Ep. 72- What The Heck Is Direct Response Marketing with Mark Newsome

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, winner and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser.

Hey guys, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. Today's guest is Mark Newsome, who is an expert in marketing, but most specifically direct response marketing, which is probably a phrase that many people out there haven't heard of, and especially probably haven't even used or would even think about using. To help grow their business strategy through whatever ways that might be doable and possible for them. So, Mark, welcome to the show.

Hey, Jason, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Pleasure to have you as well. So, before we get into these awesome strategies and what is all of these cool phrases that I just threw out, how did you get to where you're doing now?

Man, that's an awesome question, and I'll tell you this, I've been told all my life Mark your creative, mark your creative, mark your creative. And it wasn't until the first time I got introduced to direct response type of marketing in my early 20s, and I said, this is it. I didn't totally understand it, Jason, but I was lit on fire. And the reason is, is because it's kind of like psychology. In other words, something you know in 8, but somebody has to formally introduce you to it. And when you actually get you're formally introduced to it, you know, you say, this is it. And I just had the bug of entrepreneurship ever since, man. Wow.

So what was that first initial experience that like threw you into this world? And what exactly is direct response marketing?

Well, from my take, here's another word, 'cause you're right, that's kind of formalized. You hear it for the first time, what is this direct response thing? It basically means any type of promotions, formal, traditional, conventional advertising you and I do, or marketing. That we do, you make it accountable. Now you say, okay, Mark, what do you mean? When you run an ad, let's say you're gonna use newspaper, put some type of coupon or deadline in there that says you need to do this by this time. Otherwise, you're just doing what we call institutional or what I like to call D.O.N.A., dead on arrival type of advertising. Most small business people or service providers are expert at what they do, but not necessarily expert at marketing or promoting. Direct response gives us the edge because while everybody else is putting that, "Hi, I'm Joe," or, "I'm Mary and this is what I do," you're saying, "Hi, I'm Mark, I'm Jason, and if you're interested in this, you need to do X, Y, or Z by this certain date." You do that one little thing, that one change, and you'll start attracting more of your target-based audience, guaranteed.

So what do you see in the numbers, right, when it comes to traditional marketing and With the rise of social media and the ability to have all of these different digital platforms, not just on the social media side, but apps and other programming that everybody can easily become their own marketer, right? And put out their own content.

Absolutely.

Or even become a digital social media, digital manager for other people. What's the difference do you find between doing that and the success rates with that versus being very crystal clear in the way that you're doing it?

2 things. Number 1, if you're doing digital marketing, remember that second word, marketing. In other words, just because I'm on LinkedIn doesn't mean I shouldn't be applying proven basic marketing, advertising, or promotional strategies. Here's what most people do. They go on Twitter, they go on Facebook, and they say, I ran an ad, I did a PPC campaign, and it didn't work. And you say, okay, you know, walk me back. What specifically have you done? They're doing the same thing they're doing offline. That's why it's not working. You've got to have scarcity, a deadline, or what I like to call an ethical bribe. You've got to say to your audience, here's something, but if you don't act by a certain time, you miss out. If you look at most social media advertising, Jason, what you see is they're making statements. That's not going to work. It doesn't matter that you're on Twitter making statements or Facebook making statements. You've got to promote, advertise, and market. It's like when you hear the statement, it sells itself. I'm sorry, it does not. You and I have to market it. And you got to be proactive. Most people, I'm sad to say, and you know this yourself, they're not proactive. They're reactive. They do something and then they sit back and say, well, I ran a PPC ad campaign and it didn't work. Well, I'm sorry, marketing is ongoing. You've got to test. You know, what do you mean I got to test? You can't just— unless you're psychic, you know what this market wants? You've got to give them an option. Do you prefer this? Do you prefer that? And eventually you're going to hit on what they prefer, and then you give it to them. Most small business people, like I said, they're expert at what they do, but they're not very expert at promoting and marketing. And that's where guys like me come in and try to help them.

Interesting. So the one thing I'm hearing, and I'm wondering if people out there, when you're saying what you're saying, is that the fear is that I'm gonna come across like a used car salesman. If you don't buy it today, this car will be gone, right? And you're gonna lose out on the deal. How do we avoid as business owners coming across that way with our integrity, with our authenticity, in the exact way you said, right? There has to be scarcity. Because, right, as a business professional, as a therapist, and as a coach, I only have a certain amount of time during the week that I offer to my clients. And when that's gone, that's gone. And there's a waiting list, right? Two, I don't offer sales when it comes to my price point. I prorate my time. So if someone says to me, Jason Wasser, I can't afford your hourly rate, I said, well, that's great. I offer 45-minute sessions and 30-minute sessions.

Awesome.

So, I don't discount my time, I prorate that time down to the minute.

That's a fact.

And I know what I charge per minute, right? So, I give them other options where if they feel that that tier is too much for them, I find a way to say, well, what can we accomplish in 30 minutes?

That's a fact.

You don't need an hour right now. So, I have to make— look at that from my time perspective, but they have to see that from the scarcity. Also, right, that there might be a waiting list or that— and I also say to people who call me, someone actually came up to me last night at an event I was at and they're asking me, what my rates were, and I said, but I want to let you know, I may not take— they were talking about a family member— I may not take that person on as a client.

Wow.

So again, scarcity.

That's fabulous.

And it's not that I'm— excuse me— it's not that I'm saying it to create scarcity.

Right, right.

I'm saying it because I don't take everybody on as a client. There's certain prequalifications that they have to have. How is businesses, from your experience and who you've worked with out there, not doing what I'm doing.

Well, you know what, I think you should be teaching the training because that's a fabulous concept. I like it. Let me try to give you an example though to show you what I mean, because you're absolutely right. We don't want to give the impression that we're sort of a used car salesman. Let me give an example what I'm talking about. Let's suppose a, um, and I'm gonna use a service provider because I, for some reason, I don't know, I always gravitate to service providers. But let's suppose you're setting appointments and you're a chiropractor, right? And one of the things you offer is a bonus session. And here's what you say to your caller, your first-time caller. You say, by the way, Joe or Mary, just to let you know, when you set this appointment, when you keep it the first time so that we don't have to recontact you, you get this. Now, you're still gonna get the service, but by us not having to recontact you, reschedule, and go through all of that, we're gonna give you this bonus. Well, that in a way is scarcity because they understand, hey, if for whatever, now of course, you know, if there's a family emergency, we get it. But if they keep that appointment, they're gonna receive a reward. That's a way of pulling them in without, as you say, coming off saying, oh, if you don't do this, you lose out by this certain time. It's a much more, in my opinion, proactive, attractive way to get the— because here's what I've found, and you probably found too, Jason Wasser, the people who keep their appointment the first time, they're gonna go on to be your most valuable clients and customers. They'll refer more often, they'll buy more often, they'll stick around longer. Well, you want to reward that, you want to tweak that, and you want to make that, excuse me, part of your marketing message. Because you know what they'll do? They'll go tell their friends in a braggadocious way and say, you know, just by keeping my first appointment They did X, Y, or Z. Now you're not worried about who's on Twitter or who's on Facebook or who's on LinkedIn. Now granted, we want to use every platform we're on as proactively as we can, but you hear this a lot, and I want to say this because I think I'll be remiss if I don't, Jason. Ladies and gentlemen, please don't forget this: you and I do not own Facebook and these other social media platforms. They can decide— new management could come in and say, you know what, we're not going to go in that direction anymore. Somebody does this, their account shut down permanently. If you're building on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram and you got 100,000 followers and then the next day your account is shut down, where's that gonna leave you? Exactly. Don't, don't do that to yourself. So you and I have to stay in control and marketing and promoting and advertising and learn how to do it correctly, or I'm sure strategically, it's going to give you the anchor and the permanence and the peace of mind that you need in your business. And a lot of small business owners don't have that right now because everything is kind of precarious. You're sort of rolling the dice every week, you know, if I will. It's not good. You want to get where Jason is. You want to get to the point where you kind of know your numbers and you know what to expect. That's going to give you peace of mind and higher profitability, guaranteed.

So would you say that there's kind of a percentage that people should be considering when it comes to print marketing versus digital marketing, because I know every segment of society and community is different.

Absolutely. Right?

Here in South Florida, there's probably not one specific place that would be the most appropriate for me to be marketing unless I'm gonna be spending— there's one place I could market and it would, let's say, it would be $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 a month for a page or a full-page ad in a very high-end glossy magazine that only goes to certain populations here in South Florida. But for the amount of money I can spend on that, the amount of people I can hit in my indirect social media marketing is exponentially larger.

Absolutely.

So how do we think about today where, right, I'm sure all the businesses, and if you're a business owner or a small business owner especially out there getting all these random cold calls of, hey, would you wanna put your name on our golf cards for this country club, right? Or would you wanna put your business on this, I just got last week, a bag for a grocery store for their takeout bags because they're switching over from plastic bags to—

Right, right, exactly.

At what price point or what numbers is that a worthwhile investment where it's that passive marketing versus active marketing?

That's an excellent question, and here's my answer. I'm a little biased, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna admit that. I absolutely positively do not like this, what I call institutional type advertising. In other words, um, you could put your message on the back of this receipt. Unless you know for a fact that's who your target audience is, don't do it. In fact, you know, this drives me crazy. Can I give you a really simple example? Please. Let's suppose you are a retail jeweler, and I'm using this for a specific reason, ladies and gentlemen. And let's suppose you're in currently in third or fourth place. In other words, there's some mega jewelers there that got 2, 3 locations. They're doing $75,000, $100,000 a month in, you know, billboard ads and putting stuff on the side of buses and all this nonsense and you're thinking to yourself, wow, maybe I need to put my, uh, advertisement, buy one of these billboard ads and put it on a cab. No, try this instead as a test. Let's suppose your budget right now is $25,000 a month. And by the way, I don't like blanket budgets because I think it's unrealistic until you know what your, uh, customer's lifetime total customer value is. That's a dangerous precedent, but just give me this leeway. Let's suppose you're gonna invest $25,000 and you're thinking about using a local billboard. Here's what I say, as a jeweler, here's what I say you do instead. Go out and find a couple of nurses, right, that work in hospitals. Take $25,000, let's say you have a pair of diamond earrings that retail for $450, but your true cost is $200. So you take $200, divide it into 25, whatever that number comes out to, I'm just making this up, let's say it's 75. Let 75 nurses buy those $450 earrings for your true cost at $200 and watch and see what happens to your bottom line. You got 75 salesmen out there now working with doctors, other nurses. Everywhere they go, they're a walking billboard, and somebody's gonna say, girl, where did you get those? That bling? She's gonna say Jason's Jeweler, and then Jason's gonna be smart enough to create some small 2-sided business cards, and here's what the first side is going to say: Dear friend, please enter our free monthly drawing for a chance to win a $2,500 diamond studded necklace. One guaranteed grand prize winner every month. Side B, when you flip it over, it's going to say referred by, and that's where the nurse is going to print their name. So Jason Wasser gets an idea who's bringing me business because he's going to start rewarding them. Based on its total customer lifetime value. Now here's the point of this strategy. You give each nurse 5 of these and you say, the first one who has 5 of these returned before this date, I can do something really special for you. And you lay out 3 things for, you know, first one that does it, second and third. You watch what happens versus just running that billboard ad. Your business is gonna erupt, right? It's gonna erupt.

It's a totally different philosophy where you're really getting into the psychology of creating a desirable outcome. People being able to show off—

Absolutely.

—something that they think they got the deal of a lifetime, and they're going to talk about it. You better believe they were treated more special than anybody else. Absolutely.

And here's the other thing, because I'm glad you— that when I said it's kind of psychology, you think about— here's the other things that happen. Their best girlfriend is going to take a picture of those rocks and she's going to go on Facebook, look what my girlfriend got. And then somebody else is going to get a message to say, where? And then they're going to put a link in there to say, hey, don't tell anybody, but if you call this number and ask for Jason, my girlfriend says he'll hook you up. And Jason's gonna have to put his— he's gonna have to stop taking calls because he's gonna get swamped. And then you know what else that's gonna lead to, ladies and gentlemen? The people that— what I call the influencers amongst us, the A-listers— if he did that for them, what can he do for me? And she's going to call Jason. Jason's going to say, oh, you're the assemblywoman in Ward 12. Why don't you come in? Come in after 5 o'clock when I'm closed, and I want to show you a special display of rocks I don't show anybody. And Jason's going to say, Why don't you try on this necklace right here? She's gonna put it on. It's a $5,000 necklace. It cost him $2,000. He said, you know what, if you purchase this right now, I'll give it to you for $2,000. And when she walks out— before she walks out, she's already texted 10 women. She is now going to be the center of attraction, and she's got a story at Thanksgiving, New Year's, and every other thing. It's gonna explode, ladies and gentlemen. It's going to explode.

Well, so you're talking about turning potential clients into avid advocates. Absolutely. And it's really interesting because I truly believe in that because most of my practice has been through word of mouth. And recently I had to do an opposite scenario where I actually had to turn someone down who was a referral from two clients. Wow. And only by saying, right, that they're not, it's not the area of my expertise, it's not my niche. Back in the day, 3, 4, 5 years ago, I would have been accepting of that and let them in, right? Because there was scarcity for me. Absolutely. I want people out there to listen to this, right? The number one thing that you're saying is when you said about the receipt is that unless it's your niche population that you want to target, don't go there. Don't go there.

I don't care what they offer you, right?

Right. And I think for business owners out there, especially in today's competitive society where you go online and get anything within a minute, is the fact that you have to know exactly what you are, who you're servicing, who you're preaching to, for lack of a better word, right? And what are the problems in that unique community that you're trying to solve? But you can't be an Italian restaurant who decides that they're not getting as much customers and all of a sudden they want to start offering sushi. Exactly.

And that's what most of us do, Jason Wasser. In fact, one other quick analogy. Let's say you were a woman. Right? And I was on this podcast, but I'm a jeweler. I would make sure you have on some of my earrings and my necklace. And get this, even if it was just for that specific time you were on air, because I guarantee you that exposure is going to be— ladies and gentlemen, you may not know this, but companies, these big major corporate 500 companies, they spend millions, probably hundreds of millions of dollars a year to get 30 seconds in a movie, a clip. Maybe the guy's got his laptop open and you see that it's an Apple. That's not a coincidence, man. Trust me, it's not. So my point is, in fact, if you're a small business owner or a service provider, here's what you should be thinking. The late, uh, uh, Conrad J. Livingston called this fusion marketing. We call it joint ventures. Some people call it strategic marketing. Doesn't matter. Within your 5, 10 block radius, there are 5, 10 businesses that are non-directly competing. The two of you should be cross-promoting each other, man. Are you kidding me? That way you don't have to rely on this ridiculous, uh, you want to put your ad on the side of a bag nonsense. You'll be generating more first-time customers, and a percentage— not all, obviously— a percentage will upgrade to repeat customers. They'll tell people Just like what's gonna happen in this podcast. Everybody who's lucky enough to be on Jason's podcast, when he does his social media miracles, it's not just this podcast. It's gonna be seen on Twitter, Instagram, or whatever platforms he's on. I'm gonna share the link. I'm gonna use it in blog posts. This is massive viral exposure from a little tiny bit of front-end effort. That's really what I'm all about. That's what Jason's all about. You gotta learn how to do this, and of course, let me say this, a shameful plug, if you need professional help, I'm one of the sources you should look up, but I digress, pardon me.

Well, and what was the cost of this conversation? Just our time. Right, exactly. Right, so I think that's what I want people to hear out of this, is that by investing the time, one of the things that people talk about, and marketing, this whole conversation's been about marketing, but I wanna talk for a second from my perspective of networking, is that you're a wonderful example walking brand billboard. So when people out there, and I've seen this so many times at networking events, where they go out and they immediately just hand you their card and there's no relationship, there's no value created, there's no connection created. It's like, here's my card, you wanna do business with me? I heard a story recently from Dr. Ivan Misner, who I don't know if you're familiar with, is the founder of BNI, the world's largest business networking group. And he said, Actually, I'm sorry, it was through someone who I met through a community, but it wasn't from Dr. Meisner, but it was actually from a buddy of mine. And he was at an event, and he said that this guy came over to him and started talking to him. He was like, "Oh, da da da, here's, my name is whatever, here's what I do, and here's my card." And the guy who responded back to him, and he just points at his shirt. Whoa. And it was the exact field that he was in. But the person who came over to him to network didn't even have the foresight to say, "Hi, what's your name? Where are you from?

What do you do?

What type of clients are you looking for?" Immediately the guy just tried to push and sell himself. I also see that that's commonly happening in our marketing tactics as well. It's the sell, it's the you should buy it, but there's a lack of creating value. So I know as I, as my podcast grows and the number of guests grow, and right, last week I released, as of the recording of this episode today, I've released 30 episodes since the summer, right? It's not a monetary thing for me. It's a marketing thing for me. So if someone Googles my name to see if I'm a good therapist to go to, or if they don't live locally and they're hiring me as a coach outside of, right, whether it's a business or personal, they're gonna see all of the things that I'm doing and who I'm talking to. And who is sharing wisdom back with my community. And that's one of the main important things for me to have leverage for that. So that's my marketing, right? It's not necessarily, but I know that people are coming up to me like, oh, I heard this episode. Or so a friend of mine asked, would tell me that somebody that he knows asked if he knew me. Whoa. Because of my podcast. And we live in the same community, but they didn't know. They're like, "Yeah, he lives in the neighborhood." Right? So it's working, is it? Right? Like you said before, it's not a one-month worth of marketing. It's over and over and over. It's a sustained long-term thing.

Exactly, it's ongoing.

It's everything. So I know you started sharing some really powerful stuff already, and I know that there was two other specific things. Yes. You wanted to get that are very— Absolutely. You know, very salient and very evergreen. And before you tell us what it is, for people out there who don't know, what is evergreen?

Oh, just like you said. In other words, the form of power— I call what you do power networking. It never— in other words, it's not like a, uh, fashionable— remember, uh, we might be dating ourselves here a little bit, Jason, but remember there was a platform called, uh, MySpace? MySpace is no longer with us. Well, see, if you had built everything around MySpace, where would you be now? Done. So evergreen means no matter what's going on This process or this system we're putting in place will always work to some degree. Now sometimes, you know, when the economy's good, it's working better. Economy's down, you got to tweak it a little bit. But the point is, the main thrust of it is always valid. And that's what I mean by evergreen. Like, say, for instance, holding a door open for a woman. That's an evergreen thing for a gentleman to do. It doesn't mean, oh, it's wintertime, I hold it. No. That's evergreen. So you and I want to do things that are— that were like what Jason's doing. You want to do evergreen marketing and promoting and advertising strategies. Having a powerful "what's in it for me" headline, no matter if it's on stationery, your website, a business card, uh, a postcard, it doesn't matter. A powerful "what's in it for me" headline is evergreen. So you want to be as evergreen as you can. And one other thing before I answer that, I just want to piggyback off something you said, Jason, is very, very powerful about the gentleman just walking up and handing the card. Most of you have probably heard this, but it's worth repeating. The brilliant Seth Godin— and if you haven't read The Purple Cow by Seth Godin, grab it and read it, even if you have to go to eBay to get it— Seth Godin told the story, and you hear a lot of marketers, myself included, repeating it. He said, imagine you went to a bar. You hired a demographics company to tell you what bar to go to, and you walk up to the bar and walk in the bar, and the first attractive person you You see, you propose marriage. Now what's wrong with this scenario? You don't know each other. So Seth Godin says there's an alternative. It's called dating. In other words, that's why we have something on our website called a lead magnet or free problem-solving giveaway. That's a date. They put their name in, their email address, we send them some information, and we start building a rapport versus you come to my sales page. Who is Mark Newsome? I never heard of this guy. And I'm trying to pawn something to you. Doesn't work. And it really doesn't work online because people are super skeptical. How do I even know this guy's who he says he is? You got to build rapport like what Jason's doing. If you're not— because think about it, you don't want to be in business with strangers, you want to be in business with friends. You know, there's a corner store a couple blocks from my house, and I've gone in there a couple times, Jason. 5 cents short, 10 cents short. You know what the guy says? Bring it back. You'll get it the next time. See, he's smart. He's realizing that I'm not trying to sell this guy one item. I want him to come back. Customer service is evergreen. Good— I'm sorry, good customer service. I've seen, um, what's the guy, the, the, the— he's, uh, Steve Wynn told a story where a guy stays in his hotel, he and his wife. He forgot his medicine. The wife's in a panic. She calls, uh, room service. Steve Wynn's manager authorized this guy with the permission of this couple to go to their house and get the guy's medicine. Now, how many times do you think she's gonna tell that story versus let's run a billboard ad that costs $60,000? And I hope you guys are getting some value, not just for me, I'm saying from Jason Wasser. You gotta alter your mindset and say, how can I better serve? My target audience? And if you start answering that question, you get your own marketing, evergreen marketing strategies, guaranteed.

And I think one of the best people out there who's talking about this on a consistent basis is Gary Vaynerchuk.

Oh yes, Gary V. Right? Gary V.

I'm sure you've heard that story about when he was working for his family's business with Wine Library, and I think it was like pre-New Year's or pre-Christmas, and someone ordered a case of rosé. And he's like, and it wasn't even expensive rosé, it was like $7 a bottle rosé, right? And started storming or whatever it was, and there was no way the delivery was gonna get there, whatever. He literally took that box, and it was maybe a $50 thing, $60 sale, drove an hour and a half in traffic to hand deliver it to that person to make sure it got there because they were having their holiday party. And that was that.

And to this day, they're still repeating that story. You betcha.

They're still repeating that story. Or that person who— there was another one. What I love is that there was someone he was trying to get in touch with, and I can't remember the exact details, and obviously the listeners out there can correct this story by reaching out to us on social media, where he saw that that person was really into a specific athlete and sent them a jersey. There you go. Of that athlete. Oh, Gary. Just to try to get, right? And that person person obviously like blitzed it out on their social media. Of course. Right? So these are different ways that are unique, that are not car salesman-y, and they're not, they're about creating connection, about creating value. Absolutely. Right, and I actually, when I'm working with some of my business coaching clients, I have a buddy of mine in Portland and he just opened up his chiropractic practice last year, and I said, okay, pull out your Instagram, go into the search, go into locations, put in your— right where your practice is, and now go to recent, like, you know, pick a spot that's somewhere nearby, hit recent on that whatever thing that was there, and see who's coming up. So he saw a person who's a runner, and they saw that they were last checked in about a week ago at the bar across the street from his practice. It's like, hey, my name is— I'm a chiropractor. I saw that you were enjoying some really awesome craft beer at this great brewery across the street from my office. That's one of my go-to places also after I do a run. Next time you and your team needs a chiropractor, I'd love to come and do a workshop for you guys.

Wow, fabulous. I'll bet that worked out really well too. Right, they responded.

And it turns out the person didn't live locally, but now whoever does, they're gonna be like, oh hey, you guys should think about this person, right? And I had him do that for 15, 20 people. Right? And if people do that, which is— this is a little bit, right, this is a Gary Vee thing— but if you do that, you reach out to local businesses. I was at an event about 6 months ago, and this event was hosted in an outdoor— it's in a shopping plaza that's 2 stories— and I saw a van that was for a local sports, teenage sports league for kids, like training and development and, right, travel team and everything. Like, I— whatever, they got their number on there, so I went on their social media and I hit them up. Hey, my name is Jason Wasser. I'm a therapist. I work with a lot of families and kids, and I do actually have a certificate in sports and exercise psychology. And I've worked with— here are the schools that I've worked with and the programs that I've worked with with your age bracket. I'd love to set up a time to talk to you. The response came back 20 minutes later. Hey, Jason, it's Brandon. I don't know if you remember me, but you grew up with my brother.

Wow. See, there you go.

Right. So just taking that extra little bit. Absolutely. That everything that those people have marketing on their cars where they have their numbers on their cars, pick up the phone and call them. Say, hey, I just saw you driving by. I'm not necessarily in, right, I'm not necessarily looking for something in your, but really cool for you to put it out there. And I just want to let you know your marketing is working. And I just want to let you know that I'm calling you because I saw your card, right? Just start that off. And there's so many different ways.

It doesn't have to be the immediate No, that's fabulous, dude. You got some serious marketing strategies going on here. Let me just share one thing. Yeah, sure. Because as a piggy bank— a piggy bank— two things. About 6 months ago, or maybe a little longer, a store was opening a second location, and a gazillion college students, guys, had lined up the night before, like 2 o'clock in the morning. They're out playing frisbee, right? And I said, see, most people would look at that I'm talking business owners, and they wouldn't see the incredible marketing opportunity that is. I said, if that were me, I would call my manager and say, meet me out in the parking lot with 15 tablets. Give these guys all a tablet and a coupon to go get a large pizza and some wings and say, hey guys, it's on us, we appreciate you coming out here, thanks. What do you think those guys would immediately do? Yeah, versus No, let's run 60-second ads that— oh, Jason, think about this. And you, ladies and gentlemen in the audience, please, please, please listen to what I'm about to tell you. Think about the time Jason and I have been on this podcast together. Do you realize right now in your local area how many ads have run on local radio and television that you did not see? I did not see. Jason didn't see. The money's gone. And I'm telling you, you give away those tablets to those young men Or what about this? This is one of my favorite— oh, Jason, I gotta share this. This is one of my favorite strategies. Let's suppose you want to target women. I'm— again, I'm just using the jeweler as an example, wink wink. You go to a local— not a franchise, but a local mom-and-pop, uh, donut and bakery shop. You become a customer, you and the staff, and you get on a first-name basis with the owners or the managers as quickly as possible. And then you say, Jason Here's the magic question, ladies and gentlemen, remember this: Jason, would it be okay if we brought you some business? What do you think 99% of them are gonna say? You know, as long as it doesn't interrupt with what you're doing, there's nothing immoral, of course. He said, well, here's what we'd like to do. How much is that large mocha coffee thing, thingy, espresso thingy that's really popular with the ladies? How much does that really cost? $2. Okay, and how would you sell us it for? Uh, $4.79. Here's what we'd like to do. Whenever a woman comes in and orders that, give her this sealed envelope. Now get this, this is what it says on the outside of sealed envelope, Jason, in big red letters, quotation marks: "You definitely deserve this!" Exclamation point. Now do you really think it's going to take a nanosecond for them to rip that open and, and what is this? The next 2 mochas, $4, are on the house courtesy of Jason's Jeweler. And then there's a thing that says, drag a friend with you to our store before this date and you can get X percent off, 40% off any purchase up to $1,000. Come alone and you can save 10% up to $500. Now what do you think a percentage of those women are going to do? They're going to drag a girlfriend and say, you're coming with me, and they're going to go to this place. And then you're going to make an offer to her and you're going to make an offer to her girlfriend, what we call OTO, which One-time only offer. And you say to the girl— now you're gonna say to both of them, just for joining our list, you get an additional bonus. Now, just to take this a step further, because remember, we already know our total lifetime customer value is somewhere between $4,000 and $8,000. So you got a huge spread, and all of that isn't, is it, pure profit? You know, maybe it's like 55%, 70%, I don't know. Don't— it doesn't matter what the number is. Get this concept. Here's what you do to the first 10 women that spend over $1,000. You get their name, where they work, or if they own their own business, and you send— get this— a large 7-foot teddy bear and a box of chocolates and 10 gift certificates saying, please feel free to share these gift certificates with whoever you deem worthy. Now, what do you think her girl— I'm sorry, and flowers. What do you think the girlfriends are thinking when they see the courier pull up with the 7-foot teddy bear? Girl, it's not your birthday. What is this? What do you mean your jeweler did this, or your chiropractor, or your— whatever? Where do you think, A, they're gonna go, and they're gonna demand their husbands, boyfriends, live-in significant others go? That's marketing and promoting, ladies and gentlemen. That— now let me just say this: if none of what I've said, uh, resonates with you, I'm probably not your guy, right? Seriously, I mean, you know, if you're sitting here thinking, I don't know, this seems a little okey to me, I'm probably not your guy. And that's okay because the internet is fast, there's millions of people. So if I could, Jason, could I share these two strategies that I'm just chomping at the bit to share with your audience? Love it, go for it. Okay, here's the first. I kind of mentioned this, but I really want to put some meat on this. Here's what I want you to do if you're a small business service provider, or, you know, I'm going to use an appliance center. You're not franchised, so you're trying to compete with the big boys and girls. Here's what you do. Once a month or once a quarter, you offer a free drawing. A furniture concern could do this too. In fact, let's use a furniture concern. You're gonna have a free drawing for a master bedroom suite that retails for $10,000, which means a ton of your walking traffic is gonna be on this big giant sign. Stevie Wonder couldn't miss it. Excuse me, here's the point. Once the drawing is over and you reach into the box and pick Jason's name out, you had 11,000 people sign. We're gonna say right now you don't even have email or mobile marketing. You're going old school. You should be using email though, but here's my point. You pull out the name, Jason has won. You contact him, he's excited. Well, what about the other 99%? You don't blow them off. You give them a discounted— you bring a friend and you get— you know, you come by yourself, you can save 10%. You drag a friend with you, we'll give you 45% off any purchases up to $2,500. But here's the next step. This is what I really want you to get. When you're about to do that closeout on that, uh, $10,000 a master bedroom suite that only costs you, let's be honest, $5,000. Here's what you do. You put a big giant sign in and you say, we're having a raffle. Now follow this, ladies and gentlemen. Raffles cost money, do they not? So here's the thing. As long as you're one of our VIP subscribers— say, what's the VIP subscriber, Mark? Doesn't matter. Here's the point. You only invest $500, 10%. If you're not a VIP subscriber, you can still enter our raffle, but it's going to cost you $2,500. Now, what do you think most people who are serious about that are going to do? They're going to jump on your list. Hey, you just got a new subscriber. And B, let's suppose— I don't want to be, you know, pie in the sky— let's suppose 1,500 of your customers invest $500. You guys can do the math yourself. I think you've covered the cost of that bedroom set. You've made a nice cash profit. You contact 3 charities and say, hey, we're gonna give you 5% of what we bring in on our quarterly raffle, provided every 90 days you send our, our extremely time-sensitive coupon to your customer— I mean, excuse me, your donor base. And the highest ones, you know, what would you like to say? You have, uh, low, middle, and high. The ones who donate at the highest, we got a special, uh, offer for them in terms of a discount. That one double-prong strategy alone is gonna put a ton of money in your pocket. Now again, if you're hearing this for the first time and you're saying, man, Mark, I don't I'm not for you. Okay. It's that simple. That raffle strategy hooked on with building your email or, and by the way, ladies and gentlemen, Jason, you know this too. Do you realize the average mobile message is answered within 3 minutes or less? Email will never compete with that. I'm here to tell you it won't. I'm a big email guy. Email won't. So I'm saying if you're, if you're between email or mobile marketing, I'd say start out with mobile marketing. Because your messages are far more apt to be opened almost immediately. So I just, man, I had to get that off my chest.

Thank you. Amazing. Well, you're really leveraging the relationships. You're leveraging other people's clients. You're getting your name in front of people that they care about.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Just what you just said right there, they may, it may not have resonated Ladies and gentlemen, stop and think. Let's say Jason has 75,000 Instagram followers. Do you know how much time, effort, and resources he's done to build that up? And then he allows you to piggyback off of that, or me, or whoever? That's ultimate leverage. You got businesses right where I sit within a 5, 10 block radius who have spent millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars to build their customer prospect base. Here's another idea that you just cannot walk away from. Let's say Jason Wasser gives the free drawing. Well, guess what? He needs some second and third prizes, does he not? If you're not directly and you have something that would hook in perfectly, let him give it away. In fact, let him give it away to his current ex-customers as a way to say, hey, we'd love to get you back, we miss you. So he's giving them your certificate. In fact, if I were a jeweler, I'd make sure Jason, his wife, his live-in significant other, his daughters— well, she's at least 18— and all of his female workers got hooked up with my bling so that everywhere they went, somebody's gonna want to know, hey, where'd you get those earrings, that bracelet? And they're gonna say, girl, you better get over to Mark's Jeweler. Oh my God, I've seen him. I've never been in there. Girl, look, he gave us these gift certificates here. Boom. You're building an army of people who are gonna be all— you know, social media is good for this, if nothing else, ladies and gentlemen. If you use it correctly, you— I forgot the name you use, Jason, but I call them our goodwill ambassadors. They'll spread your name like crazy. Like crazy. I'm trying— what are you— if you guys don't realize what I'm trying to do right now in the short time that Jason has allowed me to share with you, I'm trying to ethically bribe you and have your mind explode with possibilities to say Wow, I gotta tell people about this guy. He was fabulous. You know, I never thought about using a raffle the way he talked about using it and then hooking it with a charity and then having the charity feed us. Or I'm using charity, could be anything. Ladies and gentlemen, if we had the time, maybe Jason Wasser will do a webinar one time or so, I don't know. But if I had the time, I could take you through a very simple, straightforward strategy using a hair salon. If you're a jeweler out there, contact me, I got a potential joint venture for you. Jason, please forgive that shameless plug, but I'm telling you, I got some strategies that would just rock it wide open for you.

Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. So everybody out there who's been listening, I wanna make sure that you really understand the basis for all this is really solving people's problems, is really getting to the heart of their emotions, of their desires, right? If you look at any marketing, campaign, it really is hitting into the three parts. And I know that, I believe it was Seth Godin, and I know Simon Sinek talks about this definitely, right? The three parts of our brain, the neocortex, our rational brain, our mammalian brain, which is our emotional brain, and our reptilian brain, which is our fight or flight, right? The survival instinct. I need to have it 'cause everybody else does and I don't, right? So really incredible stuff, Mark. Where can people reach out to you and connect with you?

Oh my goodness. If you'd like to see more, ladies and gentlemen, employ you to head over to my blog. It's you, Y-O-U, can market online now. My brother always forgets to put the now on there, so put the now.com. You can market online now.com. And it's not just for people online. It's— you'll see that a lot of my stuff really is offline, but I'm using the internet to reach a larger audience. And fabulous podcasts like this one with Jason Wasser. Thank you so much for letting me be here and share some of this information, man. I've learned a lot, and I'm going to re-listen to this because, like I said, you're a fabulous marketers, no two ways about that. But ladies and gentlemen, I implore you, as he said, build relationships first and everything else will take care of itself. Don't come through the door trying to sell, come through the door trying to problem solve. You'll become a fabulous marketer, guaranteed. Awesome.

And like always, everybody listening out there, we're not necessarily trying to sell you anything, and I'm certainly wanting to bring a lot of value to you. So if there's this episode or any other episode in the past that you have listened to that you really loved, all I ask is please share it with someone else that you might think would connect or need or needs to hear exactly what we or this episode or other episodes are talking about. And if you have even more of a desire to want to support the growth of this podcast, please go visit on iTunes and leave a 5-star written review and maybe even a little taste of something that you got and walked away from, from this episode or another episode. And so, so so we can have some really great value and other people can see that there is more, you know, more out there for them to learn from. And Mark, I'd like to thank you again for hanging out with us today.

The pleasure is all mine, my friend. Thank you. What a blast. Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life Podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook @JasonWasserLMFT.