131: Seth Godin

This episode runs 23 min. 34 sec.

Josh interviews the one and only, Seth Godin. One of the most prolific marketing authors of our time unpacks some of the new concepts found in his latest book, This is Marketing. 

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PSM Show Episode 131, Seth Godin

 

Mentioned in This Episode 131: Seth Godin

  • What is Marketing?
  • Seth’s new book, This is Marketing
  • The Marketing Seminar from Seth
  • What we can learn from Seth’s wife’s gluten-free bakery marketing?
  • “This isn’t for everyone, but it might be for you”
  • How to encourage reluctant marketers (some technical staff)
  • If you aren’t sharing your expertise, you are stealing from the world
  • If we seek to make change, then we are marketing
  • We don’t market at people, we market with them (read Permission Marketing)
  • Minimum viable audience—1000 raving fans
  • Marketing success is not reaching everyone
  • People like us do things like this
  • Positioning is helping customers become unconfused
  • If you know what you stand for, then you don’t have to compete
  • Your people are not a differentiator
  • Seth’s Alt MBA program
  • Seth’s other passions: Soba restaurant, bean-to-bar chocolate, his summer camp
  • The irrational pursuit to become irresistable
  • Satisfaction, security, freedom from fear, acknowledgement are what people want (it’s all about Maslow)
  • Seths.blog

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

SMPS

 

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Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

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Announcer: Welcome to PSM, The Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.

Josh Miles: Hello and welcome to PSM Show, the podcast for AEC marketers. I’m Josh Miles, and today I’m joined by the one and only Seth Godin. This is a huge privilege to be able to talk to one of the most prolific marketing authors of our time. Seth has released some amazing books, including The Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, Tribes, and his latest book is called This Is Marketing. Now, maybe more so than ever, I think this is a well-timed book and a perfect read for all of us in professional services and AEC marketing. I’ll be talking to Seth about this new book and how some of these concepts apply to you. Thanks again to our title sponsor SMPS, business transformed through marketing leadership. And special thanks to SMPS for making the introduction. Thank you Marci Thompson.

Josh Miles: And without further ado, here is Seth Godin.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

Josh Miles: Well, Seth, it is an honor and a privilege to have you on today. I just finished listening to the audio book version of This Is Marketing and I absolutely loved it. I found myself tweeting your definition of marketing right out of the gates. So thank you for pulling that together and the way that you’ve done Purple Cow and Tribes in the past, kind of unpacking a certain issue. This one is really more of like a manifesto to me. Did it feel that way as you were writing it?

Seth Godin: Well, I rant all the time. So I’m not sure it felt like more of a rant than usual. It’s personal in the sense that I think I’m trying to speak up, not just for the people who want to make change, but for the culture in which they’re making change. And I think for too long marketers have gotten away … Not all marketers. Some marketers have gotten away with a selfish narrative. And that doesn’t lead to a better place to be.

Josh Miles: Well, as I was preparing for today’s conversation, I reached out to some folks on Facebook and to LinkedIn just to crowdsource some possible questions. And I got I think a pretty good one. This is from Michael Venn, who’s a Canadian theater performer and a photographer. And he said, “Ask Seth about his wife’s gluten-free bakery and how building that … How you were involved in it and how maybe that influenced your view of brand or marketing.”

Seth Godin: My wife runs the biggest gluten-free bakery of its kind in the world. My involvement in it consists of sometimes delivering wedding cakes in the middle of the night. And building the first version of their IT system. It does not involve any of their marketing, their collaterals, any of that. It’s all her. But it’s a great case study, because most people will not go a block out of their way for a gluten-free, dairy-free baked good. But, the people who wanted gluten-free, dairy-free baked good will go 50 blocks out of their way for it. Not only that, but baked goods are shared. Few people happily bake goods by themselves. Which means that when you’re buying baked goods for a family event, you need to think about everyone who’s going to be there.

Seth Godin: And the old strategy was most people get one thing, and everyone else who’s got a restriction gets a banana. But if you buy what she sells, everyone is included. That’s the change she seeks to make. To make this festive engagement inclusive. And so she has grown to be in almost 50 Whole Foods and four retail outlets and more than 60 people by sticking to a very simple idea. Which is, “This isn’t for everyone, but I might be for you.”

Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s certainly a theme that I hear over and over in This Is Marketing and, of course, in your blog, your daily email, and everything. Another really great question that came across from a woman named Jen McGovern … Who’s one of our SMPS members in Washington D.C. … She was talking about how in the professional services and architecture and engineering world, a lot of our technical staff become these reluctant marketers. So I loved how especially at the end of This Is Marketing, you talked about how it really is our responsibility to market. How might you encourage these non-marketers who’ve become sort of accidental marketers?

Seth Godin: Well, let me start with a nonprofit example that’s not quite as close to home, and then go straight to the engineering focus. If someone gives $50,000 to charity, a philanthropist, what do they get? They’re not doing it because they get a tote bag, right? They’re doing it because they get a feeling, a story, a connection, status, all of those things. How much is it worth to them if they give $50,000 to this charity? Well, I would argue it’s worth at least $75,000. ‘Cause if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t do it. What does that mean? It means that if you as a fundraiser aren’t willing to be in the right place with the right story to get/earn that 50,000 dollar donation, you just stole $25,000 from this person. Because the fact that they couldn’t give you the 50,000 means they don’t get all the bonus feeling that’s left over. There’s feeling.

Seth Godin: And so if you make something that’s worthwhile, if you are able to bring a technical solution to the table that will make things better and you don’t market it, you’re stealing. You’re stealing the value from the person you could have helped. If you’re a lifeguard and you don’t rescue a drowning person, you’re killing ’em. And so when I think … You know, I’m a trained engineer, semi-trained. I got a degree in it anyway. And engineers are taught that there is a right answer. And they are taught that the result is the result. And therefore, many engineers are frustrated with the idea of marketing.

Seth Godin: So when I was at Yahoo it was run by a couple of software engineers who said, “We don’t do any marketing at Yahoo.” Which was nonsense. They just didn’t do what they thought of as marketing. But the name, the logo, the way the home page made you feel, the yodel, you go down the list, there was all this marketing about why you should use Yahoo instead of AltaVista. And there was no discussion about did AltaVista come back 10 milliseconds faster or slower.

Seth Godin: So marketer engineers, scientists, who seek to make change should take their own medicine and realize just handing people cold fish on a platter and assuming they’ll eat it ’cause they’ll figure out it’s sushi? No. That are job is to help people see that we can make things better. Because if we can’t help them see that, then things aren’t going to get better.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I really appreciated your example, how you talked about the donation really isn’t for the fundraiser. It’s for the donor. They are getting just as much value, if not more, than what the fundraiser is receiving. So I guess if we take that same principle and apply it to the engineer, if they really believe that they are giving a better service to the world, it’s in their best interest to the universe to market that and tell people about it.

Seth Godin: That’s right. Because we don’t get to market at people anymore. We have to market with them. We have to do it for them. And if you want to figure out how to get people to take their tuberculosis medicine, you don’t do it by making tuberculosis medicine more effective for people who take it, you make it so that people who aren’t taking it tell themselves a different story that causes them to take it.

Josh Miles: You know, switching gears a little bit, I’m a graphic designer by background. And I’d worked with some software startups in a former life. Hearing a lot about MVP and minimally viable product. And I loved your concept of this minimal or minimum viable audience. Can you refund that a little bit for us?

Seth Godin: So what marketers have taught us for so long is that everyone should be your customer. And the goal is mass, the goal is more. And that causes you to make average stuff for average people. It causes you to go to committee meetings and sand down the edges. It causes you to say, “It should come in 82 different languages. And we should have a version for left-handed people and tall people and short people. And how do we make it for everyone?”

Seth Godin: And as soon as you do that you’re making it for no one. Because there’s already something average on the market. That if you instead say, “We seek to serve this specific group of people, if these 1,000 people who we know by name, by psychographic, by identification, this 1,000 people wanted this more than anything in the world, that would be enough.” Because to make that product is scarier and requires a lot more responsibility than to make something that’s average for everyone.

Seth Godin: So once you become a meaningful specific, you’re on the hook. And what you get out of that is the ability to make it better for them. And if you make it irresistible to that group of people, the cool thing that happens next is they tell their friends. And it’s when they tell their friends that the word spreads. Because marketing is not yelling at strangers, marketing is, what story do people use when they talk about you?

Josh Miles: Seth, I would definitely argue that you have become a meaningful specific to the world of marketers. I wonder if you feel a sense of responsibility for helping drive marketing to where it’s going?

Seth Godin: Okay. So let me just dissuade you from what you just said. It was really inclement here the other day. And I live about a mile from my office. And I was driving to the office and I passed this woman who was walking through the puddles on the side of the road to the train. So it’d take her 20 minutes in bad weather to get there. So I pull over and I say, “Hop in, I’ll give you a ride to the train station.” And we’re talking the whole way. “What do you do?” She’s a senior partner, the most senior marketer at a company that has more than $500 million in assets. And she said, “What do you do?” And I said, “Funny you should ask. Here’s my new book. It came out today.” And I handed her one. And she had no idea who I was. And that’s fantastic. It’s fantastic. 99.8% of the people in the world have no idea who I am. And I would say 90% of all marketers have never read a word I’ve written. Fine with me.

Seth Godin: So it’s such a huge gap between what people think of as successful and everyone that I just need to highlight that. So, do I feel a responsibility for the million people out of the seven billion who are kind enough to lend me their ears? Oh, absolutely. Every day. That’s who I write for. I don’t write for me. I write for those people who have chosen to listen. And it’s a privilege and it’s a thrill. But it’s sometimes a burden, ’cause I don’t get to write about what I want today, I get to write about we. And I love doing that, and that’s what I’m trying to keep doing.

Josh Miles: So one of the other themes … You know, people like us do things like this. That kind of occurs throughout this book. Was that a driver for you early on when you were just getting started as an author? Or just starting the blog? Was that something that you were really aware of? Or is this a more recent understanding you’ve created?

Seth Godin: Yeah, that sentence came to me about the time I was writing Tribes. And my friend and provocateur Bernadette Jiwa challenged me to write a whole book with that title. And that was the original title for This Is Marketing, People Like Us Do Things Like This. People Like Us Do Things Like This encapsulates in seven words what it cultures. It encapsulates in seven words what Smallest Viable Audience Marketing is. Because first you have to pick who the people like us are, ’cause it’s not everyone. It’s people like us. Not who look like us, but who act like us, who believe like us, who fear like us. Who dream like us. And things like this is, what do we do that other people can see? And how do we dress? What do we talk about? What do we buy? Where do we go? People like us do things like this.

Seth Godin: So if you do to a nudist colony, you will quickly discover that even though everyone’s not wearing clothes, everyone is acting in a similar way. Because you don’t define a nudist colony by the fact that people aren’t wearing clothes. I’ve never been. You define by the fact that there is a code of how we talk and where we walk and how we look. And all those people like us do things like this things. And on Bizarro World, another planet, they probably have nudist colonies that are totally different than ours. And so that’s our job as marketers is to make the definition of what the things like this are.

Josh Miles: So maybe the paradox or the complement to that is this idea of you’re not necessarily competitors when you’re on the same board. You know, I’ve kind of unpacked perceptual maps before and X-Y axes. But it challenges your logic to think, “If we’re on the same board, how we could not be competitors.” But can you kind of talk through that a little bit?

Seth Godin: Sure. So behind me are all these books. And many of them have blurbs on the back, right? How often do you see Tim Cook writing on the back of a Google Phone, “I like this phone a lot. You should buy it”? People in many industries do not support each other. But authors do it all the time. And in fact, books sell better in bookstores next to their competitors than they sell in hardware stores. And the reason is simple. ‘Cause if you walk into the bookstore, you’ve announced you want to buy a book. But a book on crochet and a book on weightlifting don’t compete. You’re not saying, “Which one should I buy?” You have a problem, it solves it. And that’s where we go with this positioning thing. Which is, positioning is not how do you get more than your fair share. It’s, how do you help your customers become unconfused and find what they wanted all along

Josh Miles: So how would a professional services business be able to position its self in a way that is both meaningfully different, and as you put it in the book, generous and meaningful?

Seth Godin: So tell me … Give me a prototype firm that you have in mind?

Josh Miles: An architect [crosstalk 00:14:09] an architect [crosstalk 00:14:10]-

Seth Godin: An architect, great.

Josh Miles: With 15 employees.

Seth Godin: Architect is a great example. So Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater in 15 minutes on the back of a paper bag. And then he said to the client, “If you wish, I will build this for you.” No focus groups, no meetings, no models to work their way through. If you want a Frank Lloyd Wright building, those are the rules. Right down the street is another architect who says, “The kind of architecture we do is collaborative. And we’re gonna spend a lot of time together. And if you’re not prepared to show up with your dream board and your ideas and with your clippings, please, don’t hire us. That’s not what we do.”

Seth Godin: And right down the street from there is an architect who says, “We only do LEED-certified zero footprint buildings that have no formaldehyde in them. And if you want us to build something other than that, nah, that’s not what we do. Here’s the phone number of the first guy. You can call him.” And each one of them if they’re happy, is happy because of they’re very specific about what they do. Last night one of the architects of the World Trade Center came to my house for dinner. If you want an 80-story glass-clad building, you should call him. But, if you want a super clever little bungalow, he should send you somewhere else.

Seth Godin: So it’s not just what you build, it’s the method that you use to build it, the interaction you have with the client, what you stand for, what story the person will tell after it’s done, right? So if I had to make a living as an architect and I picked something that I knew a little bit about, I would say, “I’m an architect who actually builds the building for you.” Because I think that that service is more easily understood by the typical person I would seek to serve than, “Here’s a bunch of plans. We’ll see you later.”

Seth Godin: And so there is 50, a hundred great positions available for architects that would serve confused people, as opposed to some clever way of differentiation.

Josh Miles: I feel like the stereotype in this industry is that a firm will say, “Well, our people are what make us different.” And the problem is that 50 other firms in this market are saying, “Our people are what make us different.” So I loved what you said about if you know what you stand for, you don’t have to compete. Can you … I know you talked about that a little bit a second ago, but can you unpack that idea of what you stand for?

Seth Godin: Yeah. So that’s a line from Bernadette. And the idea is if you’re competing on price, it’s because you’ve established that what you do is interchangeable with what other people do. You’re not the one and only. It’s really difficult for me to figure out an industry where it’s easier to avoid that than professional services. Because there are no widgets, can’t use a micrometer to measure the tolerance of what you make. You say what sets you apart is your people, but you hire your people the same way everyone else hires their people. You compensate your people the same way. And your turnover is something you fight as opposed to encourage.

Seth Godin: So forgive me, but I don’t believe you. And if you’re not spending 200 hours a year training your people, I don’t believe you. Because basically what you’ve said is, “We’ve got a bunch of people. They got a bunch of people. We’d really like your money.” And that’s not marketing.

Josh Miles: What do you see as the value of training? Or how does that become a differentiator?

Seth Godin: Well, so most training doesn’t work. And it doesn’t work because it’s enforced. It’s compulsory and it’s based on command and control and compliance. It’s based on school. It’s boring and there’s a test at the end. And the HR person can brag that people went through it. So the reason we started the Alt MBA is because I abhor all of those things. And I see that technology is opening the door. So our Alt MBA lasts 30 days. It’s two to three hours a day. People do it while they are at work. It’s an intensive workshop with no videos in it. I’m not in it.

Seth Godin: And so we’ve had almost 3,000 grads. Why does it work? It works ’cause project work with no clear answer, work that’s fraught with fear and opportunity, the idea that you can engage with people in 40 countries and go faster than you thought you could go, they don’t teach that at most places. And yet, those are precisely the things we want our people to be able to do. And so I’m not surprised that HR departments aren’t crazy about the Alt MBA, ’cause it doesn’t match what they’re being measured for. But I know that most training dollars are wasted.

Josh Miles: Seth, this is a little bit of a curve ball, but if tomorrow you had to stop writing and speaking and talking about marketing, what else are you passionate enough about that you would want to create a following and to riff on tomorrow?

Seth Godin: Well, okay. So here’s one of two baskets that are in my bookshelf here for bean-to-bar chocolate. I was within two days of starting a bean-to-bar Chocolate company. And then at the last minute didn’t ’cause Shawn Askinosie is such an amazing human. So that’s one thing I might do. The other thing I might do is go back to my roots and work at my old summer camp, because I still go up there every summer 42 years later. What would be the third one? Well, people keep coming after me to start that sober restaurant. So it would be one of those three things, or maybe all three of those things.

Josh Miles: Some combination of the three would be amazing. Well, speaking of food, I think it was in the supermarket example you were talking about … I love this quote … Was, “The irrational pursuit of becoming irresistible.”

Seth Godin: Right. So which part of that do you want me to riff on?

Josh Miles: So, why is it irrational?

Seth Godin: Because in the short run, it’s better to meet spec, right? That in the short run, you can say to your boss, “We did X, Y, or Z because we have to beat the competition. We did X, Y, or D because it’s what people did before us.” And that feels rational. It is not particularly effective, though, because everyone is doing that. And so there’s no room for you. But I was inspired to write that post by my friend who runs The Opinicon, which is a hotel in Canada.

Seth Godin: And it’s unreasonable to get this much ice cream … You can’t see, maybe if you’re listening to this … But a softball’s worth of ice cream for three Canadian dollars. However, it’s irresistible because kids beg for it all year round. Because parents are happy to go out of their way. Because it’s the idyllic, perfect day. And you know what happens? Every once in a while one of those people say, “Why don’t we stay at this hotel next to here for a week when we’re on vacation?” And so The Opinicon is fully booked every night nine months in advance. Because they made something irresistible that was irrational, which is a softball’s worth of ice cream for three Canadian dollars.

Josh Miles: So shifting gears maybe one last time here, I always thought that quote about the people aren’t buying quarter-inch drill bits, they’re buying quarter-inch size holes until you blew a giant hole in that theory. Can you maybe refund that one a little bit, too?

Seth Godin: So Ted Levitt, ’62, ’63, Harvard Business Review says, “Get used to the fact that quarter-inch drill bits are not in demand. What people want are quarter-inch holes.” And I’m thinking about that I go, “Well, actually, no one actually wants a quarter-inch hole. What they want is a place to hold the quarter-inch. But the reason they want that is so they can hang a shelf. But the reason they want that is so they can clean up the bed and put the books on the bed. And the reason they want that is so when their spouse comes home, they will smile and say, ‘Thank you for taking care of our home.'” Because what they really want isn’t a quarter-inch drill bit. What they want is satisfaction and security and safety and freedom from fear. That’s what people want.

Josh Miles: And so it’s really more of a Maslow issue than anything else?

Seth Godin: It always is.

Josh Miles: Well, Seth, it has been a pleasure talking with you today. I wonder before you go if there’s anything you want to share? Especially in light of the woman who is in your car and didn’t know about you and all the things that you are doing? Anything about Alt MBA or anything else coming up that our audience should know about?

Seth Godin: Well, you know, I blog every day. And I figure sooner or later you’ll check out the blog. So I’m in no hurry. It’s gets better. So show up when you want, seths.blog. If you’re interested in the new book, it’s at seths.blog/T-I-M, which stands for This Is Marketing. And the Alt MBA starts again. Next session is in February. And we would love it, if it’s for you, to check it out. But it might not be for you, and that’s okay, too.

Josh Miles: Awesome. Well, Seth, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for making time in your very busy schedule.

Seth Godin: Well, thank you. These were great questions. It was fun.

Josh Miles: Awesome. Thank you.

Seth Godin: You’re fantastic.

Josh Miles: I think that brings us to the end of today’s episode. I probably could have talked to Seth for hours, not that he had hours to give me. But it was pretty amazing. If you have any other questions, comments, or suggestions for future shows or guests, please write to us via psm.show. Scroll down to the “Contact Us” and drop us a line.

Josh Miles: That’s all for today’s episode of PSM Show. From David Lecours and myself, Josh Miles, we’ll see you next time.

 
 

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130: ROI

This episode runs 30 min. 13 sec.

David and Josh discuss the “dreaded” three letters for marketers: ROI. Why is this concept scary to marketers and what can we do about it?

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ROI for marketers

 

 

Mentioned in This Episode 130: ROI

  • ROI: What is it?
  • “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” —John Wanamaker
  • Marketers aren’t measuring all that they can
  • Some marketers are measuring, but aren’t using the data to evolve
  • You and your leaders must first agree on what to measure
  • First establish a vision, what does success look like?
  • Suggestions on items to measure
  • Measure marketing for talent (recruiting) and marketing for clients

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

SMPS

 

We Want to Hear From You

Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

Subscribe to our Podcast

To subscribe to the PSM podcast in iTunes – click here

 

Read the Episode

Josh: Hello, and welcome to PSM Show, the podcast for AEC Marketers. I’m Josh miles, and I’m joined today by my co-host, David Lecours. Today we are talking about ROI, and maybe I wanted to torture all of our listeners today, including the two of us. But I’m actually excited to talk a little bit about the dreaded three letters for marketers R-O-I. David, are you feeling a little dread today?

David: I am. I don’t know why this topic makes me nervous. I guess we’ll unpack that. You can play therapist for me.

Josh: Well, luckily, our listeners can’t see our sweaty palms over the microphones. With that in mind, I’d like to also recognize our title sponsor, who we’re so thankful for, SMPs, who is all about business transformed through marketing leadership, and more on ROI after this insert super. All right David, we are going to do this today, we’re going to unpack, ROI. Maybe a good place to start, maybe you can tell our listeners what that stands for.

David: I think it stands for return on investment. Is that right?

Josh: I think that is correct. I was hopeful that you might make something up that was like-

David: I know, I was thinking about it, but then I was like, oh, it might go sideways. I played it straight.

Josh: Realization of introspection or roping orangutans. I’m already out of steam, I can’t-

David: See what happens, you start getting silly.

Josh: When somebody is saying, okay, marketer and then they raise an eyebrow and say-

David: Yes, they do. Don’t they?

Josh: What’s the ROI on this tactic, or what should we expect that ROI is? What do you think they’re actually asking Us?

David: Well, I think there’s some skepticism. People that don’t work in marketing, because some of marketing deals with emotion and deals with some things that aren’t necessarily implicitly measurable. There’s some cynicism about, oh, you marketers, you’re just all about that touchy feely branding and type of stuff. Sometimes it’s posed as a question of like, you need to justify why we’re going to do this. The way I want you to justify that is to tell me what kind of return on this investment. I think in its spirit, it’s not a bad thing to do. I think we should definitely use it as a filter because, look, I’ll admit, as a marketer, sometimes I get really excited about stuff. If it’s not on task, or on brand or in line with our strategic plan, it probably isn’t going to fulfill that return on investment. That seems like the motivation of why that question is asked.

Josh: Yeah, I think there’s also maybe this idea that not everybody necessarily understands marketing. One of my favorite things to say to people when things actually start working is, the secret to marketing is if you do it, it actually works. When you invest and you make the effort and you test things out and pursue the things that tested well, I think you actually see a return on that. But not everybody’s necessarily experienced in marketing, and not everybody has the same trust factor as they might in some other tactics.

Josh: So, I think what they’re really asking often is, am I wasting money on this? Am I just flushing it? Or can you give me some sort of reassurance or guarantee that we’re doing the right thing here.

David: It seems like also there’s this quest for a formula. There’s like, if we plug in X, Y, Z input, we’re going to get outcome one, two, or three. Because that’s, at least in AEC world, we’re dealing mostly with people that have a science backgrounds. Whether they’re building science or engineering, or even architecture. So, science is pretty predictable. There’s definite outcomes. Sometimes they want to apply science to marketing. I know you have a favorite quote, or an interesting quote that relates to this about, are you getting your ROI? You want to share that with our audience?

Josh: Yeah, there’s this guy named John Wanamaker. I remember hearing this quote, I think, in every job I’ve ever had in an advertising business. And then also at Purdue when I was studying advertising, I remember this being on a textbook? Maybe you’ve heard a version of this, or you’ve heard it attributed to Ben Franklin, or who knows. But the quote is, half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half. I found this particular attribution at b2bmarketing.net. But, they listed him as a pioneer in marketing who opened one of the first and most successful department stores in the United States. Growing it to 16 whole locations, which is now today part of the Macy’s chain of stores.

Josh: But I think this is really the classic thing, is that especially prior to all the technology that we have to track things today and all the big brother tactics, you would know that when I spend money, I get a return, you’re just really not sure which things you were spending on actually helped you create that return. Have you seen that at all with your clients?

David: Yeah, it’s funny. I had always heard that quote attributed to David Ogilvy. It’s one of those quotes that I think a lot of people have said is attributable over different people. But it’s also a really interesting quote in that it’s a Rorschach test that if you share it with somebody and asked for their reaction, you get insight into really what they think about, say, marketing or advertising. On one half, if you are a pessimist, then you would say, “Gosh, darn it, half of advertising is all wasted. It’s all a waste of time.” But if you are an optimist, and probably maybe more on the marketing, you’d say, “No, no, you’re missing the point. The other half is totally worth it. It is worth it and therefore, we’re getting return.” So, it’s just an interesting quote that gives you insight into somebody’s outlook on marketing and advertising depending on which side they take or what they notice within that quote.

Josh: Yeah. I think if we get into the literal math of return on investment, it’s like, if I spend a $1 and we yield $2 in sales, then I doubled my investment. So, depending on how you want to phrase that you either had a 200% return or 50% return depending on which school of thought you’re from there. Whether you’re counting the whole or the net. But the point is, if every time you give me $1, I hand you back $100, you won’t be able to hand me dollars fast enough. We’re going to create the system to where you know that that investment is returning big money and it doesn’t matter to you that 50 cents of that really got wasted, and 50 cents of that yielded 100 bucks. You’re going to be really excited that you got the $100 and you don’t really care just how effective it was.

Josh: Now, when you’re handing me $1 and I give you back a buck 50, or a $1.25, you might start to wonder, is this the best use of my money? I think that’s totally fair as well. I guess the bottom line is in so many things historically, and even today, it is really hard to put your fingers on exactly what’s working and what’s not. Even though that quote was attributed to a paid advertising spend, it really, I think, applies to things like branding, and applies to things like marketing, applies to things like video and website. I think there’s two versions of this problem though.

Josh: There’s the problem of it’s hard to know what’s working. But there’s also the real problem is they’re probably just as many marketers or firms or principles out there who just aren’t trying to measure much of anything. And then there are those who have maybe some tracking mechanisms in place, and they’re just not looking at them. What do you think is more prevalent in our industry with AEC?

David: I think, probably the lack of trying to measure. I get why it’s difficult because in AEC, we’re talking about a long sales cycle and there are so many different things that will affect the eventual sale. It becomes difficult to tie the final sale to a specific marketing initiative. You don’t know that you won the project, and the client probably can’t even tell you if they saw an ad that you posted a year ago, or if it was the conversation they had with your business developer on the golf course, or it was the incredible presentation interview, or it was the follow up slide deck that you gave them.

David: I guess my point to all that is, yes, you can’t tie it to one specific initiative. Maybe you’d be better off by trying to tie it to all of that and looking at maybe more of your total average marketing and promotional push for that particular initiative rather than trying to align it with one particular channel of marketing. Because, yeah, it becomes very difficult to attach return on investment to one specific thing. Maybe lumping or clustering things together is a better way to start to look at this.

Josh: Yeah. I think there may be two things that go into account for that. I’m going to get really geeky for like 30 seconds. But there are two things that create that challenge for measuring the one off. One of them, I believe is called the recency bias, which is the most recent thing that you heard, or the most recent touch that you had, or the email or the referral, you don’t remember the 20 other things that made you think of that brand or made you think of that firm or made you think of that business developer. It’s that very, very last thing is the thing that you attribute in your mind as the reason that you made that purchase or you decided to move forward with that partnership.

Josh: I remember as a young man being in the market for an engagement ring for my would be bride. We were at the Shane Company, which is a big national chain, I’m not sure you’re familiar with that out in San Diego. But they were famous for their very dull and boring sounding founder on the radio. Mostly what they ran was radio spots other they had some locator billboards and they’d do some print ads. But when I was in the store, being an advertising guy, they had a survey for me. They’re like, “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions about how you heard about us?” I’m like, “Oh no, that’s fine.” They went through the list. They said, “Which of the following do you remember impacting your awareness of Shane Company?” One of the last things on the list was their TV commercials. I said, “You know what, I didn’t even realize you guys were on TV.” They said, “Well, that’s the funny thing because most people select that as the thing they remember. We haven’t ever run a TV spot.”

David: Interesting.

Josh: I think since then they have made a foray into television and lots of other digital media as well. But it was kind of a funny thing. It was almost like the marketing department decided to say, “Look, this ROI thing is totally bogus, and people are going to answer with the fake response. It’s not even a thing that we do. And that’s what people think.” But related to that is this thing called last touch attribution, which is the thing I was talking about a second ago, which is things like Google Analytics or other digital tools, it’s easy for you to get a false positive of the thing that you think is really driving the traffic. Which maybe it’s just the loudest or the most recent thing that somebody saw.

Josh: All of these go into effect of like you were saying, David, maybe it’s more important to look at these as an overall campaign or an overall effort where it gets really difficult to track the ROI of running a print ad or having a banner ad or sending a weekly email.

David: Yeah, not to be disrespectful of your CFO, but at the end of the day, if you’re spending let’s say, $200,000 a year on your marketing and you’re winning $4 million worth of projects, do we need to track every last little ad that you ran? I guess it is what we were talking about before, if the results are there, and we’re getting them, I’m not sure that it is essential that it’d be tracked back to every single little item.

Josh: I think revenue solves many lows.

David: Certainly.

Josh: If the cash is flowing, then nobody’s probably too worried about how much you’re spending on a particular tactic. I think you’re probably more likely to see these kind of questions come up if the firm is struggling or if this is just not an area you’ve ever outlaid cash for before, and the marketing team is really pushing for a particular new strategy or a new approach? That might be where you’re going to start to see these questions about ROI?

David: Yeah. You’ve identified in some of the notes we made before the episode, some different ways and different ways of thinking about measuring that might be unexpected. Hope for you to share some of those thoughts in terms of different things that maybe our audience didn’t think of measuring. Because I think your point earlier was that yeah, we’re leaving a lot of stones unturned that we could be measuring that might give us some insight into what’s working effectively.

Josh: Well yeah. I think maybe before we dive into the list of things. Back in Episode 127, I believe, it was you and Ryan were talking on the client experience conversation. Ryan from Client Savvy about co-creating the idea with the client or with the customer about how you’re going to measure something, or what that process looks like. I think it’s the same thing with your client, or your principal or your CFO, is if you sit down together and decide, okay, here are the things we’re going to measure, and let’s decide together that these are important. And here’s what success looks like, we think. When we hit these numbers in these areas, or when we see these results, or when the bottom line is XYZ, that’s how all know we’ve actually moved the needle.

Josh: I think there are so many things that you can track, but tracking all the things doesn’t ensure that you’re going to get the success or that you’re going to have a shared idea of what success is. When you’re like, “Well, we have 100,000 followers on Twitter.” Your CFO may not be impressed with that as much as you adding one new client. Again, I think it’s important to think through what are the specific things you’re going to track that you can both attribute value to those things.

David: That co-creation exercise is really valuable. I think anybody would benefit from asking your boss, how are you being measured? The more you can understand how your boss is being measured, the more effective you can be in making them look good. If you’re making your boss look good, and let’s say it’s the CFO, you’re going to look good. And you’re going to be promoted, and you’re going to have a better case when it’s time for your performance review task for more money because you’ve potentially now quantified or at least you’ve done the things that made your boss look good.

Josh: Yeah, exactly. Back to your question, I think the list of things, and feel free to add to this, David. But some of the ones that I had noted before the show were what are the number of inbound requests? In traditional online marketing, inbound requests often means ones that you didn’t ask for, didn’t know that were coming. In our industry, I think that’s a really, really, really rare thing for an AEC firm to get a project request that there was no relationship, no former knowledge. But if you see an uptake in those blind requests, even though those are tougher to win, I think that it still tells you something, that there’s some effort going on there.

David: Right. There’s something about brand awareness that maybe if you didn’t have a relationship with the client, but now you’re seeing more of these requests, that you’re on more people’s radar, and your name is coming up. So, you’re being added to this list for the RFP. I think that’s a good thing to keep track of.

Josh: Well, it looks like-

David: It doesn’t mean you have to say go, you don’t. In fact, usually in my own internal go, no go process, if I don’t already have a relationship or know the client, I’ll still have a conversation with them. But it’s rare that we’re going to pursue that project in a big way, especially because if I start to get the feeling that they’re just lobbing RFPs out into the universe, trying to get as many people to respond as possible, that’s a surefire, like, all right, they’re just looking for a low price.

Josh: Yeah.

David: But I’m certainly flattered, and I’ll take a note of that we got that request because it tells me, “Hey, our brand name is out there and we’re getting asked, and there’s something nice about getting asked.

Josh: I think there’s, like you were saying back in Episode 129, when we were talking about awards, after you had won a few this past year, you started getting reached out to a little more cold, and had some more inbound requests. Again, there was some sort of activity going on that created that brand awareness and created some new chatter and activity. I think related to that, there’s some other things that you could be tracking. Are things like your ratio of go to know go. Meaning, out of those new requests, which ones are you pursuing? Similar to what we talked about in the awards episode as well, tracking the time and effort and money that it takes to create those proposals. That doesn’t necessarily tell you how effective your marketing is, but it is something that’s worth tracking, I think, to know, hey, we win one out of 10, but we’re spending $10,000 every time we go after one. So, should we be a little bit more selective to get that down to, we’re winning one out of three, and then that starts to make a little more sense.

Josh: I think, knowing where those numbers are, help you determine really what what’s worth going after, or maybe better yet, what’s the shortlist or the hit rate of those goes?

David: Yeah. I think that the ratio of go to no go is interesting. But yeah, it’s that ratio of go to wins that I think is a juicier number. I just think also tracking the total number of goes is valuable to know how many pursuits did we go after this year? Is that reasonable considering our manpower? Because I know wow, so many firms unfortunately from the top are under such pressure. There’s this myth that wow, the more we go after, the more we’re going to win and that’s not always the case.

Josh: Yeah. I’ve even heard from marketers at small to mid-sized firms who say, “Man, we cranked out a proposal a week or proposal twice a week.” Which is just crazy numbers in some firms. In other firms, that might be a really slow year. Again, understanding how big your team is, how big the firm is, and how big is a typical project? Is a typical project a $70 million building or is it a $2 million renovation? That makes a big difference too about what’s worthwhile and what makes sense.

David: For sure.

Josh: A few other things, there’s the traditional … I say, traditional in the past 10 years. The traditional digital marketing metrics such as website traffic; how many visitors, people are always asking how many hits? How many hits on the website? How many unique visitors you had, I think is a more helpful number. Bounce rate, which is we should probably go into super geeky web stuff at some point. But bounce rate is like when you go to the website, and you don’t click on anything else, and you either hit the back button or close the browser. So, you want that number to be lower. What’s your time on site is. If somebody stays there for 10 seconds, or 10 minutes, makes a big difference. Really, ultimately shows you engagement.

Josh: If you view multiple pages of a site and you’re on there for several minutes, you’re probably actually reading or consuming content. I think those are all really great measures-

David: Well, within that website area, I think measuring page engagement, page ranking, what are the top pages that people are going to and are they part of what you perceived to be the funnel or the sales process? If certain pages are getting a lot more traffic than you would expect. And then the ones that you want to get a lot more traffic aren’t, you need to start thinking about, hey, maybe we need to develop a campaign to drive people to the pages that we want people or maybe it’s a navigation issue. People just aren’t finding the content really easily.

David: Then of course, you have not just time on site, but time on specific pages. There are always certain pages that having a high bounce rate isn’t a bad thing. If it’s just a contact page, they get your phone number, they’ve got what they needed, they don’t need to move on. There probably won’t be a real high number in terms of time on that particular page. So, just being real clear about not setting these universal expectations, like more is always better. Knowing what you’re measuring and why.

Josh: I think there’s a couple other related digital numbers that we could look at, which is, if you have an email newsletter, how many subscribers you have, or your related social media stuff. How many average likes or followers or how many times does a particular tweet get retweeted, or how much traffic or follower traffic do you have on things like LinkedIn?

Josh: Those are again, maybe some of those feel a little fluffier if you’re sitting in the CFO seat. And some of those feel really important if you’re a marketing manager. I think again, just other things to consider.

David: Yeah, I know back in Episode 109, that you interviewed Nicole Law from TCOM, you got into some of the approaches that they’re taking, and looking at ROI specifically for marketing in terms of recruitment, recruitment of people. Maybe, if you could share again, some of the things that you guys talked about, and where our listeners should be thinking about those investments.

Josh: Yeah. First of all, if you haven’t listened to that episode, definitely go back and check out 109. But I think if you think about the cost of acquiring talent, almost like the cost of acquiring a project, what’s the cost of having to turn down a project because you don’t have enough people, or you don’t have the right people, or you don’t have enough of the right people in the rainy season? And then comparatively, what might you spend with a headhunter or with advertising online or what are other ways or costs that go into account of what it takes to hire somebody?

Josh: One of the things that Nicole talked about was the process and how to streamline that from making the initial reach out all the way through how long till they’re in the seat, and how long till they get on boarded? So, there are lots of things that you can measure inside of there. I don’t pretend to be the world’s biggest fan of the HR process. But I think looking at HR like a marketer, again, gives you some really interesting things to track. Also, to think about well, while we’re hiring for this particular role, we could also be marketing our services that correlate with that, that our prospective hires are seeing this is a real thing for us. That we’re really … To go back to the bridge design example from a couple of episodes ago, if we’re entering awards for bridges and our marketing, our work on bridges and we’re going to hire bridge designers, they feel like they’re going to be respected when they come to work there because it’s clearly something that the firm values.

David: Absolutely.

Josh: I also really like this idea of, like we said towards the top of the show of sitting down with your principles and team and determining what does success look like in this area, and what can we all agree on that, okay, when we do this, we will hit the mark? I guess I’d like to challenge our listeners to think about, there are so many things you could possibly measure. But maybe have that conversation with your team, or maybe sit down at the table with a couple of recommendations. Here are the three things that we could start measuring and start reviewing that I really think are going to be most impactful for your firm.

Josh: In your firm, it’s going to be really different than in the firm of your peers. That’s my challenge to you today is to start measuring something and don’t be quite so scared of ROI. What do you think about that, David?

David: That’s a great exercise. Sometimes these challenging conversations yield really great results. Just because it may be a little bit uncomfortable, I think having that conversation and getting everybody … Because what worked at a previous job, or maybe even what you think is working now may not be what other people in the organization value. Man, that’s going to be problematic. So, this thing that gets everybody pointing towards the same North Star rather than everybody going off and trying to find their own new constellation. That alignment is essential.

Josh: Excellent. Well, I think that about wraps up our conversation today. Again, we’d like to thank our new title sponsor SMPS You can check out smps.org, or while you’re at it, you can check out the psm.show website to see more about today’s episode and for all of our show notes. Of course, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions for future shows or guests, that’s the right place to go, psm.show and scroll down to contact us to drop us a line.

Josh: So, that’s all for today’s episode of PSM Show. From David Lecours, and myself, Josh Miles, we’ll see you next time.

 
 
 

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129: Awards Competitions

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This episode runs 25 min. 18 sec.

Does your firm enter awards competitions? This week David explains why he’s had a change of heart about awards competitions, as he and Josh discuss why they might be a fit for your firm, too.

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AEC Awards Competitions

 

Mentioned in This Episode 129: Awards Competitions

  • Why David changed his thinking on awards competitions
  • Are awards a recruiting and retention tool?
  • Are awards a marketing tool?
  • Which awards competitions should you enter?
  • Go/No Go criteria for evaluating awards competitions
  • Differences between regional, national, global, and intergalactic awards
  • How to develop entries that win
  • Give your award pursuit a job #, or at least track your time
  • Teaming on awards to build relationships
  • Leveraging finalist and winner status
  • What do you do with the plaque, trophy, crystal bowl, or oscar?

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

SMPS

 

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Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing Podcast, it’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hello and welcome to PSM Show, the podcast for AEC marketers. I’m David Lecours, and I’m joined by my co-host, Josh Miles. So, Josh, I want to give you an award today for being the best cohost on the planet.

Josh Miles: Oh, that’s a thoughtful thank you David.

David Lecours: Actually, the award I’m going to give you is an opportunity to take on a new topic and that topic is awards competition. I also want to mention that we have a new title sponsor they are SMPS. I want to remind our listeners that SMPS is all about business transformed by marketing-

Announcer: This is PSM, it’s insight applied.

David Lecours: All right. So, Josh, our topic today is awards competitions. I guess I have to confess that the reason I want to talk about this as I had a bit of a change of heart recently. I used to personally not be such a fan of awards competitions. I didn’t enter a whole lot of them. I thought that they had value more for, I guess, recruiting and retention, not so much as a marketing and business development tool. Since my firm is real small, we don’t do a lot of recruiting. I just didn’t see a lot of value.

David Lecours: But I have entered a couple recently and maybe it helps that I won a couple of awards and that changed my outlook greatly. I guess I’m a sucker for attention and I like to win things. But I have noticed an uptake in inquiries that specifically are related to winning these awards. I’ve had people contact me saying, “Hey, I saw you won this award, love to talk to you about a project that relates to the award that we won.” So, yeah, I want to just chat with you about that. What’s your background or thinking been about awards competitions?

Josh Miles: Man, I can remember in my very early ad agency days entering just would seem like dozens of award entries into the local Addy Awards and then our firm we would get really excited about a couple of them in particular and others were like, “Well, surely there aren’t too many billboards.” So, billboards got a shot too. This ad’s awesome or this commercial’s great and this logo is really cool and surely we’re going to win a ton of awards. That first year we won exactly zero awards. It’s heartbreaking when you go through all that work and all that effort. Just going through it, the mental catalog of all the things you’ve done that year and stuff you’re the most proud of and then you put it out in front of your peers and to have none of it recognized is really rough.

Josh Miles: Like you, I’ve had years where my former agency would put things into Logo Lounge or into other awards competitions and come back really, just have really huge years and then really down years. So, it’s easy to get down on awards when you’re not winning them. But likewise, when you have the good fortune of … Sometimes, it’s really the intersection of who are the judges and what do they like and what was your work that year. Sometimes you just get lucky but you don’t win because you have lousy work, you win because it’s good work and you get selected because the judges that year liked your good work that year. It’s always an interesting topic and I’m excited to talk through all of this today because like you, I’ve been in and out on awards in the past.

David Lecours: I’m imagining our audience is looking at entering projects that they’ve completed in the local maybe, AIA Awards or local ECEC or BIA or maybe some other trade organization. Or they’re also interested in entering marketing campaigns that they’re interested in something like the SMPS Marketing Communication Awards. Like you mentioned in that first year, you were so gung ho, it just didn’t matter. You were going to enter everything you could. But at a certain point, our audience has to decide which ones are worth it or not. So, maybe some of the contributing factors that might help a marketing director decide, is this award competition worth it? They probably have to do a little budget for the year of deciding which competitions they’re going to enter and work through the math of how much money they’re going to spend.

Josh Miles: Yeah, exactly. I’m at my former agency, we would do this early on. That first example I gave you was from the first place that I worked at, but then in my agency, there for a little while, I would choose. I’ll pick the ones we enter. It’s a marketing expense at some level. So, if we win this, it’s very exciting. And then we get to the point where you get big enough. You’re like, you know what, our budget is X for awards for this year. And we know for this competition, maybe we do or don’t want to put all of our eggs into that one competition basket.

Josh Miles: If we’re going to spend $1,000 or $2,000 or $200 this year for this particular awards competition, how do we decide which items go in there? We would literally just make a spreadsheet and have all the employees vote. We went by popular vote because when it comes down to awards, the more likely it is that somebody’s going to agree with that, that they might have a better chance. I think we tended to do better when we tried to do this a little bit more mathematically as opposed to just by the hearts-

David Lecours: Democratically rather than authoritarian.

Josh Miles: Exactly.

David Lecours: -Josh deciding.

Josh Miles: I made sure there were no hanging chads and it was all very well certified. It was a very clean election.

David Lecours: Yeah. It almost sounds like what you’re talking about is that our audience should consider maybe having like a go, no go criteria for an awards competition, and then deciding in macro, which awards throughout the year they’re going to enter. It seems like, of course, some of the things that they should consider in this go, no go, is reach of the awards. Who’s going to see it? It’s the sort of, if a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, did it really fall? I saw you win this award, so what? That’s great. It’s nice to have the ego boost, but I think that should probably be a criteria of like, are your potential clients going to hear about that?

David Lecours: That was always my challenge with a lot of these awards competitions was that it was usually, as a graphic designer, I might enter something in the AIGA competition. And then, yes, I get that peer recognition, and yeah, it feels good. But all those other graphic designers certainly can’t hire me. So, I guess my recommendation for audiences is that yeah, you might want to do some of those because I think they are really good for recruiting and retention. But I think in terms of marketing, you want to enter competitions where your clients gather in some way so that they could see you and potentially hire you to do that thing that you’re winning the award.

Josh Miles: Yeah. I think it depends on what you fancy yourself best at. If you’re best at making pretty things, then you’re probably going to win more awards by entering competitions that tend to celebrate aesthetics. If you’re a company that maybe it’s not about the aesthetics, maybe it’s more about the results. Entering competitions where they’re more stringent on the before and after or the outcome or what the impact was. Again, maybe that goes into your go, no go formulation.

David Lecours: Right. Okay. So, multiple choice question for you. Let’s say you are trying to sell your boss, the CEO at your engineering firm about entering some awards competitions. Do you want to take the approach that it is a marketing tool, a recruiting tool for new hires, or a retention tool?

Josh Miles: That is a great question. I think it’s all of the above-

David Lecours: D, all of the above.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I’ll take that Bob for 500.

David Lecours: Yeah, it seems like depending on the awards competition and your intent, and again, who’s holding it, it could fall into any one of those boxes. It seems like the retention tool if it’s not clear, winning awards is something that you can share with a potential, obviously, new hire. But I think recognizing people, especially if somebody’s on the project, make sure that their name is included in the awards submission so that they get recognized as having a significant … In fact, probably you want to list all the people that were potentially involved with that project in your firm, so they’re on record as being associated with this award winning project. That seems like a great way to help keep people around.

Josh Miles: Yeah, for sure. It’s a really sticky situation too, when you have projects where you have so many people involved, it’s just so important that you have all the folks listed in that submission to make sure that when they read the names that you didn’t leave out, Josh, who was leading XYZ because that means Josh is really sad when you leave him off the submission

David Lecours: Yeah. It’s like you get to get them all right, or don’t list any because otherwise you’re going to potentially do more damage than pretend getting people to stay, if you’re upsetting people. That’s not a good thing. There’s a lot of different kinds of awards competitions out there. I’m thinking of there’s local ones in your city, there are often regional ones, maybe your state or collection of state, there’s national, there’s probably global and I’m imagining someday there’ll be intergalactic awards where you could to put your work up against the best-

Josh Miles: The best AEC marketing on Mars.

David Lecours: On Mars, yeah, exactly. Once Elon Musk gets there, then yeah, we’ll be competing it. But I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about maybe some of the pros and cons or differences either that you had or you would imagine would be associated with those different levels of geographic awards.

Josh Miles: I think it comes back to where your firm’s focus is. If I think back to my previous position, our focus was really national. So, the local and regional awards were interesting in terms of, again, like you said, they serve different purposes. So, the local and regional awards were much better for talent attraction, because we weren’t really hiring folks from the coasts, but we were looking for clients from the coast. So, it was great to have exposure in more national type boards. But doing really pretty work that’s winning aesthetic awards locally is really attractive to other potential creatives who might have wanted to come work for us.

David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely. You tend to recruit more locally. So, that would be an intent there versus the marketing perspective, maybe bigger national, if not global.

Josh Miles: For sure.

David Lecours: When you do make … Let’s say you go through then go, no go process and it’s a go. Now you’re developing your award entry. It’s not a small undertaking. I would recommend that our audience consider opening up a job number internally, tracking your time. Because when it comes around next year, you’re going to have an opportunity to decide, go or no go again. We tend to look at these things optimistically. Yeah, let’s do it again, and hopefully we’ll win this time. But unless you have some real data in terms of how much time it actually took, and what was the cost of the award entry, I think you’re not making a very informed decision. So it is definitely a process and one that you should track and hopefully continually improve upon.

David Lecours: There’s always a lot of things that need to go into an entry. What’s your experience been about boosting your chances for winning as you’re going through the entry?

Josh Miles: That’s a really good question. I think having your firm really focus on again, what type of awards competition is this and what do we think the judges are really looking for? Is it more important that we make sure that we’re following some of the old school competitions that require for you to submit things mounted on board and printed a certain way and cover sheets and I’s dotted and T’s literally crossed or is it … Many, many competitions today have moved to more of a digital or virtual judging environment.

Josh Miles: In that case, you can really spend time focusing on, in my humble opinion, what actually matters, which is the quality of the submission, and not just the craft of paper and whatnot. So, yeah, I think it’s a great thing too to go back to the team that worked on it. Even if this is an award, not necessarily for marketing. If this is an award in bridge design, and your marketing team is tasked with entering this awards competition, it’s really important for you to go back to the guys that worked on that bridge and understand the backstory and before and after and what the impact was, and what the community thinks of it. Because all of that can really be helpful in your submission.

David Lecours: Typically, it seems like there are very specific questions that are going to be asked. Like, what was the impact of this project? The classic case study or format of what was included, what was your prescription, and then, what was the outcome? Even if that’s not a specific question, I think your suggestion of, hey take the lead and answer that question on your own. Because, while that’s going to be so much more impressive to a jury than just a bridge that looks really great. We’d love for just to look great. But yeah, if you can show how it impacted the community and what they got for their investment and some of the benefits that weren’t expected, and getting quotes from users of that bridge, who used to have to take another way before the bridge was built kind of thing, or they were scared to go across the bridge. All that kind of stuff that makes the project so much more real because now it brings it down to a human scale. Then you get to hear those stories. Regular marketing power of story is always effective. Wherever you can use that, I think that’s really important.

Josh Miles: That reminds me, I think it’s the Andrew Carnegie story about the Mississippi River, and the bridge that is steel built. People were like, I don’t know about steel for a bridge. He literally led a parade with elephants across this steel bridge. You can just imagine how long, I’m still telling that story however long in the future, but those kinds of narratives along with your awards entry, man, that’s the kind of stuff that will get judges attention for sure.

David Lecours: Yeah, for sure. Our suggestion, one of many is really take the time to read the submission qualifications. They’re probably going to be getting a lot of submissions and they’re just looking for reasons to eliminate some quickly. If you don’t follow those instructions very carefully, then your chances of winning are not very high. So, do that and then look for ways to differentiate your submission. That’s sort of a marketing contest. In a way, you’ve got to stand out, you’ve got to have great content. And then it’s got to be told in a really compelling manner. Whether that be the physical board or digital format or layout, all that stuff definitely matter.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I think it’s important too, to think about, you alluded to this a little bit, but understanding what kind of time and effort that your team is putting towards these. It’s not just about the cost of the entry fee, but also the effort and the hours that your team is putting towards this. Something maybe we can talk about in a future episode is thinking in terms of ROI or return on investment or return on the time that you put into this kind of thing.

David Lecours: Love it, we should definitely tackle that one. One of the reasons my attitude changed a little bit about awards is I realized it was an opportunity also to build relationships. In that you don’t have to enter an awards competition by yourself. Usually, there’s no stipulation about who the entry comes from. So, we entered a competition recently with our client. I think it’s a great marketing tool for account specific marketing. If you want to really cement that relationship, this assumes that the project was successful or you wouldn’t be submitting it anyway.

David Lecours: But usually from one client come more projects, and if not, at least referrals and there’s all sorts of other opportunities. So, any experiences you’ve had where you’ve teamed up, and it’s turned out to be a great thing?

Josh Miles: Yeah, we had a couple of clients that we historically entered year after year after year, and it was totally that. We weren’t always best friends with all of our clients, but the ones where the relationship was just so important on both sides, I think that was the thing that just added to it. Was like, oh, yeah, what are we going to enter this year? Even going into the new calendar year, I would say, “We’ve got these four projects, and I bet we can do an award winning thing for this third one.” Especially the holiday cards. We get really jazzed talking about why we’re going to put a little extra effort into each of these projects because the awards were so much fun to enter together and to see if we won. Always better if you actually win every now and then.

David Lecours: That process of working on it together is something that I didn’t expect would be kind of fun. It was a great way to review the project, and it was a great way to review the experience. Last episode, listeners, if you haven’t heard it, go back and listen to Episode 127, I interviewed Ryan Sydam from Client Savvy. He talks all about how important it is to measure the client experience. So, by entering this awards competition with them, it was a great opportunity to get a behind the scenes from them about how the project went and the parts that they thought were really successful, and the parts that I may have thought. And to get that feedback that you may not get in your standard debrief as you’re working together to present this project in its best possible light.

David Lecours: The other thing … Let’s say, hypothetically, you don’t do a joint entry. Let’s say you enter this on say, behalf of a client or it’s a project you work on. But in all cases, there is a client typically related to this project. Let’s say you do get nominated, I’d highly recommend that you bring your client to the award ceremony. Certainly, at minimum, let them know that you entered it, that you’re a finalist. Get them excited and engaged. This awards competition recently, I’m literally sitting there in the audience next to my client and we’re just on the edge of our seats, “What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen?” It was just a great experience to go through that together, and then to win together was of course, even better and we got some great pictures, so all that.

David Lecours: Definitely, if you don’t enter the project with your client, engage them on some level and make them part of the process, they’ll, I would imagine, really appreciate it.

Josh Miles: I think especially if you do something to make the evening fun with the client win or lose.

David Lecours: Yes, that’s true.

Josh Miles: There’s something exciting for sure. To sell them on stay with the Ryan client experience thing. To sell them on the experience of the night and not just the, it’s going to be awesome if we won it, and it’s going to be horrible if we lose. Just find ways to keep it interesting before and after the awards are handed out.

David Lecours: Yeah, go to dinner beforehand, or make sure you have some plan to get a drink or debrief after. Yeah, I like that. We’re good.

Josh Miles: Yeah, for sure.

David Lecours: And then, of course, let’s say the awards ceremony happens, there’s a lot of things that can be done after the announcement. Of course, it helps if you win. But I think that even if you’re a finalist, or even if you’ve entered, there are opportunities. So, I just want to encourage our audience to leverage those opportunities for, of course the easy low hanging fruit or social media posts but you can go even deeper and share it with local journalism outlets. There might be an opportunity where it gets picked up and stories get written. But yeah, use this opportunity for all it’s worth is basically what I’m saying here.

Josh Miles: Do you feel like you did anything that especially helped you get the word out winning this past year? I know you said you felt like you’ve had more inbound requests after having been awarded these things. So, did you do anything, or was it more just the awards themselves?

David Lecours: I feel a little hypocritical in the advice I just gave, because I haven’t done as much as I should have. Maybe that’s why I wanted to give that advice because hopefully it’ll inspire me.

Josh Miles: To self.

David Lecours: Yeah. I was waiting a little bit to get some photos of it. I’ve had those for a while now and I just have gotten so busy with project work. Luckily in this case, it was just people, they were at the event or they heard about it, and I need to do a better job of leveraging some of these wins, because I feel like I’m missing an opportunity there.

Josh Miles: Nobody is paying as close attention to your brand as you are.

David Lecours: As you are, yeah.

Josh Miles: Sending it out three months later it’s really not so bad because nobody else even know they happen unless they were actually at the show or had entered the show. So, I think whenever you get it out, even if it’s the next year. Like, oh yeah, taking a look back at this award we won over the summer, that’s totally fine, I think.

David Lecours: Well, I love that you say that because that makes me think that these awards don’t have an expiration date. And that you can use the fact that you’ve won this award forever, really, because you did. Nobody can ever take that away from you.

Josh Miles: I’m now an award winning firm.

David Lecours: Yeah, exactly right. You can use that as a moniker. What about the actual thing? Let’s say it’s a trophy or a plaque. There’s been all sorts of fun stuff. I play in a lot of pickle ball tournaments, and occasionally I’m happy. I have to say that the metals that are the best ones are the ones that are also bottle openers. Because they actually have a function, and some other function. I did win one recently that was a … What do you call those things? They’re the spinners that all the kids who are into about … Fidget spinners, yes, but it was bronze. Sounds like a cheap plastic one, this was like a bronze one. There was a gold, a silver and … That was kind of unique. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it.

David Lecours: But anyway, that’s my question to you, Josh. What do you do with the actual award? Yeah, I’ll just leave it at that. I’ll leave it open ended.

Josh Miles: There is an agency, actually still is an agency here in Indianapolis who are notorious for winning awards and then just mistreating them. At some point, they were taking these plaques and drilling holes in them and then they would just put them on this rod. They had rods in their entry way that just had stacks and stacks of awards, because they won so many of them. I’ve seen other places that maybe are less fortunate to have won quite so many, and they do little display areas within their entry way or if you’re in a smaller office, maybe you don’t really have space for that. Literally, it’s tough to figure out what to do with it.

Josh Miles: Another friend of mine has always done a great job of cataloging all the things he’s won and where he’s been published. If you go to a page on his website, it’s just general for recognition. But it’s articles that mentioned him, and books that he’s featured in, and awards he’s won. Even if the plaque or the piece of paper or the plastic trophy is not something you want to keep and use something for it, it’s still a great thing to list out all this stuff. What have you seen?

David Lecours: Yeah, I think there’s so many different things that reminded me of … I did a tour of a pretty well-known ad agency years ago. At the end of the tour, and they had this lineup of trash cans. They brought us over and they said, this is what we think about awards. We sure like winning them, but it’s not the most important thing. We really want to move the needle for our clients. It was a throwaway line.

David Lecours: But his whole point was, we don’t value awards that much, but we do want to point out that those trash cans, they’re full. They’re full of awards, they’re overflowing. I thought it was an interesting thing. But yeah, I think you got to leverage everything about this. You’re going to invest, you’re going to go in. You might as well go all in, take pictures of the awards, take pictures of you with the award. If you don’t post the analog 3D actual award, at least have a picture of it that you can utilize on your site or in your social media, or archive that somewhere you might be able to pull it out, and put it in a proposal. Certainly, that would be an interesting approach. So, do something with those awards. Don’t just throw it away or let it go.

Josh Miles: A trophy the whole team drinks from. Awards that serve dual purpose, I suppose.

David Lecours: Multi-purposes.

Josh Miles: Easier to celebrate.

David Lecours: For sure. So, let’s celebrate the end of this episode, Josh. We’re about a half an hour in. Our audience is getting to their destination, if they’re driving. Encourage our audience to go to psm.show and check out our other episodes. If you have any comments or questions or anything that you want to get back to us on, the best way to do that is to go to our website. We just updated it. Love your feedback on that. Its got some fancy new graphics, and it’s got our new title sponsor on their, SMPS. The website addresses is psm.show, and then just scroll down and there’s a contact form there, and just drop us a line.

David Lecours: That’s it for this episode of PSM Show. From myself, David Lecours, and Josh Miles, we’ll see you next time.

Josh Miles: If it’s not too late, David, I’d love to give us an award for being just under 30 minutes this episode. See you guys next time.

David Lecours: Award accepted.

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