E62 | Watertight Marketing – How to Not Waste Money on Marketing with Bryony Thomas
Dominic’s aim for The Melting Pot is to enable other businesses to optimise their business performance, to help them scale up. And so this week’s guest, Bryony Thomas, marketing guru, author and developer of marketing methodology – Watertight Marketing, is the authority on how to grow your business through marketing.
Having worked in marketing since 1997, Bryony has not only garnered a wealth of experience in the industry, but she’s written the book on it.
“Nobody needs more marketing ideas, they need fewer on which to truly focus. And one of the things that Watertight really does is get people to prioritise and focus in on the one thing to be doing right now.”
Having watched so many businesses waste money on marketing and finding that she was repeating herself constantly, Bryony decided to put her extensive marketing knowledge down on paper.
And so it’s this book and the fundamentals of marketing that Dominic discusses with Bryony in this episode. So if you’re keen to stop wasting time and money on ineffectual marketing, stop what you’re doing and tune in. It will be the best decision you made today.
On today’s podcast:
- What the Watertight Marketing methodology is
- Don’t think of marketing as something that can be finished
- The importance of language and ensuring everyone understands the meaning of what is being said
- Why a marketing funnel is the wrong analogy for successful marketing
- Marketing isn’t a checklist to be completed, it’s a mindset to be adopted
- Don’t measure micromovements
- The importance of measuring ratio over volume
- Forgotten customers
- How Bryony’s marketing transformation programme works
- How she turned the book into an apprenticeship programme
Links:
Tips to Not Waste Money By Watertight Marketing
Bryony Thomas is the author and developer of the Watertight Marketing methodology. She has successfully transformed her book on the subject into an apprenticeship programme, and so who better to speak to about not wasting money through fruitless marketing efforts, than the marketing guru herself?
“Business owners who don’t come from a marketing background are unsure, they can get blinded by the marketing babble that people throw at them or the fads that people tell them they should invest in.”
And so Bryony set about creating a marketing guide that would turn marketing from a cost centre into a business centre.
“In my experience over the last 23 years, most people approach marketing the wrong way. They try and follow the likes of Facebook, who create awareness and monetize later. And if you have a bottomless pit of cash, then not making money for a long time whilst you create a bank of goodwill can work. But for those of us who perhaps need to pay mortgages, doing it the other way tends to be far more sensible.”
The power of language
One of the best ways to ensure that your marketing strategy will be successful is to make sure that everyone on your team understands everything by the same words. Watertight marketing becomes a language that everyone uses and understands.
“Often what we find is that people use the same words but mean very different things by it. So marketing will talk about lead generation, and sales will see those leads as nothing more than fluff. It’s really important that your entire organisation uses the same words but critically mean the same thing.”
The problem with funnels
Another problem with some marketing advice is that they reference a marketing funnel. But the problem with funnels, as an analogy, is that they get smaller the further along them you go.
Whereas in marketing what you actually want is a bucket, a watertight bucket that you can fill up with tools and techniques.
Focus on starting up
As a startup business you should focus on starting up. To only lookout as far ahead as 18 month to three years, any further and you’ll end up off course.
The best way to get started in marketing is to put something out there that isn’t embarrassing, but is functional. You can always change it or update it further down the line once you know more about what you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve.
“There are lots of businesses that we’ve worked with who’ve ended up renaming and rebranding… And there are two things with renaming… The first is that they assume that everybody’s heard of them, which is frankly ridiculous. People don’t care. You can come back as something else and honestly, they really don’t mind that much. The second is that they think that it’s built up as an asset. You know, they think that changing their name will confuse the market, Google will never know who they are. Is that a good enough reason to stick to something that’s holding you back?”
Book Recommendations
- The One Thing – Gary Keller
- Valuable Content Marketing – Sonja Jefferson and Sharon Tanton
- 24 Assets – Daniel Priestley
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