mash those two words together: sales and marketing. That kind of broke my heart a little bit, so I got out of that. I was staying at home with my little boy at that time looking for a new job. I really wanted a career that I could be proud of that my son could be proud of his mama for and everything. I really wanted to work in an agency because an agency kind of gives you the diversity to be able to work on several different clients, several different projects, and several different things. Everybody has always called me the jack-of-all-trades, if you will. I like that, so I applied for a job here at Reformation in 2012. I’ve been here ever since. I’ve not wanted to go anywhere else. I can learn here. I can experience things here. I’ve met so many wonderful people.

 

Zachary: And you don’t get bored.

 

Jennifer: Even if I could, Saturday rolls around you’re like “hey podcast.”

 

Zachary:  Being in an agency, everything from posters to web design, business cards and radio spots. What you were looking for as far as having lots of things that you can do and being the Jen-of-all-trades is our trade.

 

Jennifer: I made removable, temporary tattoos for a client.

 

Zachary: Not everyone gets to make tattoos for a living.

 

Jennifer: That was kind of a rad thing to do like “hey the client wants temporary tattoos.” That’s pretty awesome. I get to a little bit of everything. Zachary and I have always worked really closely together. For some reason, we just get each other. We understand each other. We’ve always been able to finish each other’s…

 

Zachary: Sentences.

 

Jennifer: Sandwiches, very good. We’ve just always had a really wonderful connection. Last year, Zachary and I got married. Now, we’re officially married to marketing which is ironic and funny. The thing is when you spend over forty hours a week at your job, no matter what it is, you end up spending more time at your job than with your family.

 

Zachary: You have to make sure, for that reason, that it’s something you enjoy doing.

 

Jennifer: Yeah, so that you don’t really feel like “ugh I got to go to work.” We were working Monday through Friday normal work hours plus on weekends. We’ve had to travel and it just got to be where we lived and breathed it anyway. Zachary and I joke around that we’re married to marketing because we are married people together. Everywhere we go just as a couple, we talk about marketing. We could be on a road trip. We were on a road trip recently with our family and it was all about the billboards that we saw along the way. You know how you guys have license plate games or whatever you play on the road. Zachary and I play billboard games. We try to see how many lawyer billboards there are. This billboard makes sense, but that doesn’t.

 

Zachary: We find mistakes. There’s lots of times when we go “look at that, what’s wrong with that, tell me what’s wrong with that.” With your graphic designer eye, can you tell that a nonprofessional did this piece?

 

Jennifer: Yeah, a really fun game for me is to figure out what fonts they use for all the billboards that’s how nerdy I am.

 

Zachary:  Bleeding Cowboy is the most popular font in the world right now.

 

Jennifer: Zachary and I have decided that instead of having a 401k, we just put a dollar in a jar every time we see the bleeding cowboy font somewhere that’s going to be our retirement.

 

Zachary: Yeah that’s nerdy agency stuff.

 

Jennifer: Yes it is, but you know the thing is marketing is everywhere. It’s everywhere that’s what makes conversation with us. We enjoy marketing and it’s everywhere so we always have something to talk about.

 

Zachary: Regis McKenna the guy that was behind Apple’s big brand.

 

Jennifer: The 1984 ad?

 

Zachary: Yeah. He is quoted as saying “marketing is everything and everything is marketing.”

 

Jennifer: Wow that is a huge statement.

 

Zachary: Yes it is a big statement, but it’s true.

 

Jennifer: It is everything. Well let’s talk a little bit more about what is marketing just in a way of introducing the podcast. In future episodes, we’ll showcase specific things, details, interview people, have people coming in here and everything. But just in this one, let’s just review the basics that overview this show so that people can get an idea of what we’re trying to do with it.

 

Zachary: Sure. Well sometimes, people get confused and misled. You were talking about sales and marketing before and the fact that those words got crammed together for a reason. Marketing has become a buzz word. In that case specifically, became a way to not say sales anymore because sales became a bad word. There’s lots of reasons where people can say “hey I can help you with your brand” because branding is a buzz word. People often don’t really know what these words mean. They are being thrown around by salespeople and it’s misleading business owners all the time.

 

Jennifer: It’s dizzying.

 

Zachary: Yeah. To your point, to define what marketing is at its most basic, its basic understanding of the big picture of what marketing is, marketing is how a business communicates to its public. Period. For whatever reason, whether you’re promoting sales, whether you’re trying to raise funds if you’re a charity organization. Or you’re trying to increase celebrity for one reason or another. You’re trying to build awareness for different things that you stand for. You’re promoting yourself for fame or whatever. A politician has a marketing team because he is trying to get his word out of what he is and make connections with people so that they will vote for him. There’s not sales per se, but it’s still for a purpose.

 

Jennifer: Yeah it’s image shaping.

 

Zachary: Right to the public. A better term for marketing really would be business communication, but it comes from, it’s business communication is bringing that business to the marketplace. To the marketplace marketing that’s kind of where it comes from. As I mentioned before, Regis McKenna said “marketing is everything and everything is marketing.” He said that because marketing should be at the center of every business’ business strategy whether you’re a retail shop or you’re a restaurant or you’re in hospitality or you’re a manufacturer of widgets. We like widgets around here.

 

Jennifer: Widgets like the little caps that go around the end of your shoelaces. Those are called floogerbinders.

 

Zachary:  Or you’re in healthcare, you’re in education, you’re an accountant. Whatever your business is, after you set up your business regardless of what it is, you have to communicate your business to other people so that you can continue to operate. You can continue to expand who you are. Marketing is all about that process. It’s all about communicating your business to other people. It’s not just doing it, but why are you doing it. Marketing is concerned with the why behind business. Why does this person choose this business over this business when they kind of do the same thing? There’s lots of competitors. Every business has a competitor. Marketing is concerned with “okay why do you choose you as opposed to you.”

 

Jennifer: I think restaurants have the biggest struggle. Well maybe not the biggest, but I’ll say a huge struggle in this very exact category because how many restaurants do you see just driving down one street or road. What makes this place that offers hamburgers different than this place that offers hamburgers? It’s all about the image. It’s all about the marketing.

 

Zachary: Marketing is: I like to say; it’s where psychology, creativity, and strategy all come together. When I say that, what I’m referring to is psychologically we have to understand how people think. What motivates them to make certain decisions? Creatively, we have to build something, some sort of piece of creative. Creative is an agency term that basically anything that we’ve made so that could be a flyer. It could be a website. It could be…

 

Jennifer: uniform shirts.

 

Zachary:  It could be anything. It could be a banner that you have behind an airplane. We have to build creative that’s going to appeal to people. Not just any “them,” but your specific targeted market. What’s going to appeal to them? Strategically, we have to figure out how we are going to interject ourselves as the business into their lives into their pathways. All of that. Psychology, creativity, and strategy, all of that is underneath the marketing umbrella.

 

Jennifer: It’s in front of our faces all the time. It’s in everything we see and do. It’s on your way home with billboards you see on the road or signage or bumper stickers. You know how people have the little Mac logo that people put in their windows. Be like “hey I’m a Mac loser.”

 

Zachary: Hey, Mac you can’t. Apple has a very devoted following. People get tattoos of the Apple logo.

 

Jennifer: There’s Harley logos.

 

Zachary: Harley is a little different.

 

Jennifer: He’s saying that because he owns a Harley. You know owner loyalty. It’s in the car, the kind of car you get in to. I mean you bought that car for a reason. There’s all these reasons why you’ve selected the things in your life.

 

Zachary: And everybody has a car.

 

Jennifer: You turn on the radio and ads are stuck in everything you’re listening to. Product placement is stuck in everything you’re looking at even if it’s just scrolling through social media. I mean it’s everywhere.

 

Zachary: I was noticing on when we were looking at a movie. What was it called? The Rock was in it.

 

Jennifer: Skyscraper.

 

Zachary: Yeah and there’s so much product placement for duct tape in that. I’ve never seen anybody as crazy about duct tape as the Rock was in that movie. That’s on purpose. That’s the thing, none of this that you see and experience in your everyday life, none of it is haphazard. There’s people like us that sit in their room and work very hard to determine how our company’s going to present themselves and how are they going to become part of your life. We partner with companies to do just that to figure that out.

 

Jennifer: That’s what I wanted to do for this podcast. I kind of wanted to discuss examples of everyday marketing that we see in everyday life and in everyday people that people might not even notice. We take for granted a lot of the things we see anymore. We might not even notice that it’s being placed right in front of us and being suggested to us.

 

Zachary: It is there for a reason.

 

Jennifer: I mean, you have celebrities or YouTube stars or people that are celebrities for no reason endorsing products and wearing eyeliner and hash tagging product names that is a commercial. Congratulations you actually just watched someone get paid to do that.

 

Zachary:  Marketing is very important. Like you said, it’s everywhere. Let’s take a break. Let’s hear from our sponsors and then we’ll be right back.

 

Jennifer: After the break, we are also going to talk a little bit more about how we do these things. How do we get companies in front of the right people and influence their purchasing.

 

Zachary: Well, we will talk about all the details of that when we get back. Hang out and we’ll be back in just a minute with more Straight Shot.

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Jennifer: Welcome back to the Straight Shot Podcast.

 

Zachary: It’s been a long two minutes. It was actually a minute and a half. We don’t have that many sponsors right now.

 

Jennifer: But when you miss somebody it feels like two minutes. It really does. So Zachary, you mentioned that marketing is really about getting in to people’s lives and influencing their decision making. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that because I think we need some sort of takeaway or some little nugget?

 

Zachary: Nugget. We need a nugget. Isn’t that a fun word? Nugget.

 

Jennifer: Chicken nugget.

 

Zachary: Nugget number one: it’s about influencing the right people not everyone. Everyone is not your target. The whole – you know I’ve heard - I’m not going to call that out and make fun of people. I’ve heard other people say that everybody’s their target and it’s not. If everybody’s your target, you’re casting too wide of a net. It’s about influencing the right people. It’s not about conning people in to using your product or your service. It’s about reaching the people that actually need you, then convincing them to choose you in the marketplace versus one of your competitors. Those are going to be your best customers: the ones that are going to be loyal and long term and really buy in to your company.

 

Jennifer: I think that it’s really important. I think that a lot of people do feel like they’re getting conned somehow or that marketing is this seedy, little advertising underbelly that gets into peoples’ lives. I think we saw a demonstration of that when Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg, rather, had to go toward the Supreme Court hearing.

 

Zachary: Yeah, his Congressional hearing or whatever it was.

 

Jennifer: So four hours of thrilling testimony.

 

Zachary: Which we watched.

 

Jennifer: Which we totally did. That’s what we do. Basically, it was about private policy and peoples’ information being shared for advertising purposes. I think a lot of times people are nervous about biometrics, advertising and the Big Brother aspect of figuring out who those target audience is. You and I both know and people listening at home if you mention Dave Chappelle to your friend “hey you’ve ever seen Dave Chappelle live?” “Oh I’ve seen Dave Chappelle live. I’ve always wanted to see Dave Chappelle live.” The next time you open up Facebook there’s going to be tickets for Dave Chappelle advertised somewhere. It is super creepy, but at the same time there’s a reason why this happens. He’s trying to target the right people, but I think that one of the things that we can do in the podcast is take some of the fear and frustration out of all that.

 

Zachary: There’s a lot of people that are bothered by exactly what you are talking about which is the whole reason why the Congressional hearing with Zuckerberg was. He actually explained it pretty well I thought for those of you that did not watch the entire hearing.

 

Jennifer: You really missed out.

 

Zachary: I think he did –

 

Jennifer: We laughed. We cried. We drank margaritas. It was amazing.

 

Zachary: He explained it very well when he said, “Can you turn off our ability to do this?” Sure you can and you can go into Facebook and turn it off. They will turn it back on next time they do an update so you have to keep doing it that’s for real. He was like, “yeah you can turn it off, but if you turn it off, your advertising is going to suck. It’s going to be completely misplaced.”

 

Jennifer: You’re going to be getting ads that you don’t care about.

 

Zachary: What they do is they gather what you like and what you’re interested in so that those products that are related to that, they can put in front of you and say “hey this is something that’s new.”

 

Jennifer: It’s all about the user experience. Facebook experience is good.

 

Zachary: Facebook is an extremely great way to get in front of the right people. It’s not the only way, but it is a very good way to do it. We do the same thing with other media or with cable T.V. or print ads or with network even. We tried doing it in everything that we’re doing. It’s the best way for you to get in front of the right people. The first thing you need to do really is who is your target. As a business owner, who are you supposed to be trying to reach? In some cases, you have more than one. Of all the people on the planet, who should you be spending your money, your time, your effort and going after? If you try to go after everybody, it’s going to be way too much for most companies’ budgets. Coca-Cola can go after everybody because they’ve been around a long time. They are literally available to everyone. They have a bigger range than other people do, but still they don’t target everyone.

 

Jennifer: Not with every campaign.

 

Zachary: It’s just more than most people do.

 

Jennifer: They’ll have different campaigns geared toward different sectors of the population. Then how do you do that?

 

Zachary: Well, one of the things you have to do is you have to make sure that you have effective marketing. You have to make sure that it works. You have to figure out, once you know who your target is, we figure out why are people making certain decisions. What are those factors? For example, you’re a woman.

 

Jennifer: I am a woman. Thank you for noticing sweetheart.

 

Zachary: When you go to, and people hear me use this example all the time but never with an actual live person. You’re a woman.

 

Jennifer: I’m not wearing a sweater. This is the sweater thing. The sweater thing is coming.

 

Zachary: When you go wear or go buy a sweater whether it’s a sweater jeans outfit. When you go buy clothes, you’re going to the mall. You’re going through there’s tons of clothes. Why do you choose the one that you choose?

 

Jennifer: I think the easiest answer to that is to say that there’s lots of reasons. I mean it could be anything. It’s however I’m feeling at the time.

 

Zachary: Right. When people do that, when women do that (buy a sweater) it’s the example I give most of the time. They buy a sweater because it makes them feel good. They think they look good in it or it’ll make their sister jealous because the sister doesn’t have this brand. It looks so cute on me and she’s going to wish she had. There’s some sort of reason usually it’s an emotion reason to why they’re buying that sweater. It’s not because they’re cold or they happen to need an article of clothing. If you just needed an article of clothing, you can go to Goodwill and get plenty of articles of clothing that don’t cost as much as when you go to the mall.

 

Jennifer: That’s why you can have one sweater that costs a lot of money and another sweater that doesn’t, people will still choose a more expensive sweater. Sometimes, it’s not always about the bottom line.

 

Zachary: It’s why did they choose that Coach or that Gucci.

 

Jennifer: It’s a purse.

 

Zachary: Those are premium brands. They are chosen because they are premium brands which is why – what does he call himself, the one that’s married to Kim Kardashian –

 

Jennifer: Kanye West.

 

Zachary: What does he call himself? Weezy?

 

Jennifer: Yeezy.

 

Zachary: He sells white t-shirts that are just like Fruit of the Loom t-shirts, but it has his name on it which makes it premium and people buy it.

 

Jennifer: Yeah, they will spend a hundred and fifty dollars on a plain white t-shirt. Ya, his name’s Ya by the way, he prefers to call himself Ya in the third person. He sells tennis shoes as well. People will just buy a plain white t-shirt for a hundred and fifty dollars just to say they have it. You and I, you know ladies at home, there is a difference between I have a purse and I have a Coach purse. For some reason, it just is. I mean it’s a purse.

 

Zachary: Figuring out for your company whatever those reasons are going to be. What we do is we help our companies, our clients figure out how are people going to choose your sweater, your purse or your service as a business. We make the best widgets in the world. We want you to choose our widgets. How are we going to influence that decision? That’s what we do. We try to influence the perspective consumer by letting them know more about the business and giving them an opportunity to make a connection with that business. People like to feel like they are connected. I tell restaurant owners all the time because they hate to be on camera. I tell them we have to give the customer (your customer) the ability to see that you are a person. That makes them feel like they’re more relative – “Oh I know the owner.”

 

Jennifer: People like to buy from people not corporations.

 

Zachary: Exactly, there is a certain connection. These people understand me that’s what they want to think. They want to think that this company understands me.

 

Jennifer: They’re just like me.

 

Zachary: They get me.

 

Jennifer: Or there’s somebody I want to be like.

 

Zachary:  Sure. We try to figure out how to make that connection and not only that, but we try to speak using language that they understand and they like. We use terms and images that are going to influence those emotions in those people. We try to make them feel whatever it is we are trying to make them feel. We try to make them feel confident. Or is it more applicable selling emotion to make them feel afraid. If you’re an alarm company, you’re selling fear. There’s lots of other things. There’s different emotions that you would try to push and pull. How well we push those emotions. Those are factors in purchasing decisions.

 

Jennifer: I mean if you’ve ever watched an ASPCA commercial or if you’ve ever cried your way through an ASPCA commercial, there’s lots of different ways to sell puppies and kittens. Making you cry your face off to “In the Arms of an Angel” by Sarah McLachlan.

 

Zachary: We have to figure out how are we going to become an influence by figuring out the factors to those purchasing decisions. We also have to highlight what makes you different from your competition. It doesn’t do any good for me to tell how you are the same. If you tell me you’re a mechanic and you’re going to tell me, “hey I’m a mechanic, I rotate tires and I change oil.” I knew all of that when you said, “I was your mechanic” at the top. That doesn’t help me. We try to figure out what makes you different. What makes you mechanic different than the mechanic that’s three miles down the road. What’s going to make me choose to take my car to you versus somebody else? You’re a dentist. Don’t tell me you clean teeth. Tell me that you have a more comfortable environment that I will not be scared when the drill goes off in your office. There’s some other reason that’s there that we’re trying to get to.

 

Jennifer: Tell me that vodka comes out of the little pressurized water gun that would make me choose a dentist over somebody else.

 

Zachary: It has to be true.

 

Jennifer: Pain-free dental.

 

Zachary: It has to be true.

 

Jennifer:  You should enjoy the experience that’s all that I’m saying.

 

Zachary: We can’t promise things that aren’t true.

 

Jennifer: That’s true. That’s what good advertising does. There’s nothing worse than getting somewhere and it’s the bait and switch, nobody likes that. There are a lot of people that ask us, I keep asking the same question over and over, but we get a lot of people that ask us, “ Well how do you do that?” We tell them that there is a right way to find how you’re different than your competition. If there’s a right way to do it, then that means that there must be some really wrong ways to do it.

 

Zachary:  Yes. There are tons of wrong ways.

 

Jennifer: Like lying to your customers.

 

Zachary: Yes, lying to your customers is a wrong way to do it. There’s a lot of people that guess and that’s not the right way.

 

Jennifer: Oh because they like to waste money?

 

Zachary: Yeah, that’s not the right way to do it. There is a process. It’s a very scientific, 1-2-3 way to do it. We use the same process that Fortune 500 companies use. I learned this process in my years in the corporate agencies because everybody uses the same process. Everybody calls it something different. We call it Straight Line Marketing. It’s a process that all the major companies use. Just like those major corporations, we believe in being proactive and not reactive. Being reactive leads to waste. With a lot of small business owners, this salesperson told me that and they react to it. We don’t want to react to it. You don’t want your business to lead you. You want to lead your business. Being proactive is important. We also believe that we should not risk wasting money. We don’t try things.

 

Jennifer: Let’s just take a quick poll out there for anybody that may be a business owner. How many like to just throw money into your toilet and flush it?

 

Zachary: A lot of people when they’re talking to a vendor or a media rep, they’re like, “well try this and see if it works for you.”

 

Jennifer: Yeah, we’ll try it out for six months and if not, we’ll scale it back.

 

Zachary: Every decision that we make as an agency, every decision that Coca-Cola makes or Home Depot or one of those guys, every decision that they make is based on research data. We don’t do anything until we already know what the outcome is going to be based on tangible reasoning and data. We do the research and the whole work up front so that there’s no risking of money. Throw it against the wall and we’ll see if it sticks. No, we make sure that there’s a really good reason as to why that should work first. The process of kind of figuring all that out, the process of determining and discovering how you should market yourself is something that we call Straight Line Marketing. It’s the process of lining up your perceptions and your vision for the business with your customers’ needs, desires, their lifestyle, that sort of thing so that you can create the most efficient and effective business communications possible. So yes, there is a way to do it.

 

Jennifer: There’s like a scientific method. All scientific methods start with research and data and pie charts and graphs and all sorts of other boring things that tell you you’re on the right track.

 

Zachary: It’s complicated. That’s how businesses make wise decisions. It’s based on whatever information they have before they ever make the decision.

 

Jennifer: So that way you can make your marketing dollars or all of your business dollars go the distance. All of that stuff is very, super involved and takes a lot of time and also is not cheap.

 

Zachary: No, marketing is an investment in your business. Marketing is an investment in time and or money and it should be. Marketing is more than fifty percent of what your business is: communicating who you are, communicating what you have to offer, and communicating why someone should choose your business over somebody else’s’ in the marketplace. How are you going to present the products and the services that you provide? It’s a huge part of having a business. So yes, it’s an investment. Doing it the proper way, doing it right as we said, there’s a right way to do things that comes from having a defined brand foundation. You have to know what your brand is. A lot of times I ask people what’s the brand and they have no idea. You have to know what your brand is. You have to know who you are outside of what you sell. Developing a brand to base your marketing decision on all that takes time because it takes time, it does have an investment cost to it. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing well. You’ve heard that a million times. If you’re going to do something well, it’s going to take time. It takes time if you know how to do it. It takes money if you have to pay someone else that knows better than you do how to do it that’s the straight shot. Marketing is important. It’s a major part of being in business. It’s more involved than people think it is.

 

Jennifer: Wow. There you go, so if you want to sign up for notifications of when the next podcast will be released or when Zachary might be doing a seminar or a speaking engagement, just get out your phone and text the word “Reformation” to 90210. Now, up in the numbers where you would normally have someone’s contact information or phone number, just type in 90210. Then, in the body of the text write the word “Reformation.” You’ll be signed up to receive that. There’s always stuff happening in the media. Something big just happened these last couple weeks. We’re going to be talking a little bit about that.

 

Zachary: That will be the next episode.

 

Jennifer: I think the podcast is really good for being able to have commentary in some of the things that are happening. If something big is happening in the media with celebrities or non-celebrities that are affecting the media, you can bet we’re going to talk about it.

 

Zachary: Don’t just bet on it. Contact us. Let us know. Send us – you can go to our Facebook page, you can call us, we have a phone number that you can call. Let us know what your thoughts are about the subject or what you would like for us to talk about; what you want this great skinny great shot to talk about. And we’ll talk about it. What she has mentioned before, Nike just did a really huge thing and everybody in the world has talked about it. We’re going to have a show on it. We’re going to invite a couple people in.

 

Jennifer: It’s kind of a big deal.

 

Zachary: We’re going to invite a couple of business owners in to kind of talk about the impact that that’s going to have on Nike and the country. We’ll do that from time to time. If there’s something that you have a question about: why are they doing that, why did they do this or you have an opinion about whatever it is. Let us know. Shoot us up. If you want to be a guest on the show, let us know you want to be a guest on the show.

 

Jennifer: Do you have opinions?

 

Zachary: Everybody has opinions. If you think you could provide some insight, let us know. We’ll have you on the show and we’ll go from there.

 

Jennifer: Connect with us on social media.

 

Zachary: Connect with us on social media. We’re on facebook.com/straightshot. We also have an Instagram. All of our stuff’s on our website which is straightshot.net. You can go there and connect with us.

 

Jennifer: You have to try to not find us. We’re a little bit everywhere.

 

Zachary: Connect with us in any way that suits your lifestyle because we’re interjecting ourselves into your pathway just like we said.

 

Jennifer:  Marketing is already everywhere you are. You might as well talk about it. Well, thank you for coming out for the first podcast everybody.

 

Zachary: We hope you enjoyed. Let us know what you think in the comments.

 

Jennifer: Bye.

 

Zachary: Bye bye.

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Reformation Productions is a full service marketing agency in the Atlanta, GA metro. To find out more about the agency  visit www.ReformationProductions.com. Connect with us on Facebook at fb.com/reformationproductions. Blog content is © Reformation Productions. To receive more marketing tips and insights, sign up for our newsletter, Straight Shot, at www.ReformationProductions.com/contact.html to be one of the first to know when they are published here at www.ReformationProductions.com. You can also sign up for notifications by texting "Reformation" to 90210 from your mobile phone.

Category :  Straight Shot Marketing Podcast