What Is Your Product or Service?

Be specific, not generic, and make sure not to spread yourself too thin by trying to push too many services in one shot. By spreading yourself too thin, you risk diluting your relevancy and your potency, and furthermore, you risk taking away from your core competency. Chances are, you've probably heard the disparaging phrase “jack of all trades, master of none.” While I am not implying that just because you are good at multiple things (notice I said “disparaging”), you cannot possibly master one or more of those things, I will say that it is my opinion that spreading your focus can have an adverse effect. Also avoid being too generic or vague. You need to find balance and a niche, and work on solidifying your existence within that niche. A rule of thumb I live by and a concept that will be introduced to you here shortly is “be careful of distractions disguised as opportunities.”

I am going to provide a few examples that may or may not be the line of business you are involved in, but the basic principles may and can apply. In fact, many times you can grab nuggets from other industries and experience major success because you are doing something completely different from your competition. It provides your audience with a fresh perspective. A lot of times I see businesses that are trying to keep up with the big fish and mimic just about everything that they are doing. They are constantly in a state of exhaustion (physically and financially) because they are trying to keep up. It's important to be unique, a leader, a trend setter. Sometimes all it takes is a little risk to try something outside the box, and the payoff can be extremely rewarding.

If you are, for example, one of the following:

• Car salesman. Instead of thinking of yourself as just a car salesman, be specific. Do you sell new or pre-owned vehicles? If you sell new, then what franchises? Do you have the desire to represent a large dealership, small dealership, independent store, or large dealer group? Do you make an effort to work with law enforcement and military members? Or maybe you focus on or would like to become more active with being the go-to person for colleges. What is your personal primary market area (PMA)? If you sell pre-owned cars, what do you stock the most of, or what are the most requested pre-owned vehicles in your market (by brand and model)? Do you have certifications? Over 60 percent of Americans suffer from poor credit—do you specialize in credit needs?
• Singer. Instead of thinking of yourself as just a singer, be specific. What genre of music do you consider yourself? Pop, R&B, hip-hop, rock? It is no secret that there are many different types of singers and voices that range from power vocalist to gangsta rappers. There is obviously a big difference in style with a completely different audience base. The iconic Bruce Lee once stated, “I am all styles, I am no styles.” This point of view may work well for a martial artist, but as a recording artist, you want to stay loyal to what your fans—or audience—are expecting from you and in turn willing to purchase. Too much diversity will only confuse them.
• Speaker. Instead of thinking of yourself as just a speaker, be specific. Are you a trainer? Are you a facilitator of a specific course? Are you a subject matter expert? Do you specialize in workshops, seminars, or webinars? Or maybe you deliver only keynote speeches? What is your niche? Are you a motivational speaker, technology speaker, or a sales expert? Do you utilize a talent to deliver or solidify your message? As a Certified Speaking Professional with the National Speakers Association, I have had the privilege of sharing the same space with some of the world's top speaking professionals. Most recently, I was honored to be introduced to Erik Wahl, a fantastic graffiti artist and the author of Unthink. He utilizes the art of painting to deliver his speeches, awe his audience, and leave behind a real masterpiece. Another amazing speaker, Dan Thurmon, known as a dynamic keynote speaker, peak performance coach, and the author of Off Balance on Purpose, utilizes the art of comedy, coupled with juggling and acrobatics, to deliver his message. He guarantees a flipping good time, literally.
• Restaurant owner. Instead of thinking of yourself as just a person that owns a restaurant, be specific. What type of food do you specialize in? Is there a specific food you are famous or recognized for, or want to be? Do you have a secret recipe? What location are you based out of? Are you in the city or the suburbs? Do you have a single location or several locations? What are your demographics? What type of environment do you want to create—an upscale one or laid-back, cozy one? Either one will work, but it's important to the overall mission of the organization to have clarity. What type of clientele would you like to attract? Are you looking to attract a younger crowd, older crowd, families, or a mixture? Will you hold special events, like karaoke night or “kids eat free” night? How involved in the community are you or would you like to be? Do you have a theme? I recently threw an event in Dallas, Texas, and used Eddie Deen's Ranch as my event location. With its ranch-themed location resembling something out of a Clint Eastwood movie, with bull riding, square dancing, and BBQ-style cuisine, it does a great job of giving you that true Texas experience.
• Martial arts school. Instead of thinking of yourself as someone who just owns a martial arts school, be specific. What style of martial arts do you specialize in—Jiu-Jitsu, karate, judo? What is your specialty? Is it training law enforcement/military, kids' classes, or women's self-defense? What town or city is your school based in and how far can you draw students from? Answering these questions allows you to create a specific focus. I discuss this in later detail as we progress on our visibility journey.
• Real estate agent. Instead of thinking of yourself as just a standard real estate agent trying to sell properties, be specific. What kinds of properties are you trying to sell? Single homes, family homes, condos, apartments? Are you interested in acquiring homes too? Do you or have you considered flipping houses? Are you represented by a major real estate agency? Can you use its brand and credibility to perpetuate your individual credibility and brand? Is your only focus to sell properties, or have you considered selling home warranties as an additional source of income? What type of networking/referral systems have you built? Do you have relationships with home inspection agents or termite inspection agents? Do you focus on building relationships with real estate attorneys or homeowner insurance companies? What about landscapers, carpenters, and home builders? If not, then you are missing out on major opportunities. Think about it. You can build a strong referral business in all of these different areas. To get started, you can search for local companies in your area that fall within the categories of service mentioned earlier. Make a list of them and their addresses, and deliver a box of donuts and a box of joe along with a stack of business cards. Explain to them that you are looking to partner with some local businesses to create win-win solutions in which each refers business to the other. You reap what you sow. Partnering and nurturing relationships with other businesses will plant seeds that reap a great return.

What Is Your Value Package Proposition?

• What is different and better about you? What makes you unique?
• What awards have you won?
  • Have you been featured in any media—radio, TV, print, etc.?
  • “Best of…”
  • If you are a franchise, what awards has your franchise won? You can use that borrowed credibility.
  • What about reviews?
    • Google reviews
    • Yelp
    • Better Business Bureau
    • Merchantcircle
    • Yellow pages
    • Client testimonials
• What do you do better and differently from your competitors?
• What special giveaways do you offer?
• Do you have a customer loyalty or rewards program?
• Why should someone buy from you?
• Why should someone come to your event, show, concert, or exhibit?
• Have you invented or patented a process or technology?
• Are you first to do what you are doing?
• Have you been in business a long time? How long?
• Have you been practicing your craft for a long time?
• Have you served a lot of clients, delivered a lot of speeches, or performed a lot of concerts? If so, how many?
• Do you have any celebrity (or reputable) endorsements?
  • If you authored a book, did any VIPs, celebrities, or reputable people endorse your book?
  • If you are a speaker or trainer, did a Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 publicly traded company, VIP, or reputable entity give you a positive survey or review?
  • Has a food critic reviewed your restaurant and given you a positive review?

Who Is Your Audience?

This is such an important question that you need to be able to identify the answer as soon as possible. I am a business owner myself. I know you might feel like saying, “Everyone or anyone,” but that is too broad of a stroke. You should not take a shotgun approach to your business. A precise focus on your targeted audience is very important.

• Who are you trying to attract? This is going to be very different from business to business and situation to situation. But I am going to list a couple of examples with principal questions that can be applied to your specific situation.
• Car salesman (sells Chryslers in Swedesboro, New Jersey)
  • What are the demographics in Swedesboro, New Jersey, and the surrounding area (20–30 miles)?
  • How large is the population?
  • Who buys your cars?
  • What is their average income?
  • Are they men or women? (Women have over 80 percent of buying power.)
  • What kinds of cars are they buying? New or used?
  • New? Which model(s)?
  • Used? What year, make, and model(s)?
  • Are there any large companies in the area for “macro” selling?
  • Are there any military bases?
  • How far are you from a major city?
  • Who spends the most money?
  • Who is the best repeat customer?
  • Who provides the most referrals?
• Jiu-Jitsu academy (martial art school in Philadelphia)
  • Who wants to train in martial arts/karate?
    • Hardcore fighters or brawlers
    • Fans and enthusiasts of UFC/MMA
    • People trying to lose weight and stay healthy
    • People interested in self-defense
    • Women for rape prevention
  • People who love competition and competing
  • People trying to be active and social with a group of other like-minded individuals
  • Parents who want to put their children in kids' classes because:
    • They want them to be able to defend themselves from bullies
    • They want their kids to develop discipline and self-control
    • They hope their kids will be active and healthy (to get them off of video games)
    • They want them to develop self-confidence
    • They want them to interact with other kids and develop social skills
  • People who are looking for work/life balance
  • People who need to vent and need some stress release
• Professional speaker (keynote/workshop):
  • What do you speak about?
  • What is your niche?
  • Are you a motivational speaker?
  • Do you speak about leadership and management?
  • Do you specialize in digital marketing?
  • Do you get bookings from speakers bureaus (or would you like to)?
  • What industry are you in?
    • Automotive sales
    • Real estate
    • Education
    • Hospitality
    • Entertainment
    • Medical

Where Is Your Audience?

After you have identified who your audience is, you now need to know where your audience is—whether you want to break it down by:

• Demographics
• Geo-targeting
• Niche
• Industry
• Associations or organizations
• Gender
• Interests

It doesn't really matter. Once you identify who they are, it will then be relatively easy to find out where they are. The question now becomes, do you want to go after them, or have them come to you? You might be confused by this question and tell yourself that this doesn't make much sense, or that it just doesn't seem possible. How can “they,” my potential audience, come to me? That is exactly what this book is going to teach you. I call it reactive selling. Let them come to you. Why exert more energy for minimal return when you can exert minimal energy upfront, for a stronger (more gross) and easier close later.

Cold-calling someone is a much harder close or a much harder sale compared to someone (an individual, company, association, bureau, etc.) coming to you for your product or service. If you are being approached, it says the person is (1) interested, (2) a serious buyer, and (3) looking to purchase relatively soon. Picture yourself going fishing. You've got your fishing gear on, fishing pole in hand, and bait all ready to go. (If you are not the fishing type, humor me. Trust me, there is a point here.) Imagine two ponds in front of you. You can choose to fish in either one. The first pond is empty, but you have the opportunity to draw the fish to you with your selected bait. The second pond is already full of fish. All you need to do is throw your fishing line into the water and boom…you've got your fish. What pond are you choosing? I would bet it is the one full of abundance, possibility, and opportunity. You have access to such a pond, right at your fingertips, literally. This pond is called the Internet.

Once you analyze the data in regard to conventional advertising and marketing versus digital marketing, you will see that reactive selling is the smartest, most powerful, transparent, and cost-effective strategy you can adopt for success.

Conventional versus Digital—Which Is Right for You?

Major controversy has developed over whether it is more beneficial to invest your time and money into conventional marketing and advertising mediums like radio, television, and print, or to place your focus, energy, and resources into digital marketing efforts. Digital marketing and advertising are the clear choice and here is why. Conventional marketing and advertising are intrusive—meaning that it is where and when people don't want to be bothered. The reality is that people no longer wait for the Sunday newspaper to hit the front doorstep so they can search for ads to help make a buying decision. People don't gas up the car, get the family all buckled in, and drive down Route 66 looking for your billboard, in hopes of getting some pertinent information that will make them feel more comfortable in their decision to purchase a product or service. Sure, they may take notice of it, but they are not intentionally searching for it. In fact, with all of the new “no texting while driving” laws recently put in place, it is obvious that people are too distracted to look at the road, let alone take the opportunity to look up. Furthermore, people don't watch CNN or even Keeping Up with the Kardashians in eager anticipation of the commercials so they can get excited about a product or service.

Conventional media and advertising have lost the dominance they once had. And if you are not willing to change your thinking patterns and marketing philosophies and processes, you are risking extinction of your product or service. If you are not constantly in a state of evolution, you are then in a state of regression. Believe me—the world will not wait for you to catch up.

People are tired of being bombarded by the “shotgun,” “spray and pray” approach of conventional advertising. Some conventional marketing advocates reading this may be offended by what I am saying, but I am only speaking the truth and more importantly speaking from experience. As a business owner of several multimillion-dollar companies, I have experimented with both conventional and digital methods and at first was somewhat reluctant. But I saw in advance where the future was headed and made the decision to trust; for return on investment (ROI) reasons, I have chosen to participate strictly in digital mediums, and, wow, has it paid off! I believe it is fair for me to assume that some part of you, or maybe all of you, must agree with me or feel the same way. This is why you agreed to invest your time in reading this book, because you realize the importance of partaking in the digital age, even if that realization lies somewhere deep down. I understand that change can be scary. I also understand change can be uncomfortable. But this is not the first time we have been down this road, and it surely will not be the last. Think of the evolution of cell phones. They started off as large cinder block–looking devices with modest options, but they served their intended purpose, a purpose we were all quite astonished by. Wait, I don't have to be connected to a landline to speak to someone? I don't have to wait by the phone at home in anticipation of a phone call? I can make or take a phone call on demand, while running errands? As the size of the phone began to dwindle, the functionality of the phone began to increase exponentially, leading to the development of the smartphone. Not everyone was sold on the idea, and not everyone transitioned without hesitation. Quite honestly, the new capabilities were downright scary and intimidating for a decent majority, yet fast-forward to today and practically everyone has a smart phone, and our kids are just about born with them. The point is that, like a cell phone, digital advertising is not a fad or a phase. It is a permanent structure that is rooted deeply into our culture and will only evolve further. Even companies that once offered or still offer conventional marketing services are adapting and growing to accommodate and fulfill the wants and needs of today's buyers. Take a look at the yellow pages, for instance. We once depended greatly on this five-inch bible of information to determine what companies were available to conduct business with. Today, that same bible of information is conveniently located at www.yellowpages.com. Yellow pages didn't choose to fade away—they chose to adapt and evolve. Just like we must do. We must go where the fish are if we want to not only survive but also thrive. And that is why I chose to title this book Winning the Game of Googleopoly and not Winning the Game of Comcast, or Radio, or Billboards, or Newspapers.

Some may not even agree with my assessment and may not consider traditional advertising intrusive or annoying. They may even consider it a form of branding. But the reality of the situation is that conventional advertising no longer has the effect it once did, and statistics prove it. These numbers show that conventional advertising is declining year after year, and traditional ad sources are losing revenue at alarming rates. And why? Simple—because people are tired of the noise! They are tired of having things that they don't want or need constantly forced in their line of vision. And they are finding ways to negate them, to go around them, to avoid them, and to block them. It is kind of like the cat-and-mouse game between a highway patrol officer and a motorist who owns a radar/laser detector, looking to speed with the comfort of not getting a ticket. This very concept is happening with advertising. Americans are arming themselves with the radar detectors of anti-intrusive advertising.

You know these detectors as and most likely possess:

• Satellite radio
• DVRs
• Video-on-demand
• Pay-per-view
• Hulu
• Netflix
• Social media
• The Internet

Did you know that an astounding 77 percent of viewers use another device while watching TV?¹ Let's allow that to marinate for a few seconds. This means that if you have 100 people in a room watching television, 77 of them would be head down, eyes down, focus split, logged onto their computers, smartphones, iPads, or whichever electronic mind candy they choose. This tells me that your potential audience is listening to the television, rather than watching the television.

Prospects, consumers, and shoppers alike are all tired of the old-school tactics and antiquated strategies of the past. We live in an on-demand universe where people want, no, expect information, when and how they want it—and quickly too! Hence the term on-demand. It is evident that our patience for retrieving information has diminished. This is why we often see phrases like “Click here for a quick quote,” or “Get your credit approved in 60 seconds or less.” And if you fail to provide the information they are seeking, with a tap of a finger or click of a mouse, they will certainly move on. I discuss this in greater detail later in the book.

So we've established the fact that conventional marketing and advertising are indeed intrusive for the consumer, where and when people do not want to be bothered. But did you realize they also lack transparency for the marketer? In other words, there is no true way to calculate a return on investment (ROI). Yes, each of the mediums can articulate circulation, viewers, and listeners (how many fish are in the pond), but how can someone possibly identify out of all of those viewers, listeners, or readers which folks are legitimately interested, in-market prospects? You can't! It is very difficult—next to nearly impossible—even to quantify it. Obviously, if you are running an ad in the newspaper, television, or radio and someone comes into your business or calls you on the phone and states it is a direct result of the ad, you can quantify some value. But does that value surpass the monetary investment? Probably not. The problem as I see it is you must ask yourself the following. Can you identify exactly how many people actually saw the ad? No. Can you identify out of the people who did see the ad if they were even in the market for your product or service? No again. How about this: can you identify out of the people who did see the ad whether they even cared? Definitely not. Let's just say that we did have a means to generate that statistic and you found that some did care about your product or service: Can anyone assist you in identifying out of those who did have an interest how many people actually cared enough to take action—in other words, how many people called or visited you or your business? You might say yes, or you believe so, but that brings on a whole new set of challenges. You see, in order to measure a true ROI, you must have a viable tracking system to manage lead generation and prospects. This might include call monitoring and tracking software and/or a customer relationship management (CRM) solution. If you do have these tools, the question becomes, are they set up the right way with the right content and strategy? Are you and/or your team fully trained on these tools and maximizing their effectiveness? And if you possess these tools, are they set up the right way? Are you using them for each and every action item, every single time, without exception, without fail, the correct way? If you cannot answer yes to these questions, you have a problem. You see, in order for you to be able to quantify true ROI, you need to have an accurate tool of measure, housing accurate data and resulting in accurate field intelligence. Otherwise, “garbage in, garbage out.” The last time I checked, garbage won't buy you anything. In fact, it can cost you.

Conventional advertising and marketing cost a fortune for a majority to afford. If you are a sole proprietor, actor, musician, speaker, singer, car salesman, karate instructor, or personal trainer just starting out, how on earth are you going to afford a conventional marketing spend? Or maybe you're not just starting out; maybe you've been doing this for a long time now but haven't quite made it and have limited means to work with. How do you intend to pay for the advertisement source? The answer, of course, is that you can't and you won't. It is like the chicken or the egg concept with some business owners. They need an audience to purchase whatever it is they are selling in order to earn money. But if you have no audience, you cannot make a monetary return. You need to make yourself visible—make yourself seen. And in order to do that, you must pay to play, and conventional advertising is the most financially challenging way to go. I am not trying to deter you from your dream of mainstream media notoriety; I am just trying to give you a reality check. Unfamiliar with the cost associated with conventional advertising? I will give you an example in the Philadelphia market. Television would need a budget of at least $3,000 per month for at least three months to have an even slight impact on the audience. That is quoting you direct numbers from my Comcast rep in Philly. I personally ran TV commercials for a very popular independent recording artist, promoting a hot new single on the radio with a major label feature with Meek Mill of Maybach Music Group. As a matter of fact, her TV commercial for her new track was even played on the highly anticipated Kardashian wedding episode: $9,000 in 90 days for about 60 TV commercials. Was it worth it? It depends on how you define “worth it.” It provided some notoriety and credibility, but did it provide ROI? No, definitely not. Maybe if we had a million-dollar budget and were able to commit to a full campaign, but it was too expensive to keep up the initiative on TV. Same thing for radio ads—we were spending thousands of dollars for radio ads on Clear Channel. But the way that conventional media works is through frequency and repetition. You would spend thousands of dollars per month to air a 15- or 30-second commercial, and for what—brand awareness? It just doesn't make sense, not when there is a much cheaper way, a more effective way, with lasting results.

There are numerous problems with relying entirely on a conventional advertising or marketing campaign:

1. First, you have to hope that there is an audience watching, listening, or reading your commercials or ads and hope that they actually have an interest in you, your product, or service. It doesn't matter if you reach 1,000 or 10,000 viewers, readers, or listeners if they don't care about you, your product, or service. You might as well be invisible.
2. You'd also better hope that if there are people watching TV or listening to the radio they don't change the channel when your commercial comes on, or they don't use the commercial time to go use the bathroom, jump on the Internet to check on their social media, or use their cell phones. Remember that 77 percent of people use another device while watching TV. Imagine what that number rises to when a commercial is being aired.
3. It is also important to have a well-thought-out strategy in mind:
   • I have seen a lot of people save up money or use money they did not have to advertise on television or radio because they thought it was a sure shot for maximum exposure and they had substandard content created. I'm not saying they were substandard, but their actual video or audio production was of poor quality. That was counterproductive to the overall mission and a huge waste of financial resources.
   • I have also seen these same people use their very last-chance money and squander it on conventional media. They invested in TV or radio air time and got it, but it was on an overnight schedule or it was a random inventory, meaning their commercial was played in a spot the radio/TV channel didn't sell a time slot to. In other words, since they didn't have a real budget or strategy, they were receiving only the bottom-of-the-barrel ad space. They never had prime-time slots or desired segments.
   • Cable seems like an awesome, cost-effective solution, but a lot of people don't understand that cable is not even on the Nielsen rating, meaning that there could be fewer than 1,000 viewers watching a particular channel. So, just because something is cheap when it is usually really expensive, don't assume it is a deal. It is priced that way for a reason.

You may be on the complete opposite side of the spectrum and not fall under the same category mentioned earlier. You are not a small business, an individual person, or a startup. In fact, you are a large company with a large advertising budget, who can easily afford TV, radio, and print. That is great! But the fact that you can afford to use these conventional advertising opportunities doesn't mean that you should use them. Affordability shouldn't give you the license to spend irresponsibly—not if you want to grow your net profits. You do not want to just exist in the black; you want to dominate in the black and continue to evolve.

You must put first things first—that is, put the most important things at the top of your list. These are the items you must act upon quickly. More importantly, you need to be careful of distractions disguised as opportunities. This is a very important strategy and a strategy that you should always employ when designing a marketing plan initiative. As I discussed earlier, there is so much noise in the world, so many shiny objects lurking in our paths, fighting for our attention. There is so much sensory-overloaded content that it is easy to become confused and distracted. There are so many options, so many directions to take—from blow-up gorillas to airplane banners. Which way do you go? How do you pick the right strategy? The answer is simple…pick the best strategy, the proven strategy, backed by hard data—a strategy that will give you the largest ROI on both your time and your money. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, in advertising and marketing that can even come close to the power of the Internet.

Here are some important facts to consider:

It took…

• Radio 38 years to reach 50 million people
• Television 13 years to reach 50 million people
• The Internet 4 years to reach 50 million people
• And it took Facebook only 2 years to reach 50 million people! That's right—2 years!

The Internet is the most powerful marketing mechanism ever created on planet Earth. Conventional advertising outlets, such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and billboards, have been rapidly losing reach and revenue to the point that major entities like newspapers and radio stations have been sold, consolidated, or gone bankrupt. And the simple reason is the Internet. It has completely changed the game on so many levels. The Internet allows consumers (content consumers) the opportunity to consume the content when and where they want. They are no longer slaves to conventional media. At one point, if you liked a recording artist or a certain song, people would glue themselves to the radio waiting for their jam to come back on. The same went for a favorite TV show. People would rearrange their schedules so they wouldn't miss a TV show or a soap opera. Nowadays, people only need to go to Hulu or Netflix to watch their TV program. They can record the fight, the news, or whatever else they want to see on their DVRs and watch it later on, at their leisure. As for radio, there is Pandora and iHeartRadio, and even better for music enthusiasts are Vevo and YouTube, due to the visual component. People can consume as much as they want, whenever they want, and best of all…for free!