100 episodes! Yippee!!
Good marketing is one of the most important things you can learn for your business! Let’s talk about how you can do that, with some examples. Even some personal ones!
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SOURCES
Adapted from this list: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/basic-marketing-questions
https://www.facebook.com/50Pizzas/
https://www.foodbevg.com/US/Belleville/798191913384570/50-Pizzas
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes: https://www.themarketinggateway.com
Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
Over the last 10 episodes, we’ve been talking about some of the most common topics in marketing. But you know what we haven’t really discussed?
Why marketing matters in the first place.
You see, a lot of people have this idea that good marketing is just about having strong sales and advertising and a nice-looking brand. But those are really just superficial aspects of marketing, and if they’re done poorly, they really stand out in a bad way.
Let me offer an example.
As I was driving home from work yesterday, I saw a billboard for a car dealership in the Metro East that’s really trying to rise above all the other dealerships in the area by offering stronger service and better trade-in prices, but they’d put together this crazy billboard that’s full of slogans and ideas but no real sense of clarity of design.
It pained me to see it, not because it was a bad billboard – it was – but because it suggests that the sales team thought, “hey, we don’t need to have a marketing professional help us do this! We can do it ourselves” and they spent the time and money to create something that doesn’t put their best foot forward.
Car dealerships are some of the worst offenders for bad ads because they have the money and also think, since they’re selling cars every day, they have the expertise. But you know who else is really bad? Lawyers, some of whom love to make commercials for broadcast or put up billboards with their giant faces plastered on them. I don’t doubt that these campaigns get more people to call into their offices. But I also suspect that most of those calls don’t lead to winnable cases and that those billboards are more about nursing egos than attracting customers.
Now, lawyers don’t mind hiring marketing agencies to do the work for them, but they insist on doing things in a way that suits their vanity, not their clients. They, like the car sales staff, think that because they deal with the public every day, they understand marketing at an instinctual level. And maybe they do! A lot of them are more financially successful than any of us.
But they’re successful because they are already commanding high prices with cars and billable legal hours. Not because they are better at marketing.
Good marketing is about thinking through much more than sales and advertising. And it’s absolutely important if you want to create something that will last longer than the cult of personality behind it.
So, let’s dig in to what good marketing is… and why it matters!
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
As I’ve alluded to in our previous episodes, one of the problems we face in marketing is that most marketers have a varied understanding of what marketing even is. You can find all sorts of different definitions out there trying to wrap their arms around what good marketing is and what it looks like. The American Marketing Association in particular has gone from defining marketing as being a transactional activity to something a lot vaguer where we’re participating in an attention economy of value that could include things like awareness or engagement rather than money.
I find that where definitions fail, analogies tend to work best. And so I liken marketing to a soapbox.
Huh? You might be asking.
Well, back in the 19th century and early 20th century, if a speaker wanted to stand above a crowd, they’d take a wooden crate used to contain a product like soap, turn it over and then stand on top of it as an impromptu platform. One of the most famous places where you’d find soapbox speakers in the 19th century was Hyde Park in London, where different orators would try to attract a crowd at the area known as Speaker’s Corner. Snake oil salesmen and carnival barkers are also associated with soapboxes. And after World War I, you’d also see soapbox speakers speaking in behalf of political parties or causes.
All of these folks were interested in one thing – attention. By standing a little above the crowd and projecting their voices, they could draw attention to their cause or their product or the amusement service they were hoping to provide.
Right away, that image encapsulates one of the first things marketing does for an organization. It increases visibility and amplifies awareness about a cause, product or service.
But soapbox orators also had to think about the crowd and find ways to suit their pitch to the audience. If they said things that weren’t believable or which offended the crowd, they risked actual physical consequences in the form of being chased off the soapbox and maybe even being beaten up. And so orators had to find ways to engage the crowd with strong rhetoric and engaging flourishes, perhaps dressing up in fine clothes or making wild gestures or speaking in an interesting or exciting manner.
This leads to another thing marketing does for an organization – engaging the target audience.
Of course, over time, soapboxes turned out not to be enough, because there’s a limit to how many people can be in a crowd around a speaker. Even with a megaphone, a speaker has limited range because people want to see the person speaking. And so soapboxes had to evolve into platforms with podiums and speakers so larger crowds could gather.
This leads to another thing marketing does for an organization – provide a foundation for growth.
Then, there’s the element of credibility. Anyone can stand up on a soapbox and speak to a crowd. But the success of the speaker really depends upon how long that crowd sticks around and whether or not they’re listening attentively or throwing rotten tomatoes. The larger and more attentive a crowd is, the more likely others are to stop by and see what the fuss is about. This also causes those in the crowd to feel that something must be right about what the speaker is saying if others are agreeing.
This leads to another thing marketing does for an organization – enhance the persuasive qualities of the messaging.
Finally, the purpose of standing on a soapbox and speaking to a crowd is rarely just to change minds – it’s most often to get people to take some sort of action. And so soapbox speakers tended to have a goal in mind –
step right up, folks
or buy a bottle of this incredible tonic
or join me in going on strike to protest these awful conditions
or vote for me because I’m going to create change that matters to you
All of these types of messages are focused on a call to action of some sort. And that’s yet another thing marketing does for an organization – encourage people to act.
So let’s review.
Marketing helps us boost visibility and awareness, it helps us engage the target market, it helps us provide a foundation for growth, it helps us enhance our persuasive qualities and it helps us encourage people to act.
And that pretty much encapsulates what marketing actually is and why it’s important.
Let’s say you make a product of some sort. Last night, I happened to see a food truck in Belleville, IL called 50 Pizzas. This is completely real, by the way. This truck goes out to this vacant spot near the community college and offers 50 pizzas for sale every night from 4-8pm or until they sell out. I’m not sure if they’re successful or not. But that’s their business.
Having a food truck with the name “50 Pizzas” on the outside might get a few curious onlookers like myself and it might also get some word of mouth spreading if the pizzas happen to be really good. They may be able to build a few long-term customers out of that group of people.
But if they want to succeed at selling pizzas, they need to get on that soapbox and find ways to draw in a crowd. I don’t mean this literally, of course. How we do things in the 21st century is very different from how we did them in the 19th. But in their case, they need to figure out how to draw in a crowd that isn’t confined to the people who happen to be driving by that spot between 4-8PM like I was last night.
So, they can boost visibility and awareness by being online. As it turns out, they are! I looked up their Facebook page and they have another one on FoodBevg.com. That means you can at least find them through an internet search. And I noticed they had some signs along the road sticking out of the grass advertising their presence. A guy was picking them up and they were pretty small, but yeah, they had them.
Could 50 Pizzas boost their business even more through better marketing? Absolutely! They could hand out flyers or give out coupons or take out ads or set up some sort of crazy display to get peoples’ attention or any number of things. Like the soapbox orators, they could find ways to make themselves seem bigger and bolder and more polished to draw a bigger crowd.
What about engaging the target audience? Well, so far as I can tell, they’re not doing that at all. I’m not sure who the target market for roadside 12” pizzas is. I’m not sure 50 Pizzas understands that either yet, because their online presence is largely about talking about their products and the days they’re open and not about engaging the sort of people who’d patronize their stand. So beyond whatever their customer experience is like, and I suspect it’s probably pretty personal since you have to wait 5 minutes to get your pizza, they have to figure out how to get that audience to stick around. Marketing could definitely help them there.
What about providing a foundation for growth? I don’t want to put too fine a point on this, but they’d probably sell more pizzas if they were in a strip center or shopping district and offered dine-in or delivery for customers. A pizza food truck in a vacant area on the side of the road is always going to be a limited business. Marketing could help them there.
What about enhancing the persuasive qualities of their messaging? Right now their message is, “we’ve got pizza, and you can buy it until we run out in the 4 hours we’re open.” It’s a weak hook, but it at least communicates scarcity. Actually selling out of 50 pizzas every day and posting up records for how quickly they do so would be far more persuasive than the current message. Marketing could definitely help them there.
What about the call to action? I’m not sure there really is one beyond, “buy our pizza,” and that’s definitely an area where marketing could be helpful. Do they have exotic ingredients you can put on your pizza? Do they have 50 styles you can order? Do they have challenges where they want customers to make custom creations they’ll showcase online and name after the customers if they get more popular? From what I can tell, no, no and no. And I actually love the idea that a pizza place could allow customers to compete in having their own pizza design named after them. I’d totally do that! Marketing can help them there too.
And so 50 Pizzas – you’ve got a soapbox, whether you realize it or not! You can take this concept and do something really amazing with it! And I’ve even given you a boost by using my own soapbox to tell people to check you out!
By the way, I’d love to have 50 Pizzas on the show to talk through all of this, because I have a lot of respect for that entrepreneurial spirit! So I’ll reach out to them.
But lest you think this analogy only makes sense if you’re talking about products or retail, let’s apply it to my own business.
See, I’m really bad about reminding you folks that I do The Marketing Gateway as a way to elevate my own business, The Research & Planning Group! It’s not because I’m bad at marketing, though. It’s because I really hate it when I’m listening to a podcast and it’s filled with commercials for something I’m not interested in. My theory is that if you want marketing research services from my company, you’re going to come to us because you like me and the hours of awesome marketing-related content we’ve shared. And that’s quite honestly what I want you to care about – how I can help you!
But RPG is 43 years old this year. We’ve clearly been doing something right, but you know what? We’re still rooted in the 20th century where we started and we need a marketing makeover. So I’ve been working on a marketing plan to give us that later this year. And let me show you how this soapbox analogy works for us too.
For visibility and awareness, we’ve been working on creating content pitching our expertise, getting out in public more often and talking about what we do and also crafting a stronger story about why we’re not just another marketing research agency. Did you know when I started at RPG 17 years ago, there were over 50 full-service research agencies in St. Louis, and now there are probably less than 10? We’ve got a story to tell about how we weathered that storm, and later this week, my production assistant Holly’s going to interview me to find out what we did!
How do we engage our target market? Well, our services are specialized and expensive and our target market is small and largely referral-based, so advertising doesn’t work for us very well – it’s really through personal contact that we get almost all of our work. And that’s true for most research agencies.
But you know what I got really lousy about during COVID? Personal contact! So I’ve been working on a more strategic plan for outreach so it’s not just based on a whim when I remember I haven’t heard from someone in awhile, but truly focused on keeping personal connections strong.
And of course all that needs to be supported by a foundation for growth, and this is an area where we as a small, referral-based business really struggle, because it’s rare that someone goes on the web and says, “I need marketing research services from a firm based in St. Louis!” and expects to work with an agency like ours. A lot of time those jobs are won through personal connections and relationship-building. So a big part of our marketing needs to be getting out there and making ourselves stand out, maybe by speaking at more conferences, creating more publications, getting more earned media.
Or having a podcast designed to help us tap into the expertise of our local marketing community! And that last one is really a win-win because we get to sit at the feet of the masters and learn with the rest of you. I’ve so enjoyed the last 6 months of podcasting!
Beyond that, we at RPG need to think about marketing to enhance our persuasive qualities. Do you think it’s a compelling story for me to tell you, “Hi, I’m Sean and I conduct surveys, focus groups and interviews for clients who need to know something.” Maybe if you need one of those things, but most of the time, probably not! What might be more appealing is if I said, “Hi, I’m Sean. Have you ever really wanted to know how you can serve your customers better? That’s what I provide.” Or maybe “I love a good puzzle, and so I help people solve tough problems with real data.” That last one might even be more useful if I have a puzzle ready to share to tell that story better.
Once I have a good story in place, I need to be able to explain why RPG is the agency that can solve problems. It turns out that because we’re researchers, we’re experts in many things and we’ve helped clients sort out customer service headaches, put their right foot forward with branding and positioning and helped them avert disaster with creative concepts that the public won’t respond to. We helped one organization figure out if they were better with a real doctor, a celebrity doctor, or a guy who played a doctor on TV as their advertising spokesperson, and as it turned out, the cheapest option was also the best one!
And another thing I need to work on at RPG is to encourage people to act. I can write a great proposal and ask people to consider it, but you know what I’m not so great at doing? Including a call to action in my communication with them to get to the proposal stage in the first place. I don’t think I’ll ever be good at that, because it’s just not the way I’m wired. I used to win awards for being a salesman, but my selling style was always exactly what you see here on the podcast – I’d be a resource to folks and then help them figure out would best solve their need. I don’t see that changing.
But I’m getting better at getting folks to check out my content, which might lead them to consider me when it’s time to ask for a proposal, and I’m comfortable with that. So that should be our call to action at RPG as well – come and see what we’re experts in, and you’ll get something out of it and we’ll be top of mind for you when you need a research agency.
I’m working on all of that for RPG because talking about marketing every day has made me think about marketing more every day. And that’s another side benefit of having a framework like this – if you try to understand how your actions help your soapbox speech to reach an even bigger and more attuned audience, you’ll naturally get better because you’re not just creating stuff for the few people who know your value already anymore.
Now you have a focus and a reason to draw a crowd.
Could you apply this same framework to a big service brand? Of course. What about a product? Absolutely. How about a conference or a social media account or a teenager’s babysitting business? Yes, yes, and yes!
Because what I’m describing is the heart of what marketing really is. It’s a multiplier, an amplifier, a big old megaphone you use to help your voice reach further from that soapbox until you need that PA system or jumbotron or global livestream to take you even further.
And as we celebrate 100 episodes of The Marketing Gateway – really! 100! – let me close with this thought. There are a lot of folks out there who have a marketing job of some sort. It might be digital marketing or traditional marketing or marketing management or marketing strategy or sales or PR or accounts-based marketing or insights or media buying or creative consulting or branding or production work.
It might involve packaged goods or products or services or causes or just generating attention that other marketers can buy into.
It might involve a person, a group of people, a brand, a philosophy or a movement.
It might even be for something that’s not for profit or which is trying to make the world a better place or which is hoping to motivate people to take political action.
Whatever role marketing plays in your career – we’re glad to have you in our audience. Thanks for being here for the first 100 episodes, and I can’t wait to thank you again when we hit 200 episodes about six and a half months from now!
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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