# Dude. Marketing is Not Your Thing

Channel: Rob Walling
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSy7HeTmRxg
Duration: 14 min
Language: English
Words: 2477
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/ZSy7HeTmRxg

---

[0:00] [Music]

[0:07] [Music] so dude marketing is not your thing thank you for not being offended by the title of my talk by the way how many of you would agree with this in general cool how many of you say marketing is like total your thing right good and then everybody else is sort of somewhere in the middle okay well the reason I won't actually move back the reason I wanted to do this talk was because I think we spent so much time as entrepreneurs because it's sort of in our in our DNA to learn new skills and step outside of our comfort zone and in today's day and age with all of the

[0:49] tools and things that are out there that's totally possible it's totally doable especially for all of you really super smart people but it's really not always very practical because our most precious resource is our time correct so that's why I wanted to do the talk a little bit about me I am an entrepreneur I'm actually here to learn as an attendee I'm a consultant I help people put together marketing strategy and figure out messaging and all of that good stuff I'm also a marketing executive I prior to about about a year ago I left my really good job to get back into being an entrepreneur I've spent pretty much

[1:28] my whole career going back and forth between working for others and working for myself and I got zombified whoever said that think been said zombified in my last job so I finally I finally quit but it was a great job and I learned a ton I worked for a company called Tech Smith an awesome software company that makes desktop applications I see some nodding heads they've been around for a long time I came on board with the company when they were about 5 million of revenue and and was with them through a high growth period all the way up to around 50 million I was brought on board

[2:03] to put some strategy around the marketing activities that were going on and in that process I was able to build out a marketing team make a whole lot of disses about how to get things done what to do in house what to outsource all of that stuff learn to tunnel lessons process so I want to share some of that with you back to school real quick what is marketing sort of marketing 101 it is about the four PS right product price place promotion and I want to start here because I think it's important to remember that marketing is more than just the promotions piece and especially

[2:40] in a growing software company we have a tendency which I lived through we have a tendency to sort of take marketing and put it off in its little sort of siloed corner and so it becomes less and less an integral part of the product price and place part of the mix it becomes a promotion piece right and I could probably do a whole session on that but I'm not going to for this talk I really am going to focus in on promotion so this is the big problem that I see and I saw back when I was doing it and I'm still seeing it today as I'm consulting

[3:14] with businesses and talking with all of you that there's really just too many things too many choices too many options and that enough time so it's important that we narrow and focus right we hear a lot of that I've heard it mentioned in a couple of presentations today but I want to talk about some techniques for doing that some ways that I've done that and some things that might help you you could be like this kid just gonna do it all myself I get like that but he will poop his pants and cry and you don't want to be like him right so here's my four steps first set and follow some

[3:57] basic rules they don't have to be my rules these I'm going to show you what my rules are but you'll want to set and follow some basic rules these are some that I've learned over over the years one is if it's close to the customer or drives revenue keep it in-house and there's a simple reason for this and that is you can't afford to screw either one of these two things up especially as a small business you can't afford to screw up your customer and you can't afford to screw up your revenue so don't be outsourcing this stuff too soon stay General early and specialize later

[4:30] I've heard other people tweet and talk about this stuff too which is kind of nice to know that I'm not crazy it's sort of validating but it's a lot easier to teach a marketing person how to be a specialist from being a generalist than it is to teach a specialist how to be a generalist for example if you have a graphic designer they're probably not going to want to go stand in your tradeshow booth and talk to customers all day so start general specialize later and I'll get into a little bit more about what is marketing in the specializations later higher responsibly don't hire and kill people I almost killed a marketing

[5:12] writer once um poor guy uh he's so good and he could just do everything and so I just kept dumping more and more on and then finally he came and he's like I can't I can't do this anymore I you know and it was too late he didn't actually die but um and I see this with software companies a lot imagine you've got your little team of technical people and everything's rocking and rolling and then you you think you're ready for maybe your first marketing person so you hire that generalist and it might be a junior person because that's all you can afford so you bring that person on and you're

[5:46] also excited you take everything that's not technical and you dump it on that person and that person is overwhelmed pretty soon they're doing email marketing and and writing and web design and they're answering the phone and they're getting your pop and you know it's it's bad so hire responsibly another lesson or a basic rule is to manage your outsource thing if you're gonna outsource it manage it appoint somebody to be in charge of that relationship even if it's yourself you know don't just hire somebody and expect that it's all gonna get done all stuff I'm sure you guys can you know so number two is align your tactics to something

[6:24] that makes sense for your business okay so this is a chart that I use a lot just to kind of show so you can sort of get your head around you know what is the purpose for all of these activities that you're doing at the center of any marketing strategy is always your message it's who you are what you do what you make who you sell it to why they should care all of that stuff that's an area that I love working in I can probably do a whole thing on that but I want to talk more about what's around that it's why do you have that

[6:54] message while you're delivering it for a reason right you're delivering it to either raise awareness or generate leads or nurture those leads and so it's it's good to stop and take a look at that mix and say well do I have the right amount of effort in energy being put into each one of these objectives say you're a company that has a high level of awareness everybody knows about you but you're not getting any leads you might want to shift some of your focus into into lead gen and same thing with lead sourcing so you get it then go through the exercise of aligning some tactics

[7:29] for each one of those objectives this is really helpful remember that big massive list of all of those things I share the big collection this is a really helpful exercise to narrow that collection of tactics and give them a home ok it's also totally okay if you have some tactics that overlap and these different objectives so email marketing is a really good example I love email marketing you might have three different email programs running at once you might have one that is intended to raise awareness maybe you're buying lists and spamming people whatever you might have an email program going for generating leads maybe you're doing special offers

[8:08] and so on and so forth and then you have a lead nurturing email program once you get people into your pipeline then you're sort of nurturing them and moving them along three separate emails excuse me three separate programs three separate tactics each one with a very distinct purpose okay so say you went through that whole exercise and you were able to narrow down your list of things that are available to you - these four cool now you need to figure out if you're gonna do them internally or if you're gonna outsource them if you do them internally you need to decide if you're gonna do them yourself or if

[8:42] you're gonna hire somebody and if your outsource them you need to decide if you're gonna do an agency or you're gonna do a contractor well the good thing is you've already narrowed your list so you don't have to make all of those decisions have to analyze that all of those for all of those you only have to go for those five so number three evaluate your options based on fit how they how they align with that strategic objectives chart that I showed you earlier and this stuff so these are the these are the five tactics over on the left and then there's there's a key to success for

[9:19] each one of these tactics and then there's a skill and when I say skill it's more like the key skill okay for this mix let's just pick on one let's pick on PR for instance the key to key to success for doing an effective PR campaign is time and commitment to research plan and execute if your company does not have the time to research plan and execute on a PR campaign don't do it don't deny it don't try to convince the PR people that it's really doesn't take that much time we had to be able you know respect the key to success for the tactic and then think

[9:57] about the skill that's required to do the tactics so say your company does have some time and you're willing to invest in PR take a look at the skill is that something that you are you do you have the the sales skill because PR really is about outbound sales I mean it's about reaching out and forming relationships and nurturing those relationships and that sort of thing do you have that skill or do you need to be looking at an outside resource for that so I I would create a chart like this and then I would talk to people talk to different agencies talked to contractors talk to colleagues in this room talk to

[10:31] anybody you can about those tactics and what are the ways to get those done what are the successes what are the potential pitfalls to avoid if it were me if I were doing a small software company right now I would probably do PR yeah I would either not do PR or I would do it with an independent contractor I wouldn't try to do it myself it is a specialization and it's it's a huge time commitment social media I would probably do it myself or not do it at all search engine marketing I actually think this might be something worth talking to contractors small agency that sort of

[11:17] thing it is about hitting the balance between quantity and quality and they get all of that and I think if you're willing to feed them a budget and some guidelines and let them go and let them be free they'll do a good job for you if you're kind of a control freak and you like to control spend and all of that stuff which you might need to because of a financial situation then you'd want to keep that in-house and do it yourself for hire or someone to do it SEO uh I would have to outsource this because this is not an area of expertise for me

[11:50] you guys could probably do this I'm sure half of you already are email I think that this would be a great one to keep in-house and do yourself because of the skills that are required for this it's very strategic and analytical you have to come up with the strategy and all of that if you're not so sure about the writing piece then hire somebody to edit your work or maybe hire somebody to write some content for you but I think structuring the strategy and figuring out all of that totally something you could do so last point is to stay focused [Music] we all have shiny object syndrome in

[12:29] this room I know refer back to your alignment chart every time a new idea comes up always be thinking of resourcing and what it really takes to get this stuff done remember those the key to success in this and the skills necessary and learn how to say not now I think a lot of us think that oh my god I either need to do this now or never well that's not necessary just say not now I'm gonna stay focused on my strategy here is my strategy this is what I'm gonna do talk to me again in a few months so just a quick recap of my four steps for not

[13:02] what I do pooping your pants and crying like the baby was to establish some rules align your tactics to a strategy and remember those four objective or three objectives evaluate your options based on something like the key to success and the skills and stay focused on staying focused and then you can be like this baby who obviously did not poop his pants and pee or cry or whatever I don't know and then you'll be you'll be good to go thank you very much [Applause]

---

About this transcript
Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com).
ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts.
Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools
How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt