As I sit here tonight, January 2018, I’m on top of the world. Young, successful, in-demand. I feel like a boy band member circe 1998 in the middle of my first world tour. I made it. I’m here. Besides thinking about how I can avoid screwing this success up, one of the things I think about all the time is how I made it, and why I’ve been able to successfully run a business for years. And one of the realizations I’ve had is that a large part of the success of Rothman PPC is due to the fact that we understand the marketing mindset. We are marketers, we are paid to market, and we get the job done.
Lots of terms get thrown around in this line of work; sales, marketing, advertising etc. Those terms are mentioned together all the time, often used interchangeably, and often looked at as the same thing. But they’re not. Let’s define terms.
Marketing
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
I like to slim the definition of marketing down to “the activity of communicating offerings that have value for customers.” In terms of the marketing work Rothman PPC does on Facebook and AdWords, this slimmed-down definition matches what we do. We get in front of people (customers / potential customers) who are likely to be interested in, and want, the value that our clients offer via their services.
Sales
Merriam-Webster defines sales as “operations and activities involved in promoting and selling goods or services.”
Advertising
Merriam-Webster defines advertising as “the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements.”
Marketing With A Little Bit Of Advertising
So the way I look at things, is that by running AdWords ads and Facebook ads, we’re engaged in primarily marketing with a little bit of advertising. We’re not engaged in sales. When the leads we get our clients call into our clients’ businesses, that’s the point that the sales and selling begin. And the selling is done by our clients, the actual businesses.
Our work is to find the people who want our clients’ offerings (marketing) and to get in front of them with effective ads (advertising).
Advertising in this sense is the actual ad that the Google and Facebook users see. The search engine ad copy, the Facebook feed ad, etc.
What’s really interesting to me is the marketing part of things. This is where we are tasked with finding the people who want our clients’ offerings. On Google this is done by running ads on the keyword searches we think this audience would search. And on Facebook this is done by getting ads in front of the audiences who would likely want our clients’ offerings.
And this audience-finding is where the magic of AdWords and Facebook happens. When done correctly, you get in front of people who are looking for exactly what the clients’ businesses offer, and when you can do that, the rest of it takes care of itself and clients get lots of solid leads and new customers.
The Marketing Mindset
Good advertising copy gets clicks and traffic to the clients’ websites, good sales work by clients turns leads into new customers, but neither of those things happen if you don’t first get the marketing right and get in front of the right people.
And that is what we love doing here at Rothman PPC. We love finding the right people on Google and Facebook and getting in front of them with ads showing them exactly what they’re looking for.
We’re a matchmaker. We match potential customers with businesses who offer them what they’ve been looking for. And to me, that’s how I think about marketing and the marketing mindset. It’s all about finding the right people and getting in front of them.
So how do you find the right people? AdWords has keywords and Facebook has audiences. And to figure out what are the correct keywords and audiences to target, we try and put ourselves in the customers’ shoes and think like the customer.
If I needed a moving company, what would I search in Google?
If I was an oil and gas company CEO, and I needed a new HR software, what audiences would I be a part of in Facebook?
Those are the types of questions we ask ourselves when trying to find the right customers on Google and Facebook.
Marketing is all about finding the right people to get ads in front of. And the marketing mindset is putting yourself in the customers’ shoes and trying to think like a customer.
To find the customer, become the customer. Good luck.
