...the anti-agency, agency ( do more, yourself, and win doing it)
I Need To Do Something To Get A Bump In Cash Flow
The solution is creating sales in a time frame they wouldn't have occurred naturally. Take on the mindset of not letting your customers move at their own pace. Motivate them, or your competition will do it for you.
I Want To Be The "Go-To" Name In My Community
Targeting qualified leads is a good short term ROI, but the Stronger foundation that gets you to that top spot where you own the market share of customers, is accomplished by prioritizing Exposure strategies. Exposure marketing is an overlooked powerhouse strategy. I'm not talking about buying big ad spaces and slopping your name and logo on it, with your corporate slogan. No. That does nothing for you. Absolute waste of money. You have to actually "do something" with that exposure. Make it memorable, make it relevant to a pain point. Our minds constantly absorb the bits of info that it deems important to our survival or advantage. That's the mental real estate your messaging is aiming for. When you become the go-to name, your exposure lets you educate and dictate the direction of the market.
I Need Some Better Tools & Effective Micro-Strategies
Here is a continually growing arsenal of useful low-cost tools, such as website builders. printing ( MyEZPrinter), creative tools and automation.
I Want To Get Good At Making and Keeping Customers
This is about seeing your business as an ecosystem which is pooled together by all of your "properties" such as websites, social media, physical storefront, but also your people, your customer service, and your workflow and policies. All of these things must work toward the same goal in unison. When a prospect or existing customer lands on one of your properties, your ecosystem should work to transform them into a customer, and then keep them that way.
The Quick Flex
The "Quick Flex" Cash-Flow Kit
"I Need a Cash-Flow Bump... Like, Yesterday."
“Build it and they wills come"...well sure....but invite them...and they'll get there quicker and more often.” ~ DH Peck
(In Development - Coming Soon)
Own The Playing Field
I Want To Be The "Go-To" Name In My Community
The "Untapped Potential" Everybody Secretly Wants: The Power of Knowing You Exist.
Let’s be real for a second. We’ve all been beaten over the head with "Targeted ROI" and "Lead Generation." The gurus tell you to hunt down the person who is literally holding their credit card in their hand, ready to buy right now.
And sure, that’s great for a quick win. But do you want to be a hunter, or do you want to own the forest?
Yes you are going after the patch of people who are most likely to buy right now…but so is everyone else. There’s really nothing wrong with that..but I have loftier goals in mind for you. Longevity. Influencing the path of the future customers, before your competition can.
The strongest businesses, the ones that become "household names" aren't just better at targeting; they are better at Exposure. They understand that "knowing you exist" is the mandatory prerequisite to "knowing what you do."
If Mrs. Jones doesn’t need a plumber today, but she’s seen your name on her fridge, at the local coffee shop, and in her mailbox for the last six months, guess who’s getting an opportunity to be front and center when her water heater decides to throw a retirement party in the middle of the night?
It’s you. because you already occupy space in her head.
The "Secret Sauce" Nobody Is Talking About: The Power of Knowing What You Do
I'm not talking about "they sell ties"..or "they clean carpets"...When I say "Knowing What you Do"....and mean it from the customers point of view. It's why they need you. It's the problem you solve for them"
All the exposure you can get...isn't going to do much good unless they understand your value to them. I see different advertising mediums in our community. One example is a booklet my kids brought home from school. Inside were various community items and it was loaded with pages of community advertisers. I noted a few ads that took up premier positions on the covers. I looked at one...all I saw was the contact information, the company slogan, and a photo of the owner. That's fine, but I'm not going to remember anything about them. It just washes into everything else that looks and feels the same, from that industry. many of the smaller ads did a much better job of catching my attention and sticking something memorable in my brain. and they didn't need a big size ad to do it.
The lesson here is that when you engage in exposure marketing, you have to actually do something with that exposure...something more than just putting your name out there.
One of my side passions is accelerated learning techniques. I understand that one of the ways memory works is that it accumulates memory by building upon, or stacking on existing memories in the same context. So, in a nutshell...a customer already has a set of ideas, or limited understanding...or we'll call them knowledge points....about your given industry or service. Meanwhile as we go about our day...our brains naturally try to salvage the important things, the useful things to our own advantage or advancement. So, if you want your name to be remembered...you need to feed our brains with something important or advantageous that will stick to our existing chaotic pile of context. You've name isn't important by itself, so its not going to be valuable. It will however become important, but only after we've decided we need your help...its that thing that we understand is going to help us...is the thing you need to work into our memory.
This is how you nudge to market in your direction. Be memorable..but more importantly...be understood. Because when they finally come to the cross roads where they need some one like you. Your name will be sitting on the forefront of their mind.
Why "Wait-and-See" Customers are Your Biggest Opportunity
Most marketing advice treats anyone not ready to buy today as a waste of money. We call that "The Short-Term Trap."
Think of your market like a funnel:
The Nows: Ready to buy today. (The most expensive leads to get).
The Laters: Ready to buy in 3 to 6 months. (The most ignored group).
The Somedays: Will eventually need you. (The foundation of your future).
When you prioritize Exposure Marketing, you are educating and dictating the direction of the market. You aren't just waiting for a lead to find you; you are making sure they never have to look for anyone else. Here’s the thing, You figure you have a finite number of possible customers in your local playing field. I see it like this. They are all your customers…or rather..they are all customers…of what you provide. …just at different points in time. Meanwhile…you should be addressing all of them as equals, all of the time. The quicker you can snatch them into your business ecosystem, the sooner you control the playing field.
High-Impact, Low-Budget "Fame" Strategies
You don't need a Super Bowl budget to be the most famous person in your zip code. Here are a few "boots on the ground" ideas that work like a charm:
1. The "Power of the Stack" (The Referral Co-op)
Don't just hand out business cards to people; hand them to places. Find 3-5 non-competing businesses that serve the same clientele (e.g., a Realtor, a Mortgage Broker, and a House Cleaner). Ask to leave a small, professional "take one" stand of your cards in exchange for doing the same for them. It costs you the price of a coffee and creates a passive "referral engine." The trick here is, you offer to pay for the creation of the card with their advertisement on it, but you include your brand on there too as the “Sponsor”. This is advantageous to the particular business because of the potential foot traffic coming from another business (where the cards are placed) but it also gives you constant exposure in any of the traffic flows.
2. "The Original InBox" Jumbo Postcard
Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is the gold standard for neighborhood dominance, hitting every current and potential customer in the entire neighborhood.
This is distributed to the top Income households in Twin Falls, Kimberly and Filer. Totaling 15,000 mailers.
That is 1/3 of the entire immediate local market, all in one shot.
3. The "Thank You Bump" A Value Add for your office by collaborating with a Food Partner. (In Development)
A smart actionable idea you can put into play:
The piggyback Handout Card: Partner with a local food shop, for a win/win. You get the added value of a thank you gesture; a food deal for your client, as a thank you. The food partner gets a bump in traffic from you..
The Bottom Line
Exposure Marketing is about familiarity. Familiarity places you in opportunistic positions, which are often happening right at those critical moments when a person finds himself transitioning to a potential buyer. If you are a familiar name around town…you are automatically “in the game” when crunch time happens.
When a lead finds themselves in a position where they are choosing or looking, the familiar name is going to be their first internet search. or that first “comparison” search.
When they know your name, you’re always in the game.
Scrappy Maneuvering
High-Octane Resources on a Lemonade Stand Budget.
Let’s be honest for a second: The "Big Tech" world wants you to believe that if you aren't spending four figures a month on a software suite with more buttons than a cockpit, you aren't "doing marketing."
They’re wrong. In fact, there is a massive gap between "expensive" and "effective," and that’s exactly where this section lives. I'm taking the time to use and curate a collection of low-cost, high-impact tools and micro-strategies designed specifically for the business owner who’s ready to take the wheel.
The truth is, you can do way more than you realize. You just need the right gear and a little bit of "know-how."
Consider this your toolbox for the modern hustle. Dig in, the list is always growing.
The Road To Longevity
"...I Want To Get Good At Making and Keeping Customers"
A Perspective Shift, from "Advertising" to "Ecosystem": Why Your Business Isn't a Storefront - It’s an Environment.
Most business owners wake up and ask, "How can I make a dollar today?" It sounds logical, right? But it’s actually the fastest way to stay small. When you obsess over the ROI of a single ad or the profit margin of a single sale, you're looking at the world through a keyhole.
I like to look at the whole house.
Your business is an ecosystem. It’s a living, breathing collection of "properties" - your website, your social media, your physical storefront, your customer service, and even your internal workflows.
The Goal: Every single one of these properties must work in unison toward one primary objective: To Make and Keep a Customer.
I like football, and Ive often heard players or people in that industry talk about the difference between a championship team and a perennial losing team, or stories about how such and such Hall Of Fame Player practiced differently. These conversations often remark that the championship teams take more care with the details and the nuances, or that Wide Receiver taking every catch in practice all the way to the end zone.
The Secret to "Collateral Success"
Making money, helping people, and being a pillar of your community are wonderful things. But they aren't the goal. They are the collateral occurrences. They are the natural side effects of a business that focuses on the details and nuances of its foundation... making and keeping customers.
If you get the ecosystem right, the profit takes care of itself.
The Mindset Flip: From "How Much Profit?" to "How Much Engagement?"
Get the engagement first...then pile on the profit once they are there.
When designing a promotional campaign, if its about how much money you will make, or how much you will try not to lose, in the process...then its going to quite a different looking thing that's built to make sure they get there.
You want to be creating more and more times you and that customer or lead interact with each other.
Stop worrying about the immediate ROI of your next promotion. Instead, ask this: “What is it going to take to get them to interact with one of my properties?”
Marketing’s job is simply to create "The Gravity." It pulls people toward your ecosystem. Once they land on your website, walk through your door, or comment on your post, the marketing job is done. Now, the Ecosystem takes over.
Your job isn't to "close" them; it's to nurture them so well that they couldn't imagine going anywhere else. That's how longevity is built.
Redefining "The Win" (The Customer Service Secret)
We’ve all heard "The customer is always right." We also know that, occasionally, the customer is actually quite wrong.
But in your ecosystem, they ARE always right to expect to be taken care of. No Exceptions.
When a transaction goes sideways, most owners fight to be "right." They want to save a few bucks or protect their ego. They forget that they aren't just dealing with one person—they are dealing with that person’s ten closest friends, their co-workers, and their entire social media following.
In this ecosystem, we redefine the "Win":
A Loss: Being "right" but losing the customer forever, and creating a seed of negative influence that will have its trickle in the pond effect. Sure, every business can probably compensate for a little bit of this which is inevitable anyway…but you don’t want to be always be adding to it too.
A Win: Doing whatever it takes to ensure that customer returns. This creates a seed of positive influence. Not just from that customer who feels the win, but also from everyone else in the store who watched you create a win.
Longevity isn't built on being right; it's built on being remembered. If you have to bend over backward to fix a mistake, do it with a smile. You aren't "losing" money on a refund; you are "investing" in the next ten years of that customer’s loyalty, and the collateral influence of his circles. Remember, your goal is to own the playing field…because that’s ultimately the source of more transactions happening more often.
The "EZ" System: Capture, Nurture, Return (In Development)
To make this work, you need more than just a good attitude, you need a system.
Lead Capture: Making sure no one enters your ecosystem without leaving a footprint.
Nurture: Automating the "hand-holding" so they feel valued even when you're busy.
The Return Engine: Giving them a literal, tangible reason to come back before they even leave.
Ready to stop chasing sales and start building an ecosystem? Let’s get to work.
Contact
Connect :
doran@myezmarketing.com
208-539-1875 ( Text )
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