Marketing Tactics That Drive Real Business Growth with John Dwyer

Are you wasting money on marketing strategies that don't deliver results?

You're not alone.

97% of businesses have never used an incentive to attract customers and it's costing them big time. But what if you could transform your marketing without breaking the bank? And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, A podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode! I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And today, I am thrilled to welcome my guest today, the legendary marketing maverick John Dwyer. And we're going to uncover how you can use direct response marketing tactics and create unforgettable wow factor moments to attract and retain your customers. Whether you're a business owner, frontline manager, or simply looking to take control of your customer attraction, this episode is packed with actionable insights you won't want to miss. I do have one simple request, though. If there's somebody in your circle who could benefit from the insights that we're sharing today, please do them a favor and pass along a link to this episode. Thank you very much. Hey, have you ever felt like your marketing efforts are a black hole sucking up your budget without delivering the results you hope for? Well, maybe you've tried things like running ads, offering discounts, or pumping out social media posts. But at the end of the day, it seems like your competitors are thriving while you're left wondering what you're doing wrong. Most businesses fall into the same trap, relying on outdated strategies or worse, Focusing on price wars that eat up profits. But what if the real problem is deeper than you think? What if there's a proven approach that you've never even considered that could transform the way you attract and keep your customers? And what if this tool actually made you money instead of draining your budget? That brings us to our Question of the Day. So as a business leader, Are you struggling to stand out in a crowded market while juggling the never-ending cost of not just money, but the time and energy trying to connect with your customers? I'd love to know your thoughts. Why don't you drop your ideas, your thoughts, and even your, oh my God, this is me moments in the comments. I'd love to hear from you. And if you're up for it, go ahead and share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. Put your comments down. and be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, our guest today is a true marketing trailblazer, somebody who has redefined what it means to create unforgettable customer experiences. John Dwyer isn't just a marketing expert. He's a master of the wow factor. With a list that includes global giants like Disney, KFC, 7-Eleven, and even Rupert Murdoch's media empire, Wow! Jon has spent his career transforming businesses into household names. What sets Jon apart is his ability to craft simple yet ingenious strategies that deliver measurable results. Strategies so powerful that they once caught the attention of Jerry Seinfeld, leading to one of the most iconic collaborations in marketing history. Jon, welcome to the show!

Marc, that guy you just spoke about sounds pretty good.

He does, doesn't he? You should maybe meet him. You can go to the bathroom and see him in the mirror.

I'll tell you what I'm gonna I've got a lot to live up to after that intro.

So, John, why don't we get some clarity on who your customers are and how do you serve them?

Yeah, our customers, generally speaking, are small to medium-sized businesses. Around about a dozen years ago, I swapped from being in the corporate world doing, you know, marketing consultancy for the likes of the companies you just mentioned, you know, the McDonald's and KFCs and 7-Eleven and so forth. And I said to my wife, look, we're not getting any younger. Why don't we use this IP that I've been, you know, developing with the bigger businesses And why don't we do what Anthony Robbins does? We jump on stage at seminars and we provide this advice to smaller businesses. And yeah, so therefore that's what we did. I had no clue what I was doing because I'd been in the corporate world forever and speaking with smaller businesses, as you well know, needs a, yeah, it's a different communication tool. Particularly, I'll never forget, Mark, I walked out on my first seminar and, you know, we had about 100 businesses in the room and the week Before, you know, I was doing stuff with Seinfeld and I was in a boardroom of 7-Eleven and doing stuff with McDonald's. And on the first time I stepped out on stage, I said to the people in the front row, what do you do? And there were 3 ladies and they said, one said, I'm a psychic. The other one was a life coach and the other one made garden gnomes. And so I said to my wife, look, I'm going to Costco at morning tea. And she said, why? I said, to buy some rope. What the hell have we done? Because we stepped out of the boardroom. into this world that I just wasn't used to.

Yeah.

And so therefore I look over the years, it's a dozen years ago now. So we've hopefully, you know, recognized what small to medium-sized businesses want and you know what, they don't want advice. I thought they did. And so, you know, for the first year or two, I was silly. I was giving them marketing advice when in fact they are a very good technician, but they're very busy in their business, no matter what that might be. They want packaged done-for-you concepts. And so therefore we swapped the whole business across to Delivering to them a packaged concept rather than trying to teach them.

Right, right, right. Well, you know, and to your point, I think many businesses pour money into marketing with very little return. Why do you think that this is such a widespread issue? Like, there's so many resources out there. Why are people limiting themselves?

Yeah, look, I really do think it's because, you know, most business owners have never, you know, I guess, trained themselves in marketing. They're very good technicians. You know, we've got a dental practice at the moment that came on recently and he's got a multimillion-dollar business. But, you know, he told me when he went to dental university, he spent whatever it was, 3 or 4 years there and came out as a very good dentist, but no one ever taught him how to get patients, how to get, you know, customers. And that's the thing is that most businesses are run by very good technicians, but they don't have the skills, which in my view is the most important thing. And that is, you know, marketing skills.

Yeah, yeah. And of course, you know, this podcast is dedicated to helping people because to your point, they don't have marketing skills, they might not have finance skills, they don't have leadership skills. And so they need to be able to shake up their, their bubble. When it comes down to marketing skills though, what's the biggest misconception you've seen around what actually makes marketing effective?

I think the biggest misconception is that the easiest way to quickly bring in income is to drop your pants. In other words, drop your prices.

Yeah.

And we all fall prey to the temptation of doing that. And there's nothing wrong with doing that maybe once or twice or 3 times a year. The big department stores do that, you know, when they want to get rid of stock. However, whilst it's the easiest way to bring in quick money, of course you lose margin. And, you know, we all know that it's a race to the bottom and the guy down the road can match you within 5 minutes.

Yeah.

And so our philosophy is, is look, instead of price discounting, what you should be doing is value adding by If you don't have an organic wow factor and I, you know, these guys who've made the iPhone, they don't need my help. Okay? There is only one iPhone. They've got an organic wow factor. It doesn't matter what phone you might wanna follow, but I'm just using this as an example.

Mm-hmm.

They don't need me. They've got an organic wow factor in their product. But if you're a solar dealer and your solar panels look like everyone else's, or you're a furniture store and your furniture store looks like everyone else's, then you need to come up with what we call an artificial wow factor. And that, generally speaking, is a Happy Meal toy. And so how we teach people to increase the number of customers and sales is that if they've got a me-too product, it's just the same as all your competitors, then think about having an artificial wow factor that's going to cut through price. In fact, take their eyes off the price and get them to buy your product versus someone else's. And McDonald's have been doing that.

I can't wait to dig more into that because I think you're onto something there because I just spoke to movers And talking to all these moving franchisees, right, who are constantly, the one question they hate more than anything else when somebody calls them up and say, I wanna move from this place to this place, how much will it cost me?

Right?

And of course, you know, they're using services as a commodity-based thing. And I hear the same thing from accountants and from bookkeepers, right? That they, and you go onto the website and all the websites say the exact same thing. And so for the people tuning in, what are some telltale signs— that a business is relying really on ineffective marketing strategies?

Normally the obvious one, it's silly for me to say this, Marc, but the obvious one of course is sales have flatlined. But what they, the obvious signs are that when a business can't predict their future income, then you know and I know that's nail-biting. And so therefore what we try to do is provide them with a model or multiple models whereby they can flick the switch and all of a sudden, it sounds ridiculously corny, I know, but you know, they can flick the switch and there's a pretty good chance that, you know, their income will increase because the stuff that we provide them is, you know, I'm a baby boomer. I've been doing this since the 1800s. So therefore, you know, there's a pretty good chance that the stuff that we give businesses has had a history of working. I'm not completely stupid. If I give them something I haven't tested, then I'm an idiot. So, you know, we want to have a reasonable win rate. And can I guarantee that everything we give them works?

No.

They might be wearing an ankle bracelet. They might have an awful product. Who knows? But most of the time, the stuff that we provide to them, which is value-add marketing ideas, has been tested, you know, Quite a few times over. Yeah.

You know, one of the challenges I've had as an entrepreneur, as a business operator, is when I, when I use some strategies and stuff, I have a really hard time kind of proving ROI on any of the marketing. And I know when I talk to even like meeting planners and, you know, they, they put ads and they do different things. How does a business know if they are blowing the bank on bad initiatives, or is it just something that they have to keep consistent with? And then they realize, you know, 6, 8, 12 months later, they've just wasted a ton of money.

I'm glad you brought that up because it's my pet hate. I've got 6 millennial children who keep on telling me everything's about brand building. And it is, we buy Kellogg's because it's Kellogg's and, you know, we buy Nike because it's Nike and Coca-Cola because it's Coca-Cola. However, if you've got a turnover less than $1 million and 96% of businesses in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK are doing less than $1 million.

Okay.

So the vast majority of businesses are doing less than that. Then really you should not listen to the bearded hipster 26-year-old who tells you to build your brand. And the reason I say that is I don't know whether they're bearded hipsters, but mine fall into that category of, you know, 20s and early 30s. I keep on saying to them, look, branding is irrelevant if nobody's buying your product. So, you know, the thing is, is the conventional wisdom from an advertising agency is get them to fall in love with your brand so that they'll taste your product. We flip that, get them to taste your product so that they'll fall in love with your brand. And the best example of that is calamari outside the seafood shop. You know, if I owned a seafood shop, I'd have, you know, hostesses at lunchtime and dinnertime outside handing out calamari samples, taste testing. And then if people liked it, there's a good chance they'll come in and spend a fortune on the barramundi. And that's the thing is that there's a lot of, you know, look, it's easy for baby boomers to have a shot at millennials because I've got 6 of them, but they tend to concentrate and focus so much on building the brand. And you've got to do that. Don't get me wrong. You know, it's great, but simultaneously with that, you've got to put food on the table. And so, you know, I've got clients that say, look, they were being told by a branding expert who was 25 that, you know, they needed to get more likes. And I said, yeah, you try that going home tonight. Tell your family around the dinner table, kids, we got 242 likes today on Facebook. And the kids are going, daddy, there's no food on the table. So vanity metrics is alive and well, and you want to get away from that. Every single thing you do should be measurable if you're a small business. So, you know, billboards and signs on the back of taxis and on the side of buses is not your caper. Because you won't be able to measure that. Whereas if you advertise on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram today, and you will know if you do it properly with direct response marketing, you'll know whether that's worked tomorrow.

I love that. I love that you mentioned vanity metrics because I see all too often, especially, you know, being an entrepreneur, I'm constantly getting harassed by people who say, oh, we're gonna get you more likes, more views on YouTube. We're gonna get you more likes on Instagram. We're gonna get you more followers. And the one question I always have for them is, how do I guarantee that the people you're guaranteeing are gonna be my clients?

Right. Got it.

And so, is there a methodology behind being able to look at one's initiatives and saying, am I actually doing what matters versus am I, you know, just doing the vanity metric thing?

Absolutely. And look, there's 5 components to that. I mean, we, we are a direct response marketing company, so therefore Whilst I absolutely applaud brand building, because as I said, that you want to do that, but you don't want to do it solace. You want to do it in conjunction with putting food on the table.

Right.

And you know, there's not too many small businesses under a million turnover that can afford to sponsor a sporting team or a basket— you know, like a basketball, football, whatever it might be. What I say that there's 5 components to direct response marketing. Number one is highlight their problem. And let's say it's a weight loss company. So that would be, are you not feeling well and are you overweight? So after you highlight the problem, number 2 is to aggravate the problem. Do you know the summer's just around the corner? Do you want to look good in the swimsuit? Number 3 is to provide the solution, and that is use my dietary program and you'll look like a supermodel in 4 weeks. Number 4 is proof, which generally speaking is people who were not happy before, but now they are. And then number 5, a strong CTA, which is call to action. So If I want to condense that, those 5 points down to 2, then it's really problem-solution marketing. You highlight their problem and you give them the solution. Right.

Would you say that that's kind of what the general— around advertising, that's always been the formula? It's like, here's a problem, here's a solution, right?

It should have been. But the funny thing is, Marc, is that, you know, when you look, even in the old days with newspaper advertising, there were so many people that would just waste the headline at Christmas time. For example, they say Merry Christmas from whatever the company might be, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that is not the Elvis Found headline because everyone is doing that from December 1st onwards. What would've been better is to sort of, you know, spend $50 in my business, whatever it might be, and you get a free blimp.

Yes.

And, you know, Merry Christmas can certainly be all over the ad, but they forget that that headline has to be an Elvis Found headline. It's gotta be a headline that's gonna grab their attention. Of course, the world that we live in these days, you got 4 seconds, 4 seconds.

4 seconds. 3 years ago they said it was 7 seconds. And so, yeah, to your point, when we're in an industry of where people are just doing this for hours at a time, yeah, 4 seconds is, uh, and it might— 4 seconds might be really generous.

What we find, Marc, is that, um, a lot of particularly people around my vintage, you know, baby boomers who are, you know, still running their business, but they're being coached, if you like, by— and this sounds like I've got it in for the 20-year-olds, don't get me wrong, you know, they're smarter than me and just about most things, but they will say, look, you know, give me X dollars and I'll put a Facebook campaign on for you. And because they might not be well-versed in the mechanics of direct response marketing, they'll put that Facebook campaign on. And of course the cost per lead might start off okay, but then, you know, we know that it goes up sometimes. What we do is that, you know, the latest one that we do, we just say to people, look, why don't you run a contest on Facebook? And we call it the Facebook contest formula. And all you do is that you give away your product or service as the prize instead of giving away something that's completely different. And that means if you are giving away your product or service as the prize, whoever enters that contest, provided you've targeted them properly on Facebook, is going to be raising their hand and going to be a red-hot lead. So therefore you give one of your products away. We have a classic case just recently where it was a company that was a walking frame company for older people. You know, the walking frames they use when they go shopping.

Yep.

And it was about $500. And so we put a Facebook campaign out and said, how would you like to win a walking frame? We targeted people predominantly in their 70s and 80s. This guy got 820 leads in one week and he only spent $40 a day. And at the end of it, he said to me, I can't get to those 820 leads. And I said, well, just spend $20 a day, not $40, spend $20 and you get 400 leads. He said, I can't get the 400. I said, well, spend $10 a day, you get 200 leads. And so therefore it's things like that that really to us, I guess, come naturally because of what we do.

Mm-hmm.

But if you can imagine, I mean, we've got a dental practice, as I said, at the moment, at the moment we're giving away the invisible braces on Facebook. So it says, win invisible braces for your children. The only parents who are going to enter that contest are parents who have children with crooked teeth.

Yeah.

You know, you don't need braces on your teeth if you've got straight teeth. So therefore, again, they got about 1,000 entries in the first week. They've only spent $30 a day. So they're getting entries for about 25 cents on Facebook, which is insane. And out of those 1,000, they give one person invisible braces. The other 999, they give a special deal to. They say, look, you didn't win, but we've got a great deal for you. And if they can't ring them, because most can't get to 1,000 people, we have an AI robot then that rings the 999 people who didn't win. And the robot has got a better conversion, would you believe, than the human.

Really? That's hilarious.

Yeah.

You know, you've brought so many things to the forefront, and I know that, you know, the audience is probably tuning in going, how does this affect me? Or how can I make this work for me? And so when we come back, I'd like to explore your idea about this wow factor. And expunge on it so that people can actually take away something that they can apply right away. And we'll get to that right after this.

When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book, Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights! Camera! Action! today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com.

Welcome back! I am here speaking with John Dwyer. We're talking about everything marketing. Marketing. What the heck is marketing? And John, in your experience, how does missing the mark with our marketing affect a business's ability to compete within its industry. I do see that when somebody puts out a flyer in our little town, everybody puts out a flyer in our little town. If somebody puts out a Facebook ad, everybody puts out a Facebook ad. And it doesn't matter if it's an accounting firm or a pool shop, whatever. There's gotta be something that people can do to actually differentiate themselves.

Yeah, look, this, I mean, our business is theinstituteofwow.com. So obviously I'm going to be biased towards creating a wow factor to distinguish your product service from your competitors.

Right.

You know, but even the guy that we lived on acreage up until when all the kids left home and we had, you know, 2 or 3 acres. And if I had the guy come in to do the lawn mowing on his ride-on mower, not once throughout the whole dozen years that we paid him did he ever put us on a loyalty program, you know? So, and what I mean by that is that if he said to us, look, every time I mow your 2 acres, you'll get a point. And when you save up 5 points or 10 points, you get a dining voucher. Now he would never think that way because whilst he's a great lawn mowing guy and very good technician in that regard, he wasn't thinking how to keep us as a customer. Now we stayed with him, but I'll tell you what, if, you know, there was a letterbox drop that came in our letterbox and it was a guy who was half the price and did exactly the same thing, my wife probably would've swapped, you see. So therefore what I say to people is that, you know, just don't take that sale for granted. Make sure that, you know, you actually provide them with a wow factor, a gosh factor that nobody else gives them. And it's so easy to do because 97% of businesses don't do it. But the big mistake that most business owners make, I believe, is not identifying their most profitable target audience. They identify their target audience, but not the most profitable. So if you are a skin, like a wrinkle cream company and you're targeting women who are 45 or 50 over and your skin cream is reasonably expensive, but it's good, then you just don't target women over 45. You target rich women over 45 who might live in Beverly Hills, California. And that's the thing is that sometimes, you know, people ignore the fact these days that the social media platforms are the most laser-targeted form of advertising that the world has ever seen. So make sure you use it.

Yeah, it's really interesting. But would you say that you have people who push back on that and they go, but I don't want just the rich people in Beverly Hills, I want everybody?

Yes, exactly. They get caught on CPL. So therefore the cost per lead to them on Facebook, for example, for all women over 45 might be a dollar. But if they're looking for women over 45 of a particular demographic, in other words, they're rich, then the cost per lead might be $2. I'll take the $2 one all the time because they're not gonna be a wasted lead.

Right, right. And so really, it's really defining that breakout of these people will be willing to pay the extra cost for this skin cream in your method. Whereas the people who are living maybe in downtown, living hand to mouth, they have 4 kids and they just, couldn't afford their way out of a paper bag, that's just a wasted lead for the business.

It is. Well, and, and Marc, look, I, when I swapped across to this game, because I was a novice at small to medium-sized businesses, I'd been doing stuff for 7-Eleven and McDonald's and places like that. I was doing all the big scratch bingo games for Murdoch's newspapers down under. So therefore it was back in the day, this was, you know, 20 years ago, but it was back in the day that newspapers, I think, probably saw the horizon wasn't looking too flash and they had to sell more newspapers. And so therefore what they would do is get me to create promotions for the newspapers. So if you bought the Sunday paper, you might've got a Disney poster. Okay. If you bought the Sunday paper, you might've got a dinosaur book or you might get a bingo card. And if you've got to buy the daily papers thereafter to scratch out the numbers that are in the paper. So I did all that sort of stuff. And I have to say, you know, like for big businesses, very few of them use direct response marketing, but the publications like Murdoch's newspapers, they knew it. They knew all about it. McDonald's knows all about it. If you go to McDonald's, aside from the Happy Meal that's been around for years and, you know, you get a toy out of it, you'll notice that when the Olympics are on, it'll be collect the 6 Olympic Coca-Cola glasses. You know, Christmas, it'll be collect the 6 toys and so forth. And just most businesses just don't understand. I mean, it doesn't have to always be an incentive. Most of the time it is a Happy Meal toy for your business, but it doesn't always have to be. It can be the chance to win $1 million. I mean, we can get $1 million from an insurance company for $22,000. And so all those shows you see on TV, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Deal or No Deal, that's all paid out by Lloyd's of London. That's not paid out by the TV networks. And the TV network basically pays a premium based on the difficulty of the questions, but you can give away $50,000, $100,000 prize and it will only cost you $4,000 or $5,000.

Yeah. And it's funny how we think about it, right? Like we think about like with casinos, you know, giving away cars at the casino. So, you know, they put a car up on a pedestal and you can play, you can play. And if you get a certain combination of stuff, then you win the car. Well, I found out that it wasn't actually the casino buying the car, right? It was really the insurance company that was, uh, was doing it because the odds of winning it were astronomical, but not impossible.

Yeah. Well, look, when people say to me, oh, look, how does that work? I go, I had one yesterday. It's a donut chain here in Australia. They're a donut business. And I just said, well, what you would do is you'd advertise on social media and say, I say, look, win $100,000. You can get the $100,000 insured. And I'll explain how that works in a second for anyone who's watching or listening. But yeah, they said to us, oh, but how would you market it? I said, what you would do, I mean, you've got 50 donut stores around this particular area of Australia. Then what you would do is run a Facebook campaign demographically in each of those areas. And it would say, how would you like to win $100,000 every time you spend $15 in the donut store? Now their average unit sale at the moment is $11. We'll take it to $15 overnight because for every $15 you get an entry into the $100,000. draw. So if you spend $30, you get 2 entries. Okay. So the benefits should be proportionate to your spend. And they said, okay, well, go on. And I said, well, what happens on the Facebook ad when you actually say, you know, win $100,000, they click the ad, they come through to a landing page, which is a contest page. And basically they give their details and then we email them a code straight away within 30 seconds. They bring that code into one of your stores. So therefore they've got to come in to get their free entry. So that's the first entries for free. After that, you gotta spend $15 per entry, right? And also they get a free donut. Well, the husband and wife who own this chain, their head exploded. They went, oh my God, that'll just— we'll be smashed. Is that not the idea? And then of course, once they're on the gravy train, in other words, someone's spent $15 and they've tasted the donuts for the first time, then of course they've got their details. Guess what? For the first time ever, they've got their details. And so therefore every afternoon or second afternoon or every week, whatever they want to do, they can send out a text message to those people and give a special deal on a dozen donuts. They've never ever thought like that before.

Yeah, it was interesting because, you know, I grew up— I'm a baby boomer as well, so I grew up with bounce-back offers where you get the newspaper, you get a little coupon, and then you take the coupon into the store to get— and that was a really great way for the operation to figure out if the marketing campaign was working because if they only got 2 coupons in the whole week or the whole promotional tour, they're, eh. But when they get 50 or 60 or 100 coupons back in. Now people are like engaged and they have a conversation and they now have details. And so what you've basically done is figured out how to do this with social media.

Exactly. And the good part about social media compared to letterbox brochures, and don't get me wrong, I even said to these people, if you've got 50 stores around Australia, then the target audience for each one is probably within 10 miles around each store. So therefore, even though we're in the digital age and AI, for goodness sake, make sure you still, you know, test letterbox brochures because on the front of the letterbox brochure, it can be all about the $100,000 prize. On the back of the brochure, it's 3 coupons, perforated coupons, just like KFC used to do when you and I were growing up. And you go back to the old thing and basically the first coupon is a deal that week. The second coupon is a deal for the next week and so forth.

Yes.

Every single thing is measurable. I mean, the crazy part about it, you and I can go into any restaurant in Canada, America, England, Australia. We can go into a restaurant tonight and spend $300 and they won't ask And I, they don't have any clue who we are.

Yep.

We have a restaurant client in Melbourne, Australia, and it's the only restaurant in the world that's full 364 nights a year. And that's fact. And all that happened there is I stopped him wasting $750,000 on advertising. And I said, we're going to give each of your waitresses 50 cents for every name and contact detail they get. So when the waitress walks to the table now, she doesn't give them an app. She doesn't give them a QR code or any of that stuff. She just says to the 4 businessmen or whoever it is on the table, Here's 4 entry forms, about the size of an ace of diamonds playing card. And it just says, win dinner for any of your friends at the end of the month. Give us your name, your email, and your phone number. Now we're not much interested in email because the open rates are through the floor, but what we are interested in is their phone number. And so what happens is that every afternoon at 3 o'clock, his secretary sends out a few hundred text messages and it says, listen, hi Mark. Hi Jill. Chef Pierre's got a special deal tonight, seafood lobster tail meal for 2. For $78, whatever it might be. No one leaves this restaurant for less than $200 a couple. So it is bait and switch to a degree, right?

Yeah.

It's a seafood restaurant. Yeah. So therefore he said to me every afternoon at 3 o'clock, he fills every seat in his restaurant by sending out a text message. Why? Because he collected data.

Brilliant. For people who are tuning in and this is resonating with them, how can they reach you if they need your help?

Look, I've got too much money. I live on a private island, Marc. So therefore, you know, I just don't, I'm not available. I wish. I wish. People keep on saying to me, Marc, why do you, you know, why are you still, you know, running around doing all of this sort of stuff? I say, because I had 6 kids, they took all my money.

So aside from sending out smoke signals, how can people get in contact with you?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, look, what I found at the end of a podcast, Marc, I found that it's beneficial to actually invite people to have a call because most of the speakers around the world and coaches and what have you make out that they're so wealthy, of course, they've got a private plane. And so they can't take calls and you think, oh, I know the real truth. So what we've done is I've set up a page and wait for it. It's a corny URL, but it's called getmorejd.com. My name is John Dwyer, but I get JD. Okay. So it's getmorejd.com. So if anyone would like to set up a Zoom call, I think that's the best thing to do. If you'd like some help and we'll work out whether I can help you or not within the first 10 or 15 minutes, but yeah, getmorejd.com.

Okay, terrific.

And of course my website is, you know, theinstituteofwow.com.

So, you've just talked about how important these— having these incentives is to really step out of the mark. But one of the things that I see is I see industries like one of the things I tell them to do is go out and look at your competitors' websites. If they're talking the same language, if they're reflecting the same thing, then we need to change our language. So, I understand the incentive component to it. But what about when they go to a moving company's website and everybody's talking about the same thing? We're family-owned. We're trustworthy, we're clean, we're safe. How do people start talking a narrative that would really elevate them past their competitors?

First of all, don't fall into the trap of taking up a lot of real estate space by having a headline that says, welcome to our website.

Right?

You don't need to do that. You don't need to do that. And whilst it's nice, you know, it's a bit like when we get emails these days, I always have a bit of a giggle because I'm sarcastic. I have a bit of a giggle where they go, oh, hi JD, hope you are well. Well, what are you gonna hope I'm not well? I mean, why do you waste— that's a full line you've just wasted, you know?

Right.

My wife was here, Marc. She'd tell you that. Yeah. As I got older, I just got angry. I don't know. But yeah, really the same principles apply, Marc, and that is problem solution. So therefore on the top of your website, which of course is the most important, you know, real estate that you've got because it's just as important as in the magazine days, the front page of the magazine, right? So your front page of the magazine is that top part of your website, and it should have either an Elvis found style headline. In other words, you've just won the gold medal in your industry. So you've won the award of the best bakery or whatever it might be in the world. Right. There's nothing wrong with that because that's a wonderful positioning statement. But if you haven't won that, and most of us don't win trophies, then yeah, make sure that that headline at the top is a problem solution. It doesn't have to be you screaming. So if you go back to that weight loss example that I gave before, then it might be, if it's a weight loss company, there's one of your clients, one of your customers who is, there's a before and after photo for obvious reasons. And he or she is saying, I cannot believe I lost X number of pounds in just 4 weeks. This has changed my life. Now, if you are overweight and you're not feeling good about yourself and you come to a website like that where the headline screams at you, Problem solution, there's a good chance you'll scroll.

Yes.

Yep. And if you, and if you, and if you scroll, by the way, Marc, and they, and then if we've got you half interested, that's when we say, join our program and we'll give you a free vacation. Okay. So what we do is that we package all of these things together and we give them the Happy Meal toys so they don't even have to dream it up. The biggest, most successful Happy Meal toy in the world was the Seinfeld one, which I know you'll probably get onto. And that is a free vacation. You give someone a vacation, they'll crawl over broken glass and throw money at you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, some people would turn around and say, you know, how, how can I afford to give them a vacation? It's like, you know, they're, you know, like when you talk about like the donut shop and stuff, I find that entrepreneurs are very, there's a lot of scarcity thinking, right? There, there's scarcity thinking in, if I invest in my employees, they might quit. If I create an incentive plan and give it, you know, give away the farm, Then I, and people will walk away and I'll just be taken advantage of. How do you change, help people change that mindset?

Well, all I say is, what was the percentage that you were willing to give up in order to get a customer? So therefore I'd say to someone, if they're an owner of a business, what would you be prepared to pay me or anyone for that matter for a customer? And if they say, well, 10% of the sale price, and if y'all were selling something for $500, I'd be prepared to pay $50 to get that customer. Because if you're selling something for $500, you've got a 30% margin in there, then you're walking away with, let's just say $200 for round figure.

Right.

And if I said to you, okay, well, I can give you a customer for $50, they're gonna say yes every time because guess what? They've got a $500 sale and it's only 10%. So, and I say, okay, well, if you were to have a sign outside your business or online that said 10% discount, do you think anyone's gonna get hard nipples over that? And no, not a chance in the world. Groupon spoiled that for everyone because they came in with 50%. However, if I give you a vacation to anywhere in Canada, right around the US, right around the world, and it's worth up to $1,000, but I give that to you for $50, do you think that $50 on this, which is a Happy Meal toy from heaven, would be a better spend than just giving up $50, a 10% discount? As a video. Do you think a 10% discount would match this? And that's what we do. So we have it, obviously I'm telling you about that one because as a result of a big promotion down under that we did with Seinfeld, I got contacted by a travel company who said, look, you know, we've got unsold rooms right around the world. Would you like to market them and give them to businesses as a Happy Meal toy? And I said, yes. So now we give businesses now the absolute packaged promotion from heaven whereby they say, buy my product or service and I'll give you a free 3 to 7 night vacation and they pay $50 for the vacation. Love it.

You know, and what's interesting is it doesn't have to cost us stuff. You know, we all live in communities and all our communities have businesses. And so if we went to businesses and say, hey, can we do a partnership deal? Can we do something? Like you go to, I don't know, if you're a restaurant and you go to a local hotel and say, hey, can we run a contest where we're gonna give away a 3-night stay, a weekend stay to your hotel? Would that be okay? Well, Put your logo in. We'll tie it to all our advertising. What's the hotel going to say? No. It's like, oh, we can't afford to have 3 nights that we might be empty filled up by, you know, and have your advertising spewed all over the place. It costs them nothing.

Yeah.

And yet it's so hard to do it. Like, I worked in a hotel in a small town, and the one claim to fame that this town had was it had a skydiving landing strip. And we had 4 hotels all competing for the same business. And so I got into a partnership with the skydiving school and I started putting out promotions and it would say, stop jumping on the bed. The ceiling impacts are affecting our overhead. And so, and then we would, we would do things like we would do free giveaways for tandem jumps and all this. And what ended up happening was because we formed this relationship with the skydiving school. Instead of camping on site, we gave them discounts and we started filling up the hotel with skydivers. And we became a partner that effectively took our dead nights and filled them up with skydivers. And we ended up getting their annual conference, right? And so, it's like we have to get out of our box somehow. We have to get out of this thing and start thinking a little bit more creatively.

Well, what you've just explained there too is that a good idea can snowball into becoming an unbelievably good idea. Yeah.

But we have to be willing to try, right? And so, I mean, getting ourselves out of shaking the— this idea that we're on an island, right? It's my store, you know, I'm special, nobody else is. And then, and then saying, you know, can we go out actually into the community? It's like, oh, I don't wanna partner with anybody. What happens if they rip me off? Right?

And it's like, yeah, I just don't get it. Well, yeah. And Marc, I mean, because, because of what you do and I do, you tend to go to probably more Anthony Robbins style, you know, events than most And what you just explained there is the closed fist mentality versus the open palm mentality. You've got to have a mentality where you're happy to do business with other people and do promotions, as you said, do joint venture promotions with other people. You know, the wow— you talk about small country town. We lived in a small country town for a little while and most of our kids probably grew up in the small country town. So it was our version of Mayberry, uh, Andy Griffith Show. And there was a hairdresser in town and she said to Gail, there's only one, she'd been there forever. And she said to my wife, Gail, could John give me some of that wow factor stuff? You know, Anyway, so I knew it was a free job that was coming up. And her name was Kimberly, lovely, lovely lady and a good friend. And Gail came home to me and she said, look, Kimberly's in trouble because she explained to me there's a hairdresser opened across the road. First time in 30 years in a little country town, there's 2 hairdressers. And the other hairdresser, in order to get traction, decided to have men's haircuts, which Kimberly was charging $55 for. The shop across the road, the hairdresser across the road opened with $10 haircuts for men. So all of the men just went— men don't care. They'll go to the butcher to get the haircut. So the men just walked straight across the road.

They'll go to your gardener for a haircut.

That's right. That's right. Anyway, Gail said to me, look, I know you're busy, but here's another freebie for you. I went, oh, terrific. And she said, Kimberly said, can you ask John what we should do? Should we drop our product? We can't do $10 haircuts for goodness sake. I said, leave it with me. So anyway, 2 days later, I gave her the idea that got all of the men back within a month. And the idea was very simple. It was wow factor, but it was not an incentive. We just put a sandwich board outside her hairdresser opposite the one across the road to, you know, And it just said, we fix $10 haircuts.

Lovely!

So, the wow factor doesn't always have to be a Happy Meal toy.

Lovely! That's great. That's absolutely phenomenal. Hey, I know that people are tuning in and they're getting some ideas. I would like to talk about some cautionaries and some pitfalls. What are some of the wrong ways people are doing this stuff? And we'll get to that right after this.

Attention meeting and event planners. Is your company or association planning a live or virtual conference, seminar, or staff retreat? Are you looking for a fresh, energetic perspective on what it takes to put on a jaw-dropping experience for your customers or staff? Book customer experience expert Marc Haine for your next group event. Past participants have said, Marc kept us in stitches while teaching us how important and powerful actually designing our customer experience can be. Read more testimonials and find out how Marc can serve you and your group at marchaine.com. That's M-A-R-C-H-A-I-N-E.com.

Welcome back! I am speaking with John Dwyer. And of course, as you can tell, our topic today is super, super valuable. If you're getting lots from it, please let us know in the comments. As you can tell, John and I are absolutely committed to small business owners just like you. So, if you need help, if you're planning a leadership retreat or a conference, or you need some advice, please go into the show notes. Our contact information is there. Please let us know how we can help you. John, cautionaries and pitfalls. What are some of the things we should be concerned about? As we start trying to test the waters on some of your concepts?

One of the things you should be very cognizant of is that people love to sit on the fence and I'm one of them. I mean, we all love to sit on the fence because, oh, would we buy that new car or buy that new television or buy that new lounge suite? I'll think about it. I'll think about it. And so therefore my cautionary advice would be is that when you are going to be running a campaign, no matter what that is, If there is a special deal attached to it, a, a wow factor giveaway, an incentive, whatever it might be, the chance to win, you know, $100,000, make sure you put a time limitation on the offer. And there's nothing wrong with extending that. I mean, sure, the Entertainer, I think, has come back, you know, a million times. So has the Beach Boys.

Okay.

So therefore you can say, look, this is available only until, you know, 15th of whatever month it might be. And then of course, if it comes to the 14th of that month and you've still got some stock, you can say, you know, We've extended it by public demand. Okay. And there's, that's not a cardinal sin. That's just common sense. But if you don't give a deadline, then just watch what happens. It will not be anywhere near successful. It just will not be. So whatever offer you've got, make sure you get them off the fence.

It has to be FOMO, right? There has to be a fear of missing out.

You got it.

Yeah.

Yeah. There you go.

Any other pitfalls? Like when somebody's investing in it, when somebody's trying to do something like you, for instance, you mentioned You know, doing a $100,000 giveaway, leveraging insurance companies and that sort of thing. When somebody's testing something for the very first time, I do know a lot of people, they'll get convinced by their strategy and jump both feet in. Is there a way to do this a smart way? And is there a way to do it really dumb?

Yeah.

Taste testing. I hope I'm answering your question, Marc. I mean, at the end of the day, I would say to everybody, look, just do a taste test on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever the platform is. And I know we talk social media, social media, social media. So, you know, it can be a, it can be a test in the local newspaper or it can be a test in the letterbox drop as well. But we think that, you know, 80 to 90% of what we do, we as in a marketing company these days, our clients want a quick turnaround. I haven't had a client yet who's knocked on my door and said, JD, I'd like you to help me increase my business, but do it slowly. You know, I've never had a client that's asked that.

Take your time.

Take your time. You've got all the time you want. And so therefore, yeah, they expect me to be David Copperfield and sometimes you are, sometimes you aren't. I mean, I've had clients that are trying to sell snake repellers. This was an inventor, by the way. And normally you run the other way with inventors, but he asked me if I could help him sell snake repellers, which were sticks that you put around your rural house that apparently vibrate under the ground and scare snakes away. I don't know how it works, but he came to me in winter and I said to him, when do snakes come out? He said, oh, spring, summer. I said, come back and see me in spring, summer. I'm not Seriously, you can't sell footballs in the baseball season. Try selling Christmas trees on the 1st of January.

There you go. Yep.

There are some things that, you know, even though we think we're pretty good at this, you just can't do. But what I would say to people is just dip your toe in the water. The great thing about social media, as opposed to in the old days newspapers, is that you can throw a few hundred dollars at Facebook and test 1 or 2 or 3 campaigns. And you'll know within 2 or 3 days. In fact, you'll probably know within 1 day whether or not that's money well spent. And the great thing is, is that if it works, then you turn up the volume. And you couldn't do that back in the days of just magazines and newspapers because you'd have to pay a whole lot for that. And there's a very, very good chance that if it rained, that newspaper that was thrown over the front fence—

Never got to the reader. Yep.

Yep.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it costs a fortune.

One thing though, Mark, I will say is that, and this is a bigger business, but the Bank Down Under that I did the Get a home loan, get a free vacation, it was called. And Seinfeld was the spokesman for that. I kept on getting all the time from left-brain thinkers because let's face it, a bank is run by people who are more operationally minded. So they're going to be left-brained, whereas you and I tend to be right-brained, you know, promotional marketing. They were saying to me, oh, listen, what we want to do, JD, is that we want to give people the choice. So if you're coming in to say, you know, get a home loan for 6.2% and you get a free vacation, And Jerry Seinfeld was on TV saying that. Or if you don't want the vacation, then we'll give you the home loan for 5.9%. I said, are you insane? I don't know what you're smoking, but that'd be like McDonald's saying the Happy Meal comes with a Happy Meal box for $8. If you don't want the— sorry, the toy comes with the $8 box. If you don't want the toy, you get the $7. They know that they're paid a dollar for the toy. So just be careful if you are in any sort of business. Not to listen to many, well, too deeply to left-brain thinkers because they will say, why are you doing that? Whereas Marc and I will say, why not? Give it a shot.

And so we've just sent a coronary virus all to every CFO out there. You have all these CFOs going, what?

I don't have many accountant friends. And by the way, Marc, for being ultra right-brained, in other words, spreadsheets used to scare me. I'm a bit smarter these days. Because I used to be scared of looking at a spreadsheet. That's how stupid I was. But coming close to the wire on a couple of occasions, I've got to say to you, I should have listened more to the accountant.

Yeah, yeah, there's a place for them. So Mr. and Mrs. Accountant who's listening to this, we still love you. It's okay. JD, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

Yeah, look, I, I think really at the end of the day, if I was to offer any advice to anyone, try and stay away as much as you possibly can from that temptation of price discounting. And the reason for that is that you will find that if you drop your prices, then your competitors down the road will probably match it within 5 minutes. But if you say to them, look, buy my product or service and you get whatever that extra bonus might be, then they will be having 6 months worth of meetings to work out how to combat that. I mean, the one that I use all the time is a hardware store. Now, I don't know what the big hardware store would be in Canada or the US, but in Australia it's a big one called Bunnings. So there's basically a Costco size retail outlet, the size of a football field. And they sell everything and they guarantee that they'll beat anybody's prices by 10%. And they're on television and social media like you wouldn't believe. They're like the McDonald's of the hardware game, right? If you were a hardware store opposite them and you think you're gonna beat them on price, then you are on drugs.

Yeah.

Okay. There's no way you're gonna beat Bunnings on price. However, if you had a deal whereby every time somebody bought a wheelbarrow from you, you gave them a free pitchfork, Or every time someone spent X dollars with you, you gave them 2 free movie tickets. The big Costco-style competitor, the 40-ton gorilla across the road, would be spending 6 months of committee meetings trying to work out how to beat you because they're not built for that. They're built for price discounting.

Yeah. And that leads to other conversations I've had on the show about how smaller business can be really, really adaptable and you can pivot and you can turn really, really quickly. All you have to It's just make the decision to do so, right?

Yeah, dead right. And with social media these days, whereas the old days you'd have to draw up an ad for the newspaper and then you'd have to probably make a number of copy changes and then it's gotta be given in a certain format to the newspaper and the deadline you had to get in by Thursday at 4 o'clock, otherwise you wouldn't be in the Saturday paper, all that sort of stuff. Keep in mind, I was born in Bedrock, so therefore I'm familiar with all of these. The Flintstones were my childhood.

Chisel newspaper.

Yeah, you got it. Whereas these days, you know, you can think up an idea. I mean, you know, we run fast. I laugh when I see, you know, people dealing with the bearded hipster website designer who took 6 months to put together a website. We do websites as in one-page landing page websites in 24 hours. We don't mess around, right? And so, and are they to a formula like McDonald's with their hamburgers? Of course it is. You know, we know what's gonna go up the top and the middle and down the bottom. So we move pretty fast, but my view is, is that if you are going to survive as a small business and you want to really distinguish yourself from the opposition, you've got to come up with a wow factor and you've got to communicate that in, you know, I guess the most cost-effective way. And these days, whether you like it or not, the most cost-effective way is Facebook, Instagram, all those platforms. Right.

Fantastic. J.D., thank you so much for doing this. Could you just remind everybody one more time of your offer?

Yeah, thank you. You can have a conversation with me on Zoom, and we found Zoom is the best because then at least you can hold up your bad ads or whatever you want to hold up. I'll hold up a few of my bad ads as well. So if you wanted to just book a call with me, then yeah, just go to getmorejd.com, as in John Dwyer, getmorejd.com. And the other website that we have is Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, John, for sharing your passion, your expertise with us today. It's been absolutely brilliant. It's been one of the fastest shows. I don't know. It just went like this.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you'd like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is It is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. How simple is that, right? It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a comment or a review about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? Did you get a takeaway? I'd love to know. And of course, if you haven't done so yet, please make sure that you subscribe to the podcast because then you get notifications when I bring you fresh new content each and every week with experts just like J.D. So, I'd love for you to be able to get that. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been an absolute pleasure. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

Thank you for joining us this week on Experience Leadership. Make sure you visit markhane.com for a full directory of available episodes. While you're at it, if you found today's content valuable, please share it and tell your friends about the show. As Mark says, knowledge is power, but only if you share it. Be sure to tune in each week for the newest episode. Please. Stay safe, stay healthy, and— Dare to be the exception.