March 20, 2025 • 30 mins
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What if the marketing strategies draining your budget could be transformed into systems that actually generate profit? In this eye-opening conversation with John Watson, founder of Accrue Marketing, we uncover the costly mistakes most businesses make with their marketing efforts and the straightforward solutions that can revolutionize your approach.
Watson's journey from data analyst to marketing coach began when he repeatedly found himself delivering devastating news to clients about their marketing performance. After analyzing countless campaigns, he discovered a shocking pattern: businesses routinely spending $1,100 per sale on products with only $100 margins. This realization led him to develop a systematic approach to marketing that eliminates wasteful spending and focuses on proven strategies.
We dive deep into the critical importance of customer data analysis, exploring how modern CRM systems make sophisticated customer segmentation accessible even to small businesses.
Perhaps most valuable is Watson's "apple tree analogy" - while businesses strain to reach apples at the top of the tree (flashy marketing tactics), they ignore the low-hanging fruit or even the apples already on the ground (existing customer relationships and referrals). His perspective challenges the common overinvestment in acquisition while neglecting the more profitable retention activities.
For more information, visit www.accruemarketing.com
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Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Erin Manning (00:02):
Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the
photo imaging industry's leadingnews source.
Here's your host, Gary Pageau.
(00:22):
Hello again, to the Dead PixelsSociety podcast.
I'm your host, Gary Pageau, andtoday we're joined
by John Watson, who's thefounder, coach and fractional
CMO from a company called AccruMarketing, and he's coming to us
from Alberta, canada, today.
Hi, john how are you today?
John Watson (00:36):
I'm doing great, Gary.
Thanks for asking.
I really appreciate kind ofjoining you today.
you
Gary Pageau (00:41):
So, John, tell us your story of your marketing
journey that got us to the pointwhere you started a crew
marketing.
John Watson (00:50):
I started out as a business kind of data analyst,
okay, and I used to analyze theperformance of sales and
marketing campaigns, well beforethe internet, okay, and you
know it was direct mail and callcenter campaigns and that kind
of stuff.
I did, you know, a lot of workfor some of the big charities
(01:12):
and I found that I was alwaysthe bearer of bad news, right,
and I learned really quicklythat a lot of the sales and
marketing campaigns that wererunning were very poorly
conceived and they had not runthe numbers not targeted.
Well, and I I used to joke thatI had I should have one of the
horsemen of the apocalypse as mylogo, right, cause I was always
(01:35):
showing up with thisdevastating bad news, right,
right, right.
And so as I started my owncompany, my first company, I
didn't want to repeat theexperience.
I saw how devastatingly poorlya lot of these things did, and
so I started seeking out help.
I said, look, I don't want tomake the same mistakes, right,
(01:57):
all I was getting was sold overand over by, like everybody
didn't want to help me, theyjust wanted to sell me.
Gary Pageau (02:02):
Right.
John Watson (02:03):
Whatever it is they wanted to do, and I found it
very difficult to get legitimatehelp Okay, and I knew I needed
it Right, so I just kept seekingit.
And so how I got this kind ofwhole program going was is I
wanted to be the help that Icouldn't find Right, okay.
Gary Pageau (02:20):
That's great.
So you saw an opportunity andyou wanted to fill it so awesome
.
John Watson (02:23):
Yeah Well, I just found that it's so difficult to
actually move past thesalespeople and actually get
legitimate coaching andconsulting and somebody who's
willing to work with you to helpyou, as opposed to just trying
to sell you.
So that's really the genesis ofmy whole company was how do I
show up in a way that I couldn'tfind for others once I had
(02:47):
learned the ropes?
Gary Pageau (02:48):
Yeah, you got to be able to learn what it is you're
going to share in order toshare it right.
John Watson (02:54):
But as an analyst, when I started, one of the
things that analysts do is theydig into the root causes of
things.
Right, so it's not working, why?
And so I just kept digging intowhy, why?
Why, you know why, frommessaging point of view, right,
so it's not working.
Why, right?
And so I just kept digging intowhy, why.
Why, you know why, frommessaging point of view, from
design point of view, from myand it turned out that in most
cases it was a leadership issueand a lack of communication.
(03:15):
Right, and so marketing, in myexperience, has has largely,
I've said, the way I've come tounderstand it is that there's a
lot of assumption, it's atremendous amount of assumption
A lot of business owners, andparticularly small business
owners, but it's common acrossthe board, where they feel like
(03:36):
they don't understand all thenew tech, right, they're
intimidated.
So you know, older guys like usare sometimes intimidated by the
technology.
They don't really understand it.
It's happening so fast thatthey're just like, look, I don't
get this stuff and they try topawn it off on somebody else to
do it, right, right, and so theyhire, carefully, they'll hire a
(03:57):
bunch of suppliers, right, thatthey think are are consultants
right and more often than not,they're just salespeople, right,
and they're pitching you onwhatever it is they think is
what they want to sell you andmay or may not have anything to
do with your needs.
Gary Pageau (04:14):
Their agenda is to sell their platform, program
marketing, tech or what have you.
John Watson (04:19):
Exactly the leadership gap that happens is
that, in the interest of passingit off, that's something that
you don't understand or reallydon't want to understand, right,
you pass it off to somebody whoreally isn't understanding the
role you think they're going toplay, right, you think they're a
consultant and they're justtrying to sell you whatever, and
you end up with this bigleadership gap, right, and then
(04:42):
so quite often, there's no realclear goals established, there's
no real conversation about howit's going to produce results,
or even what kind of resultsthey expect, and so you end up
with what I call this sort ofrandom acts of marketing, right,
you know, and the strategybasically comes down to hope and
(05:02):
a prayer, right, right, andit's like, okay, well, that's.
That's kind of a pretty badcombination.
Gary Pageau (05:08):
Well, one of the things I want to circle back on
is when you said you had to bethe bearer of bad news.
That kind of stuck out to me,so I made a note here, like what
was the bad news?
Was that money was wasted, thatresources were squandered?
Was that results really weren'tclose to what they had expected
?
What were what would be atypical bad news scenario?
(05:32):
That, as an analyst, you knowquite often.
John Watson (05:35):
Uh, what I found was, if you didn't do the math
ahead of time, right, so almostI had.
I'll just share an example.
I had a client where they werea one-time sale.
It was kind of an expensivesale.
It was a $1,200 purchase butthe margins on it were really
low.
They only had $100 margin on a$1,200 sale and the marketing
(05:58):
they were doing was costing them$1,100 per sale.
Oh gosh Right.
Costing them $1,100 per sale,oh gosh Right.
And they had been doing that,for they were spending half a
million dollars a year on theirpromotional program and it was
basically they were throwing themoney away.
They would have been better offto go have a big party in Vegas
, and but they never measuredanything, right, they didn't
(06:22):
know that the performance oftheir marketing.
So I was the first one to evershow them that.
Here's your sales funnel andyour unit cost per sale on
average is vastly 10 timeshigher than the margin available
on the product you're sellingand there's no lifetime value
because you're a one-timepurchase.
Gary Pageau (06:44):
So there's no opportunity to make a buy.
You don't have thatrelationship with this customer
because you're buying it once,yeah, and so it was a huge
eye-opener right.
How was that received?
Right, because you've gotsomeone, a client or a business
owner who's been doing somethingthat they think is working
right or they think is effective, or at least they're looking
busy right, or they think iseffective, or at least they're
(07:04):
looking busy right.
There's activity which I thinka lot of marketing has become
let's look busy, let's look likewe're doing something right.
And so how was that received?
When you delivered that message, did they change or did they
say you know what it works forus?
John Watson (07:19):
I think, well, no, I don't think.
Most people say it works for us.
It's usually shock and awe.
It's like some people run awayand they say you can't show this
to the boss, right?
You have to give me a chance tofix it before you share these
data.
Gary Pageau (07:32):
You know the $1,200 sale.
What was the response to that?
What did they do?
What did they think?
John Watson (07:39):
They embraced it.
They said, well, we are busy,they were making sales, but
their sales were coming from adifferent channel.
Most of their, the vastmajority of their business was
coming from professionalreferrals.
They had a pretty largecommunity, a network that was
driving business their way andit was producing the vast
(08:00):
majority of the work, and all ofthe so-called classic
advertising and marketing theywere doing was just taking
whatever profits they weremaking and flushing it down the
drain.
Okay, so what do we do?
Right?
The answer is you know that's.
The next question is okay,that's bad.
What do we do?
And in their case it was justlook, let's focus on where
(08:21):
you're generating the businessand let's amplify that and do
more of that, rather thanwasting all that money over here
.
Let's focus on where you'regenerating the business and
let's amplify that and do moreof that, rather than wasting all
that money over here.
Let's double down on whatyou're great at and make that
exceptional.
And they're like great.
Gary Pageau (08:34):
So so one of the hardest things for a marketer or
a business owner to do, one ofthe hardest words they have is
no right, I'm going to stopdoing this.
Because they've been, you know,they've had this activity, you
know generating interest orwhatever.
Like I said, it's expensive,it's, it's, it's eating up the
entire cost of the product inthis one channel.
But you, they'd almost bebetter off not doing anything
(08:57):
well, you have to do something.
John Watson (08:59):
but it really comes down to the biggest
conversation that I, the mostfrequent conversation I have
with people, is now that youknow your max cost of sale,
right, and you're starting andchoosing advertising channels
based on which ones have a hopeyou know at all of ever
(09:20):
producing a sale within thatcost.
Right, exactly Right, and itdoes.
It eliminates most of them,right.
You look at it and say, allright, well, that's, those are
the constraints of the business,which channels have a hope of
actually producing profitablesales, and that alone makes a
huge difference because youstart focusing on things that
can work.
It doesn't mean they willimmediately, but you know that
(09:42):
the possibility is there, right,that in many cases, a lot of
the channels I see in a perfectworld where you had fantastic
response rates, they stillwouldn't produce a result that
was workable, right, right, soit's like, why are we wasting
time on that?
But just simply by focusing onthings that that have the
potential to work, with sort ofa reasonable margin of error,
(10:03):
right, you can.
Gary Pageau (10:05):
you can really put the effort into those things
because they have potential,right because one of the things
that like in our in my audienceis you know, we've got a lot of
people, you know, sell cameras,right, which is a 1200 device
with a very low margin, right asyou know, because, you
mentioned earlier, you're aphotographer, right, so you know
what cameras cost, so you know,but it but again it's the same
(10:27):
sort of thing where the buyerfor cameras is different now
than it used to be, becauseobviously people have camera
phones, so you don't need asnapshot camera for everyday
photography, like you used to,right, so people were buying
cameras differently, so you haveto reach them where they are,
as opposed to traditionaladvertising.
John Watson (10:46):
Well, I think what it does is, you know, whenever
you have a low margin product,really, the first thing to look
at is how does lifetime valuefactor into the business?
Right, can I cultivate arelationship with this client?
And oftentimes, particularly inretail, we tend to take the
order, you know, and then wedon't follow up with them.
Right, it doesn't go into anemail database we don't have
(11:08):
necessarily.
You know, if we're advertisingfocused, we may not be putting
enough effort into retention.
And what type of promotions canwe run?
How do we engage with people,get them coming back for all
kinds of add-ons?
And I think the first thing isto just look at how does the
business work and where shouldwe be focusing?
Is it on acquisition, is it onretention, and what's the
(11:31):
balance between the two thatactually makes the most sense?
Gary Pageau (11:35):
And so what are some of the things that somebody
should look at when they'retrying to evaluate that?
Because in many cases again inmy audience these are
well-established businesses,right, they're brick and mortar.
If they're a camera store or aone hour lab or a printer or a
photo lab, you know they've beenaround for a while.
There isn't a lot of startupactivity there, right, but a lot
(11:56):
of them, a lot of them, makethe assumption that everyone
knows we're here because we'vebeen here, right, so there has
to be some sort of outreach topeople who are unaware.
But you also have to reach yourcurrent audience, right?
So is there a formula or apercentage or something that you
can look at for that?
John Watson (12:20):
You have to create the formula for the company, and
I think that's really the goal,and I always try to talk about
it in investment terms.
Right?
So, if you had an investmentportfolio, you'd have money in
different asset classes, right?
So if you think I have anacquisition asset class and I
have a retention asset class andI have maybe something for
developing partners or channelpartners, and it really comes
(12:40):
down to what are the assetclasses, what allocation should
I invest in each of them?
And then how do I maximize thereturn from each one of those
channels?
And the easiest way to do thatis by looking at your data right
and analyzing it and mostretailers are really good at
logistics and managing inventoryand right.
(13:03):
You know, the operational partof the business is critical, so
they tend to be really good atthat, and critical, so they tend
to be really good at that.
And the most common thing,though is is not doing customer
data analysis Right and thecustomer data analysis is
usually not present in the inthe point of sale software right
.
It's just not something that'sgenerally built in, and if it is
, it's pretty lame right.
Gary Pageau (13:25):
Well, what would be an example of useful data in
that case?
Right Cause, in most casesthey're capturing, you know,
name, sometimes address,certainly an email, if they can.
Sometimes a phone number Isn'tthat useful, or what more do you
need?
John Watson (13:39):
Absolutely.
That's the beginning of it,right.
So most things with customerdata analysis.
What you're looking for iswhere are they in their
relationship with you, right,right, are they a first time
buyer?
Is it the first time they'veever bought from you?
Right, so that's a welcomething, right?
The?
The goal with that person is toget them to come back and be a
(13:59):
repeat buyer.
If they've bought from you manytimes, right, right.
Once they're a steady repeatbuyer, how do I upsell, how do I
cross sell them?
Or how do I introduce them toother opportunities that you
offer?
Right, you know, when you havean opportunity to engage them,
get feedback from them, try toturn them into an advocate where
they get referrals, maybe turnthem into an affiliate if
(14:22):
they're into that sort of thing.
It really comes down to if youcan identify where a client is
in the life cycle of therelationship with you, you can
communicate with them inappropriate ways to achieve very
specific objectives.
Right, but it tends to be some,like I said, it tends to not be
part of the software, right.
(14:42):
So it requires you to kind ofdig in, pull the data out,
segment it all up in ameaningful way and then to do
some sort of segmentedcommunication out to the
different groups?
Gary Pageau (14:51):
Now, if you're your typical business owner, that
sounds like a lot of work andit's continuous work, you know,
because you've got, hopefully,new customers coming in all the
time that you got to figure outwhere they are on their on their
journey.
Is this something they can dothemselves, or should they put
it on staff or hire, you know?
I mean, where do you put thatsort of thing in a business?
John Watson (15:14):
The beauty is this stuff is now accessible to small
businesses.
It's pretty affordable.
Yeah, it really is.
You know you're getting intoautomation, right.
So, like I said, part of theproblem with the point of sale
systems is you need to get yourdata out of it, but that doesn't
mean you have to manhandle itright.
You can have connections right,directly made to another,
(15:35):
another system, like a crmsystem, for example.
Right, so the data comes out ofyour point of sale into the crm
, the crm aggregates it up intomeaningful ways and then you can
start to do triggered emailsand text messages and
communication that are allprogrammed with workflows, right
, and this is all available infairly entry-level CRMs now,
(15:56):
right, yeah, yeah, and so it'snot rocket science anymore.
Gary Pageau (16:00):
Funny.
You say that because a lot ofsystems everything wants to be a
CRM.
Now right, I mean, I useMailChimp for my newsletter and
it wants to be a CRM.
I mean, so there's a lot oftechnology being built in across
different platforms actually tolet you do this sort of thing.
John Watson (16:14):
More and more.
With everything up in the cloud, you can integrate things so
much easier than you could.
Even if you have a couple ofcomponents that are traditional
software, you still have theability in most cases to
integrate them and to automatethis kind of stuff.
Gary Pageau (16:28):
You've used the phrase a couple of times random
acts of marketing.
Where did that come from andwhat does that mean?
John Watson (16:39):
Random acts of marketing comes from that
earlier conversation about sortof being sold on tactics.
We're inundated with tacticalstuff all the time.
It's Facebook this and TikTokthat and Instagram this, right,
and it just it's.
All we get is this bombardmentof tactical things and it's
(17:00):
overwhelming Right, and so a lotof people feel like geez, I
have to.
It's like fear of missing out,right, I need to be on that
platform and I need to do thisand I need to do this, and
they're just sort of racing tokeep up with the trends and it's
you're not doing it for goodbusiness reasons.
You're doing it because youthink you should Right, right,
right.
Anecdotally.
Gary Pageau (17:20):
But I guess my point is why is it with
marketing specifically thatpeople do that?
They don't do it with otherparts of their business?
John Watson (17:31):
You know what I mean.
It's almost like you know why,though?
It's because people don'tunderstand it, right?
Okay, marketing has always hadthis sort of mystery.
You know, romance like airyfairy it's emotional, it's, it's
creative.
It's something else that Idon't understand, right, and
(17:52):
then, and now technology, rightnow it's super high tech, and so
you have this combination ofit's mystical, right?
It's this, you know the thing Idon't understand, and so,
because I don't understand it,I'm likely to be passing it off
to somebody else and sort, andso it makes you susceptible to
being sold on stuff that youdon't really need or understand
Right, and, in many cases,aren't ready for Right, and it
(18:15):
just, it's a very slippery slope.
Gary Pageau (18:18):
I mean, the reason why I ask that is because it
seems like a lot of it is.
You know, like I said, you knowI call it chasing the shiny
right.
You got a shiny object.
Yeah, it is.
You know, like I said, you knowI call it chasing the shiny
right.
You got a shiny object and youjust chase it down and it's.
You know, I'll go to anindustry conference and there'll
be a marketing presentation.
Somebody will get up there andthey'll talk about their, their
TikTok experience, right?
Oh, I, you know I moved thismany lenses on TikTok and you
(18:39):
know this kind of thing and youknow everyone immediately tries
to copy them.
But what they are not copyingis the process of how that
person actually sold all thoselenses on TikTok.
Who did they target?
What was the demographic?
John Watson (18:56):
They just said oh, no, you got to do TikTok videos.
Well, the other thing is, justbecause you sold it on TikTok
doesn't mean it was profitable,right?
Yeah, that's true.
What did it cost you to makethat sale?
Right, and it seems low.
But quite often the socialmedia has a lot of human costs,
right?
The amount of time and energyyou put into it is often ignored
, right?
So when you start to do fullcost analysis of some of these
(19:18):
channels, they're not aseffective as they appear to be,
right?
they can be right, but they'reoften not right.
Gary Pageau (19:27):
Yeah, I mean it's funny to say because you know
I've done it.
I'm not an expert like yourself, but you know there is sort of.
You know the classic thingsvery often are classic because
they work.
You know, like direct responsepostcards, right, if you have a
lawn care business and you needto reach people with lawns, you
can do that very effectivelywith a postcard and very cost
(19:49):
effective.
You don't need to be doingTikTok videos and dances with
your John Deere and things likethat.
But you know it's just funnybecause it's like, well, that's
not cool, that's not happening,that's not.
But guess what, it's darneffective.
John Watson (20:03):
My recommendation for most small business owners
is I use it like an apple treeanalogy right, and you think
about all this fancy stuff, isyou're picking the?
Apples on the very top of thetree first.
You know like you're lookingaround and there's apples all
over the ground.
Right yeah, I can reach most ofthem.
I don't have to get the ladderout and do that.
(20:24):
I can focus on the low hangingfruit or what's dropped off
already.
Gary Pageau (20:28):
Right.
John Watson (20:29):
And and quite often we, we ignore those things.
Right, they're free, they'relow cost, they're easy, they're,
they're, in many cases have ahigher demand, like the higher
intentionality from the buyer.
And we're spending our timekind of climbing the ladder,
grabbing stuff and kind offocusing where we're spending
our time kind of climbing theladder, grabbing stuff and kind
of focusing, where we're justtrying to get attention and
(20:50):
there's no, and there's nointentionality, right, but we've
interrupted them, we.
They're aware of us now, butthat doesn't mean they're going
to buy right, yeah right.
So so much of it is.
Just look, take care of thefundamentals first.
Make sure you understand whatthe economics are and that
you're making decisions thatactually support your business
(21:10):
as opposed to just distract you.
Gary Pageau (21:14):
So if you're a, let's say, your typical camera
store, right, and you've got amix of products, in the sense
you've got your higher endcameras that you make very
little money on, you've got youraccessories, which you make
more money on but they're alittle harder to sell, and then
you've got your high marginprint products right, your
(21:36):
output, your print, your cameras, your canvases, your metals and
your photo books and all thosegreat products right.
But most people envision you intheir head as a camera store,
right.
That's sort of what gets theattention.
What would you do within thatsituation in terms of?
Would you just focus on themargin things and just keep on
(21:57):
doing what you're doing ortrying?
John Watson (21:59):
No, I think you always have your lead offers
that try to draw people into thestore.
Gary Pageau (22:03):
Right.
John Watson (22:04):
But this is where going.
Circling back to the customeranalysis, right, if you know
what they bought, if they boughta high-end camera, well,
there's a good likelihood.
They're going to buy somelenses and they're going to buy
some accessories and all kindsof stuff.
Right, they're into it yeah,yeah yeah, and if they're, you
know you can use the theirpurchase patterns to guide you
(22:24):
in terms of how to communicate.
The segmented communication isreally underutilized and by
recognizing where people are intheir life cycle, by identifying
what kind of buyer they are arethey professional, are they
semi-pro, are they just somebodywho's messing around you really
(22:45):
can tailor, you can communicateto them in that way.
I mean, it's not from anacquisition point of view, but
even in an acquisition point ofview, you can tailor to
different audiences based onwhat you're trying to sell.
Gary Pageau (22:56):
Right, you have a picture of, let's say, you have
your aficionado, right You're.
You know the old retireddentist meme, right, where you
know the guy.
This is the guy who's going tobuy a Leica and go to Alaska and
you know he's going to spend alot of money on hardware, right,
so you may have a few of thosepeople.
So how would you use thatcustomer to get more people like
(23:17):
him, like you know what I'msaying?
John Watson (23:20):
Again, it depends on who they are.
I think now everybody's asocial media influencer in some
way, yeah, right, and so ifyou're doing that kind of
high-end photography, you'reprobably posting it.
You can incentivize them toreally give you feedback, to
make introductions, turn theminto a fan or a source of
referrals.
(23:41):
Quite often those people aredoing.
I mean, they can be trainingother people.
I know I do.
People come to me all the timesay how do I use my camera?
Right?
So you can, and I've sent somany people to local photography
shops because I like them right.
Yeah, yeah, and I think part ofit is the customer service side
(24:01):
.
If I'm really enamored with ashop because I absolutely love
the product line and I like howthey treat me and you know what
they offer, you know they sortof help me out right, then I'm
going to send people there,right.
And I think part of it is reallylooking at the marketing in a
holistic way, right?
So everybody tends to thinkmarketing is advertising, right,
or the acquisition side, andthey miss.
(24:22):
There's a whole, I mean thevast majority.
Most of the marketing shouldactually be retention and
customer engagement andgathering customer feedback and
generating reviews andtestimonials and referrals and
the margins on that are vastlyhigher and you usually lose
money on your acquisition Right.
Exactly, you make money on theretention Right and but we've
(24:43):
got that mixed up in that wespend way more money and time on
the acquisition side Right, andyou know, and tend to drop the
ball on the retention side.
Gary Pageau (24:52):
Right, yeah, exactly, because I mean, if
you're I mean, I've heardnumbers anywhere costs up to you
know, $18 or more for an onlinecompany to you know, get a
print customer Right, thatthat's, that's what it costs
them to acquire.
So, which is why they do, likeyou know, get a print customer
right, that that's, that's whatit costs them to acquire.
So, which is why they do, likeyou know, a big giveaway to at
least get one thing from themand get them into the system, so
(25:13):
at least they can sell themsomething later.
John Watson (25:14):
Yeah, it's, it really is.
You know, I think this holisticview is well.
The main thing I focus on istrying to get people to to see
marketing as more than justadvertising.
Gary Pageau (25:26):
Right.
John Watson (25:27):
Right that there's a, there's a.
I have a 20 step framework thatI get them to back up and say
let's just look at this from abeginning to end perspective.
Right, If you look at thecustomer's journey through your
business over time, not just thesingle transaction but over,
say, 10 years.
Gary Pageau (25:42):
Right.
John Watson (25:43):
What experience am I creating?
How do I facilitate theirexperience so that I can
maximize my earnings from thoserelationships?
Gary Pageau (25:52):
Right.
John Watson (25:52):
So you're cultivating relationships,
maximizing lifetime value andgenerating all kinds of
secondary sales, as well asreferrals and et cetera, et
cetera.
And because you need that tooffset the high cost of
acquisition.
Gary Pageau (26:08):
Right.
John Watson (26:09):
Right, but people?
But historically I've seenpeople put way too much emphasis
on the acquisition side andlargely ignore the retention
side, and it just did that.
The math, you know.
If you really understand themath, you'd flip it around.
Gary Pageau (26:26):
Well, and that's what's funny is, I think, a lot
of very wildly, wildlysuccessful companies are the
ones you don't hear much about,right, because they're just
working on their existingcustomer base and et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera.
But I think you know, in termsof where our media works and how
the business press works, right, the big and flashy, you get
all the attention.
(26:46):
But there's literally, you know, thousands of companies that
are kind of doing what you'redoing.
Hey, I'm just gonna focus on mycurrent customers and, you know
, go where my bang for the buckis and I'm not going to take out
the splashy ads or have theTikTok influencer.
John Watson (27:00):
Well, it's a balancing thing, right.
I'm not saying don't do it.
What I'm saying is balance itright.
Gary Pageau (27:06):
I'm just saying it's a matter of you know sort
of.
As you know, as we become asort of media obsessed culture,
right, we look for those kind ofthings when actually the hero
companies are the ones that are,you know, not probably blasting
things out.
John Watson (27:24):
The challenge really, I think, is getting
people to realize that attentiondoes not translate to sales,
right, not always it cantranslate to sales if you put
the system in place to make sureit does in a high probability,
but just by itself, without thesystem behind it, is very
unlikely to Right.
Gary Pageau (27:45):
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, how many hot fad products
have there been right Just inthe last?
Well, forever.
But in the last few years thatgot a lot of attention but then
just flopped in the marketplace.
John Watson (27:58):
Yeah, it's, I mean, like anything, and this is why
I try to get people to thinkabout it more from a systems
point of view, right, not justdo the single tactic and hope
for the best.
It's like chain them togetheras an actual system.
Right, we're going to do thislead offer and we're going to do
, you know, when they get in thestore, we're going to do this
kind of promotions and this typeof engagement and this kind of
(28:20):
you know how, this, how we'regoing to enroll them in our you
know sign up program and andthat's how we're going to follow
up with them.
And it's like, if you thinkabout it as this lifetime, you
know this, this, this integratedapproach, right, it really
doesn't take a heck of a lot ofextra.
I mean, it's certainly not anymore costly than advertising,
right, it really just is a shiftin, it's a different way of
(28:42):
approaching it, right, it's lesssort of hopeful and more
engineered I love that.
Gary Pageau (28:49):
That's a great slogan.
I love that.
Less hopeful, more engineered,right.
accrue marketing.
com I love that.
That's awesome.
So where can people go to learnabout your 20 ways to fix your
marketing?
Where can people go for moreinformation?
John Watson (29:03):
well, the two way, two places.
One is my website, which isaccrewmarketingcom, and then
Amazon.
I have my books up on Amazon.
It's probably the easiest placeto buy it.
It's called being Profitable abusiness development roadmap,
but my website is full of I'vegot 20 free downloads, ebooks
(29:23):
for download.
I've got a ton of resources.
So I think the thing.
If people want to understandmore of this, I would invite
them to take advantage of allthe free resources at
accruemarketingcom.
Gary Pageau (29:36):
Awesome.
Well, listen, john, it's beengreat talking to you and I've
learned a lot, and I appreciateyour time and best wishes and
hope to talk to you again soon.
John Watson (29:43):
Well, thank you very much.
Appreciate the invitation to beon your show.
Erin Manning (29:47):
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel
Society podcast.
Read more great stories andsign up for the newsletter at
wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.
Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the
photo imaging industry's leadingnews source.
Here's your host, Gary Pageau.
(00:22):
Hello again, to the Dead PixelsSociety podcast.
I'm your host, Gary Pageau, andtoday we're joined
by John Watson, who's thefounder, coach and fractional
CMO from a company called AccruMarketing, and he's coming to us
from Alberta, canada, today.
Hi, john how are you today?
John Watson (00:36):
I'm doing great, Gary.
Thanks for asking.
I really appreciate kind ofjoining you today.
you
Gary Pageau (00:41):
So, John, tell us your story of your marketing
journey that got us to the pointwhere you started a crew
marketing.
John Watson (00:50):
I started out as a business kind of data analyst,
okay, and I used to analyze theperformance of sales and
marketing campaigns, well beforethe internet, okay, and you
know it was direct mail and callcenter campaigns and that kind
of stuff.
I did, you know, a lot of workfor some of the big charities
(01:12):
and I found that I was alwaysthe bearer of bad news, right,
and I learned really quicklythat a lot of the sales and
marketing campaigns that wererunning were very poorly
conceived and they had not runthe numbers not targeted.
Well, and I I used to joke thatI had I should have one of the
horsemen of the apocalypse as mylogo, right, cause I was always
(01:35):
showing up with thisdevastating bad news, right,
right, right.
And so as I started my owncompany, my first company, I
didn't want to repeat theexperience.
I saw how devastatingly poorlya lot of these things did, and
so I started seeking out help.
I said, look, I don't want tomake the same mistakes, right,
(01:57):
all I was getting was sold overand over by, like everybody
didn't want to help me, theyjust wanted to sell me.
Gary Pageau (02:02):
Right.
John Watson (02:03):
Whatever it is they wanted to do, and I found it
very difficult to get legitimatehelp Okay, and I knew I needed
it Right, so I just kept seekingit.
And so how I got this kind ofwhole program going was is I
wanted to be the help that Icouldn't find Right, okay.
Gary Pageau (02:20):
That's great.
So you saw an opportunity andyou wanted to fill it so awesome
.
John Watson (02:23):
Yeah Well, I just found that it's so difficult to
actually move past thesalespeople and actually get
legitimate coaching andconsulting and somebody who's
willing to work with you to helpyou, as opposed to just trying
to sell you.
So that's really the genesis ofmy whole company was how do I
show up in a way that I couldn'tfind for others once I had
(02:47):
learned the ropes?
Gary Pageau (02:48):
Yeah, you got to be able to learn what it is you're
going to share in order toshare it right.
John Watson (02:54):
But as an analyst, when I started, one of the
things that analysts do is theydig into the root causes of
things.
Right, so it's not working, why?
And so I just kept digging intowhy, why?
Why, you know why, frommessaging point of view, right,
so it's not working.
Why, right?
And so I just kept digging intowhy, why.
Why, you know why, frommessaging point of view, from
design point of view, from myand it turned out that in most
cases it was a leadership issueand a lack of communication.
(03:15):
Right, and so marketing, in myexperience, has has largely,
I've said, the way I've come tounderstand it is that there's a
lot of assumption, it's atremendous amount of assumption
A lot of business owners, andparticularly small business
owners, but it's common acrossthe board, where they feel like
(03:36):
they don't understand all thenew tech, right, they're
intimidated.
So you know, older guys like usare sometimes intimidated by the
technology.
They don't really understand it.
It's happening so fast thatthey're just like, look, I don't
get this stuff and they try topawn it off on somebody else to
do it, right, right, and so theyhire, carefully, they'll hire a
(03:57):
bunch of suppliers, right, thatthey think are are consultants
right and more often than not,they're just salespeople, right,
and they're pitching you onwhatever it is they think is
what they want to sell you andmay or may not have anything to
do with your needs.
Gary Pageau (04:14):
Their agenda is to sell their platform, program
marketing, tech or what have you.
John Watson (04:19):
Exactly the leadership gap that happens is
that, in the interest of passingit off, that's something that
you don't understand or reallydon't want to understand, right,
you pass it off to somebody whoreally isn't understanding the
role you think they're going toplay, right, you think they're a
consultant and they're justtrying to sell you whatever, and
you end up with this bigleadership gap, right, and then
(04:42):
so quite often, there's no realclear goals established, there's
no real conversation about howit's going to produce results,
or even what kind of resultsthey expect, and so you end up
with what I call this sort ofrandom acts of marketing, right,
you know, and the strategybasically comes down to hope and
(05:02):
a prayer, right, right, andit's like, okay, well, that's.
That's kind of a pretty badcombination.
Gary Pageau (05:08):
Well, one of the things I want to circle back on
is when you said you had to bethe bearer of bad news.
That kind of stuck out to me,so I made a note here, like what
was the bad news?
Was that money was wasted, thatresources were squandered?
Was that results really weren'tclose to what they had expected
?
What were what would be atypical bad news scenario?
(05:32):
That, as an analyst, you knowquite often.
John Watson (05:35):
Uh, what I found was, if you didn't do the math
ahead of time, right, so almostI had.
I'll just share an example.
I had a client where they werea one-time sale.
It was kind of an expensivesale.
It was a $1,200 purchase butthe margins on it were really
low.
They only had $100 margin on a$1,200 sale and the marketing
(05:58):
they were doing was costing them$1,100 per sale.
Oh gosh Right.
Costing them $1,100 per sale,oh gosh Right.
And they had been doing that,for they were spending half a
million dollars a year on theirpromotional program and it was
basically they were throwing themoney away.
They would have been better offto go have a big party in Vegas
, and but they never measuredanything, right, they didn't
(06:22):
know that the performance oftheir marketing.
So I was the first one to evershow them that.
Here's your sales funnel andyour unit cost per sale on
average is vastly 10 timeshigher than the margin available
on the product you're sellingand there's no lifetime value
because you're a one-timepurchase.
Gary Pageau (06:44):
So there's no opportunity to make a buy.
You don't have thatrelationship with this customer
because you're buying it once,yeah, and so it was a huge
eye-opener right.
How was that received?
Right, because you've gotsomeone, a client or a business
owner who's been doing somethingthat they think is working
right or they think is effective, or at least they're looking
busy right, or they think iseffective, or at least they're
(07:04):
looking busy right.
There's activity which I thinka lot of marketing has become
let's look busy, let's look likewe're doing something right.
And so how was that received?
When you delivered that message, did they change or did they
say you know what it works forus?
John Watson (07:19):
I think, well, no, I don't think.
Most people say it works for us.
It's usually shock and awe.
It's like some people run awayand they say you can't show this
to the boss, right?
You have to give me a chance tofix it before you share these
data.
Gary Pageau (07:32):
You know the $1,200 sale.
What was the response to that?
What did they do?
What did they think?
John Watson (07:39):
They embraced it.
They said, well, we are busy,they were making sales, but
their sales were coming from adifferent channel.
Most of their, the vastmajority of their business was
coming from professionalreferrals.
They had a pretty largecommunity, a network that was
driving business their way andit was producing the vast
(08:00):
majority of the work, and all ofthe so-called classic
advertising and marketing theywere doing was just taking
whatever profits they weremaking and flushing it down the
drain.
Okay, so what do we do?
Right?
The answer is you know that's.
The next question is okay,that's bad.
What do we do?
And in their case it was justlook, let's focus on where
(08:21):
you're generating the businessand let's amplify that and do
more of that, rather thanwasting all that money over here
.
Let's focus on where you'regenerating the business and
let's amplify that and do moreof that, rather than wasting all
that money over here.
Let's double down on whatyou're great at and make that
exceptional.
And they're like great.
Gary Pageau (08:34):
So so one of the hardest things for a marketer or
a business owner to do, one ofthe hardest words they have is
no right, I'm going to stopdoing this.
Because they've been, you know,they've had this activity, you
know generating interest orwhatever.
Like I said, it's expensive,it's, it's, it's eating up the
entire cost of the product inthis one channel.
But you, they'd almost bebetter off not doing anything
(08:57):
well, you have to do something.
John Watson (08:59):
but it really comes down to the biggest
conversation that I, the mostfrequent conversation I have
with people, is now that youknow your max cost of sale,
right, and you're starting andchoosing advertising channels
based on which ones have a hopeyou know at all of ever
(09:20):
producing a sale within thatcost.
Right, exactly Right, and itdoes.
It eliminates most of them,right.
You look at it and say, allright, well, that's, those are
the constraints of the business,which channels have a hope of
actually producing profitablesales, and that alone makes a
huge difference because youstart focusing on things that
can work.
It doesn't mean they willimmediately, but you know that
(09:42):
the possibility is there, right,that in many cases, a lot of
the channels I see in a perfectworld where you had fantastic
response rates, they stillwouldn't produce a result that
was workable, right, right, soit's like, why are we wasting
time on that?
But just simply by focusing onthings that that have the
potential to work, with sort ofa reasonable margin of error,
(10:03):
right, you can.
Gary Pageau (10:05):
you can really put the effort into those things
because they have potential,right because one of the things
that like in our in my audienceis you know, we've got a lot of
people, you know, sell cameras,right, which is a 1200 device
with a very low margin, right asyou know, because, you
mentioned earlier, you're aphotographer, right, so you know
what cameras cost, so you know,but it but again it's the same
(10:27):
sort of thing where the buyerfor cameras is different now
than it used to be, becauseobviously people have camera
phones, so you don't need asnapshot camera for everyday
photography, like you used to,right, so people were buying
cameras differently, so you haveto reach them where they are,
as opposed to traditionaladvertising.
John Watson (10:46):
Well, I think what it does is, you know, whenever
you have a low margin product,really, the first thing to look
at is how does lifetime valuefactor into the business?
Right, can I cultivate arelationship with this client?
And oftentimes, particularly inretail, we tend to take the
order, you know, and then wedon't follow up with them.
Right, it doesn't go into anemail database we don't have
(11:08):
necessarily.
You know, if we're advertisingfocused, we may not be putting
enough effort into retention.
And what type of promotions canwe run?
How do we engage with people,get them coming back for all
kinds of add-ons?
And I think the first thing isto just look at how does the
business work and where shouldwe be focusing?
Is it on acquisition, is it onretention, and what's the
(11:31):
balance between the two thatactually makes the most sense?
Gary Pageau (11:35):
And so what are some of the things that somebody
should look at when they'retrying to evaluate that?
Because in many cases again inmy audience these are
well-established businesses,right, they're brick and mortar.
If they're a camera store or aone hour lab or a printer or a
photo lab, you know they've beenaround for a while.
There isn't a lot of startupactivity there, right, but a lot
(11:56):
of them, a lot of them, makethe assumption that everyone
knows we're here because we'vebeen here, right, so there has
to be some sort of outreach topeople who are unaware.
But you also have to reach yourcurrent audience, right?
So is there a formula or apercentage or something that you
can look at for that?
John Watson (12:20):
You have to create the formula for the company, and
I think that's really the goal,and I always try to talk about
it in investment terms.
Right?
So, if you had an investmentportfolio, you'd have money in
different asset classes, right?
So if you think I have anacquisition asset class and I
have a retention asset class andI have maybe something for
developing partners or channelpartners, and it really comes
(12:40):
down to what are the assetclasses, what allocation should
I invest in each of them?
And then how do I maximize thereturn from each one of those
channels?
And the easiest way to do thatis by looking at your data right
and analyzing it and mostretailers are really good at
logistics and managing inventoryand right.
(13:03):
You know, the operational partof the business is critical, so
they tend to be really good atthat, and critical, so they tend
to be really good at that.
And the most common thing,though is is not doing customer
data analysis Right and thecustomer data analysis is
usually not present in the inthe point of sale software right
.
It's just not something that'sgenerally built in, and if it is
, it's pretty lame right.
Gary Pageau (13:25):
Well, what would be an example of useful data in
that case?
Right Cause, in most casesthey're capturing, you know,
name, sometimes address,certainly an email, if they can.
Sometimes a phone number Isn'tthat useful, or what more do you
need?
John Watson (13:39):
Absolutely.
That's the beginning of it,right.
So most things with customerdata analysis.
What you're looking for iswhere are they in their
relationship with you, right,right, are they a first time
buyer?
Is it the first time they'veever bought from you?
Right, so that's a welcomething, right?
The?
The goal with that person is toget them to come back and be a
(13:59):
repeat buyer.
If they've bought from you manytimes, right, right.
Once they're a steady repeatbuyer, how do I upsell, how do I
cross sell them?
Or how do I introduce them toother opportunities that you
offer?
Right, you know, when you havean opportunity to engage them,
get feedback from them, try toturn them into an advocate where
they get referrals, maybe turnthem into an affiliate if
(14:22):
they're into that sort of thing.
It really comes down to if youcan identify where a client is
in the life cycle of therelationship with you, you can
communicate with them inappropriate ways to achieve very
specific objectives.
Right, but it tends to be some,like I said, it tends to not be
part of the software, right.
(14:42):
So it requires you to kind ofdig in, pull the data out,
segment it all up in ameaningful way and then to do
some sort of segmentedcommunication out to the
different groups?
Gary Pageau (14:51):
Now, if you're your typical business owner, that
sounds like a lot of work andit's continuous work, you know,
because you've got, hopefully,new customers coming in all the
time that you got to figure outwhere they are on their on their
journey.
Is this something they can dothemselves, or should they put
it on staff or hire, you know?
I mean, where do you put thatsort of thing in a business?
John Watson (15:14):
The beauty is this stuff is now accessible to small
businesses.
It's pretty affordable.
Yeah, it really is.
You know you're getting intoautomation, right.
So, like I said, part of theproblem with the point of sale
systems is you need to get yourdata out of it, but that doesn't
mean you have to manhandle itright.
You can have connections right,directly made to another,
(15:35):
another system, like a crmsystem, for example.
Right, so the data comes out ofyour point of sale into the crm
, the crm aggregates it up intomeaningful ways and then you can
start to do triggered emailsand text messages and
communication that are allprogrammed with workflows, right
, and this is all available infairly entry-level CRMs now,
(15:56):
right, yeah, yeah, and so it'snot rocket science anymore.
Gary Pageau (16:00):
Funny.
You say that because a lot ofsystems everything wants to be a
CRM.
Now right, I mean, I useMailChimp for my newsletter and
it wants to be a CRM.
I mean, so there's a lot oftechnology being built in across
different platforms actually tolet you do this sort of thing.
John Watson (16:14):
More and more.
With everything up in the cloud, you can integrate things so
much easier than you could.
Even if you have a couple ofcomponents that are traditional
software, you still have theability in most cases to
integrate them and to automatethis kind of stuff.
Gary Pageau (16:28):
You've used the phrase a couple of times random
acts of marketing.
Where did that come from andwhat does that mean?
John Watson (16:39):
Random acts of marketing comes from that
earlier conversation about sortof being sold on tactics.
We're inundated with tacticalstuff all the time.
It's Facebook this and TikTokthat and Instagram this, right,
and it just it's.
All we get is this bombardmentof tactical things and it's
(17:00):
overwhelming Right, and so a lotof people feel like geez, I
have to.
It's like fear of missing out,right, I need to be on that
platform and I need to do thisand I need to do this, and
they're just sort of racing tokeep up with the trends and it's
you're not doing it for goodbusiness reasons.
You're doing it because youthink you should Right, right,
right.
Anecdotally.
Gary Pageau (17:20):
But I guess my point is why is it with
marketing specifically thatpeople do that?
They don't do it with otherparts of their business?
John Watson (17:31):
You know what I mean.
It's almost like you know why,though?
It's because people don'tunderstand it, right?
Okay, marketing has always hadthis sort of mystery.
You know, romance like airyfairy it's emotional, it's, it's
creative.
It's something else that Idon't understand, right, and
(17:52):
then, and now technology, rightnow it's super high tech, and so
you have this combination ofit's mystical, right?
It's this, you know the thing Idon't understand, and so,
because I don't understand it,I'm likely to be passing it off
to somebody else and sort, andso it makes you susceptible to
being sold on stuff that youdon't really need or understand
Right, and, in many cases,aren't ready for Right, and it
(18:15):
just, it's a very slippery slope.
Gary Pageau (18:18):
I mean, the reason why I ask that is because it
seems like a lot of it is.
You know, like I said, you knowI call it chasing the shiny
right.
You got a shiny object.
Yeah, it is.
You know, like I said, you knowI call it chasing the shiny
right.
You got a shiny object and youjust chase it down and it's.
You know, I'll go to anindustry conference and there'll
be a marketing presentation.
Somebody will get up there andthey'll talk about their, their
TikTok experience, right?
Oh, I, you know I moved thismany lenses on TikTok and you
(18:39):
know this kind of thing and youknow everyone immediately tries
to copy them.
But what they are not copyingis the process of how that
person actually sold all thoselenses on TikTok.
Who did they target?
What was the demographic?
John Watson (18:56):
They just said oh, no, you got to do TikTok videos.
Well, the other thing is, justbecause you sold it on TikTok
doesn't mean it was profitable,right?
Yeah, that's true.
What did it cost you to makethat sale?
Right, and it seems low.
But quite often the socialmedia has a lot of human costs,
right?
The amount of time and energyyou put into it is often ignored
, right?
So when you start to do fullcost analysis of some of these
(19:18):
channels, they're not aseffective as they appear to be,
right?
they can be right, but they'reoften not right.
Gary Pageau (19:27):
Yeah, I mean it's funny to say because you know
I've done it.
I'm not an expert like yourself, but you know there is sort of.
You know the classic thingsvery often are classic because
they work.
You know, like direct responsepostcards, right, if you have a
lawn care business and you needto reach people with lawns, you
can do that very effectivelywith a postcard and very cost
(19:49):
effective.
You don't need to be doingTikTok videos and dances with
your John Deere and things likethat.
But you know it's just funnybecause it's like, well, that's
not cool, that's not happening,that's not.
But guess what, it's darneffective.
John Watson (20:03):
My recommendation for most small business owners
is I use it like an apple treeanalogy right, and you think
about all this fancy stuff, isyou're picking the?
Apples on the very top of thetree first.
You know like you're lookingaround and there's apples all
over the ground.
Right yeah, I can reach most ofthem.
I don't have to get the ladderout and do that.
(20:24):
I can focus on the low hangingfruit or what's dropped off
already.
Gary Pageau (20:28):
Right.
John Watson (20:29):
And and quite often we, we ignore those things.
Right, they're free, they'relow cost, they're easy, they're,
they're, in many cases have ahigher demand, like the higher
intentionality from the buyer.
And we're spending our timekind of climbing the ladder,
grabbing stuff and kind offocusing where we're spending
our time kind of climbing theladder, grabbing stuff and kind
of focusing, where we're justtrying to get attention and
(20:50):
there's no, and there's nointentionality, right, but we've
interrupted them, we.
They're aware of us now, butthat doesn't mean they're going
to buy right, yeah right.
So so much of it is.
Just look, take care of thefundamentals first.
Make sure you understand whatthe economics are and that
you're making decisions thatactually support your business
(21:10):
as opposed to just distract you.
Gary Pageau (21:14):
So if you're a, let's say, your typical camera
store, right, and you've got amix of products, in the sense
you've got your higher endcameras that you make very
little money on, you've got youraccessories, which you make
more money on but they're alittle harder to sell, and then
you've got your high marginprint products right, your
(21:36):
output, your print, your cameras, your canvases, your metals and
your photo books and all thosegreat products right.
But most people envision you intheir head as a camera store,
right.
That's sort of what gets theattention.
What would you do within thatsituation in terms of?
Would you just focus on themargin things and just keep on
(21:57):
doing what you're doing ortrying?
John Watson (21:59):
No, I think you always have your lead offers
that try to draw people into thestore.
Gary Pageau (22:03):
Right.
John Watson (22:04):
But this is where going.
Circling back to the customeranalysis, right, if you know
what they bought, if they boughta high-end camera, well,
there's a good likelihood.
They're going to buy somelenses and they're going to buy
some accessories and all kindsof stuff.
Right, they're into it yeah,yeah yeah, and if they're, you
know you can use the theirpurchase patterns to guide you
(22:24):
in terms of how to communicate.
The segmented communication isreally underutilized and by
recognizing where people are intheir life cycle, by identifying
what kind of buyer they are arethey professional, are they
semi-pro, are they just somebodywho's messing around you really
(22:45):
can tailor, you can communicateto them in that way.
I mean, it's not from anacquisition point of view, but
even in an acquisition point ofview, you can tailor to
different audiences based onwhat you're trying to sell.
Gary Pageau (22:56):
Right, you have a picture of, let's say, you have
your aficionado, right You're.
You know the old retireddentist meme, right, where you
know the guy.
This is the guy who's going tobuy a Leica and go to Alaska and
you know he's going to spend alot of money on hardware, right,
so you may have a few of thosepeople.
So how would you use thatcustomer to get more people like
(23:17):
him, like you know what I'msaying?
John Watson (23:20):
Again, it depends on who they are.
I think now everybody's asocial media influencer in some
way, yeah, right, and so ifyou're doing that kind of
high-end photography, you'reprobably posting it.
You can incentivize them toreally give you feedback, to
make introductions, turn theminto a fan or a source of
referrals.
(23:41):
Quite often those people aredoing.
I mean, they can be trainingother people.
I know I do.
People come to me all the timesay how do I use my camera?
Right?
So you can, and I've sent somany people to local photography
shops because I like them right.
Yeah, yeah, and I think part ofit is the customer service side
(24:01):
.
If I'm really enamored with ashop because I absolutely love
the product line and I like howthey treat me and you know what
they offer, you know they sortof help me out right, then I'm
going to send people there,right.
And I think part of it is reallylooking at the marketing in a
holistic way, right?
So everybody tends to thinkmarketing is advertising, right,
or the acquisition side, andthey miss.
(24:22):
There's a whole, I mean thevast majority.
Most of the marketing shouldactually be retention and
customer engagement andgathering customer feedback and
generating reviews andtestimonials and referrals and
the margins on that are vastlyhigher and you usually lose
money on your acquisition Right.
Exactly, you make money on theretention Right and but we've
(24:43):
got that mixed up in that wespend way more money and time on
the acquisition side Right, andyou know, and tend to drop the
ball on the retention side.
Gary Pageau (24:52):
Right, yeah, exactly, because I mean, if
you're I mean, I've heardnumbers anywhere costs up to you
know, $18 or more for an onlinecompany to you know, get a
print customer Right, thatthat's, that's what it costs
them to acquire.
So, which is why they do, likeyou know, get a print customer
right, that that's, that's whatit costs them to acquire.
So, which is why they do, likeyou know, a big giveaway to at
least get one thing from themand get them into the system, so
(25:13):
at least they can sell themsomething later.
John Watson (25:14):
Yeah, it's, it really is.
You know, I think this holisticview is well.
The main thing I focus on istrying to get people to to see
marketing as more than justadvertising.
Gary Pageau (25:26):
Right.
John Watson (25:27):
Right that there's a, there's a.
I have a 20 step framework thatI get them to back up and say
let's just look at this from abeginning to end perspective.
Right, If you look at thecustomer's journey through your
business over time, not just thesingle transaction but over,
say, 10 years.
Gary Pageau (25:42):
Right.
John Watson (25:43):
What experience am I creating?
How do I facilitate theirexperience so that I can
maximize my earnings from thoserelationships?
Gary Pageau (25:52):
Right.
John Watson (25:52):
So you're cultivating relationships,
maximizing lifetime value andgenerating all kinds of
secondary sales, as well asreferrals and et cetera, et
cetera.
And because you need that tooffset the high cost of
acquisition.
Gary Pageau (26:08):
Right.
John Watson (26:09):
Right, but people?
But historically I've seenpeople put way too much emphasis
on the acquisition side andlargely ignore the retention
side, and it just did that.
The math, you know.
If you really understand themath, you'd flip it around.
Gary Pageau (26:26):
Well, and that's what's funny is, I think, a lot
of very wildly, wildlysuccessful companies are the
ones you don't hear much about,right, because they're just
working on their existingcustomer base and et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera.
But I think you know, in termsof where our media works and how
the business press works, right, the big and flashy, you get
all the attention.
(26:46):
But there's literally, you know, thousands of companies that
are kind of doing what you'redoing.
Hey, I'm just gonna focus on mycurrent customers and, you know
, go where my bang for the buckis and I'm not going to take out
the splashy ads or have theTikTok influencer.
John Watson (27:00):
Well, it's a balancing thing, right.
I'm not saying don't do it.
What I'm saying is balance itright.
Gary Pageau (27:06):
I'm just saying it's a matter of you know sort
of.
As you know, as we become asort of media obsessed culture,
right, we look for those kind ofthings when actually the hero
companies are the ones that are,you know, not probably blasting
things out.
John Watson (27:24):
The challenge really, I think, is getting
people to realize that attentiondoes not translate to sales,
right, not always it cantranslate to sales if you put
the system in place to make sureit does in a high probability,
but just by itself, without thesystem behind it, is very
unlikely to Right.
Gary Pageau (27:45):
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, how many hot fad products
have there been right Just inthe last?
Well, forever.
But in the last few years thatgot a lot of attention but then
just flopped in the marketplace.
John Watson (27:58):
Yeah, it's, I mean, like anything, and this is why
I try to get people to thinkabout it more from a systems
point of view, right, not justdo the single tactic and hope
for the best.
It's like chain them togetheras an actual system.
Right, we're going to do thislead offer and we're going to do
, you know, when they get in thestore, we're going to do this
kind of promotions and this typeof engagement and this kind of
(28:20):
you know how, this, how we'regoing to enroll them in our you
know sign up program and andthat's how we're going to follow
up with them.
And it's like, if you thinkabout it as this lifetime, you
know this, this, this integratedapproach, right, it really
doesn't take a heck of a lot ofextra.
I mean, it's certainly not anymore costly than advertising,
right, it really just is a shiftin, it's a different way of
(28:42):
approaching it, right, it's lesssort of hopeful and more
engineered I love that.
Gary Pageau (28:49):
That's a great slogan.
I love that.
Less hopeful, more engineered,right.
accrue marketing.
com I love that.
That's awesome.
So where can people go to learnabout your 20 ways to fix your
marketing?
Where can people go for moreinformation?
John Watson (29:03):
well, the two way, two places.
One is my website, which isaccrewmarketingcom, and then
Amazon.
I have my books up on Amazon.
It's probably the easiest placeto buy it.
It's called being Profitable abusiness development roadmap,
but my website is full of I'vegot 20 free downloads, ebooks
(29:23):
for download.
I've got a ton of resources.
So I think the thing.
If people want to understandmore of this, I would invite
them to take advantage of allthe free resources at
accruemarketingcom.
Gary Pageau (29:36):
Awesome.
Well, listen, john, it's beengreat talking to you and I've
learned a lot, and I appreciateyour time and best wishes and
hope to talk to you again soon.
John Watson (29:43):
Well, thank you very much.
Appreciate the invitation to beon your show.
Erin Manning (29:47):
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel
Society podcast.
Read more great stories andsign up for the newsletter at
wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.
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