Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

Business Strategy

Why you should work on your marketing daily

It’s easier to do things daily than it is to do them weekly or monthly. It’s counter-intuitive but it’s true.

When I exercise daily, it isn’t even a thought. It’s a habit. I make time for it and it gets done. No excuses.

And it’s the same with your marketing.

If every day you publish your thoughts on social media, write that blog post, refine that ad creative, or generally check in on things, it’s a lot easier than trying to do it once a week or whenever you have time.

And here’s the thing: your results are a lot better, too.

We all get busy. And when you’re not planning to work on your marketing every day, it becomes an afterthought. Things get missed. Days go by.

And then what happens? The pipeline slowly dries up until one day you are wondering what happened to your leads.

It must be the competition, you think.

I get it. Marketing is time-consuming. It can be difficult. There are so many details, tasks, revisions, coordination, and headaches that come with it.

But it’s also the highest point of leverage in your business.

After all, would you expect a fruit stand to be successful if it did not take its fruits to the marketplace?

Yes, you have operational responsibilities. Yes, they’re very important.

But if you’re not working on your marketing initiatives daily, moving projects along, and publishing content to the world, then your business will suffer.

Maybe you won’t see the effects today. But every day you’re not investing your time in marketing, you’re losing opportunities. I guarantee it.

If you own the business, ask yourself how many days each week you work on your marketing—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

If the answer is less than five, you’ll have a problem soon (if you don’t already).

Work on your marketing daily. It’s easier and it gets better results.

Yours,

Kevin C. Whelan

Two specializations, two brands, one door

I recently walked into a fast-food restaurant in Toronto that specializes in roti and dosa dishes.

But they aren’t a “roti and dosas” restaurant. They operate under two distinct brands, My Dosa Place and My Roti Place, even though they serve food from the same retail space.

The ingredients in dosas and roti are very similar. They both have lots of curry flavours and originate in India.

At the location I visited, there is one door but inside there are two separate cashiers, two separate food stations where they prepare your food, two separate menus, and two separate eating areas in the same retail space.

It makes you wonder why they didn’t just open a “roti and dosas” restaurant if that’s what they end up serving anyway. Why go through all the trouble of setting up two separate food stations and hiring more people if you own both businesses and operate them from the same place?

There’s a lesson about marketing here: when it comes to marketing, specialization is power.

People like knowing that the thing they are buying is high quality. In this case, customers are not buying from a generalist fast food place that makes everything. They’re buying from either a roti or dosa restaurant. They’re buying from specialists at each.

It’s not hard to imagine a fast food restaurant being able to make two good dishes under one brand. But there’s nothing remarkable about a company that sells roti and dosas.

It’s more remarkable to be a roti OR a dosa restaurant.

One is specialized, and therefore probably good at that specific category, and the other is generalist, and probably mediocre at both. Even though we know they’re the same company, the trouble they went through to create two brands and distinct experiences makes sense to me.

So my final takeaway is this: it’s okay to sell multiple things or to serve multiple markets, but it can be smart to do that under different brands if you can manage it.

Brand consolidation and diversification may seem more efficient, but to the customer, it can make you seem unremarkable at any one thing.

Yours,

—K

P.S. I discovered later that they also have My Meatball Place and operate it alongside My Roti Place at a different location.

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There Are No Shortcuts in Business

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When I was a kid, one of my household chores was to vacuum.

We had what I thought was an 80-lb vacuum, which I would lug around the house every other week.

Sure enough, when I was done, my dad would inspect my work and tell me whether he signed off or not.

Usually, I had packed away the vacuum already and was one foot out the door to play my friends when he comes back and tells me I missed a spot.

Not one spot, but a lot of spots.

Sure enough, I had to ramble back in, haul out the vacuum and redo the entire set of stairs that I so hastily did the first time.

Every time this happened, the chore took a long longer and was a lot more arduous than it could have been.

This taught me a lesson. I hold a belief now which I attribute to these moments which is that if you’re going to do a job, do it right the first time.

The car dealership

I recently purchased a car, and we visited all of 3 locations. We knew we wanted a Toyota because we heard they run forever.

The first place I went to was an independent dealership that mostly sold Toyotas.

We looked around and they had nothing within our budget and interests.

The salesman asked me if I’d like to leave my contact info in case anything comes up within my range.

Not more than a few days later, I get a call from an overseas call centre telling me I’ve been approved for auto financing.

I asked how they got my contact information and the person told me that I must have given my information at some car dealership.

I had written it on the back of a business card with an invitation to contact me should a vehicle fitting my needs become available.

I had not given them permission to resell my contact information to car financiers.

And even though I’ve asked to be removed from their list, I still get calls, and just yesterday, a text message.

So what happened here?

1. Breach of Trust

This dealership broke the cardinal rule of business, which is to earn and keep trust.

The car salesman seemed fairly genuine. I had enough trust to leave him with my information. And now I’d never go back.

In fact, I’m not one to leave reviews on Google, but I have a good mind to start.

He broke my trust to make a quick buck. He sold my personal information to a company who keeps calling me, despite being asked to be removed from their contact list.

2. Lack of Permission

The second major issue here is a lack of permission. When contacting individuals, whether by phone, email or otherwise, without their permission, you aren’t doing marketing. You’re trying to take a shortcut. It’s spam, and it builds a bad reputation. It can also be illegal according to the CAN-SPAM Act (US) and CASL (Canada).

To make one thing clear, sales calls are fair game. If your company is listed in the phone book or has their telephone number online – you’re fair game according to the law and business expectations.

But spamming people without their permission is a shortcut. It may make you a quick buck today, but it doesn’t build a business.

There are no shortcuts in business (or in life).

What Makes You Noticeably Different from Your Competition?

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It was a beautiful fall day. The sky was clear, the weather was mild, and the sun was out in full force; the birds were chirping and the grass was green; the leaves started changing, but only slightly.

In short, it was the best day of my life.

What happened that day? I got married to my extraordinary wife.

I never felt better. Leading up to it, however, was a different story.

Planning a wedding is hard. It’s easy to underestimate the sheer number of decisions needing to be made.

From the outside, yes it looks like a big ordeal. But from the inside, it’s even more involved than it looks.

At least that was my experience, and I have a background in event planning.

Choosing suppliers

During the planning process, you start looking for all of the vendors and suppliers you’ll need for the wedding.

You have venues to consider, photographers, caterers, florists, bakers, suit and dress stores, restaurants, officiants, musicians, limo drivers, hair stylists, decorations, wedding invitations, bachelor/bachelorette planning, and the list goes on and on… endlessly.

I was reflecting on how many decisions we made. Some were easy, and some were not.

When it came to selecting a DJ for the evening festivities, we were given several recommendations from friends and did some additional searching to find the right person or company.

A wedding DJ is important. They set the tone for the entire evening. The proceedings are either under their control, or it’s out of control in general.

Friends of ours referred us to a DJ group they used for their wedding and gave glowing recommendations.

They couldn’t stop talking about how amazing this DJ and his wife were for their wedding reception. They told us that they wanted to literally throw money at them by the end of the night, they were that good.

“What did this DJ do that was so special?”, I wondered.

It turns out, it had very little to do with the music or performance, although that was great too.

“Wait, what?”, you might ask? Why would someone rave about a DJ service outside of their ability to play great music and keep things on schedule?

It turns out, the number one thing that came up during their raving review was the extras they provided. The differentiators.

This DJ group (a husband and wife duo) was not like any of the other DJs we encountered in our search. And we wouldn’t have known to even look for it, had someone not told us.

Their difference is that they take care of all those little things that could possibly (and often do) go wrong in an evening.

They make sure everyone is where they are supposed to be at the right times. They make sure the speeches run according to schedule. They even bring a Mary Poppins-style bag containing everything a bride and groom could possibly need in the course of the evening.

They think of it all so we don’t have to.

In short, they were our advocates. They filled all of the missing gaps and had years of experience behind them. They made sure almost nothing could go awry. If something did go wrong, they found a way to fix it.

The DJs’ differentiators were their willingness and ability to take control of issues either before they happened, or right as they happened, without intervention from the bride and groom.

Their difference they provided was offering relief for my bride and I from the stress of problem solving when unforeseen incidents cropped up.

Their ability to produce an amazing evening from a music perspective is table stakes in their industry. All DJs we spoke to seemed to have that.

But their willingness to go the extra mile on the day and their experience to help us to plan things properly in advance was not something anybody was willing (or able) to offer like they did.

The takeaway

In business, the best strategic advantage you can have is a differentiator.

When comparing apples to apples, it’s the ones with a valued difference that will win every time.

What makes you and your business so unique that you can’t be directly compared to someone else?

For me, I offer conflict-free advice and help business owners win back their time. I offer advocacy for their cause and alignment with their interests.

I don’t know of any others who offer the same kind of service that I do, which makes it easy to contrast against traditional consulting and agency service providers.

And that’s why I get referrals. That’s why companies stay with me.

What do you offer that is both valued by your clients or customers and can’t be found elsewhere? What do you do differently that your customers tell you they value?

It doesn’t need to cost you a single penny. All it takes is listening to your customer and watching for opportunities to give them a better experience.

If you have a key differentiator, I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

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