Healthy Website Transcript
Season 2: Episode 4

This is a full written Transcription for the episode: Is Your Website Hurting Your Business? of the Midwest Mindset podcast.

Transcript

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Matt Tompkins: Is your website hurting your business? That is not an easy question for us entrepreneurs to ask ourselves, but for the vast majority of small businesses, the answer is yes. Or at the very least, your website isn’t helping your business. Your website is literally your digital storefront.

And the days of simply having a website that’s just up and exists online, it’s not enough anymore. Even having a website that looks great, that isn’t enough either. Not in today’s search engine optimization world. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, it doesn’t matter what product or service you sell, your website needs to be well thought out, well planned and executed with a strategy in mind or your website will hurt your business.

This episode is a website 101 course to help you turn your website into a tool that helps grow your business instead of hurt it.

Matt Tompkins: Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that gives you the small business owner, the big agency Secrets to Marketing. I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing.

Now, if you were to walk into a store that had dust and dirt and cobwebs all over the countertops, no one was even behind the counter to help you. Even the paint on the walls, it was peeling and it it looked like it belonged in like a bowling alley from 1972.

What would your first impression of that business be? How long would it take you before you turned around and ran for the exit? Probably not very long. Your website is no different. Your website is your digital storefront. And in today’s digital world, you have about five seconds, five seconds to pass what they call the grunt test. Yes, the grunt test is could a caveman or cavewoman or cave non-binary person? Could a person from the Stone Age look at your website and in five seconds know what your business does?

If your product or service is for them and establish quality and credibility. If you’re thinking about your own website right now and scratching your head going, that is a lot to accomplish in five seconds. I don’t think my website is doing that for me. Well, you’re not alone. I don’t want you to feel ashamed.

Matt Tompkins: You should not feel embarrassed because there is no playbook that they hand out to us entrepreneurs and small business owners about what we’re supposed to do with a website. And we’re bombarded by, You should do this. No, you should do this, and you have to do this every day. And that will only be $20,000 a month.

Please know that’s what this episode is all about so that you know what you need to do with your website, what you need to get out of your website. And when you hire a professional, what to look out for so that you don’t get ripped off. Joining us on this website, 101 course in this episode is our website graphic design and branding expert Chad Dodd.

Chad is the owner-operator at Klar Inc klar with a K where they believe in clarity through simplicity. Chad works with business owners like you and me every single day through this exact process. So Chad has seen this movie a thousand times. And I asked Chad, when he was in the studio with us, for most businesses, is their website hurting their business? Yep. Yes, Chad will expand on this, don’t worry.

Chad talks about the three different types of websites that you should consider, and I think this is a good place for us to start. Which one of these types of websites fits the needs of your business?

Chad Dodd: Is it a sale site? Is it a brochure site? Is it just a validity site? Right.

Matt Tompkins: What are each one of those things? Yeah.

Chad Dodd: So a sale site is are you capturing leads? Are you calling an action to the customer to say, Hey, I want you to give me your name, email address, whatever it may be, so I can follow up with you. You’re going to get something in return, that kind of stuff, so you can make a sale or is it a E-Commerce site, a just a commerce site where they’re buying apparel or whatever it may be, a sale site, a brochure site is basically just that. It’s all the sales brochures that you have in your organization that you have made into pages on your on your site.

So basically, it’s just I want to make sure that when, you know, my sales team is talking to somebody, that customer is just going out to validate what the sales guys were saying. That’s really all it is. Or to go back and say, Oh yeah, I remember this thing at a trade show. I go to their site to see see that kind of thing, but it’s not calling me to any sort of action to to buy from them. Oh, and then are you is it a site to validate that you’re in business? Right.

So COVID was a big part of that. Right? People would go and they don’t know whether or not they’re in business, but if you don’t have a site at all, people are going to be like, Well, they’re not a real company, right? So or you is your site there just to let people know? Yes, I’m a real company. Yes. I’m open for business. Credibility.

Matt Tompkins: Legitimacy, Yeah. A sales site, a brochure site and a validation website. One of the things that we commonly see business owners do is that they realize, as COVID showed us, that they need a website for that validation thing, right?

So business owners, we just put one together really fast like I did on Wix and we call it good. You know, it looks decent on the surface, but it really has no functionality at all, especially in the eyes of Google, Yahoo! And Bing. With that search engine optimization, your.

Chad Dodd: Site is like Waldo. People have to find it and it’s really hard to find Waldo, you know? And so because you have other characters in the Waldo book that look exactly like Waldo, there’s a little differences, but it plays tricks with your mind.

Also, the sea of all these different things that hide Waldo and all that. Your website is the same thing. You have millions, billions of sites that are out there and they could just be one letter off, you know? From yours. And so it’s it’s being found. And that’s where you look at SEO strength, you know, building in good quality content that is telling, you know, Google, Bing, Yahoo! Search engines, what is on your site and what people are searching for.

So it’s not just one thing of like, yes, I want a good well-designed site, but you know, is the content valid for the client? Is there enough content to clarify to the client what you do or the services or about you or any of those types of things?

Matt Tompkins: I really want to reiterate this point because it is so important and we see it every single day with businesses and we think that designing a website is just the graphic design element of it. And a website is so much more than just how it looks on the surface. On face value.

Chad Dodd: Design is when we say design your site around like there is the visual design, there is the user experience design, it’s the interface, it’s there’s all these different portions of its content design. How is the content being laid out?

You know, when we go into the design world to kind of veer off really quickly, when you get a book, like a physical book, that book and how that content and the words on the page are laid out is design. It takes someone to say, this is how this should be laid out for each page so that the reader can consume it properly. Well, you have to do that too, for your site.

And gone are the days of the 1994 Yahoo pages where it can just be a bunch of text and, you know, multiple backgrounds and like it has to be, you know, well-designed looks, looks good and that the user can understand because the users now your clients, your customers are savvy now of what looks good and what doesn’t look good. Yeah, we.

Matt Tompkins: Are graded on an unfair grading curve when it comes to the internet, and that’s just a fact. Social media is a perfect example. So let’s say people are scrolling through their feed and they see Joe Rogan’s video podcast and then they see your video podcast.

They’re going to they’re going to compare them. They’re going to judge them on the same level playing field, even though we know behind the scenes they are not level at all. It’s not fair at all because he had $2 million per episode and you have $2 per episode.

So we have to ask ourselves, what is the value of that first impression? Because that first impression, it often lasts forever. It is very difficult and expensive to try and change that impression. Once a person’s opinion of your business has been formed. And let’s let’s not kid ourselves the content that you put out, the quality of the content you put out, is a direct reflection of the quality of your business. That’s how people see.

Chad Dodd: It as a business owner, like, well, like I do design, like that’s I love design. And so I’m always kind of trying to perfect my craft, like, Matt, are you a designer? No.

So when we look at like building a Wix site, right, you’re building it based off of what you know of design, of how to build things and what you think is good. Now, design is subjective, but however, though, when you look at that, you’re proud of what you put together on Wix or Squarespace or any of those, you know, builder, you know, sites, you do.

Speaker3: This test with your spouse or your friends. Yeah, it looks pretty good.

Chad Dodd: Yeah. Like and you’re looking for approval, but like you think it’s good but have you really gone and showed it to somebody who is a designer or who and said, Hey, what do you think of this? And they’re going to give you honest feedback, right?

And if you like, do that. They’re going to give you feedback. Was like, well, I probably wouldn’t do that and we’re going to change this. And then you can get offended by that because like, look at what it is, because you have ownership of what you built. And so we would say like, Yeah, if you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t have any funds.

Yeah, it’s okay to start with a Wix Squarespace site, but when you get funds, get a designer, get a proper team around you, you know, to to build this thing out correctly because we’re looking at as a designer and as a builder designer for UI UX, we’re looking at the customer experience, not what you think is going to be looking good or not. We’re looking at that customer and bringing them into that experience.

Matt Tompkins: I totally relate to the cost and that sticker shock that we get as small business owners, but it’s important for us to not just consider the cost, the immediate cost, the short-term cost of having your website professionally designed and built for your business and your business’s needs. We have to consider the cost of not doing it right.

How much money are you losing out on by not updating your website to what it needs to be on today’s internet? Well, let’s talk dollars.

Chad Dodd: Yeah, right. And we’ll look at it in brand dollars like brand equity. Are you depositing or are you withdrawing? Right. And are you in a surplus or a deficit? And so when we look at a site that’s been built in 1998 and you have all these other sites that you know from the same, you know, companies that are in the same. Genre. You you know your site when they click on that, they’re you’re going to lose equity real quick with that client and they’re going to be like, they haven’t updated this. They’re out of touch with with me as as a client.

They are out of date, like whatever it may be. And so you’re losing trust from that brand, trust from from that interaction. And so it’s literally saying like the website is part of your part of your brand build, right? And the branding is just, you know, the repetition of knowing who you are with, with looking at the visuals of it or the written words of it. And so when you have a site from 98, like is it building trust with your potential clients or is it taking trust away?

Now, when we look at it from a utility standpoint, you know, from a site from 1998, there’s a lot of security issues that come into into play along with that, where my brain is going well in 1998, are you collecting customer data or not? Which if you have Google Analytics on it, you’re definitely collecting, you know, information from people on there.

Chad Dodd: And so now it becomes a security problem of what’s happening on your site. Is it vulnerable to different things? Or if you’re storing client information on your site that’s from 98, you know that it now is vulnerable for attacks and, you know, that kind of stuff.

So there’s a lot of things that go into your site in that side of it, especially if it’s 1998. Well, yeah, we’ve gone through sites and yeah, they haven’t touched it for two years.

And you know, in that there’s so many vulnerabilities along with it where, you know, just because of outdated plugins or you know how the the site was built, you know, PHP is not updated like all that kind of stuff and then you’re in trouble there. So it’s not just 98 sites. It could be two year old, one year old site.

Matt Tompkins: There are a lot of things that we try and cut costs on as small business owners. We we rub pennies together if we have to to make this dream of ours work. But we also have to be realistic. We hire a professional to fix our plumbing.

We hire a professional to design and build our homes. We hire a professional expert to perform medical procedures. Your website is fundamental. It is an unavoidable fundamental need for your business to thrive. So why do we think that we don’t need to hire a professional to build it?

Chad Dodd: Yeah, because one, if they don’t know what they’re doing, you’re going to spend more money after the fact to to fix all the things. But I think too, like while you’re talking, the thought of especially if you’re like a retail space or just in your office, right?

Like every every day, every week, every month, at some point you need to dust, vacuum clean up. Right? I’m one of those guys who I’ll rearrange furniture all the time because I get bored with how things look, right? But when it comes to our our digital properties, we set it and forget it.

And you know, those there’s sites I’ve gone to that they have spelling errors or grammatical errors on their site that’s been there for five years. You know, like that’s another touch point that somebody sees that and they mixed up the, your, yours, you´re, you know, there, theirs their, you know, and that’s going to diminish, you know, you know, take away from your brand equity.

And so it’s that going back and perfecting it looking at it again cleaning things up and and that’s not coming from somebody who’s selling websites or marketing. We would say that if we weren’t in the business. Yeah, you know, you need to do those types of things and go back and do that.

Matt Tompkins: So yes, we need to trust the experts to help us with building our website and our marketing. But trust is the key word there. I don’t blame business owners at all who are skeptical and rightfully so, of marketing agencies who come to them.

They talk fast, they use acronyms, and they they either talk talk through us or talk down to us. They act as if they wrote the algorithms themselves. Trust me when I tell you they did not. It is offensive to me to see how much money is just flushed down the toilet when it comes to things like marketing, because we seem to be in this industry just surrounded by snake oil salesman types. It’s not fair.

It pisses me off and it’s why we stepped in and helped so many businesses with what we do. Because yes, you need an expert, but you need to be able to trust that expert so that they don’t take advantage of you.

Chad Dodd: What are they selling you is really the key, key thing. Like are they listening to what you’re asking for? Right. Um. Yeah. You can find someone who’s going to build you a site for a couple grand, you know, a college kid or whatever, and they’re going to build out a, you know, a templated site and blah blah, blah and build their portfolio and yeah, you save some money, but at the end of the day, like, what are they really actually selling you?

I’m on my end. I’ll always talk myself out of dollars first, looking at the at the client to really see what it is because we are all underneath, you know, we came through a time where money is tight and so we’re nervous to spend the dollars.

Even if we may have it, we may be nervous to spend that dollar. So looking at that that portion of it. You good? Yeah. So looking at the portion of of your site, like we’ll always talk about marathon running of things, you know,

So if it’s just like, hey, if imagery is great but content on your site is terrible, then maybe just hire a consultant to go through, look at your site, you know, see what’s really wrong and give you a proposal of what it could be. Not telling exactly what you need to fix, but unless they’re going to do it or it could be, you know, just the content needs to change so you can rank better on on Google or, you know, the search engines, whatever that may be.

Chad Dodd: You know, so it’s not spending tens of thousands of dollars to do a whole new build, but it’s just changing content. We did that with a client just recently. They’re like, we’re not ready to pull the trigger on a whole new site. We’ll do it later on.

But we just need content that’s updated. Yeah, so that’s all it is. It could be just a simple changing colors because their brand colors change. There’s a lot of different reasons, so pay attention to what that person is when you go and talk to them about building a new site. Are they listening to what you’re asking? Are they listening to your end results, what you’re wanting to to gain out of it? I’m wanting more sales, you know, or I’m wanting it just to be a brochure site.

I mean, I’ve consulted other agencies over the years and they’re sometimes just not listening to what the client wants because they don’t need a sales site, they just need a brochure site. And so they you know, there there’s more money in the sales site because there’s more copy involved. There’s more, more pages. Yeah. Bigger site, you know, And so they want that dollar amount. But are they really listening to what you want?

Matt Tompkins: Are they listening to what you want for your business and are they focused on the right outcome? Are they focused on more business, increasing sales, more qualified leads, not just likes, hearts and views. If a marketing agency cannot or will not explain what they’re doing thoroughly and in simple, clear language, then they are not making you a part of this process. This is your business. If you’re a solopreneur, then you are your business.

This is always a giant red flag for me. If a person won’t explain exactly what it is that they’re doing, what am I paying you to do? If they can’t answer that question, then you should be skeptical. I would also say to make sure that they have a plan. Agencies. They want you to just pay them forever every month, just ongoing recurring money that they can put in their pocket book and they’re happy indefinitely. We offer clients the option to learn how to do it themselves, and then we work towards the goal of their team or being able to do it themselves or at least have the option to take this over in-house at some point. So they’re not spending so much money every single month.

I like a therapist who doesn’t want to see me every week for the rest of my life. No, I want a therapist who wants me to be better or good enough to where Maybe I don’t need therapy. I don’t need to come in every week. You want a marketing expert who has your best interests at heart and not their wallet? Be weary of smoke and mirrors. Do not let yourself be blinded by the fast talking sales pitch that promises to make you look cool.

Chad Dodd: Yeah, and if you have a web developer, web design company coming to you and all they’re talking about is how it looks. And they’re not talking about the value of search engine optimization, you know, and the copy and the content and the imagery that goes along, all the tags, all this kind of geeky stuff that we all talk about. If they’re not talking about that side of it and they just say,

Yeah, we can make you a beautiful site warning, walk away like, yeah, it could be a good value, you know, for you, but there’s more that goes to it and you want to make sure that you’re getting a tool that is going to be effective.

If you’re spending 5 to 10 grand on a site and you have everything, it looks beautiful or whatever it may be, but no one’s finding it. You wasted 5 to $10,000.

Look at the sites that you are currently visiting for you as your own, you know, like whatever that that company may be or if it’s ESPN, if it’s a news station, is it, you know, Apple, is it a retail shop, whatever it may be like, look at those sites that you enjoy going to and see what they’re doing and see what they’ve implemented and then go, okay, how can I implement this into my organization, not duplicate, but how do I take these principles and apply this to my site or to my business to ensure that I’m being found and that when when they do arrive that it’s effective, that they’re going to stick around and then buy from me.

Matt Tompkins: One final tip. You can try visit a site that you love and then visit your own site immediately afterwards. If you cringe, then maybe your website is hurting and not helping your business. Chad is one of those that I trust entirely.

He is one of those marketers, those designers who does have your best interests at heart. And he is here to help Klar Inc that’s Klar with a K Chad.

I appreciate him coming on the program here today. Speaking of your website, if you would like that checklist for writing the perfect SEO focused blog article, trust me, you can do this yourself. It is in the show notes. The link to download is in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us here today and.

Matt Tompkins: We’ll see you on the next episode.

Emotional Marketing Transcript
Season 2: Episode 3

This is a written Transcription for the episode: Facts vs Feeling of the Midwest Mindset podcast.

Transcript

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Matt Tompkins: Have you ever noticed how us human beings, we make a lot of decisions that aren’t in our best interests from the fast food that we eat to the politicians that we elect? We often ignore the facts that don’t fall in line with how we feel about something.

Understanding why people buy is crucial to marketing your product or service and growing your business. And in this episode, we’re going to showcase this fact versus feeling showdown where only one will be standing at the end.

Welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that gives you the small business owner, the big agency Secrets to Marketing. I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing that produces real results.

Now, if you are looking for a case study as to what works with marketing a product or service, there is no better case study than Steve Jobs versus Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is a name that’s obviously revered among entrepreneurs. I mean, this guy is the ultimate entrepreneur. You know, he’s a bootstrapper.

He started in his garage with Wozniak, and they built what is today now the most valuable company on planet Earth. But in the early 80 seconds, things took a turn. Things went south for Steve Jobs, and it came down to their company’s marketing. In the early 80 seconds, they had a product, a new computer called the Lisa. Now, the Lisa was at the time, the most advanced home computing system ever created.

Matt Tompkins: It was Steve Jobs, their masterpiece. And so they did what many businesses do. When I honestly what I still see many marketing agencies, the supposed experts still do. Today they went out and argued the facts. They argued the facts to a degree.

I don’t know if we’ve seen a a more full throated effort at arguing the facts than in this situation because they took out a 16 page ad, 16 pages in The New York Times and in all 16 pages, all they did was argue the facts. They listed the specs, all of them. This is, hands down, the most thorough argument as to why this product is the best quality product in its category. And unless you are a NASA engineer, it meant nothing to you. It didn’t resonate, it didn’t connect with anybody. And thus the Lisa was sadly a flop. It was a flop to the point where Steve Jobs lost his job.

Yeah, he was fired from the company that he started. That’s how bad of a flop this was. Now, let’s fast forward to 1990 Steve Jobs. He’s brought back into Apple. And they are innovating what would become the iMac in 1998 when they released the iMac? It was built off of, I mean, technologically very linear progression from one product, the Lisa to the iMac. They built off of its operating system and a lot of the functionality and everything, they improved on it drastically, but it was very much a linear progression from one product to the next.

Matt Tompkins: So technologically. Similar products, but vastly different marketing campaigns. This time around, they didn’t take out a 16 page ad in the New York Times. This time they took out a single one page ad in The New York Times with just two words Think different. Think different, only two words in the ad, they didn’t list the single spec.

They didn’t list the single fact. And the iMac would go on to revolutionize home computing. It brought Apple back. It. Was the starting point of Apple transitioning to where they are today. As I said, one of the most valuable companies on planet Earth. And it all started with just a fundamental shift in marketing their products.

They stopped arguing the facts and they start started to tap into how their products made people feel. That’s what that single page ad did think different. It piqued people’s curiosity, their excitement. It had an element of mystery to this. What it made people want to know. It tapped into basic human emotions. And I know as a business owner, it’s hard for us to not argue the facts because we want to believe and oftentimes we say out loud, I make decisions based off the facts. That makes sense, right? It seems rational, but we just don’t.

Matt Tompkins: You and I, we do not make decisions based off of the facts. We make decisions based on how this makes us feel, and then we pick the facts to justify that decision that we’ve made, which was actually made based on how it makes us feel.

Fast food is another perfect example here. It really isn’t that it relatively. It isn’t that hard for us to eat healthy. Okay. It takes a little more planning, maybe establishing a new routine. It actually costs us a lot less money. It’s more affordable. I know when I went through my my healthy phase and I say it’s a phase because I’m trying to get back there. But lately I’ve been off the wagon. Yes.

As they say when it comes to maybe not eating the best food, but when I was eating healthy, I felt better. I looked better. I saved a lot more money. If I were to look at every fact and if we stacked up the facts versus fast food and healthy food, healthy food wins hands down if you’re making a decision based on the facts. But we don’t make a decision based on the facts. We just don’t. Not with anything, really.

And so we choose fast food based off of deep rooted emotions and emotional connections we have with advertising and with, you know, my dad taking me to McDonald’s on Saturday mornings and Hastings, Nebraska, to eat their their pancakes and their kids meal and getting the toy and all these different emotions.

Matt Tompkins: They’re tapping into feelings. That’s why we’re making that decision. Another example would be politics. How many times have we seen people vote and make decisions to put people in office that go against their own self-interest? They do it because of feelings. It’s amazing to me that more people in politics and all the different cable news networks can’t seem to figure out all this is, is marketing.

It’s just understanding that it’s all about feelings. I mean, we’ve all had this experience, I think, right, where somebody says something on Facebook, it turns into this big long thread, this big argument back and forth. And it doesn’t matter how many facts you present, it seems so obvious to you. How can this person not see the facts? But you don’t ever change their mind? I don’t think anybody’s mind has ever been changed on Facebook, period.

But you don’t ever change their mind with the facts. Why is that? That’s because they’re not making this decision. They’re not taking this position based on the facts. They’re taking this position. They’re making this purchasing decision based on how this makes them feel. So it’s almost like we’re playing a different sport. They’re playing baseball. We’re playing soccer, and we’re expecting somehow for this thing to end well. And it does it. Now, the important thing all of this illustrates for you as a small business owner is understanding that very fundamental truth about marketing and then applying it to your marketing.

Matt Tompkins: Because we see this mistake made time and time again where businesses argue the facts. And I have been there myself. We want to use the word high quality over and over and over because we think that’s what moves the needle. We want to argue the specs. You see the ads on TV?

Four out of five doctors agree this toothpaste is the best. Is that why people buy that toothpaste? No, it’s not. They don’t care. Five out of five people watching that commercial don’t care what four out of five doctors think about that toothpaste. What they care about is how that makes them feel. And so if you can come to this understanding, this basic truth, when it comes to marketing your business, you are going to see unparalleled success compared to your competitors, because sadly, most people are still hung up on this delusion that people make decisions based on facts.

When we don’t, we clearly don’t. The examples I’ve given today are just a few. We know this intrinsically. We know this about ourselves. We know why we’re making these decisions. And it is not because of the facts. So we can keep arguing the specs, keep arguing the facts, and have similar results to the Lisa of the early 80 seconds with Steve Jobs and not see the success we want to see with our business or the alternative.

Matt Tompkins: We can focus on the three problems that your business can solve. Now there are three problems. Doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, what product, what service, who your customer is, it doesn’t matter. There are three problems that you can solve for your customer.

For a person, you have external problems, internal problems and philosophical problems. Okay. What does that mean? External problems are the facts. External problems are. To use an example here, off the top of my head, we’ll say a car. All right. So an external problem is I need a mode of transportation. All right. Now, here is the big misstep that we make. We think that that is what people want to hear in our marketing. So we argue, you need a car.

You need a car with four tires, not just any tires, the best tires, this engine and this these specs, the facts. We argue the merits of the car. Even though we’re making that decision because of that basic need, the real reason we make our purchasing decision is because of internal problem. So an external problem is just the basic need. I need a mode of transportation.

We don’t make our purchasing decision based on that. Instead, what we make our decision is based off of the internal problem. How does this make us feel? What do we want? What do we want? Not what do we need now? I need a mode of transportation.

Matt Tompkins: I could go out and find a $200 car. It’s a piece of junk. It’s going to do all the things I need it to do. It’s going to get me from point A to point B, from home to work, from work to home. Maybe stop at Casey’s to get that, you know, shame filled slice of pizza that I know I’m going to get tomorrow afternoon. Okay, I got to stop eating the Casey’s pizza. Anyhow, I digress. It’s going to get the job done, but I’m not buying that car. You know, I could get a Subaru, I could get a minivan, but I’m not. I drive a jeep Wrangler Unlimited. Why do I why did I buy that car? It’s a lot more expensive than other cars.

The reason is because of the internal problem. I bought that car because in high school, my best friend Brett, he got a brand new Jeep Sahara, I think it was Jeep Wrangler. And ever since then, I always wanted a Jeep. I wanted a Jeep wrangler. And then when I could finally afford one, it was my dream vehicle. I was able to get one. And now I love it. I love it. Do I go up mountains? No. Have I do I take the top off? Rarely.

Matt Tompkins: Honestly, I’m too lazy. It’s too much work. And so I don’t I don’t use the Jeep for most all of the things that Jeep is known for. The facts, the specs. No, the reason that I have a jeep is because of how it makes me feel. It’s tied to emotions. And the same thing can be said for how many pickup trucks and SUVs do we see driving around Omaha now in the winter time? Maybe we get a snow once, twice. We don’t really need that truck. Most people don’t need that truck.

Most people aren’t farmers. Most people aren’t hauling around hay and other things, tools, you know, most people who are driving these SUVs and these trucks, they they have purchased them because of an emotional connection, because it’s a Cadillac Escalade, because it’s a Suburban, It’s because of whatever emotional reason, whatever, however that product makes them feel. That’s why they got it. So you have three problems.

You have the external, which is I need a mode of transportation. Nobody makes their decisions on what they buy. Based on that, though, you have internal, How does this make me feel? Or what do I want? That is what people make their purchasing decisions on.

And yet we make the mistake of flipping those two around. And so we go out arguing the facts, thinking they want a solution to this external problem. They need a mode of transportation when in reality what they need is a solution to an internal problem and it plays into the ego, it plays into emotions.

Matt Tompkins: To carry that car analogy, if I said, you know, external, I need a mode of transportation internal, I need a mode of transportation that shows up my neighbor Todd because Todd has a Prius, he has a hybrid. He’s always bragging about it.

And I make more money, I’m more successful. And I feel like, you know, my my Subaru. No offense, Subaru. I don’t know. I’ve never driven a Subaru, so I can’t knock a Subaru. But it’s just this random example off the top of my head. So I’m driving my Subaru.

He’s driving his driving his hybrid. And you know what? I want to show off my status. I want to feel successful. I want to feel good. So I buy a Tesla and sure, I have to wait two years for that thing to show up, but then I have it. Now I feel good. So I’m making that decision based off of internal.

And then that leads me into the final problem you can solve, which is philosophical by buying that, by buying that Tesla. I am a part of something bigger than myself. Bigger than myself. I am a part of something bigger than myself in the sense that I feel like I am contributing to helping the environment.

Matt Tompkins: I am lowering carbon emissions. I am using less fuel. This is better for the environment. It’s better for my kids, for the next generation. Right? If you notice there, there are three problems that can be solved external, internal and philosophical.

Two of those three problems are all feelings. All feelings, internal and philosophical are all feelings. And those two internal especially are how you should be marketing your product or service to your your ideal customer. Unfortunately, the mistake we make is we we focus in on the external. We focus in on the facts, which is not why anybody makes a decision, a purchasing decision.

There’s a very simple formula here for for any business and what you do. You have a problem, you have a solution, and you have an end result. And it is very important to focus on painting that picture or illustrating to your ideal customer to that prospect, that new client, what that end result looks like and what it will feel like. What is that going to feel like? Sometimes we get hung up.

Don’t say sometimes. Most of the time businesses get hung up on that external problem. We argue the facts. We point out all these different facts and specs and intricacies of the solution, and we don’t ever paint or even talk about the end result of that solution. The end result is actually what matters most because that is how it’s going to make you feel.

Matt Tompkins: I had a friend of mine send this to me today. I won’t mention who it is, but a company they make, you know, they do kitchen remodels, bathroom remodels, remodels, and they have countertops as their feature. That’s their main That’s their bread and butter. Right.

They have a beautiful website. It looks like they probably spent thousands of dollars. It was done professionally. Looks great, looks amazing. It’s not really getting them results at all. And that’s why they reached out. The first thing that I took a look at was their messaging. What is the message? How are you connecting with your ideal customers with your target market? First paragraph on the home page. It reads Like many business websites that I’ve seen. You’ve probably seen too. T

hey all sound something like this. Our product is made with only the highest quality materials. They will support up to £400 of weight. They have been tested for 4000 hours under the highest pressure. Blah, blah, blah. That is not what is going to sell countertops. We think it is because we think that’s what’s important. That external problem, we don’t focus on the end result. The end result is how we highlight the internal problem and the philosophical problem.

A more effective message on this website for countertops could be something like this. Simply say it’s time to come home to a kitchen your family loves.

Matt Tompkins: Come home to a kitchen your family loves. Immediately in my mind when I say that it is I’m having. This vision of my family, who for the most part I love and enjoy spending time with. We’re all in the kitchen. We have these beautiful new countertops and they are the reason. This is what has brought us all together. I’m proud of my kitchen. It looks great, makes me feel good. And my family is there.

And it’s Christmas, it’s Thanksgiving, it’s the holidays. It’s watching, you know, husker football games, whatever the celebration or just a random reason to get together and maybe play cards some night as a family. These countertops are the solution.

But what that message does is it focuses on the end result, focuses on the internal problem, and it focuses on the philosophical problem, too, because we’re bringing family into this. This is a generational thing. It is more than just my my kitchen is more than just my new countertops. It’s my wife’s, it’s my parents, it’s my brother and my siblings, my cousins, whoever might come over.

Tap into those feelings because that is what people base their decisions on. Marketing is all about trust. It is all about building trust and building trust as fast as you can. You have about five seconds on a website. They call it the grunt test. To convey what problem you solve, what your solution is, and what the end result is going to be.

Matt Tompkins: And if you don’t do that in five seconds, people aren’t even going to scroll down. They’re just going to move on. And that’s just a analytical, data driven fact, no pun intended. Facts don’t build trust. You know, you’ve heard that saying, and I’m going to I’m not going to try and quote it exactly because I’ll screw it up. But, you know, a statistic is saying, hey, this foundation helps a million people. People don’t care about a statistic.

They care about a person. We’ve helped a million people or your money gave Bob this liver transplant, and he’s alive today because of you. It makes it personal. Why? Why does that work? Because. Feelings. That is what we base decisions off of. And to build trust, you have to empathize. You have to connect. You have to relate to your customer. And that is all about understanding their emotions, their feelings and your own. And how that drives their decision making process.

Facts versus feelings. It is not even a fair fight. You should remove facts from your argument altogether. Focus on feelings. Focus on connecting and relating. Resonating deeply as we’ve talked about. Because feelings win every time. When you use feelings and you build trust, people will fill in the gaps. You’ve probably had this happen. I know I have. Where you make the argument of all the specs and all the facts and all the things you do and all the reasons why and people’s eyes gloss over.

Matt Tompkins: You know, when you simply say this is the end result, this is your problem, this is the end result, we’re going to help you. We’re going to help you get here to this place where you feel this. People say, Yes, I trust you. They’ll fill in the gaps, stop making a fact based argument and start focusing on the feelings. Thanks again for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset.

Now in the show notes, if you are looking for a secret weapon to help your business thrive when it comes to search engine optimization, there are so many things that you can do yourself. Trust me, if I can do it, you can do it, too. And we are trying to help you out here with a free checklist in the show notes. Free checklist to write the perfect SEO focused blog article.

Blog articles are the secret weapon for your SEO, for your search engine optimization. If you want to show up higher in search results, if you want to drive more traffic to your business’s website, this is something you can do for free. All it takes is time and knowing how to do it. And if you want to know how to do it, the checklist is there for you. It is absolutely free. You can download it, click on the link in the show notes.

And we’ll see you next time.