047: DIY Marketing – Good or Bad? Featuring Marketing Expert David Kaufer

Title: DIY Marketing – Good or Bad? Featuring Marketing Expert David Kaufer

Guest: David Kaufer

Peter: DIY marketing, good or bad. So what we’re talking about is as a business owner, should you do your own marketing? Welcome to the Biz and Life Done Well podcast, where we explore what it means and what it takes to do business and life well. I’m your host, Peter Wilson. If you’re like me, you’re intrigued by stories of common people who have achieved uncommon success in business and life.

Join me as I interview fascinating people about how they got started, their successes and failures, their habits and routines, and what inspires them. Today, my guest is David Coffer. He is the chief dynamic officer with Coffer DMC. Did I get that right, David?

David: Yeah. Well, yeah, Coffer DMC, KDMC Marketing.

Peter: KDMC Marketing. So David and I share some office space here in Edmonds. We’ve been, sharing space and clients and ideas and, trials and tribulations for, I don’t know, five, six years now.

David: Coming up yeah. Actually, coming up on, I think, six, seven years, almost.

Peter: Yeah. So we we are both marketing agency owners, so I felt that it would be great to have David on today to talk about a question that we hear a lot, which is, DIY marketing, good or bad. So what we’re talking about is, as a business owner, should you do your own marketing? And that’s, you know, that’s that’s a huge thing. We hear it all the time.

Right, David?

David: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And especially, like, we were talking about earlier, digital marketing. Right? Because, basically, now if you’re a business, marketing is digital marketing.

You have to be, especially after the pandemic. I mean, if you’re not if you’re not marketing Yeah. Exactly. You’re you’re in trouble.

Peter: Yeah. So, you mean we’re not gonna advertise in the newspaper anymore? Yeah.

David: No. What’s the newspaper?

Peter: What is the newspaper? So, a couple things. We we sat down and kinda came up with a list of questions that if you’re you are a business owner and you’re thinking about doing your own marketing, got some questions that you should ask yourself. The first question that I came up with is, you know, are you happy with the current growth rate of your business? And I I look at it, and I’m I always think about, like, you know, if you’re gonna if you’re in growth mode, you should at least be growing revenue and profits, you know, 10% a year, double digit.

Right? That’s kind of everybody’s

David: That’s the goal. Target.

Peter: Yeah.

David: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s that makes a lot of sense. I mean, are do you do you feel like do you need marketing? Do you are you are you looking for more customers, patients, clients, whatever it may be? Do you need more business?

Peter: Right. That’s funny you should mention that because, you know, do do you need more? Because some of the clients that we work with for various reasons are at max capacity right now. Yeah. But they know that it’s not gonna stay that way.

So they they wanna continue investing in marketing right now.

David: Right. Right. They’re not they’re not turning off the spigot just because yeah. They they with where they are.

Peter: They They complain about the phone ringing too much, and I said, you want me to turn it off? And they say, no. Yeah. Keep it coming. And I think one thing that you you brought up is how confident, are they if you’re happy with your current growth rate, kinda goes back to my point, but you said, you know, how confident are you that that will continue or those results will continue?

So

David: Yeah. Right. I mean, how long can you ride, whatever it is you’re doing? Mhmm. You know?

Because, again, businesses are at different stages, and sometimes you kinda get that momentum or push for whatever reason. Maybe, again, it was coming out of a virtual conference or, you know, whatever it may be. But, you know, it’s hard, I think, to maintain momentum unless you’re proactively pushing the ball ahead with with marketing. Marketing.

Peter: Another thing we talked about is, you know, the experience side of things. How much experience do you have in marketing? Right. Digital. Right?

David: Yeah. I mean, are you a are you a newbie, a novice? I mean, is this is this stuff really brand new? Do you know enough just to be dangerous? Have you played around a little bit with AdWords maybe five years ago for, you know, a product that you were doing at a company?

That sort of a thing. I mean, it all comes down to how familiar are you, you know, with it. Because a lot some of it can be somewhat technical. Although, again, it has gotten, as you know, a lot more user friendly, some of these tools. You know?

Yeah. You and I can use them.

Peter: Yeah. Right.

David: That that says a lot. But, yeah, there is a learning curve. There’s a learning curve because we’re talking about, and I know you’re gonna get into it in a little bit more, but, you know, these different pieces of digital marketing as well.

Peter: Yeah. Exactly. And the other thing that I’m thinking about is, you know, what is your time worth, and, you know, how much time do you really have to devote to marketing? And I and I think of an example. We recently recently had had an attorney come to us who had been doing their own marketing.

And, we just sat down and did the math on it. And given the amount that they were spending on Google Ads and they were managing it themselves, it made way more sense for them to hire us as the experts to do it. Because, you know, attorneys

David: Yeah. Their hourly rate, you look at what their billable rate, if they could be spending that time Yeah. Doing billable work versus doing the analytics and tweaking their AdWords, that’s a no brainer.

Peter: Well, especially when, you know, I talk to attorneys and they bill in, you know, a tenth of an hour, know, six minute increments. Right? So when you’re when you’re when you’re tracking your time that much, you know, you’ve gotta be aware of how you’re spending every moment. Absolutely. So yeah.

So that’s that’s something else. And and the thing I I ask is, like, do you really have a passion for this, or is this, like, you know, the last thing on your list you wanna do? Because if if marketing is not something that you have a as a business owner, you have a passion for it, then it’s not gonna get done.

David: For me, yeah. It’s gonna be very difficult, you know, to be motivated to to take the steps that you need to take. Yeah. Because it does it takes work. Mean, and and, again, there are different pieces to it.

You can’t just say, oh, I’m just gonna do this one thing, and my marketing is fixed.

Peter: Yeah.

David: You know? Like posting on Facebook a couple times a week. That doesn’t cut it for your marketing program.

Peter: You’re just getting started. Yeah. You’re just getting started. Tip of the iceberg. Yeah.

Exactly. And I think that this is a good segue to something else you and I talked about, which is really, you know, marketing. There’s strategy and there’s tactics.

David: And so Absolutely.

Peter: You know, let’s talk about that a

David: little bit. So Yeah. I mean, you’ve you’ve really gotta start with the strategy again. Sometimes, you know, again, you have businesses that go out there. We’re joking, you know, like Yosemite Sam just, know, boom boom.

Yes. Let’s just start

Peter: shooting Let’s try this. Let’s try that. Let’s try

David: this. And you really have to back up and say, you know, like, branding, messaging, you know, who are we? What are we trying you know, what is our message? Who is our audience? I mean, do you really have a defined buyer persona in place?

You know? Yeah.

Peter: Yeah. The strategy side is I mean, generally, when we work with a client, I’m sure you guys are the same way, it’s a very collaborative effort with the owner of the business. Right? Yeah. We always wanna start off on that right foot and get the strategy right.

Part of that is just knowing all the right questions to ask. There’s certainly a lot of books out there and other resources that a business owner can leverage to figure strategy out. You know, there’s there’s a million marketing books on, you know, strategy.

David: Yeah.

Peter: Right? But then again, you’ve gotta take the time to read them. And

David: Put pen to paper.

Peter: Yeah. And only, you know, about half of the books are any good. So you gotta figure out which ones to read. And, you know, I don’t know how long you you’ve been doing marketing, probably longer than I have. You know, there’s just something that you learn along the way with respect to your experience.

David: Right? Right. Right. I mean, yeah, it’s a nice shortcut. Yeah.

Right? To expertise as ex you know, experience does translate into expertise. And like you said, we know what questions to ask. I mean, we go through, you know, the the the process of, you know, helping guide the company through, you know, a series of questions and steps, you know, to help boil down what is it you’re really trying to do. So, like you said, make sure that whatever tactics follow are on the right path.

Peter: Right. Exactly. So you’ve got strategy, and then and then you’ve got tactics. And and I was trying to list out sort of what I believe are sort of the big the basic digital tactics that, you know, every business should at least have an answer for. Right?

David: Right.

Peter: Website, A number one. Right. Yeah.

David: Oh, yeah. I mean, website is a no brainer. Right? Yeah. And but, again, people kind of take that for granted, and it and it’s I think as we’ve seen through the pandemic, because everything has been driven more through the Internet, all communication, every everyone’s searching for things like you

Peter: On their phone. It used to be kind

David: of a cliche, but it really is true. Like, your your website is your storefront. Yeah. Whatever kind of business. So what what are you putting forward there?

Are you making it easy for people to know what you do, how to contact you, how to order, do, you know, do whatever, those types of things? Is it compelling? Is it visual? Is And it now and I don’t know if you’re running into this. We didn’t talk about this, but accessibility.

Peter: Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah. For sure. We’re we’re definitely seeing that.

Yeah. The the other thing that we’ve found in the last year, I remember when we crossed the threshold of 50% of the searches were being done on mobile devices, from desktop device. Now it’s we’re seeing some of our clients as high as 80% of the visits to their website are from a mobile device.

David: I believe yeah. Same here. A lot of our health care clients

Peter: Yeah.

David: They’re seeing, yeah, like, 75, 80%. And it kinda makes sense. Right? Especially, again, you think about people now who are spending more time home. They’re Mhmm.

You know, they’re on the couch. They’ve got Netflix going, and they’re searching. Like, oh, that reminds me. I need to take care of x y z. So they’re they’ve got their either their iPhone or their pad.

Peter: I can be on a Zoom call, and I’m gonna pick up my phone and Google something. Right?

David: Right. I’m gonna remember that our next Zoom call.

Peter: Talk about multitasking. So so you really have the website is it’s it’s table stakes. I mean, you’ve really gotta and it’s gotta be mobile enabled. It’s gotta be not just mobile enabled. It’s gotta be, really designed with mobile in mind, and it comes down to, like, we see a lot of times sites we look at.

With a business owner, it looks great on a desktop, and then you put it on your phone, and you’re like, well, I only see, like, a quarter of this picture that’s on your website, and the font is, like, way the wrong size. Like, the font is huge, or it’s, you know, it’s something’s messed up, and it’s just basic blocking and tackling things that, need to be done. So website is clearly, that’s, like, a number one. And there are some DIY tools for that, like Squarespace and Wix. Wix and some others that that work okay.

They’re they’re they’re limited.

David: Yeah. I mean, they’re Yeah. They they can. And and and, again, there have been situations we’ve had clients that they’ve been great starters for them.

Peter: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve even had sites where they’ve started off on a Wix or, Squarespace, and then they’ve actually had us convert it to WordPress because they didn’t like the functionality. They liked the design, it but didn’t have enough functionality.

Yep. So websites, social media profiles, again, that’s, basic table stakes. People are gonna look for you, and you need to show up there. It doesn’t mean you need to be posting every day, but you need to at least show up and have your profile claimed.

David: Yeah. Social and social I’m just gonna jump in real quick there. Go ahead. Because, again, I think, you know, we tell our clients social proof is a real thing. Oh, yeah.

I think it’s part of the the, you know, the research journey for so many customers and potential patients or whatever.

Peter: Again, like

David: I said, they kinda go to the website. A lot of times, they do go to a Facebook page or they look Instagram.

Peter: Yeah.

David: And they they, you know, they wanna learn more about the company. And

Peter: Or or, you know, a a huge customer journey that we, work with is word-of-mouth with our clients. You know? Mean, first and foremost, word-of-mouth and personal referrals is huge, but it’s very rare that somebody is just gonna go directly to the business if it’s referred. They’re gonna Google the name of the business. They’re gonna look up the social profiles just like you’re talking

David: about. Yeah. They still wanna check them out. They kinda again, you just wanna see who are they getting get a feel. What do they do?

Are they legit? You know?

Peter: Yeah. I mean, if you if you ask a a question on Facebook to friend a friend group, and they and you’re looking for a certain business, and they respond, and they say, oh, go check these guys out, they’re probably gonna link to your Facebook profile. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

David: Very often.

Peter: So you gotta take care of that. You know, I always feel like email marketing is super important. It’s very low hanging fruit. It’s probably some of the cheapest advertising or promotion you can do for your business. Right?

David: It is. It’s amazing. I just laugh because, you know, how many years, you know, did we think that email marketing was dead? Right? And you can’t kill it.

As a matter of fact, in some ways, it comes back stronger than ever

Peter: because Yeah.

David: You know, getting back to website. And I remember you and I talked about this a while ago, and you you pointed this out. It’s like so as important as social media is, right, the the downside to social media is you’re you’re, at the beck and call of the platform.

Peter: You can’t control it.

David: You can’t control it. Yeah. Right? And so you think about the two channels you can control the most when you’re talking about the dig well, three, I guess, if you include mobile. Yeah.

But, really, email marketing. Right? You can have a direct relationship with your audience. Yeah. Assuming that what you send them and share is interesting, relevant, helpful.

Yeah. People people still respond to that, as you know. Yeah. You’ve done a great job with that. And, yeah, of course, website.

Right? You can still control those. So those those are things people don’t necessarily think about is you wanna be able to have that control.

Peter: Exactly. So a couple other things that I I would put on the list as well would be reviews and reputation management. Right? So your, you know, Yelp well, not necessarily Yelp, but certainly Google.

David: Google. Right.

Peter: Google reviews, Facebook. And then there’s just, SEO, which is a a very broad term. I I would sort of refine a little bit, say local SEO, which is, you know, making sure that your that Google is finding you.

David: Yep. Yeah. You want as far as covering the basics, you wanna make sure you’re covering local SEO for

Peter: sure. And then, and then you may be doing Google Ads and and Facebook Ads or things you should consider at the very least. So yeah. So, I mean, good news, like we talked about earlier, you know, there are tools for businesses if you wanna do it yourself.

David: There’s software for everything now. Right. Right? So Right. I mean, there’s a reason SaaS has become so huge.

Peter: Exactly. Yeah. But then then, you know, if you do wanna use a tool as a business owner, you’re gonna buy a tool. We see it all the time. Right?

People fall in love with the idea of some tool. You know, they watch the YouTube video.

David: Or Could be a CRM. Could be a social media platform. Whatever it may be. Right.

Peter: Yeah. And then so they buy it. Then what happens?

David: Yeah. They sit there. You have to you know, there’s always a learning curve.

Peter: Mhmm.

David: I mean, I mean, again, no matter how easy you make it, there’s a learning curve, so you have to figure out how, you know, how to use it, how to apply it with your particular business and your needs.

Peter: Exactly. And then I always think about, like, just how do you stay accountable? Like, you can buy the just buying the tool and paying for it every month, you know, you can feel good about that purchase. But if you don’t use it and there’s no you know, it’s just it you’re actually

David: That’s just a wasted expense.

Peter: You’re you’re you’re spending money on things that you, you bought into the vision, but you didn’t actually buy into the you know, you have to have some accountability, I guess, what I’m

David: trying to

Peter: say. So if you decide to hire a marketing agency or you’re thinking about it, you know, what are the things that come to mind for you in terms of what a company should be looking for in a marketing agency?

David: Well, I mean, I think, you know, the obvious low hanging fruit is experience, first of all. Yeah. Right? Because, again, you get you get people this is a a growth area. It’s amazing to me how much digital marketing has exploded in terms of, you know, people who are calling themselves digital

Peter: marketers Exactly. Or

David: Yeah. What is it? What’s a what is a digital marketing agency? You know? So, I mean, just like any other service provider, I think experience counts for a lot.

You know, how long they’ve been doing this. You know, they’ve been working with, you know, companies like yours and all that. Mhmm. You know, we were talking about niche expertise. Yes.

Right? Again, depending on your industry, depending on your business, it may be more important that you hire an agency that really understands your you know? Right. Maybe, like, for, again, law. You know, legal is kind of one that’s a special.

Peter: Right.

David: Health care is another. Right? Right. There there are some that I think it really does make sense to have.

Peter: Yeah. Or if you’re if you’re selling, a product online, you you wanna hire an agency that is a, you know, an ecommerce expert

David: for your Right. That’s a great example.

Peter: You know? That that’s, and even you can dial into, like, beauty products or, you know, supplements or, you know, there’s all kinds of agencies out there that will help those individual niches succeed, when they have the experience to back it up. Right? Right. And and that that’s one thing you’re gonna wanna ask is what types of businesses, have you that that would be a great question.

What kind of businesses have you worked with in the past? You know? Who who have you had success with? Another thing I would ask is, you know, what is your process for working together? You know, how often should I expect to interact with somebody?

If I have an issue, how quickly should I expect a response? And if you say, well, there you know, if the agency says, well, we’re perfect and we never have an issue, then red flag. Right? Yeah. Because we all have issues and we all, you know, there’s all always an area where we can improve.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s really about how they respond. So, yeah, I I like that.

What is their expertise? Also wanna look at who is on their team. You know? Like, I wanna learn a little bit more about who is the if it’s just a single person, that’s that’s one thing, solopreneur or marketing agency. But

David: Yeah. And that, again, that could be a good fit depending on what your needs are.

Peter: Because like

David: you said that, you know, if you have the right person and, again, we’ve worked with people and I know, you know, other solopreneurs,

Peter: you know, whatever the term Solopreneurs. Yep. Preneurs.

David: Right. Where their role is basically kind of like as a project manager. Right? Senior project manager. And they have the experience and expertise to understand, again, what your problems are to be able to consolidate that and say, okay.

And pull together the resources and kind of Yeah. Okay. Here. Sure. I’m gonna use, you know, this platform for this or whatever it may be.

And their but their their responsibility is making sure it gets done and then you know what’s going on.

Peter: Exactly.

David: That that could be a good solution.

Peter: That that that really could be. The other thing I think about is if you’re a start up, you know, and you don’t have a lot of money as a business, know, to invest, you’re just kinda bootstrapping things, that’s gonna that’s gonna impact, obviously, the amount of budget you have and and how you’re gonna get it done. You may be willing to take a, you know, take a chance on somebody who’s just getting started as a marketer

David: Right.

Peter: As well. You’re kinda on that journey basics.

David: Right? Really? Yeah. Just the bare bones.

Peter: Yeah. So and that’s that’s something that, you know, we’ve seen work. When we got started, you know, I started this agency ten years ago. I’ve been doing digital marketing for, like, thirty years, but we had a couple clients that we took on, and we were just getting started, and they were willing to, you take a chance on us. Absolutely.

Right.

David: Right. No. We’ve we’ve pay we’ve paid our dues. Yes.

Peter: Exactly. So, yeah, that that’s a a couple other things I think about is, like, budget. Like, how much are you willing to spend? And one of the things that I always ask a business when we sit down is how much what what are you how much are you spending right now on a customer acquisition? And I’m shocked at how many businesses can’t tell you how much they’re spending to get the leads, new customer leads for their business, like, a per lead basis, or what their customer acquisition cost is.

David: Or even how they’re getting their customers.

Peter: Are they tracking them?

David: Are they tracking Yeah.

Peter: You know? Yeah.

David: Again, that gets down to some of those basics that, again, it’s kind of second nature for us because that’s what we do. Yeah. But, no, I I think getting back to budget, that’s that’s obviously a big one.

Peter: Yes.

David: Right? Because you need to have budget because, again, this is one of the things many clients don’t understand is that what you’re paying for isn’t just the software, the tools that we provide. It isn’t just how many hours it takes to update a website or, you know, put together a Google advertising campaign.

Peter: Right.

David: You’re also paying for and this gets back to expertise and experience. And, you know, there’s a lot that goes goes into what we provide for clients that you’re not necessarily gonna think about nor should you.

Peter: Right.

David: But there’s a cost to it. I mean, it’s a professional expertise service just like an attorney and, you know, other professional services.

Peter: CPA. CPA.

David: Right? And so Yeah. Unless you’re able willing and able to invest in these services Mhmm. You know, you you might be best just do it yourself until you can afford. You know?

And and what is that number? Again, it depends, but I would say it’s gotta be a minimum. I mean, in our case, 1,500 a month.

Peter: You know?

David: Mhmm. Plus advertising, whatever you wanna do. So, again, for professional services Yeah. Think about it again. If you were to hire starting with a marketing coordinator these days even.

Peter: Yeah.

David: You’re gonna be spending anywhere between probably 40 to 60,000 plus spending.

Peter: Well, if you could if you could find somebody

David: to hire. If you could find some I mean, there’s that whole thing. Right? But, I mean, just look at it from that standpoint. Sure.

And, you know, just one last point there. And I know you take this perspective is, again, when we’re working with clients, the one thing that you have is that’s that’s our focus. Right? We are so we view ourselves as your marketing department.

Peter: Yeah. Yeah.

David: And, you know, you can’t hire a marketing department at the scale that you can get from

Peter: an Exactly.

David: Agency. I mean, that’s Yeah. That’s always kind of the the big selling point that

Peter: Right.

David: I leave with.

Peter: Right. It’s yeah. And you’ve got this team of experts that is you know, if you hire the right agency, you’ve got this team of experts that, in in the case of, you know, both our agencies, you know, we have people with, you know, massive domain expertise in particular areas of marketing, and you’re you’re basically getting a fractional

David: Yeah.

Peter: You know, marketing department

David: Right. Right.

Peter: At a fraction of the cost, really.

David: Right. Right.

Peter: That’s a

David: good way. Yeah. That’s a good way of putting it.

Peter: So we we don’t we don’t we we’ve got some services, so for biz marketing, that are a little less than that, you know, kinda your the $1,500 a month bogey. You know, it depends on what you need, but then again, there are additional services that you can get

David: I’m saying that again, especially if you want that virtual marketing department.

Peter: The full on.

David: The full

Peter: on. Yeah. Like said, there are certain services.

David: Like you said, yeah, we we provide, you know, whether it’s review packages or, you know, things like that. Absolutely. Yeah.

Peter: Yeah.

David: Yeah. You can do you could kind of one off or Sure. Find some of these things for less than that.

Peter: Yep.

David: But you’re not gonna get that full Exactly. Consultative approach.

Peter: So, so why don’t we wrap up here, David? I’d I’d like to, you know, offer a pitch for your your organization. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, what do they need to do?

David: Oh, just, you know, drop me a note.

Peter: K.

David: David at, Koffer, k a u f e r, d m c, in run d m c, dot com. David@Kofferdmc.com.

Peter: Got it. Awesome. And, if you’re interested in, chatting with Biz Marketing, we’re at bizmktg.com. Check out our website. And David and I collaborate a lot.

Occasionally, we’ll run into a potential client who’s a better fit for the other person. We, we recommend that. So yeah. So please, check us out, and, thanks for joining me today, David.

David: Oh, yeah. Do it again. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, Peter.

Cool.

Peter: Thanks for listening to this episode of Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most of the other popular podcast platforms. Please tell your friends about us and leave us a review so even more people will find out about us. Thanks again. We’ll see you soon.