Why Is Marketing Getting Tougher? Because It's Getting Harder to Do This!

So I had to pop on today to share something with you that makes it even more difficult to do what we want to do as a small business and quite frankly, as a marketing company for small businesses. A while back I signed up for an email to be alerted when regulations come down the pike that could either interfere or make it more difficult for us as marketers to do business. And this morning I received one that I thought was quite disturbing. I'm just going to share this. Let me pop it on the screen.

And what it basically says is There's a bill AB3048 could severely limit businesses ability to use cost effective digital advertising tools to reach their customers. California businesses may be left showing ads to people who live far away or, or who have no Internet in their products, interest in their products or services. That would make it harder for businesses like yours to reach the customer, the right customers. And it would help Californians find what. And wouldn't help Californians find what they're looking for. So what does that mean? Well, I gave an example of, you know, when my wife sends me to the store, she takes a picture, sends it to me and says, hey, this is the item I'm looking for. This is the aisle it's on. So I go out searching. I have very targeted, I have very specific targets I'm looking for. So when I walk into Vons or Ralph's or whatever the shopping store is that she sends me to the grocery store, I can walk right up to it, hold the picture up and say, yep, this is it. Well, in targeting, in Target market, there's a lot of the same thing. It says, hey, I want to show this particular offer, whether it's an ad or it's a piece of content, I want to show it to this particular person. And as a marketer, we say, hey, what is the ideal target market? And then we create that content and put it in front of them so that they're most likely to engage with it. And that could be, you know, take an offer, you know, sign it for a li. Whatever it may be. Well, what this does, and stay with me this, because this makes a lot of sense to me, especially the difference of when you go into a Vons and you look up and you see the aisles, they're numbered and it tells you exactly what's on those aisles. You kind of, even if you don't know where you're going, you can find your way. Well, if this bill passes, which I hope it isn't, isn't going to, it's on the Governor's desk. It's almost like when you walk into Costco, you know, raise your hand. Have you walked into Costco before and you're not sure where the, you know, what is. I went into one the other day. We're visiting some in the area of Southern California in the San Diego area. And I went to a Costco that was unfamiliar with me. Not that that made it any, but I went looking for some heavy cream for my coffee. And normally the heavy cream is in the aisles where they have the cold items. And I walked down there and I didn't find it. Instead, this particular one, and maybe this is new for, for more and more, they have a cold area, not just for produce, but they have a cold area for dairy. So then I went back over there and checked it out. It wasn't there either. My point is, when these tools are removed, which they've already been, they've already been really changed. When the iOS change happened a years ago, it made it more and more difficult because people had to, had to opt in to be marketed to instead of opt out.

Well, it's going to be that difficult. And what me, what that means is now when a customer says, hey, can you target my ideal audience? If this passes in the state of California, which I deal mostly with local businesses, the answer is going to be no, I really can't. Or I can give it my best, but realize what's going to happen is the cost of doing that and the marketing is going to go way up. I was just talking to a client this morning who we're running some ads for. They're a cosmetic surgeon and we were talking about, you know, the quality of the ads or the leads that are coming through and they're not as good as they used to be. Why? Because of things like this. We can only get it seems like it, versus very specific. I went and said, well, you know, I did come home with the heavy cream, but it's a canned, you know, Carnation Instant. No offense to that. It's Carnation Instant versus, hey, it's the organic farms that I'm supposed to get. I didn't know. I just thought it was what it was. Well, that's the difference we're having now. So their, their quality of leads are already getting diluted. If this passes, what we're going to see is the cost for the advertiser is going to go even higher. Now, what's the other side of that? Well, at Swingpoint Media for the last 14 years, we've been focusing on one thing primarily. And that's creating content that solves your ideal customers problems. And why would that be a big deal? Well, here's the thing. When we have a desire to get something, we're not 100% sure of it, of, of how it works and, and things like that, we have a series of questions that go through our head. You know, besides the how much does it cost? Will it do what I'm looking for? How hard is it to put together? You know, does it require maintenance, whatever that kind of those questions are? Well, what we do is we go into that client's business and we say, let's find out what your ideal customer. What are the most common questions they have to have answered before they make a buying decision? And we make that content. Now, why is this different than paid advertising? Because what happens is most of our customers, our ideal customers, have the same series of about 20 different questions. Once you make that, that content and then keep refreshing it over the life of your business, what happens is when people go to search, what do they do? They're drawn to your business or not necessarily to your business, because they might even know the name of your business. They only know they're trying to solve that question. And you happen to have an article up there that they read or a video that they watch. Now what this does is it starts that connection phase, right? It starts that connection phase. And so what happens is it's not built on targeting as much as it is, hey, I'm solving a problem for my ideal customer. So will this bill make a difference? Absolutely. Now I want to share the next page because what I did is in this thing with Google, when I signed up, I said, hey, when things like this come up, show your support. So what I did is I then filled out my information and I sent it to the governor to veto that so I can still reach my online customers. I did this not for me, because we spend so much time on the organic side, we're attracting people versus going out and hunting for them. That's the difference is one of them. We, we basically attract people with honey, if you will, with the answers versus we go out and, and hunt for them and. But I think both have to occur. Do we do that for customers, the paid and the organic? We do both primarily. Our main is for the organic, where it attracts them. The reason I'm sharing this with this morning, because I want you to understand this, I want you to be aware of it, that this is going on. Because here's the thing, we've said this For a long, long time. I remember when I didn't live in the state of California that I discovered this was true. If it starts in California, it usually then just makes its way across the country into the other 50 states. It's almost like we are a petri dish and, and we're, we're testing things out. And if it works out here, or let's say it just, it gets approved out here, then it says, well, it must be good for the country because it's good for California. It's not always that way. So my goal is to say, hey, why don't we just say as a we the people, this isn't going to work for us. And so I went ahead and sent this in and said, hey, please, please block this. Now here's the thing. I'm not one of these guys that said, I want to have every detail I can say, you know, you have kids between the age of 8 and 13 and you have X number of dollars that you make every month and you live in this house and you live in this particular area. Are those helpful when we actually do the targeted marketing? Absolutely. But I don't need to know a lot of personal information. A lot of the things we talk about, when we talk about targeted marketing that work today.

They are somewhat more general. Like, I don't know who you are. I just know a lot of the things, your interests, your desires and things of that nature that we. I think there's still over 20,000 contact points that are available today that weren't available or that were, that were still left over after the iOS change. The big thing for today is I just wanted you, I just wanted to share. This is, this is the kind of stuff that we as marketers and you as business owners, who you may not ever see this, you wouldn't see this until it probably became a law. I, on the other hand, because I'm signed up for this, because it does affect our, our business and our customer's business, I wanted to make sure to get this out to you. So with that, I'm going to let you go again. My name is Jeff Harrison. I'm a company called Swing Point Media. We're a content marketing company and we specialize in helping H vac services around the country get more customers using organics. Organic. If you want to know more information, just please DM me or drop me a question in the comments. I'll be more than happy to get back in touch with you. Have a great day.