Stop Wasting 95% of Your Marketing Budget. (The Buyer Strategy No One Talks About!)

The vast majority of marketing in the world today is aimed at a tiny subset of people. We call them the ready buyers, the person who's already decided that they need what you sell, who's actively comparing for options and looking for a solution. The person who's just one good ad or one good conversation away from pulling out their credit card and becoming your client or your customer. Every business, including mine and yours, spends the majority of their budget their marketing energy trying to reach those people. And here's the problem with that. According to the majority of demand generation research, at any given moment, only 3 to 5% of your entire potential market is ready to buy today. The rest, that 95%, are either unaware that they may even have the problem that your product or service can solve, or they're not yet in enough pain to go on the journey to look for a solution to solve it. They're somewhere in the middle of a long consideration cycle. And if all of your marketing is aimed at the 3 to 5%, you're competing with everyone else who's targeting that same customer. It's no wonder the cost per lead goes up and the conversion rate goes down. And you and your team, your marketing team, your agency, whoever is doing the marketing, you feel like you're constantly on the hamster wheel. Trying to find the next ready buyer before the last one runs out. If you're new here, my name is Darrell Evans, and over the last 15 years, our agency has helped clients do well over $300 million in revenue. And today I'd like to offer you a different way to think about this. And it starts with one question: What if you became the obvious choice before the buyer was even close to buying? I have hundreds of these examples in our 15 years, but I want to give you one specific example today. And we're gonna use the example of a home remodeling contractor, specifically kitchens and bathrooms. They do good work, strong reputation, 4 generations in the trade. Now here's the reality of the business. The decision cycle for a kitchen or a bathroom can be as long as 2 years, sometimes longer. The homeowner gets an idea, starts pinning things on Pinterest, starts looking at things on Google, shopping around at the local HomeGoods store, potentially Home Depot or Lowe's, maybe even gets a few quotes and then shelves the project. Maybe they revisit it in 3 to 4 months after some friends come over and they have a conversation. Maybe they get a few more quotes. Maybe they go on to a few more home stores. Maybe they wait for a bonus, a tax refund after the kids get out of college. They wait for the renovation to feel worth it. Maybe it's current interest rates. And then maybe finally they call someone. If the contractor is only running ads when he or they need the job, they're only visible to the people who are already deep in the cycle. So they're showing up on page 5 of someone else's 2-year consideration cycle. I said I was only going to go through one example, but I learned this when I was in the mortgage industry 20+ years ago. It was never an emergency for someone to buy a home loan. It was never an emergency for someone to buy a home. And you could argue, well, if rates dropped and they already had a 7% mortgage and the rates dropped 5%, there's an urgency because the rate could go back up. True, but that's not the whole story because there's refinance costs, there's all of these other considerations. On the purchase side, it became really clear to me back then that if I didn't market early and often and build the trust way before the purchase was necessary, then I might as well not have the deal at all. So let's take it back to the remodeler and look at it differently. Rather than showing up when they've ended their 2-year consideration cycle. What if he'd been running very consistent, low-cost brand awareness and visibility campaigns where he was showing up in front of his homeowners in his local area with helpful videos, helpful tips, helpful tutorials, ways for them to think about the remodel, pros and cons, choices, all of the things that his family's generational expertise says that this person considering are going to want to know before they make the decision. Before and after videos, project walkthroughs, client stories, things to watch out for when you're hiring a contractor. He, my friend, is building something completely different, and it's what I'd offer you to consider as well. He's building familiarity. He's building trust. And over time, he is becoming in a roundabout way known by his perfect prospects in advance. That same person who doesn't need him today is going to likely know exactly who he is and what he can do and what their company can do for them. If that person's on that journey for 2 years, here's something that most business owners and marketers alike don't even know that's available to them. And that is, for example, on Meta, which is Facebook and Instagram. You can do this on YouTube. You can probably do it on TikTok if that's the right mechanism. And Pinterest probably has this as well. It's just we don't do a lot of work on that platform. And that is you can run an ad and do something called setting a frequency cap on your video ads specifically, which is what we want our clients doing. And what this does is it allows you to control how often the same person sees the same piece of content or the same ad. You can tell the platform, look, Show the video to this person no more than twice every 5 days, or once every 10 days, or twice every week. And why does this matter? Because one of the biggest mistakes in marketing is overexposure to the same message repeatedly when the person's not ready to buy today. So when someone sees the same ad 15 times— think television, think radio, think billboard on the side of the road— they start to tune it out. And the reason they do that is because our brains have this really beautiful system called the reticular activating system, and job, one of them, is to filter out things that are irrelevant to our life and our world today. It's not your fault. It's the way it was made. It's the way he made it. And we need this system. But what's worse is when you don't have variation in your campaign structure and you don't have variation in your marketing, you don't just lose that buyer, they get annoyed and they block your ads or your page so that you can't even show up to them when they are ready. And that's a difference in today's digital world. The brand that you're trying to build for this prospect where you want to build trust— these are my words— you start to feel like an annoying pest. And you know what people do to pests? They kill them. You're out of their life. But when you set a frequency cap and you do this properly by setting up a series of multiple pieces of content, a series of multiple types of ads, 5 videos each appearing no more than twice to the same person in any given week. If they're on that platform, you create something that feels almost like a television schedule. Now, I know some of you are resisting what I'm about to say, but stick with me. Different content, same brand, steady cadence, not hammering them over time. You're not annoying them. You're not trying to sell them. You're accompanying them on their journey. And one thing we believe in to the core is your job in marketing is to meet people where they are, not where you'd like them to be. So often in marketing, we hear that, oh, it's not working, or these buyers, these leads are not good. They're not showing up for the meeting. Oh, they canceled it. That's because you didn't meet them where they were. Now, sure, some people will book a meeting and not show up, That's the way it works. But the vast majority of you where you're struggling is all you're running are what we call bottom of the funnel ad campaigns. Did they book a meeting? Did they become a lead? Did they book a call? Did they schedule on our calendar? Did they call our sales team? I get it. I own a business. I've owned 6 businesses in 35 years. I understand we got to get the cash flow in. We got to get the sales in. I hear you. But when we go back to the earlier statistic and we agree, by the way, I didn't make that number up. By the way, it's been that way in all 6 of my businesses. It's been that way in 638 businesses or 640-something businesses we've worked with at our agency. 3 to 5% of any market is ready to buy today. Now, you're not going to capture the other 95 to 97% even in 2 years or 5 years. That's not what we're talking about. But studies would show that of that remaining audience that's not ready today, 30 to 40% of those people are going to do something in the next 3, 6, 12, 18, 24 months. But yet we're putting all of our energy, all of our eggs in the now buyer basket. Going back to the strategy, the beautiful thing about this frequency cap strategy, and there are some marketers on the internet, and if you are watching this right now, go ahead and tell me how silly this sounds in the comments below, because there are some marketers who they live and die by the idea that they can get a perfect stranger on the internet to book a call and close a deal. And that, my friend, is very shallow thinking. The beautiful thing about this structure in this campaign on almost all the platforms, not all, but some, you can get started with a budget to run this type of campaign for about $150 to maybe $200 per month. Why? Because you're not chasing someone booking a call that's going to cost $200 or $300 today. So it's not that 100% of your budget goes into this type of campaign. No, it's not what I'm saying. We're saying that if you understand the value of your buyer's journey and if you understand your customer truly and you agree that they're not going to all be ready to buy today, then why would you not take a percentage of your big budget? $200, $250. Even if you're a big advertiser, you don't need more than $500 or $1,000 a month doing this. And you put a small piece of that budget on each of these videos. So if you've got 5 videos running, you know, maybe you have $10 a day on each video maximum. You're barely spending anything, but you're consistently getting in front of your most ideal prospects that you want to be in front of, but you're just getting in front of them before they're ready to make the decision. I want you to think about some of the best known local businesses in your market. How did they get that way? The best service providers. In your market? How did they get that way? The ones where you say something like, oh yeah, I know something about them. I've actually seen their product before. I've seen their service before. I know some people who've used them. Actually, they didn't get there with one great ad. They didn't get there with one great campaign. They didn't get there because they just bid the most on Google. They got there through repetition, consistency, and the one that most of you just can't stomach is time. And here's the good news. Whether you like it or not, the time's going to pass anyway. And we already know the statistics that the vast majority of salespeople, they don't even follow up with their lead more than once or twice, when the studies show that many times you've got to follow up with a lead for 7 to 12 times before you can actually get them to convert. So when you look at those numbers and the fact that most salespeople won't do the follow-up long enough to get the person to convert, then why wouldn't you insert this type of model in your marketing, inside your campaign structure, because now you're letting the videos answer the objections. You're letting the videos answer the frequently asked questions. And let's be clear, the way this is structured, in theory, we can't prove it all the way through, but in theory, you're only running videos and messages and content and ads that only your most ideal prospect would even understand what's in the video. The wrong person who's not considering the thing that you do, they're going to skip the video. And Meta, Instagram, Facebook, Google, YouTube, these platforms now can tell what type of person should see this ad based on all of the data, all of the data points, all of the behavioral indications, all of the profiling that they have. Like it or not, I get it. I'm not wild about all the privacy stuff either, but this is the game. This is the game we're in. Before the internet, television was sort of the dominant way for companies and brands to mass advertise themselves, specifically local businesses. Of course, national businesses, television advertising, they'd run these local spots on the news, run them during the games, run these campaigns for years just to get visible in that moment. Think about the biggest game that happens every calendar year. Companies spend $8 to $15 million for a 30-second spot in that one game just so they can get upwards of 120 million eyeballs. But you and I can't do that. That's not the game we play, nor is it the game we should play, because what we can do with social ads is once that person consumes some of our content, they watch 25% of our 1-minute video, they watch 50%, they watch 100% of our video. We can now let the platform help them by showing them the next video and then the next video and then the next video, literally walking your prospect right down the buyer trail on their timeline. The goal isn't to run these ads and get someone to call today. It can happen, but that's not the goal. You've got lead gen campaigns and sales generation campaigns to do the heavy lifting there. We're not disputing that. But when we talk about customer acquisition costs, when we talk about campaigns being profitable, and all we're measuring is whether this ad produced this sale in this week or this month, it's shallow thinking. It's nothing that we've done in, in 600+ client campaigns and campaign relationships over the last 15 years. It's nothing I've done in 35 years. The game that you want to play is the long game. The game you want to play is, I presume they're not ready to buy today, and I'm going to be there when and if they ever get ready. But some of you are too short-sighted for that, and that's my encouragement for you today. You want to be the name they think about 5 months, 6 months, 12 months down the line. This whole strategy is called our Dollar a Day Ad Strategy or Brand Visibility and Awareness Strategy. And we're going to post a video right when this video is over. You can check out a little bit more about how that structure works if you're interested. And it, to me, it's the modern small budget version of the same principle of the big game ads. You get to stay present, though. You get to stay relevant. You get to be there when the moment arrives, when they decide to do the thing that you want them to do anyway. So you might be thinking, I get the concept, but what do I actually do to run this campaign? And this is where marketers and business owners overcomplicate it. They try to get really high-produced videos to run in this campaign. And let me be clear, you do not need any highly produced content. It doesn't have to be polished. It doesn't have to be a brand film. It doesn't have to be a story film. It doesn't need B-roll. It doesn't need a production crew. Through none of that. Some of the best performing videos that we've put in these campaigns over the last— since 2014 or '15— have been shot right off of a smartphone. Any brand, any variety. Sometimes they're just project walkthroughs. Sometimes it's just a picture with an overlay. Sometimes they're just 45-second Q&As, questions that you're answering based on a project that you're working on, and a prospect or your client asked you a question and you just decide to turn that into an ad. Sometimes it's a 1-minute before and after reveal. There's no limit to what you can use to create. What you're proving with this content isn't that you have a big marketing budget. You're proving that you actually do the work that's real and that you are a master of your craft. In a world where anyone can claim anything, showing is worth 100 times more than telling. The businesses that win in the long run are not the ones with the best product on the planet. It's not the ones with the lowest price. It's not the ones who've been in business the longest. It's not the ones with the prettier website. It's the ones who were there with their prospect consistently, reliably, and visible during the long window before the buyer was ever ready. That was a secret of my growth of my mortgage company 20+ years ago. It's been the secret of the growth of our agency. We've had companies come back to us that first showed up in our world 5, 6, 7 years earlier. And I guarantee This is the, the unlock that you're missing in your business right now. You can start today using this strategy. Again, we'll put a video up here somewhere in here. I'd love for you to watch that video so you can understand exactly how this model breaks down. And you can start today with your smartphone if you choose to. The window is open right now for you to use this strategy. But let me be clear, I am not sure how long this strategy is going to last because these platforms really don't want you to run this strategy because they make more money when you run lead generation and sales campaigns. And I do want you to run them. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. But if you don't carve off 10 to 15% to do this, then you are going to constantly be in the battle of chasing the now buyer. And all I'm suggesting is there's a better way. Thanks for hanging out with me. I'm Darrell Evans. This is the Mindshare Podcast. If any of this sounds good, watch the video about the Dollar a Day Strategy popping up somewhere here. Let me know below if you plan on using it. I'll see you next time.