Driving ROI isnt as hard as you think

Intro: 0:00

Welcome to The Summit. A podcast focused on bringing you the knowledge and insights for industry leaders. I’m your host, Kyle Hamer and I’m on a mission to help you exceed your potential. As a sales guy, turned marketer, I am passionate about building sustainable businesses. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 20 years , it’s you won’t find an overnight growth-scheme, a shortcut to success, or a way to hack yourself. Nope, success is the by-product of hard work great relationships and deep understanding done over and over. We’re here to help you unlock that success with some secrets from other people, one conversation at a time.

Steve Brown: 0:35

Good afternoon. Welcome to The Summit. I’m here with Steve Brown, founder of ROI, online and author of the golden toilet. And we’re going to have a , we’re going to have a little chat today about , marketing, the good, the bad, the ugly, and, u h, you know, w how sales really plays into all that. Welcome to the conversation or welcome to the show today. How are you doing Steve? I’m really honored to be here. Kyle, I’m looking forward to this. I love talking to folks that have been hanging out in my industry. It makes the conversations even better.

Kyle Hamer: 1:12

Well, I tell you what, I’m, I’m an accidental marketer. probably much like you a s sales guy turned marketer, but i t’ll be awesome for our audiences to get to know a little bit more about you. Tell us a little b it about your background and how you got started with ROI online.

Steve Brown: 1:24

Yeah, so I found myself pigeonholed into a sales position. I was good at it, but you know, in , uh , a good salesperson is a hard to find. And I had every , company I worked for I ‘d h elp them grow their market share and Excel. And over time I realized that this, this website thing was coming into play and I would take it upon myself, take the initiative to go over to the web design firm and get them to upgrade. And I was seeing it as a tool to facilitate the sales process. A nd I , so while I’m doing this, I was hitting my quotas and then I would just go over and hang out and learn. And I , I was just like that. But what I realized was, and that was back in the day o f cold calls. So f or y ou, for the folks listening, who hasn’t done cold calls, cold calling sales is like watching a football game. And everybody knows that it’s a quarterback sneak on one, every single play the game. Okay. And you just, you just did that all day long. And so you run 10 plays. You might make one yard and you do 10 cold calls. You might make one sale, but that’s just the way you had to be. So you started not only did you have to work on your frequency of sales calls, but you had to work on your competency. But I realized that the folks that would go to our website fill out a form on my gosh, they wanted to talk about what we did and it wasn’t like it . This is what I like. I’m on a barge in interrupt. You, you’re going to have to put down your fire hose , take off your fire hat and sit down and helped me make my quota, whether it’s best for you or not. Right. That’s what it was like. But if someone goes to your website and fills out a form, they actually want you to contact them. And they’re interested in learning more about what you do. There’s a miracle. Okay. So I started, I update the website, long story short. I ended up working at a web design firm as a salesperson , and guess who was coming in the door, a whole bunch of MES , a whole bunch of people wanting their website to do something for them. They didn’t have the words, but they had the expectations. And in that time that I spent at that web design firm, I saw that what I needed to do from what my perspective was. And so that’s where ROI online. The internet marketing agency was born

Kyle Hamer: 4:08

And fast forward . What couple of years? Several years. I mean, it’s, it’s been a while and you decided, Hey, I’m going to write a book. And the book’s called the golden toilet. stop flushing your marketing budget into the website and build a system that grows your business. So it sounds to me like maybe even your perspective evolved after just, Hey, I need something that’s a better mouse, t rapper, uh , g iving people words for what they want the website to do. Wh ere d i d t his book come from?

Steve Brown: 4:34

Yeah. So you’re right. You know, in the beginning, the main thing that I wanted to address was education. I’m one of my clients to meet on a regular basis with us on a weekly basis. So at least they wouldn’t be in the dark. Like I found my clients are at the previous place or how I was, you know , trying to find a web designer and get some answers is like, before you go in that office, they need a tire rope around your ankle because you’re going in this sacred place where they don’t even what you’re a human. Well , I’m supposed to talk to you and talk down to you. So I’m , I was addressing that immediately is like we had people that actually liked to talk to business owners and really work on it. But we were still in that trap , w ere wanting, we were addressing the problem, but we weren’t addressing the real problem. That’s where the book comes from, but we are addressing the problem. They had to come in and go, I think I need a new new website. Oh, we’re good at doing a new website and we’re not going to keep you in the dark. We’re going to actually teach you what we’re doing a little bit. And that’s like radical. But then as the years go on and you get clients that been with you three, four years, and then they come in one day and they go, Steve, I just don’t think this is working. And I’m going, what are you crazy? We were just sitting in house bragging about your account, looking at all the data on the back end , look at all these forms are filling out. Look how many phone calls they’re getting. And that’s all that came from that blog posts and that social media posts and that unique phone number. What is this guy? Just, what’s he not seeing that we’re seeing, but these, these are smart business people and they they’ve been running great businesses and they’re still, they’re not, they’re not stupid. They’re not crazy. And I’m going, what’s missing in a couple of cases. I figured out we were being measured on attrition. We were putting all our efforts in, as we talked about in the beginning of engagement, on acquisition, the word dumping, all these leads on the desk, and then people are coming in and moving them out of the way. What’s this crap when we’ve got work to do right. And I assume they had a great sales process, but they didn’t. And I’m going all right . Well, what part do I own? And , and I realized, you know, I need, I need to be connecting a CRM expectation and all of this long story short, I just recognize after hundreds of conversations with business owners, that there was this common theme, even though they said it in different words, the subtitle, like in a foreign movie, you know, a foreign language movie where you get the English subtitles, but they don’t match the lips that are moving on the, the movie right. Where you could put these people in there . And even though they’re speaking English, and they’re saying, I need marketing and branding and sales, which to most people like the same thing. Right. But then we would go, Oh yeah, we do that. But I realized what they were really saying is, Hey, I’m realizing I need to invest in this asset. And I need to have an expectation. That’s going to grow the value of my business, but I don’t know what the heck to ask for. And I’m hoping I can trust you. And, and what I was realizing was , uh, the real problem here is we need to make sure that all the fundamentals are clear to them when we were assuming the fundamentals were clear to them, okay. Hey, Steve, I need, I need to get some clear messaging. Okay? You got it. Clear messaging coming up. Well, that didn’t help anything. Or later on a comeback , we need to update our messaging. Okay? So I need to get some emails going out. Okay. You’re a social media realize we go, look, this is what I’ve been missing. And I realized I’m only going to get to tell someone one time a day during a sales call or something. I need to write this down so that a lot of people can avoid all the frustration, the train wreck, the wasted money, just all the common experiences that go with trying to get your website have granted somehow it help your business. I wanted to write this book so that the business owner can go, Oh my gosh, I got the words. Now I know what to say to the web team or the marketing agency. Now I know what to expect. Here’s the diagram I want this. Then the marketing agency is going to go, Oh my gosh, we’ve got a translation. So that now when we say marketing, we’re seeing marketing . When we say branding, we’re seeing brand. And when we see strategic campaigns, we’re talking about the same thing. Instead of we thought we were talking about like that time with your wife, baby, I got the tickets. I got the tickets, the tickets to where to Disneyland. Don’t you remember? We’re going to Disneyland. And she goes, I never said, I want to go to Disneyland. So what are you doing ? Are you crazy? We were just sitting there three weeks ago. And you were saying , you want to go to Disneyland? I thought it was going to be a big surprise. You’d be proud of me and happy. And she goes, no. I said, Disney world. You remember how you felt? That’s what it felt like when he said, Steve, I just don’t think this is working.

Kyle Hamer: 10:29

And I think that’s all too true for, for a lot of agency and marketing owners. It’s i t, a nd I think the interesting nuance here is, is that when you’re really good at sales, you become good at active listening, right? And a lot of no disrespect to the good agencies o r the great, the great marketers out there. But if you’re going to be great at your job, you have to be really good at active listening and understanding what somebody means n ow, what they say. Yeah.

Steve Brown: 10:56

Serious. And I

Kyle Hamer: 10:57

Think it’s interesting because you use a, a sales technique early on in your book and you talk about, somebody comes to you and says, Hey Steve, Hey Steve, Hey Steve, I need a new website. And you start immediately with a takeaway close. Like I find it interesting that you’re like, maybe you don’t. And , and, and I think for a lot of people, that’s probably a pretty abrupt disruption for our listeners. Why do you take that perspective?

Steve Brown: 11:26

Well, here’s what we’re up against. We’re up against weaponized persuasion. That’s been going on over the years. Why do they show up using the best words ? They haven’t say this? I think I need a new website. I got to show up in the top of a search and we need to be posting pictures of my dog on social media. Okay. Why are they saying that? Cause they get called every day by somebody that doesn’t know anything about their business, wanting to make that quota and promise them . I can get you on the top of the search. And well , after about 40 of those, you hang up and go and go, well, I guess getting on top of search is important. I’ve been told 40 times. Right? Okay. So when people come in and he goes, Steve, I need a new website. Well, that’s what you’re up against. You need to reframe that person’s perspective. And even though you’re tell them, well , actually this and this, you have to tell, you’ve heard that thing where you need to tell somebody seven times before they really hear it. Okay. You remember that last time your kid came in and it was asking this, and yet, dude, I told you, I told you like three times already. Well, here’s the problem. You need to tell them four more times. And for seeing sin, when we don’t have seven times to tell them in a 45 minutes sales call, where they get to talk about 30 of those minutes. Right? So here’s what you do. You’ve got to get the brain. You got to , I call it, stop the brain and introduce a reframe. And it needs to be a little absurd. It needs to be iconic and memorable. And that comes from story. But it’s like, look, your website is just a toilet. You wouldn’t work in an office. If it didn’t have a toilet, you wouldn’t buy a house. If it didn’t have a toilet. But when people come over, where do you guys hang out in the kitchen, around the dining table, maybe out by the pool or the fireplace, whatever. And they don’t walk out and go, Oh my gosh, the toilet is not going to be a part of that conversation unless you didn’t have one that, but everybody comes in and all the focus is on the toilet, but it’s just one piece of a comprehensive system that makes the house you still need. What about the air conditioning system? What about electricity? What about AC? I mean, I already said that, but what about the other things? Right? The lining . And that’s what people get focused and hung up on this website thing. As some little thing they get, all right , then let’s check that task list off. Now we can get back to doing real business, but it’s not true. You have to consider these other things

Kyle Hamer: 14:28

And you start to introduce something there that I think a lot of , uh, a lot of business owners and even marketers, like think we, we cognitively understand, but we don’t necessarily take the steps to , create the, the system, right? The hopper system, something to feed the sales mechanism. I mean, you talked about early on being judged on a ttrition and all you were doing was building this acquisition m odel. Well, those are two different motions, right? I t t akes two different techniques, t wo different frames of thought for business owners out there though isn’t marketing and sales being intertwined together. Especially if, you know, if you’re not doing this e very d ay and having this conversation, isn’t this a s a new way of thinking,

Steve Brown: 15:13

You know, there’s, there’s these trends that are happening. That’s a great question. I love that question. I do want to say you innately as a business owner, you innately know you have a hiring system, you have a payment system, you have an invoicing system. You have, you have a service delivery system, right. So why would it make sense that you would look at it in this way? But here’s all these conversations start at the marketing doorstep. When I would truly love it . They started at the sales doorstep, but the reason that people start at the marketing doorstep, because it’s less intimidating than the sales conversation. Okay. But the people that we really gel with think of it this way, the business is like the life cycle of it . of anything. It has a l ife c ycle. You have a beginning stage startup stage. You just, Hey, I think I got this idea. And then you actually, someone actually bought your product and then use it . Actually, someone wants to work for you. And then , so you get some good employees and get good products and get good systems and stuff. And finally you get to this point, I think we got some legs here. I think we’re going to go make this and go. And the , you finally, you look up and you’re covered with mud and sweat. You had your head down really just doing what you shouldn’t be doing. And you realize we’re going to scale. I have to get my act together online because we can’t just go off of referrals. Now we’re expecting more. People need to discover this and understand this and researches before they come in. And so that’s when I alluded to it’s part of a sales function, a sales facilitation tool, not just marketing. And so we , they come in and go, I need to do this. And they’re thinking marketing, but sales is kind of the same thing. But the data, the data that your actual can collect off of interactions online as mushing , these two things together, it used to be marketing. Wasn’t cute, little red headed kid. That was fun to be around in , but that’s first kid is dismissed from the dinner table when the conversation gets serious. Right. And then sales is always like, Oh my gosh, we got to do sales. And if you’re not sales oriented, it’s like, okay, we need a sales person . Cool . Who are we going to hire? I don’t know somebody. I’m just a people person. And as then you just throw a person that until one of them sticks, but that’s expensive and costly. And if you’re not thinking of it together as like, all right , I’m going to build a sale system that needs to honor the online experience, but needs to be supported by the marketing experience so that these can work together for success instead of separate antagonistic and you know, sales guys. And Jared’s , you won’t use my materials and the marketing person stupid. They don’t want know how to design brochure.

Kyle Hamer: 18:24

Well, look, I, and I think, I think my, my personal journey started early on in my career where , if I didn’t generate my own leads, I didn’t eat meaning right. There was no, there was no food on the table. But as you, as you move forward, you know, today, I don’t think there’s a sales person alive that I’m aware of. Who’s like, man, I don’t expect marketing or expect this t o, to bring, bring somebody of interest. Like I’m looking for higher quality conversations. I’m looking for, for people to transition into. And yet I can’t tell you how many times the sales bungles it, because they didn’t really understand where that person was at or what was going on, or they weren’t really good at active listening. When you look at the evolution of technology a nd in, you know, you talked about the data, how is data and marketing transforming us from where we were 10 years ago when it was leads a nd advertising, tell me what’s different.

Steve Brown: 19:29

I’d love that set up there because this is like crazy. I’ve that my agency has started its ninth year. Okay. I have never gone out and did a cold call. I’ve never sat and called someone, Hey, you need a new website. Never all my business has come to me . My appointments come online, fill out a form. They click schedule a call. They look at my calendar and they pick the time. Then the little robots in the background, they send a nice little email and put it on their calendar, along with the zoom link. And then a confirmation, the name before and here I do. I come in after, you know , you want to know what my morning routine is. I get a drink, coffee, take shower and mosey . And the work I don’t, I don’t do the, you know, the ice pass and this, I get up at four and then I do pushups and meditation. But what I do come in and get , I look at my email that says, Steve, you’ve been scheduled by Kyle at four o’clock on Wednesday. Who’s Kyle I’ll click on that. And then my tool opens up and says, well , Kyle works at this company and he’s been on your website about 20 times. The first time he came on was on this date. And he’s been hanging around on this service page. And so the form you filled out on the thing he wants to talk about this, well , I’m walking in to a very warm to hot call. And so what am I getting to do? I’m getting to have a great conversation. And I’m being able to discern whether we’re going to be a good fit or not. So what’s, what’s happening is I’ve been doing the Mark . I mean , so how did that person even get on there and schedule us think about that? Well, first of all, they were home researching one day and thought, you know, I need to figure out a solution for this challenge. So maybe they were on LinkedIn. Maybe they were on YouTube. Maybe they were on Facebook. I hate Facebook. Maybe they were on Instagram. Maybe they were on Twitter. Who knows, who knows. And they stumble across some piece of information in that you’ve created that they appreciated when they clicked on it to learn, to get to the rest of the story. Like Paul Harvey would say, it took them over to my website and sat them down and asked them , would you like a little popcorn and soda while you’re taking your time? You’re safe here. No, one’s going to come up and try to sell you. And they hang out on your website a little bit and they go, all right, I think I know enough here. I’m going to actually expose myself and give them my name and talk to them. Think how far along they are in the sales process to do that. That’s crazy. And it’s realistic. And it happens every day in progressive forward thinking businesses. And it’s not that hard and think about the competitive advantage you’re competing against other people, just like you that have a problem trying to figure this out as well. But if I can just give you the courage, let’s just lean into this a little bit. You know, they’re going to think about it. And you know , maybe later over and over and over, like you’ve been doing, but you’re going to be way down the road with your act together online.

Kyle Hamer: 23:25

The , the, the sales and marketing system that I first got indoctrinated with was a tool by a guy that named by a gentleman . I think he’s in grapevine, Texas , uh, rich Harshaw monopolize your market. And he talked about building a sales hopper in the thing that he said, that’s always stuck with me is as if is doing its job, your salespeople are only order takers . And this was, you know , 15 years ago when I was first introduced to this. And it was a foreign concept. Like how could you ever turn, you know, the garage door service into McDonald’s where it’s like, I show up and I exactly what I want. If I go to McDonald’s, I know I’m going to have, you know, whatever it is that I want off the menu. Like, there’s not, there’s no convincing that has to be done by that particular person on the other end. As a matter of fact, it’s just, I show up, I order, they tell me my price and I drive through and I get my food and I move on. Right? And so many B2B or, or even B to C businesses have , have struggled. There’s like, well, I need to do a billboard, or I need to do this type of print advertising, or I need to do this, or I need to do that. And those are all marketing functions, but they don’t drive anybody closer to a sales conversation or to a decision where I show up. And I, I know what I want. You have a, you know, you in your book, the golden toilet, you talk about these, these four cogs of, of your system and, and what business owners and, and , people who are really thinking about how to create this, this environment. They need to go through, talk to us a little bit about what those four are. And then, yo u k n ow, we’ll, we’ll discuss a little bit about how you, how you identify what you are doing, right. Ar e y ou ar e?

Steve Brown: 25:07

Yeah. So the number one challenge that business leaders, parents, coaches, teachers, salespeople, order-takers the first challenge they have to get past is how to communicate clearly to be able to take what’s in their head and say it in a way that everybody sees the same thing. That’s in your head. That’s so hard. It’s really hard. And so when you think about the power of clear messaging, that’s your number one biggest lever that you can lean on that lever and get a big competitive advantage. Number one,

Kyle Hamer: 25:54

Hold on. And before you go into number two though, let’s, let’s talk about that for just a minute, because like you said, early on, I said, tomato, you said tomato. We thought we were both talking about a little red thing, but really I mispronounced it. I was talking about potato. So what does clear messaging mean? Like what does, what does that actually mean? And what does it actually look

Steve Brown: 26:14

Clear messaging? So when you think about, when someone looks at your brochure, reads gets an email from, you, looks at your webpage , sees a social media post and just a split second. This is what’s going on. You have a brain. And then that brain, there’s a brainstem. It’s the old brain it’s called. It’s the brain we share with dogs and lobsters. You know how you can communicate with a dog and not even speak language. Right? Okay. Well that part of the brain doesn’t process language. It doesn’t read. Okay. Yet I call it the body guard that bodyguard has to sign off on every decision that’s made. And so when someone picks up a brochure, this is what’s going on. The body guards looking number one, it’s a safety first imperative. That’s what your brain we use . Our brains kept us alive when dinosaurs and tooth . And we didn’t know how to read. We didn’t know how to talk. We just knew how to like put mud on her hand and put it on the cave wall . Right? And yet we’re running a muck naked. Basically. We don’t have claws. And yet we’re surviving. We’re flourishing. It’s because of that body guard and the bodyguards , all his job was, it was like, Hey, you’re not safe here. You need to get outta here now. Or you’re safe. You can give a little more of your time and energy and expose yourself a little longer. But if I notice anything wrong, we’re we’re outta here. Okay. So you see it happen all the time. The limos pull up these big meatheads, get out, they look around and they discern the situation. They give the signal and the outcomes of VIP, but just one threat pops up. They rush them out of there . So that’s, what’s going on. When they look at your messaging in just a split second naming to go, Oh, I’m understood. And I want to know a little bit more. That means I’m safe. They get that’s the power of clear messaging. And so there’s a great book called building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. And it’s a seven part framework that our brains crave one to be communicated in a story format. That’s why we sit down and watch a movie. We basically pushed a button and I’m daydreaming. That’s all you’re doing. You stop thinking and you’re experiencing, and you’re being moved around by emotions. That’s why we could get, we picked three countries, languages. We don’t speak. And then when let’s get some little kids that can’t speak yet and turn on a silent movie, we’ll just giggle at the same time. Well, we’ll be scared at the same time. That’s that old brain just loving that, loving the story. So that building a StoryBrand is a way to start creating messaging that honors the rules of story. The difference between music and noise is music follows rules. The difference between clear messaging and just blah , blah, blah. The difference between aha and blah , blah, blah is rules. Aha. Messaging follows rules.

Kyle Hamer: 29:50

And then, okay, so I’m following the rules, but that’s , that’s just step one in your, in your gears, right? That , that leads us into what I mean. Okay. So I got great messaging. Now

Steve Brown: 30:03

He’s got to live somewhere, doesn’t it? And it used to be go back 30 school back 40 years and your grandparents, but messaging was like, when they walked in and said, Hey, Kyle, how are you doing today’s today? And you pick it up. The chicken livers. Yeah. Hey , I’ve got some good. I got some really nice pork butt over here. By the way. That’s was the clear messaging of the days . Like Kyle glad you here appreciating. But I had to live somewhere nowadays. It has to live in a virtual version who would have thought we couldn’t go walk around the shop, walk around the, where all the couches are and sit in. ’em shake hands. Tell the, tell the salesperson . I’m just looking. Whoever thought that we couldn’t go shake, sit in a conference room. It’s really highlighted the need that you have to have a virtual representation of your physical experience. There has to be a virtual experience that delivers you that messaging. I call it marketing automation. We don’t want to get deep in the weeds right now. But the easy thing to know is that it needs to live somewhere, some website, but it’s also needs some robots helping them deliver a human experience. Right? So it’s called marketing automation. We’re a little bit familiar with the cause of mail monkey and in constant content, constant attack. But marketing automation is how you start baking that messaging. In the next piece, you go, you investigate people. Champ changed the way that they, they research and buy and live. So you go online and research so that you’ll stumble into things and start to go. I like that. And I want to learn more. You’re in the marketing automation realm, but that time that you go click, I want to talk to somebody because they have a few more questions about how’s this going to look in my situation. Now we’ve crossed over into the sales side, but that experience needs to be baked into the sales. You remember that time you got all jacked up, you went over to the showroom, you’re going to buy that lawnmower or whatever it was. And the guy comes out and he’s a jerk. You remember how upset you got? I mean, you , you actually you’ll left . You were hot, even so upset. You’re wrote a review. You wrote a bad review. Why, why did you have that reaction? Because the body guard and your brain said, they tricked us. They made me think it was going to be like this. They made me expect it was going to be like that. And then I walk in and that sales guy’s injured . And wasn’t saying, that’s why that messaging that experience on the sales side, it’s got to be congruent with the marketing side. So clear messaging, the marketing automation, sales, automation. These are the things that are floating below the tip of the iceberg. And we see the next part. Now. Now it’s time to start doing social media posts. Now it’s time to start running some ads. Okay. But we all come in and that’s what they say. I think I need a website, need to do some social media stuff and show up on a search, but they’re missing all this back in . And that’s very important. You can run ads all day, but you wasting your money. If they go to your website. Here’s what I learned this cow. So I found myself divorced the second time. And I was going to have to get online and build out a dating profile on some, some dating site. Right. So what do you do? You go in you , okay. Set up account. Then you answer all these questions are, you know, what’s your weight, what’s your height? Where do you live? What do you like? What do you, you know what, ask you all these things. You know what those are. Those are search. Those are keywords. And there are hashtags so that you show up in some search parameter that the person on the other side’s putting in, you want to be included in that short list. Right? Okay. So I do that. And then you’re supposed to put some pictures and then write a little bit of bio about yourself. Well, I’m a guy. Okay. And so I look at my picture , it’s not , Hey , this is a picture of me in some efficient, zip off fishing pants here. I really liked those pants. My buddies are , they got some like that. Right? So I’m putting in pictures . I don’t write , I like walking on the beach and pina coladas in the rain. And I didn’t do any of that. So a couple of weeks ago , by my phone’s not blowing up, I wonder why. Right? And so my ex text me, and this is what our tech sends. Steve in need to change the pictures on your profile. That’s how bad it was. My ex tells me the, and sends me the pictures. Okay. And you need to, you need to ride a little bit in your bio there. And that’s when it hit me. You can show up in searches all day long, but people are going to swipe left if it doesn’t appeal to them. So I’ve put a nice profile if I wanted to find some hunting buddies or some fishing buddies or whatever. Okay. So I had my search parameters all in, but I didn’t have any good messaging. I wasn’t tailoring it to my audience. And that’s, that’s the problem with most websites. And that’s what it really sunk into me.

Kyle Hamer: 36:09

So now you’ve got your marketing automation, you’ve got your messaging, you’re moving into your, to your, to your sales engagement and taking him across the line. What’s the, what’s the

Steve Brown: 36:22

Fourth campaigns. Right? So, yep . What does that mean? That’s a great question. I’m glad you asked Kyle. So first of all, it’s doing something that’s not tactical, but strategic, everybody gets that. I think I need a billboard or on , and put a yellow ping Jad back when that was legitimate. Right. And so why do you want to do this? So if somebody walks by the, Oh , Oh, I didn’t know that what’s that phone number I’m going to call Kay . But you need to do with some strategy. So a strategic campaign means this and we’ve all experienced many of these successfully. And in my book, I talk about one because I didn’t realize that I’d done it till later when I was thinking about it. Okay. That’s how good it was. But I was sitting there. So currently my part, my significant other she’s worried about the dry or catching on fire and wants me to clean out the lint. And I’m looking in there and it looks clean, but I know there’s this thing in the back that goes into the wall. And , and so there’s this fire and I don’t like, I know you’ve done it. And you’ve pulled out the dryer in the small little utility room and you get back there and then you gotta go to home Depot once and you come back and you got the wrong one. You got to do it again. I just wasn’t, that’s the way it works for me. I know I have the right tool and I break stuff. So I’m sitting there and I’m putting it off. And so I’m looking on Instagram one day and all of a sudden, I see this, this lady’s hand with his aunt eater head thing, she puts it on a vacu cleaner handle, sticks it right into the hole, on the dryer. And then the next thing I see is all this lint coming into the clear vacu canister, all that lint was sucked out of there. And then there’s the fire stats that are going past and I’m sitting there. And then I go, it says by now I click on it. And not only does it take me to the purchase page, it’s on sale. So it wasn’t 29 95. It was 1995 or something. And then I clicked purchase. And then my little phone puts in my, my credit card information. And then as I clicked buy, and then I went on about looking at Instagram, I didn’t go online and search. I didn’t go. I wonder if there’s an ant eater, head looking thing out there that fits on. I didn’t even know it existed. Okay. So what that was, was a beautiful strategic campaign that goes by and clearly in a second game , super clear idea what the , what it did and how easy it was. And more importantly, I didn’t have to do it. That was a woman putting that thing on the head of the vacuum cleaners thing, right. It was like, this is two wins immediately. Then I click buy . Now I’m off Instagram and I’m on their website. And what did I find? A bunch of dancing raisins telling me about their environmentally friendly plastic and how many whales they’ve saved? No, it went right to the shopping cart, right? What I expected, then there’s a price. Guess what I was wondering? I wonder how much it is. Not only that I know how much it is, it’s on sale. And then I’m wondering, well, how do I get this thing? Oh, there’s a nice little button. And then it got captured my credit card information, click purchase. It took me less than a minute, less than a minute from not knowing anything about it, to understanding what I expected to see, walk me along. Didn’t ask me, are you sure? You sure you want to buy this? Don’t you want to know that how many people we’ve employed in the past year, maybe later, but I’m busy. I’m on Instagram. That’s, that’s a beautiful strategic campaign. They think about all the thinking behind that. Well , what should we do when we need to show them in a split second? What we do? Well, let’s get, let’s get someone . Who’s the target market here. A woman concerned about driving lint catching on fire, not a guy. So they have that person showing you, they can do it so easy. And then how to , how to buy. That was a beautiful, well thought out, AAA plus strategic campaign.

Kyle Hamer: 41:34

You know, they say that the w what I love about that story is , is how common sense. It feels like you say the story, right? And we’re talking about strategic campaigns and yet most business owners or, or , uh , marketing folks, they’re going to go well, yeah, that’s what you should do. That makes sense. And yet it’s so difficult to get experiences like that. I mean, think about all of the experiences you have, where it doesn’t end up being like that, or it’s a complete interruption and you get lost in this, you know, this Wonderland of somebody else’s , uh , ego writes their own throne . Self-fulfilling prophecy. They say that the, the, the simplest things in life actually take the most thought. And the most work when you’re looking at strategic campaigns for, for businesses, is there a , is there really a spot where those don’t apply or does it apply to everybody?

Steve Brown: 42:38

You told me a story about the funnel, the hopper, the hopper guy named Martin . Right. So how did you know about him? Because he wrote a book or he was posting content somewhere. There’s a strategy behind that, and you really valued it, and you loved it and you bought the book, or you implemented the system, maybe that’s how you got into this business. Okay. So there’s not one, one place that this is not applicable. And, and I would say you’ve witnessed this before the internet. If you’ve been around that long, you’ve witnessed immersion of this, all my book is, is just wanting you to recognize universal principles that are , will always be applicable and always in play now. And in the future when technology changes, but the brain, the experience, the way we invest in , think about it. We used to just, Hey, we need something to eat tonight around the campfire and back in a thousand years ago. Okay. Well, I’m going to run out and get a rabbit, but may have said that, okay, where do you go? And I don’t know, I’m just going to start heading that way and see if I find a rabbit trail, but along the way, he’s, you know, lizard when we’re eating lizard at night, you’re out discovering, okay , you might, you might run into an elephant, but who knows, but you start off somewhere. That’s one way people live by and shop the same way. And if your stuff’s not out there, then they’re not going to get your stuff .

Kyle Hamer: 44:29

You know, it’s interesting that you say that I was, I was just reading a book. Uh, the future is faster than you think. And one of the things that they were talking about is the reason that Sears and Roebuck became such an important staple in , in the American commerce, i n the American experience, which by the way, at a certain point, u h, Sears and Roebuck had 10% of every dollar spent in America, went through Sears and Roebuck, like, think about that. Like that in and of itself is just insane. But the reason that Sears and Roebuck became a thing was, Hey, we’ve got, u h, 300 unique locations during the explosion of the railroad. And nobody, everybody had their own unique time. There was no consensus of time. There was no standardization. So t ime, the trains were never running on time or off time. B ecause if you know, I left Amarillo and headed to Denver, well, I left Amarillo w ith three Oh five and I arrived at Denver at seven Oh five, but t hey’re like, well, you were supposed to arrive at five Oh five, but you know, like nobody had figured that out and Sears and Roebuck did exactly what you’re talking about. They took the, I think the original company was founded on watches. They took a case of 5,000 watches or something like that. And in sold them via catalog. And when they sold them, it started to correct the time in the inconsistency. And so when you look at application today, the marketing mechanism, like if you think about, you, think about your little, your four little gears, Susan robot, clear messaging, we got a problem with time. We can fix your time with a watch. How do I get there? Well, the marketing automation of the time was a catalog mailed to you. Yes. I decided that I wanted to buy a catalog. It went into the sales component. I had to fill out my order. And then ultimately it was done strategically because initially they only started with train station conductors and owners of trains. Right? It gets everything in your system has been around much longer than we think, but it’s, it’s having the imagination and creativity to understand it and then apply it. That really, I think, is what separates the companies that will continue on versus the companies that get acquired and moved out

Steve Brown: 46:46

Agreed. And that that’s the whole intent of my book is for you to recognize this. It’s not crazy new and you do it already. I just want you to look , don’t see website, see a system. And if I can get you to do that, I just saved you a year or two of pain and frustration and wasted time and money, and many conversations with your spouse going . I think I just, I never should have done this

Kyle Hamer: 47:19

Well, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve , uh, we’ve chatted for quite a while today. I really, really appreciate your generosity and Sharon , you know , some of your perspective in educating those that are listening , uh, Steve, if somebody wants to get in touch with you or has questions about your system, your book, or otherwise , uh , you know, give us the, give us the 30 seconds

Steve Brown: 47:37

Commercial . Yeah. So you can go to ROI online.com called it ROI online, because I wanted to convey that I understand you and get you, that you want this investment to move the needle. Somehow my book, you’re going to have to write this down. It’s hard to remember the golden toilet, stop flushing your marketing budget into your website and build a system that grows your business. You can get an Amazon and get on audible it’s available on Kindle. And then you can hear me interview all these great and interesting guests on the ROI online podcast as well. Yeah, that’s probably, and then LinkedIn, y ou k now, Steve Brown i s such a distinct name. I have to put ROI online after it so that you can find me on LinkedIn. So Steve Brown ROI online now reach out if you need some resources, I’ll point you in the right direction. And if you need some help, we got, we got a little q uick s tart Academy. If you want us to teach you how we do it for others, y ou can get your marketing d irector, sign up. I can get you guys on the same page. You’re going to work with t he content person. Y ou h ave t o work with a technology person, strategy person. It’s a great, it’s a great thing. We call it the ROI Q uickstart Academy.

Kyle Hamer: 48:56

Great. Well, we really appreciate you being here and sharing today and , uh, look forward to folks tuning in next week for the next summit podcast. Thanks Steve for being here and , uh, just really, really

Steve Brown: 49:07

It’s been great, great questions. You’re a great host. Thanks .