Why Your Marketing Is Everywhere and Getting You Nowhere

Introducing Josh Anderson

I have with me today a really cool guest that I think is going to help a lot of small businesses. His name is Josh Anderson and he is the founder of Marketing Reboot, which is both his company but he also has a podcast, which is how we met. Josh, I don't remember who introduced us... oh, you found me on LinkedIn. That's it —” and yeah, that led to being on your podcast. We had this cool conversation and I was like, okay, I have to have you on mine because you have some knowledge that I don't have. Your target market is more —” I think you told me it was like twenty-five million to like a hundred million is kind of your sweet spot.

Yeah, it can vary of course depending on the need and what they need, but yeah —” twenty-five million top line is kind of the sweet spot, you know, around there give or take.

And mine is really kind of up to where yours begins, so like yeah —” at twenty-five million they start needing you. That makes sense. I'm super glad to have you on the podcast. First, I want you to brag on yourself a little bit —” but I'll make it more comfortable. What is a really cool compliment that a client of yours has given you?

Oh man. You know, there's always the testimonials that are great, but I think the biggest compliment can be when somebody allows you to be their fractional CMO and trusts you to do it correctly. That trust in the relationship —” I've gotten that compliment of course, like "wow, you can visualize all the areas and how they come together for a full campaign" —” but just people giving you the trust to steer their baby, so to speak, is a big compliment.

The Problem: Chaotic Marketing

Yeah, and so as a fractional CMO you get to see a lot of different operations —” some good, some bad. So let's dive into that. You mentioned to me before I hit record that some businesses kind of start things out of order with their marketing operations. Talk about that.

Yeah, I mean what I do is really help people take chaotic marketing and see clearly. I bring clarity to that. As a very small business —” kind of like the ones that are your ideal customer —” you're just putting everything together and doing what you can to stay on top of being in the market and all the noise that comes with it. But as you start to build a little team, now you're not the solo founder anymore. You actually have maybe a strategic marketer, a director of marketing, plus a junior marketer —” now you have three cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. Things can get a lot more confusing: who's working on what, what's being done, who's tracking things of that nature.

So my team can come in and help audit the entire viewpoint of what people are currently doing. And then we normally cut twenty-five to thirty percent of what people are doing because they're focusing on the wrong things or they're putting themselves in too many verticals where the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Something as simple as file naming structure within Google Drive —” teams spend hours and hours searching for things they've already created previously just because nobody remembers what the name was. Something as simple as that can save each team member one hour a week, and that compounds over time.

Pick Your Lane —” The Cat Vet Example

One of them is simply trying to be everything to everyone. You just cannot do it. We need to focus on what we're going to try to own and be really good at. That doesn't mean you can't experiment in other areas —” you can —” but as soon as you double down on what's working, then you can take more strategic bets on what you think will be the next thing.

So let me pull an example out of the air just to see how your brain works. Let's talk about a veterinarian. A veterinarian has been working at another practice for a while and they're ready to start their own. The first thing I see them do is call themselves "Minneapolis Veterinarian" and throw all these typical words on their marketing —” "compassionate," "dogs, cats, and small breeds," "friendly staff" —” all the same boring stuff. They cast the widest net possible. You could slap any vet's name on that and you wouldn't know the difference. They call you. Where do you start?

I would start not even thinking about the messaging yet —” it's time to dive into where they're currently at. If they're coming from another veterinary clinic, they have a lot of insight about what that clinic did well and what they didn't do well. They see the gaps —” maybe they weren't really good at cats. And now this new Minneapolis Veterinary, she loves working with cats. So the passion's there and there's a market gap there as well. That's where I'd start —” get the core fundamentals of how we're going to develop the messaging, and then shape everything around the felines. "I am the number one cat-recommended veterinarian in Minneapolis."

I love that. I love when a small business picks their lane and commits to it, because then all their marketing gets easier. You can have fun with it. Cat owners are a different breed —” pun intended —” from dog owners. And that veterinarian, if they love cats, why not go all in? The adage: if you're a neurosurgeon, you're going to get paid a lot more than a general practitioner.

The Messaging Platform

We have a foundational audit where we're gathering as much information as possible —” Google Analytics, HubSpot access, things of that nature —” but we're also interviewing key stakeholders, the board, the C-suite, employees. We do an anonymous employee survey to the entire company to see how they actually feel about how the company portrays itself. They're on the front lines —” they're going to have really good ideas. Then we interview customers.

Then we're really focusing on: what you think you're saying to the market, is that what you're actually saying? We look at their internal positioning statement —” that can take a long time, and there can be some really hard arguments about what you truly stand on as your differentiator. We try to get a good messaging platform built. That's your internal positioning statement, your origin story, your archetypes, your ICPs —” all in one document. This document is like gold. Because now you have a team of four, five, six plus sales, plus customer service, and everybody's messaging is filtered through this messaging platform. You're all speaking the same agreed-upon language. It eases the customer journey —” if they hear something on the website but then talk to sales and it's completely different, that's friction. This removes the friction.

Step two, once you have your messaging platform set, is a clarity path. We're talking to the leadership team: what is your three-year goal, your one-year goal, quarterly goals? We work backwards. Three-year, one-year, quarterly goals —” and then what issues do you see on the horizon? We assign ownership and timelines for each quarterly goal. That becomes the roadmap for the next ninety days. Then campaigns are built to filter up to those quarterly goals. More bite-size pieces.

Advice for Businesses Just Starting Out

Stay on top of your data. Make sure you have Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, your CRM in place —” so you're making decisions based on data, not gut feeling. Gut feeling is great for creativity, but if your campaigns don't deliver top-line results, what's the point? And second —” if you haven't done it in a while, try to build your own internal positioning statement. Try to get the whole team aligned, using the same language, from top of funnel to bottom funnel plus customer service, onboarding, offboarding, and even employee hiring and training. Analyze, get the data, trust the data, optimize by the data —” and make sure you're all speaking the same language.

And where can people find out more about you —” your writing, your podcast, all of that?

Marketing Reboot —” it's mktgreboot.com. Articles, newsletter, and the podcast is called Making Big Shifts.

Thank you so much for your insights. I think they're extremely valuable whether you're just starting out and want to get things right the first time, or you're a more established business ready to expand or shore up what you've been doing. Thanks for being on here.

I really appreciate you having me. This has been fun.

I do have one final question, and it is perhaps the most important question: dogs or cats?

Oh man. Growing up —” both. I really am truly both. We only have cats now because my wife's a huge cat person, but me and my son are talking her into getting a dog this summer.

We'll let it slide that you're both —” since you and your son are pro-dog. Thanks again, Josh. I really appreciate your time and your wisdom.