The Local Voice - But I Don't Like Lemon Pie

Do you ever get stuck when it comes to getting more customers for your business? With all the choices available, not only offline, but now with digital marketing and AI, where does one begin? If you are a local business owner and you want to grow your business, then you've come to the right place. The Local Voice is a show dedicated to sifting through the noise and sharing practical steps to help you achieve your goals. Welcome to another episode of the Local Voice, hosted by Jeff Harrison, a practitioner in the world of digital marketing. Get ready to take some notes. Let's begin.

So this man hires someone to help him get more sales in his restaurant. And after the person he hired hung out in the restaurant for a week, he came back and said, this is what I know your customers would love. If you added lemon pie to your list of desserts and you would increase sales by 20%. And the restaurant owner says, listen, I'm not going to do that because I don't like lemons. Well, this is a common issue when it comes to working with clients sometimes who they forget that we're servicing their customers, not them. And I know that kind of sounds a little strange because at the end of the day, the customers are paying them, but the business owners are paying us. But sometimes what happens is we can see things from a different point point of view. And what I mean by that is we will take a step and say, hey, we want to look at your customers and we want to find out what, who that ideal customer is, what their likes and dislikes are, what their pain points are, and then create content and reasons to make a decision to buy from those things. Now, those may be different than what you as the business owner would see and you say, but I don't like lemon pie. Well, here's the thing. That lemon pie, or excuse me, that. That resistance to lemon pie may be the 20% that's holding you back. And really, at the end of the day, you went into business for what? To service your customers. But some, and I say this because I've been there before, we've all been there before. Hey, I don't like doing this. As an example, there's a period of my period of time is with my marketing company that I wasn't really a fan of paid advertising. I loved organic and I still love organic, but I realized there's a place and a time for paid advertising. And it's my lemon pie. It was my lemon pie. And I realized this as at a time when I had another person working with me who was a business partner at the time, and he showed me the value of having paid advertising.

Well, I want to point out that when something comes up and it reminds you of lemon pie, this story, that you'll take a second and say, wait a second. Is it just my bias towards lemon piece, or do I know for a fact that all of my potential customers, who are my ideal customers, they don't like lemon pie either.

Let that sink in for a moment because it may be the difference of adding additional revenue. Now, I want to put a little, A little next line to that.

Often when we hire somebody, what do we hire them for? We hire them because they can do what we can do, but they do it better, or we've chosen to let somebody else do it because they're good at it and we trust their judgment. The last thing we want to do is get in the way of their creative process. Now, wait a minute. I know, I know you're going to say yes, but, but that's, that's one of those things that's a brand issue. They're not staying on brand point. They're changing our brand vibe, whatever it may be. I get all that. The person putting this together, whether it's a video, it's written content, it's a social media post, whatever, we want to make sure the brand voice is consistent throughout. But one thing we want to also let them have range with is the fact that they probably do what they're doing every day at a very high volume. And their, I'm going to say their trial and error rate is much higher than ours. We have a gut feeling they have an expertise, and I don't want to overuse that word, expertise, but I do want to point out that they are a practitioner. It's just like if I were hired by a company that let's say they sold automobiles and my job was to help them get more people in the door to buy automobiles. The last thing I'm going to do is hang out in the dealership and tell them how to sell cars better. My goal, my job is to get people in the door. But ironically, sometimes we kind of step across that line as business owners and we kind of get in the way and it makes their job a little bit harder. So if you're going to hire somebody, I think, I think the word is micromanage, and don't take this wrong, but sometimes we micromanage the people we hire. There's often times where my gardener shows up and my wife says, hey, can you go out and tell them to do x Y and Z. And I feel like I'm kind of telling him how to do what he does at a very high level. I'm trying to tell him how I, I want it done. I want that feedback as the marketing company of what your expectations are. But let us do what we do, just like we let you do what you do at a very high level. Would never tell you how to sell cars, never tell you how to handle a client when they come in for, you know, for a, what is it, a physical. That's your job. You're the expert at that. And I think what happens is now you support and you can move at a much faster rate. So just a real quick message today on hey, are you restricting your growth.

Because you don't like lemon pie?

Make sure to share this with somebody, you know, who maybe needs to hear this. And you don't want to tell them, but they really need to know this. My name is Jeff Harrison with Swing Book Media. This is the Local Voice. Thanks for joining me for another episode.

There you have it. Another episode of the Local Voice with Jeff Harrison sharing practical marketing advice that is working in today's busy climate. For more on Jeff, Visit him on LinkedIn or the website swingpointmedia.com until next time, do the things that produce results and leave the rest for your competitors.