Lead Generation vs. Branding: How to Win the Marketing War

Step into the smoke-filled boardrooms of Madison Avenue with Advertising in America. Ryan Chute, Mick Torbay, and Chris Torbay pull no punches as they debate the most expensive myth in marketing: the “perfect lead.”

Episode Highlights

• Why chasing the “Glengarry leads” could bankrupt your business.
• The dangerous illusion of digital targeting and search intent.
• Why brand-building beats hyper-targeting every single time.
• The real math behind reach, frequency, and cost efficiency.
• How messaging, not media, is the ultimate form of targeting.

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💬 Do you believe in the mythical “perfect lead,” or is mass media still king in building brands?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads® for Essential Services

In a world of opportunity, we can send our limited resources to good leads or bad leads. If all we want are the good leads, where can we go to just talk to them? 

Targeting good leads. The Glenngarry leads the magical list of leads where everyone is rolling in cash and ready to buy. They just don't know anyone who sells what you sell or does what you do. Is there such a list? Maybe. 

Budweiser advertises a lot on TV. Is that because that's where all the thirsty beer drinkers are? No. Are there tons of TV viewers who aren't even beer drinkers? Sure. But the medium still builds the brand very well among plenty of people who are the target. Reach that group with a relevant, compelling, memorable message, and you will have plenty of targeted leads. 

Targeting good leads is the most expensive way to market your business. You can't afford to spend good money showing Chris Torbay how good your geotechnical drill is. 

When people say fish, where the fish are, what they really mean is…

Ryan Chute: In today's episode, we're going to debate the best way to target the good leads. To start, let's hear from Mick on the best way to target these supreme specimens. 

Mick Torbay: Nobody wants to waste their money talking to the wrong people. In marketing, we call that wastage. Premium brands understand wastage. You put an ad for a Rolex in a magazine, and you have to know that about 90% of the people who read that magazine can't afford a Rolex. So wastage is a real thing. And you need to understand how to reduce it. Ideally, you would not spend $1 transmitting your message to anyone who cannot afford what you sell or is otherwise not inclined to buy it. So, that leads us to targeting; targeting good leads, the Glenngarry leads, the magical list of leads where everyone is rolling in cash and ready to buy, they just don't know anyone who sells what you sell or does what you do. Is there such a list? Maybe.

One of my Wizard of Ads Partners has a client who is in the private jet business. He buys them, sells them, charters them, leases them. If you want to take a citation jet from Regina, Saskatchewan, to Palm Springs, I got a guy. That's right. Private jets in Saskatchewan, Canada. This is a province the size of Texas, except it only has 1.2 million people in the whole freaking place. Now, how many of those 1.2 million people can afford to buy a private jet? The answer is not in the thousands. It's in the dozens. Can you effectively market your private jet business without targeting?

No way. You can't use TV, radio, print, or outdoor. Too much wastage, and you can't use digital because there's no search intent. If they're not looking, you can't target them. No search intent means digital is a dead end too. So my partner bought the list. Expensive, yes, but absolutely necessary. 

I feel bad for any business that is put in this position because targeting good leads is the most expensive way to market your business. If you sell industrial mining equipment, you sure as shit better target your leads. You can't afford to spend good money showing Chris Torbay how good your geotechnical drill is. There's 50 people in the world who buy those, so you'd better be on a first-name basis with all 50 and target. The hell out of each one.

But remember, in our quest to not spend one dime on people who can't afford what we sell or are otherwise not inclined to buy, we can easily get distracted by the not one dime part. Reducing wastage to nothing is not actually achievable. And there's an intersection where the cost of a good lead is actually higher than the wastage it's supposed to prevent.

Think of wastage as something you wanna reduce, not eliminate. Because as you get close to zero wastage, you're now paying a fortune to reach almost nobody, and that's not a good strategy. I'm lucky because most of my clients do not have such a narrow target. For the most part, they're looking for homeowners or adults, 18 plus, or women 30 and over. Now that's a demographic that doesn't require a lot of targeting. You can reach those people by the thousands for just pennies using mass media. Way cheaper than targeting. If you have a competitor who's trying to target leads, when the demographic is homeowners, don't do anything to change his mind. He's gonna spend himself into the ground. Let him do that. Unnecessary targeting is a beautiful thing when it's being done by your opponent. 

Ryan Chute: Wait a minute, Chris doesn't know shit about geotechnical drills. Or does he? He does know a thing or two about advertising, and I'm not sure whether to think more or less of him, Chris?

Chris Torbay: The best way to get more targeted leads is to get more leads, reach more people, become familiar with more people, be the brand more people think of first and like the best from that vast pool, the right people. We'll sort themselves out. There is no medium where people whose air conditioner just failed, hang out. There is no medium where guys about to shop for an engagement ring, hang out. Will they Google it at the last minute? Sure. But if that's your strategy, you've already lost. 

Budweiser advertises a lot on TV. Is that because that's where all the thirsty beer drinkers are? No. Are there tons of TV viewers who aren't even beer drinkers? Sure, but the medium still builds the brand very well among plenty of people who are the target. Reach that group with a relevant, compelling, memorable message, and you will have plenty of targeted leads. 

By all means, don't target badly. Don't advertise Budweiser during Saturday morning cartoons. Don't advertise Barbie dolls on a home renovation show, or on one of those car fixer-upper shows. When people say, fish where the fish are, what they really mean is; don't fish where the fish are not. But that's only specific to a degree. It means fish in a lake, don't fish in a parking lot. But within the lake, the fish are everywhere. There isn't a secret spot where you can just drop your line and konk a fish on the head with your hook. You still have to fish, and it still takes time. 

Targeting the right audience by choosing the right show or the right medium can only be so effective, and audiences change. If you reach consumers who are not your specific target today, they may very well become your target tomorrow or a year from now. The fish swim around, the fish get bigger. The spot that was no luck yesterday could be full of fish tomorrow. My bigger question is, where did you get this impression that there actually was a way to only target your message to only the people who specifically need your product or service right now?

Who the hell suggested that this would be possible if you were just a little bit smarter? Because that guy has set unrealistic expectations for how the universe works. Do you go into a bar hoping that inside there is one single girl who is exactly your type and has a thing for guys who are exactly like you, and you buy her one drink, and she accepts, and you propose marriage? No.

No one expects that. That is how the world works. Do you walk into a purse store and find them displaying one purse, and it's exactly the one you wanted? No, they literally have hundreds of purses because they have no idea what you want and no idea what the hundreds of other people who come into the store might want. And that's the purse store. These guys totally know that vertical. Bloomingdale's has to do that with purses, and underpants, and pillowcases, and coffee makers. Everybody is different, and the same people are different tomorrow. And criteria change and circumstances change. Stop thinking there's a perfect target and a perfect solution for that perfect target.

There's bad targeting and there's good targeting, but good targeting only gets so good, and it doesn't get any better. Be a great brand with a great offering and a memorable message. Be present enough that people will know you well and be likable enough that people will turn to you when the opportunity arises, but do all that broadly. The more successfully you do that broadly, the more hot, immediate targets you will reach. 

Fishing with a rod and reel at your favorite secret spot is fun, especially if you what you really like doing is spending the entire day in the sun chatting with your buddy, drinking beer. If you like catching fish, get a net. Go into the ocean. 

Ryan Chute: Huh? Stay tuned.

Ryan Chute: It seems to me that there's two angles of approach here. That one, you could get the good leads before they get to Google by targeting them with epic ad copy or that two, the second angle is that we target homeowners from age 35 to 55 years old females, because they're the most likely to call and ensure our message is in front of the right people at the time when they need your thing. What's the best play here, guys?

Mick Torbay: I wanna start by answering your question as asked.

Who the hell told you that there's a way to target people? The answer originally was the Yellow Pages. They originally said, “This is where people look when they're just about to buy. Do you want to talk to people who are just about to buy?”

“Oh, yeah, that's exactly who I want.” And more recently, the search engines are saying exactly the same thing. Come to spend your money with us because we have people who are just about to buy. The part they don't mention is the people who are just about to buy, who do not already have a preferred brand.

Chris Torbay: The people who are brand completely clueless at that moment.

Mick Torbay: And that's the part that we don’t, that they never mentioned to you, is that they're only talking to people who don't have a preferred brand. The reason why people don't have to Google where to get a burger this afternoon is because a couple of burger ideas are already in their heads.

So if we today, we wanted to quickly grab some lunch, we wouldn't have to say “burgers near us.” We just go to fricking Burger King or Mickey D's. So sadly, that's the answer to your question.

Chris Torbay: I think you're right.

Mick Torbay: They sold a bill of goods because it's horseshit.

Chris Torbay: And beyond that, too, it's not just the search engines; it's all digital marketing that has created this, too, where you pay per click. You have, or you have display ads where you only pay when somebody clicks on them. So only a person who is looking for lemons will click on this ad for lemons, and allegedly, then, what they tell you is that, and it's trackable, and we can measure exactly where your people are coming from.

Mick Torbay: And it's based on a false premise, which serves that advertising medium to sell you more advertising.

Chris Torbay: But then it erodes the reality of the world, which is that people are just walking around, and you cannot get into their heads. You cannot target specific people at specific times when they're just about ready to buy and they're looking, all these sorts of things, that's an unreasonable thing to think of. To think is possible.

Mick Torbay: I also think that to some degree, people will conclude that a good lead is somebody who bought, and a not-so-good lead is somebody who didn’t.

Chris Torbay: There are lots of good leads.

Mick Torbay: Our clients run into this challenge all the time when their CSRs are on a phone call and they take a call, and then at the end of the call, they have to say, "Did it close, did it not close?" And there's another button, especially on ServiceTitan says, “this was not a lead.”

And there's a lot of times when people will click on this, “Oh no, that wasn't a lead”. And then if you actually go and listen to that fucking call, “Oh, it was a lead.” All right. It's just you.

Chris Torbay: I think that's a good point.

Mick Torbay: And you've now magically made your close rate get higher. Because everybody who doesn't, who calls you and doesn't buy wasn't a lead.

Ryan Chute: It should instead infer that I wasn't a salesperson capable of doing my job.

Chris Torbay: Or any number of other things. I'm a homeowner. If you want to advertise wallpaper to me this year, I'm not going to wallpaper anything in my home this year. I'm pretty, pretty sure about that. But will be in three years, in which case I'm a lead. Eventually, I'm gonna get to it. Am I a lead now? Am I gonna close this week? If you're a better salesperson, am I gonna close this week? No, we, everything's pretty much the way we want it, but in the future, there will be a time that I will close, in which case I'm a lead now, if you’re brand building.

Ryan Chute: I think that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what lead gen is and what branding is, and what sales activation is.

Mick Torbay: Now, we have to define our terms.

Ryan Chute: We do. And I think that when we all communicate with the same language, that will have a much clearer path to how we construct our marketing.

So in marketing, we have brand awareness, and we have to say things that would attract a relational customer.

Sales activation is going to attract the transactional customer. So we have to have both of those. About 40% of your business and home services should be focused in on the messaging around, around activation. Get somebody to try us out. Now that doesn't mean discount necessarily, but it does mean to do a thing now.

Mick Torbay: Find a reason to take them down the funnel.  That's a little bit.

Ryan Chute: So it's about where they're on the funnel at, in the funnel. And branding isn't at the top of the funnel. Branding is at the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel and way past the funnel when we're trying to continue the relationship afterwards.

Sales activation happens along the way for the things that we might be able to entice somebody to do, or to bring them in deeper into the funnel to do something with us in the first place. The missing piece of this equation is this ferial thing called lead generation.

The reality of it is that branding and sales activation are both lead generation activities; all of it is lead generation. Your truck wrap is lead generation. Your website, right? The uniforms that you wear, the performance that you have inside the customer's house, the great work that you do, the warranty, all lead generation, for the next time they just decide to work with you or not.

Where the problem lies is the portal, to which they transition from not a customer or a previous customer to buying something from you now, or at least giving you the opportunity to buy something right now, going from lead to prospect. For me, a lead go to prospect is they've booked an appointment, they've shown up in your store, they have done a thing that has required them to take an action to transition from one state to another state.

This is a portal, this is symbolic. But it's deeply important because when we recognize that it's not about lead gen, it's about capturing a lead or being present where the leads are when they need your thing, we're now talking about spending money on conversion presence or portal presence. Having that ability to be able to quickly get the customer from m not us to us, and then converting them into a prospect. And when we get them to prospect, it's our job in sales to get the thing done, which is going to be supported by the marketing, communication, and creativity that we started before we got to Google.

So if all you're spending your money on is the portal, why are they gonna pick your door and reach for your doorknob versus the 400 other doorknobs that are sitting in front of them at the exact same spot.

Mick Torbay: On the topic of targeting, what concerns me the most about the topic is that I think there's a lot of advertisers who say, “I've only got a certain amount of money, so therefore I must target.” And how shall I target? I would submit that if that is your starting place, you may have already made a mistake. Because I would look at it in terms of, do I have to target or should I target and what I want to, I want the answer to be is you either don't have to target or, “oh crap, I have to target.” If you have to target, that's bad news for you because it's expensive and it's fewer people.

Chris Torbay: But I also wonder, like it's a continuum, right? So the example of private jet, I think, was a great one. That one, yes, you've got no other choice. You've really gotta do that. I think generally speaking, it's a bit of a continuum, and so many things, it's easy to get a bit better. To get better than that starts to get more and more expensive. And that's the challenge, which to reach. You could do a bad job. So let's not do a bad job. Let's find things generally where are homeowners wide, generally where these people where can you find them? What media do they listen to? What sort of shows do they watch within that medium? All that kind of stuff. But then, beyond that, you're still gonna get lots of noise and lots of other stuff. You can only be so good without doing that extreme thing.

Ryan Chute: That's the red herring, though, right there. And I love that you brought that up, Chris.

One of our media buyers that we're working with right now is looking at a particular landscape where they can't service the whole city. So they're saying, let's target. Every time you add something to the target, the cost goes up.

Mick Torbay: And the number of people you reach goes down.

Ryan Chute: So what we're talking about right now is the critical conversation around efficiency versus spend. Now, here's where the break happens.

I'm a small business operator. I have $5,000 I can spend on that thing to target, right? I have to choose who am I going to lose, right? Which is something we talk about all the time, and who are we gonna lose, but we're talking about it from the standpoint of messaging. And the answer to this, by the way, the spoiler alert here, is that the people you choose to lose. The targeting that you do happens in your message, not in your people, not in media choice. But sometimes you gotta choose the channel, and you've gotta choose who to lose. I can't go on all of the radio stations. I'm gonna choose the most efficient option possible.

When I'm in that small part of the city where I can only do so much, I'm going to have to shrink it down and just talk to these people, but talk to them over and over again. So it's not your budget, it's always a reflection of reach, not the frequency or message. Always invest in frequency and message properly, and targeting becomes more freeing as you get more money.

Chris Torbay: But also the reason you're still gonna have so, you're living within your means. You're targeting as many people as you can, or you're advertising to as many people as you can, given the means you have. It's targeting with its message. And what that means is there's a bunch of people in there who are not going to buy because the message is talking to a specific subset, even of that smaller group.

Ryan Chute: And that's where the problem lies when people say, “Hey, I'm going to target women 35 to 75, homeowners only of a certain income with a college degree and two kids at home.” All of a sudden, you've got this perfect little thousand people you're gonna talk to

Mick Torbay: And damn is that's expensive.

Ryan Chute: And that's not only expensive, but absolutely ineffective.

Chris Torbay: They don't all want your product this week.

Mick Torbay: Their water heaters all work right now.

Ryan Chute: Exactly. So what we're talking about here from a targeting standpoint is if you are looking at targeting for a budget, target the geography. Target +18 if it's social media.

Mick Torbay: Unless you're selling Barbie, in which case maybe not +18.

Chris Torbay: Here's the interesting thing, I made that point about if you're selling Barbie dolls, don't put them on the car fixer-upper show. Guess who watches those? Car fixer-upper shows? Dads. Dads. Dads. Oh, they've got daughters. How many dads have got daughters? About 50% of them.

So it's actually not bet. It's not great. But it's not like even within that, you'd certainly be the only right, the only daughter toy that is advertised in that show, in which case you're gonna stick out. People are gonna remember it. So maybe it's not all that bad, actually.

Ryan Chute: But the trick from that next step forward is you're in front of dad's talk to dads and about how to make their little girls' habits.

Chris Torbay: There we go. Messaging use.

Ryan Chute: Targeting dads. Is the message that you're targeting, it's not the actual dad, right? We don't wanna talk to all dads because there's going to be a whole bunch of people that aren't dads right now. But if you know what, if you run that ad and these people are 18 years or older, it has been scientifically proven. I don't know if you guys know about this yet or not, but 10 years later, it's 10 years later, they're exactly 28 years old.

Mick Torbay: Or in my case, 43 years later. We’re starting to have kids.

Chris Torbay: It's interesting, Mick makes the point about about don't run a TV ad for geotechnical drills because there's only 500 guys who buy those. Have you ever, because I have seen all three of these on like major network television, have you ever seen an ad for General Electric? Bombardier or Siemens?  

Those are ads that are aimed at bond traders, and corporations that might, airline CEOs, things like that. And they'll run it during the football game. They'll run it where? Everywhere. And that's 99.99999% wastage. But it's still worth it. Because you know those, that subset is out there, and if the message to those people is relevant, and you go, “Wow, Bombardier, they seem like they're really got their act together.” I don't know if you're a bond trader,but  you might buy the bond, right? Like it might invest. And so mission accomplished.

Mick Torbay: You might also acknowledge that almost no major decision is made in a vacuum. And that bond trader might be deciding to do it, but he also has a circle of other bond traders that he talks to. He might talk to his wife, or he might talk to his executive assistant. He might talk to his mentor. And in fact, at every stage the numbers get a lot huger. And suddenly, if everyone in America has a good feeling about General Electric, then all of the shareholders of this company might say,

Chris Torbay: “Oh, I guess we're, they're doing great things. Why don't we invest in them?”

Mick Torbay: I certainly feel good about the General Electric engines on this airplane.

Chris Torbay: And I guess that’s my point, which is whenever you try to get too specific of a targeting, you go. Are you sure your target's that small? Or do you think your target's actually way bigger? Why don't you grab a lot of people?

Mick Torbay: Especially since it costs so little, since it's to reach millions of people.

Chris Torbay: Like pan for gold in there. And finally, you'll find that they were in there. You didn't see them initially when you scooped up the big fistful of dirt.

Ryan Chute: But let’s put some math on this thing. Let's put some math on this thing by talking about doing some targeting. Now, when we did this particular study, we had a couple of different things at play here. We had a measuring company that is producing absolutely astounding metrics for us. Just rock your socks off metrics, and you go, woo, wow, like we can win here. Then we do our zero in targeting. And we have two different companies that we're looking at comparing this to as to getting this content on, and the goal is that we're trying to get frequency at the right frequency for the least amount of money, for the most amount of people.

So in one instance where we removed all of the targeting, what we found was that we actually got down to about a $5 cost per 1,000 people, talk to three times a week. Wow. I'm paying $5 to talk to 1,000 people. Every week, three times. Not too bad. Not too bad. Not the best. There's way more efficient buys than that. We have buys that are under a dollar that do the same thing. Different markets, different strategies, different channels.

When we started using dialing in, tuning into the very specific metrics, we got it up to $48 for the perfect customers. $48 three times a week, every single week. Now, do you want to spend $48 for 1,000 people, or do you wanna spend $5 for those same 1,000 people? How many more thousands of people can you buy?

Mick Torbay: Nine.

Mick Torbay: That's called math, right?

Ryan Chute: There you go. Nine times the amount of people. And do you know what those nine times more people know?

Mick Torbay: Other people.

Chris Torbay: They know Other people.

Ryan Chute: Other people. And if you say the things that actually matter that catch their attention, that entertain them, that actually draw some sort of conclusion that you are the value-based solution that they're looking for, will they tell their mom, dad, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, next-door neighbor, or friend? There's a lot higher chance of success here.

Now, what if we took that $5 per 1,000 people and got it to 40 cents? And what if we, instead of that, on that 40 cents of having a 30-second ad, we turned it to a one-minute ad? Now, how many more people are we talking to? We're talking about just a metric shit ton more people. We're talking hundreds of thousands of people. That we're now talking to and at a minute-long ad times by three ads a week. To the same people. By the way, to the same people that we're talking to, we're talking to hundreds of thousands of them. We're targeting them inasmuch as we're targeting everyone.

But we're now talking to basically your population. We're doing it for a fraction of a penny, and we're talking to them for two and a half hours a year. Two and a half hours a year. Can you imagine talking to two and a half hours of clients a year? Now they may not need the thing when they saw your ad. Most people don't.

Mick Torbay: But maybe they have a preferred brand now. And now they are going to be Googling you in your category.

Chris Torbay: And that's part of it is sometimes when you hear people talk about, “oh, I wish I could target,” it's because it comes from desperation. They're not in a position to build their brand over the years and say, "Why don't we become the market leader?" They need a call tonight. So that they're, so that their truck doesn't, doesn't sit around all day tomorrow.

Ryan Chute: And this is the obsession.

Chris Torbay: Targeting is not the cure to that.

Ryan Chute: That's right. This isn't Field of Dreams. Just because you're on Google doesn't mean you're going to get chosen. And if you are, you're up against all of the people, all of them that have more money than you. All of them, right? And they're going to outspend you.

Mick Torbay: You will bleed out playing that game. Unless you've got the most money, which you probably don't,

Ryan Chute: And if you do, you're probably not dealing with us because you've been bought by private equity. And yes, you know you're doing the thing that you need to do.

Mick Torbay: The things we're talking about are here are not hypothetical because our clients expect us to make the market leaders, and this is exactly how we do it. We're not holding shit back here. This is how we do it. We don't do it by targeting fewer people for more money. We do it by targeting more people for less money. And for the most part, our clients are not as narrow as the private jet guys, where they have no choice but to target, and if you're in a business where more people knowing who you are, knowing why you matter, and knowing why you stand apart from your competitors, if that would help you, then that's the way to do it.

Do it the less expensive way, reach more people for less money, instead of the other way around, which by definition is what you're doing when you're targeting.

Ryan Chute: The rule of thumb is very simple. If you can buy a list, buy it. If you can't buy a list, do mass media. And I think, where the biggest disconnect for people is, I only have $5,000. I can't do radio, or TV or anything else. You probably can't do TV, but you could; you definitely do radio well.

Do you know that you could, depending on your town? If you're ready to service all of, gosh, what Tampa, all of Tampa, Florida, you can absolutely start targeting Tampa, Florida as a whole for $5,000 a month on radio.

You will absolutely get a cult following of people that listen to that one station that you're going to get a real good deal on, because you're gonna have us figure out how to get you a real good deal and negotiate out that desperate station that was happy to put 40,000 people in front of you. It's gonna be one of the worst stations on the radio. It's gonna be one of the worst.

Mick Torbay: Don’t get the number one station, that's for sure.

Ryan Chute: It 100% will not, but you know what it'll get you? It'll get you the right frequency with the right message in front of a small group of people that will start doing your thing. And do you know who? They know people.

So you're 40,000 people. How much does that cost you? About $20,000. About $20,000 to do those. 40,000. And it's about. But even 40,000 people for $40,000, if you're ready to drop $3,000, $3,500 a month, you're in good shape. For $5,000 a month, 60,000 people, $60,000 a year, there's a pretty darn good chance that we're gonna get you somewhere in the realm of 100,000 to 120,000 people. If we could get a real deal, good deal to come together.

120,000 people versus occasionally passing by somebody as they're doom scrolling on social media, as you're trying to get their attention with no message that matters in an emotional environment that has you being completely and utterly ignored,

Mick Torbay: And you think of how few of those 100,00 people have to need what you what you sell now, it's a tiny number of those, if it's 1%, if it's one 10th of 1% that's 100 people, right? Oh my God. That's pretty good. It's not something that's possible when you start targeting.

Now, if you're only reaching that perfect group of 400 people, how many of those people have need a new water heater today? Is it two? Oh God. And how many of them are gonna buy from you? Like, the numbers become so low so quickly, and did I mention how fucking expensive it was to buy those 400 people?

Ryan Chute: Hugely expensive. And that's why small markets are usually very cheap markets to purchase for us. But they're also, least efficient because we're not talking to as many people, right? So if you're in a tertiary town or area, you're going to spend more per person as a cost, but you're going to absolutely be the big fish in a little pond right away.

Mick Torbay: And this is exactly how we do it.

Ryan Chute: This is exactly how we do it. And look, when you start thinking about it that way, the real question is how do I target? The simple answer is you target with your message. You matter in your message. You become the company that they know, like, and trust, for one, when their system or solution or problem lets them down. The thing you sell lets them down. And the guy that they currently have let them down. Those two things are letdowns.

Boom, you're in, right?

Chris Torbay: But target with your message, and not with your choice of media.

Ryan Chute: That's it. That's it. The call to action is we're going to be there fast. The call to action is not necessarily a discount.

Mick Torbay: The call to action is, you remember us and you like us and you feel good about us because we entertained you, we’ve been with you every day when you went to work. Every day when you drive home from work. It's those people. “Oh, yeah. That guy with the penguin. It's awesome.” There are a lot of ways to get into people's heads, and some of them you can argue they don't deserve to be there.

But it doesn't matter if you deserve to be there. If you've been with them and part of their daily routine and you've done something that made them feel good, You told them a nice story, you entertained them, you made them giggle on the way home, then you will become remembered. That is absolutely predictably possible.

Ryan Chute: But that does require you saying something that resonates with them, that matters. That's what we call salient. That does mean that you have to say things that are going to bond you with the gut, with the prospective clients.

Mick Torbay: And it takes time.

Ryan Chute: And it takes time. Be ready to have a relationship before the relationship even starts. Everyone's talking about relational selling and relationships, and no, it's about being relational.

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Ryan Chute: There is absolutely the truth between short-term and long-term, and when we really think about this, again, what's one of those ways that we target? Well, it’s through the copy.

What are we saying in the copy when we're targeting? It's about talking transactionally or relationally. Now, if our goal is to target the high-value leads, it's not about targeting the people with the biggest houses and the highest net worth in your zip,

Mick Torbay: Or magically finding the people whose water heater broke this morning. 

Ryan Chute: That a super expensive lead, right? Because that's hyper targeting. What we're targeting here, is a high-quality lead, is the relational customer that's able to pay you. That's it. 

Mick Torbay: And who will choose you as their preferred brand? Literally, months before they need it. Months and months. 

Chris Torbay: As they like way, the way you behave, what you stand for, the kind of vibe you give off. And it may be that high-end, high-service, high-touch. Things they know deep down that I bet you this guy's also not the cheapest, but they are identifying with that, they are attracted to that aspect of it, way before the day their water heater actually craps out.

Ryan Chute: So targeting happens in the relational disposition of your brand, not the transactional disposition. That's why you should have 40% of your messaging towards sales activation, which will diminish over time, that sales activation, those offers, those things. You should be asking people to buy stuff from you. Yes. 40% of the time. Somehow call to actions. But, we absolutely need to not be that impetuous teenager sticking their hand out, begging for $200  every time they see you, either. Because now you're creating this commodity-based, transactional customer.

Mick Torbay: And don't be surprised when that's exactly who you get. A person who wants a discount. 

Chris Torbay: Yeah. And the greatest brands, in fact, that percentage gets very low. Apple, virtually never transactional, and the only urgency they have is the new ones here.

But basically, they just make you really want one of those products. And they don't just target the person whose phone just broke. I was gonna say, they don't just, people, target people whose phone is four years old. They continually, continually, market themselves. 

Mick Torbay: And the only reason why they ever take put something on sale is because the new one's there. If they are old enough justification for lowering that. You don't actually want that one anymore. 

Chris Torbay: You'll find the brands like that, in fact, don't target at all. They say who they are, and the people find them. And if you say that message with a wide enough, broad enough appeal, or a broad enough spectrum, you will appeal to the people that you're gonna appeal to within that.

Ryan Chute: Folks, this has been another episode of Advertising in America. If you like what you see go ahead and smash that like button. 

Mick Torbay: Don’t smash it. Gently.

Ryan Chute: Do it gently, touch it just softly. touch it with a loving caress. Go in and leave us a review. We'd love to hear you. We're happy to take your smack talk as well, like we love it all. Just give us some interaction. We want to hear from you. We want to know that we're connecting with you and you're feeling something. Till next time.

this is Advertising in America.

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