President's Letter - March 2019

I’m not sure many of you know this, but before I was ever in the detailing industry I had a long career as an entrepreneur.  I have owned restaurants, catering companies, been an investor in several successful businesses, and for many years ran a coaching and consulting company for the restaurant industry and small businesses in general.

Recently I had the pleasure of attending one of our IDA Webinars, Marketing: Beyond Social Media.  It was a great webinar, and the whole crowd shared a ton of good ideas and insight into successful marketing.  It really got me thinking, and I wanted to share a core principle that I have shared with a lot of businesses.

Marketing is a Process, not an Event!

Many business owners have told me "I used that ad medium, it didn’t work" or they say “I’ve tried everything out there and it doesn’t matter, nothing moves the number.”  Well, those comments are just plain dumb.  

The problem in most cases is that the business owners tried something once, usually not following a direct marketing strategy, didn’t get good results, and deemed it a failure.  Further, when questioned about the resulting math of the promotion, they just don’t know.

The reality is that there could be many factors affecting the poor results.  Often there is a market-message-media disconnect.  Far more common is that the ad is poorly constructed with no headline, no offer, no deadline, etc.

This is made worse by poor or no tracking.  In short, there are a ton of things going wrong, and the impatient business owner wants to run the silver bullet ad.  “If I run this ad it will kill all my competitors and make all my customers and their families line up at my door to pay full price…oh every day of the week without complaints or issues…”  THAT'S NOT REALITY.

You need to get ahead and stay ahead of your marketing.  Right now you should be planning for June and July.  Build a calendar, plan promotions, and plan the advertising so you always have a flow of clients.  It is far too often that I see folks that market, market, market, then they get busy doing all the work and the marketing falls off until they get slow and they need to market it all again.  For many, this is also how cash flow rolls.  You have to get off the roller coaster!

The point of this principle is that you need to plan your marketing strategy and then work it like a coach works his game plan, like a farmer works his fields, like a hunter works the woods.  Marketing successfully takes time – even when you are doing all the right things.

Lastly, the NCAA Basketball Tournament is finally here – Let’s Go DUKE!!

Respectfully yours,

Jonathan Munsell
IDA President
Facebook and LinkedIn: jonathanmunsell
IG: JumpinJonny

PS: As always, please reach out to me, connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever works for you, and let's continue to move this association forward, grow, be strong, and be internationally recognized as the source for detail information and education.