Describe your service here. What makes it great? Use short catchy text to tell people what you offer, and the benefits they will receive. A great description gets readers in the mood, and makes them more likely to go ahead and book.

Describe your service here. What makes it great? Use short catchy text to tell people what you offer, and the benefits they will receive. A great description gets readers in the mood, and makes them more likely to go ahead and book.

Describe your service here. What makes it great? Use short catchy text to tell people what you offer, and the benefits they will receive. A great description gets readers in the mood, and makes them more likely to go ahead and book.

BY: Dave Hiebeler | June 8, 2023 Disclosure: The following article was authored 100% by a human with experience in the category; it includes proper sourcing and fact-checking. If you feel your business is in real growth mode and you wonder how much you should spend with a marketing agency per month, I have your answer. This article will give you an agency owner's view on what it will take to get started. I will assume you are already in pure messaging mode, which means you have done all the heavy lifting to build a website/brand that asks prospects to do something and nudges them along to consider you a viable option. And like many businesses right now, you are not looking to increase your overhead; you are instead looking at where you can make cuts. The other assumption is that you have a solid Google footprint, which means prospects like what they see when they do a direct search. Will Google change this due to their own A.I. adaptations? Yes, and it’s coming soon. Start at $1,600 to $3,000 per month. It's funny because I don't get asked this question often when we are in the discovery phase with clients, but I know it is at the top of their minds. And understandably, you may think you need help to afford the counsel of a marketing agency. Eventually, everything comes down to how much. And soon after that, it's either a "yes" or "no" decision. As a business owner, you may budget for Web hosting, high-speed Internet, tax advisors, employees, and insurance. Sure, marketing is a deductible expense; a better way to consider it is as a monthly utility, like electricity, heat, and water. Marketing should not be any different. Commit to a starting agency marketing budget like this for six months or more. Why that much per month? The $1,600 to $3,000 monthly agency spend level is the opinion of this agency after working on thousands of campaigns over the years. This minimum level gives your marketing agency the resources they need to get the momentum started. When you begin, you will have less profit to play with; your gross revenues are not yet significant. You could be in the friends and family funded or in a pre-venture capital pitch stage. And when budgets get more extensive, your agency can add more channels and frequency to get things buzzing for you. In a recent Forbes article about "How Much You Should Spend On Marketing," Thomas Minieri recommends that businesses have two advertising-level budgets: "If you want to maintain your current sales level, then do 5 to 10% of gross revenue. If you want rapid growth, then 20% or more, depending on your industry and type of business." I agree with his budget advice. When your business is in its early years, your goal will be more ambitious to grow your brand. Or, if you are an established company launching a new product or service initiative, your budget could be much larger than $3,000 per month. Why start at this budget if things are tight for you? You'll get a more actionable critical mass of data from your agency campaigns on how prospects are relating/reacting to your most viable product (MVP). This data is precious to you, the failures especially. It puts time on your side to build demand generation in one channel, maybe two, if you are very efficient. Proper marketing involves trial and error. Trial and error require time. Every one of us hates the error part, especially. We have found that the most successful marketers identify their audience patch, soak it, and own it over their competition. We have an East Coast luxury auto franchise we work with that advertises to local "auto intender" residents by local counties with email blasts once per month, every month since 2014. They 'soak their patch.' An agency budget of $1,600 to $3,000 per month will allow you to use channels like Permission-Based Email or Instagram with some modest frequency. Larger monthly budgets above $3,000 enable your agency to add channels you could be unfamiliar with, like Podcasts, YouTube, and Connected TV (CTV). You will be happier doing marketing yourself if: Unfortunately, there is this expectation that marketing is easy, "Just spray and pray to an audience, set it, and forget it." There are also numerous sexy rags-to-riches articles. These are tales of significant revenue gains that occur overnight. What gets omitted from the story is how long it took said owner to succeed; those details are boring, aren't they? In my morning Flipboard app regimen of reading many articles (a pleasure and a curse), I see them too. One would think, "If only I could find the same magic elixir they have found; it seemed clear how they were successful." But as business founders, we pride ourselves, especially on DIY actions; it's how you built your thing, sweat, brains, dark days, and grit. You are my sisters and brothers. I love you. It is also sometimes hard to gauge whether your current upward trend in revenue will sustain itself, gulp. If so, hold on investing in agency expertise; you will be putting too much short-term results pressure on yourself and your agency. Stand-down. Marketing effectively is challenging and time-consuming. It is hard. What worked so great last quarter could have worked better this quarter. Is it my competition? Is it the economy? Did the audience channel lose its mojo? Did I over-fish the pond I've been in? The sexy stories you see can cause quick-fire judgments on what works and does not. Too often, time gets removed from the equation when the only goal is lead generation over demand generation. Do marketing yourself in-house if a committed agency budget makes you nervous and your team has a fair amount of time. Your current revenue and cash flow may not support a dedicated budget with an agency's expertise. It's a ‘nice to have’ down the road for you. Are your expectations of what marketing can do realistic? Your expectations of marketing's proper role and effectiveness are crucial. If you think an agency will drive immediate conversions to sales for your business, you need to be more realistic. On average, only 3% of your best prospects are buying right now. We call that a low-funnel conversion. Your agency will guide you to the correct demand generation strategy to move the 40% that are just starting to look for what you got. That takes time. Your agency is responsible for the top of the sales funnel; your business is responsible for mid and low-funnel conversions to sales. Fewer businesses want to own this, but it's true. What defines an emerging business? It can be a start-up in its 3rd year, an early-stage company that just got a second round of funding, or an existing business with a new product or service to grow market share. Any business with a unique market opportunity with new funding for expansion or a time-sensitive event that needs to get the word out is in the emerging category. You could have a familiarity problem. Low familiarity is widespread, especially with emerging businesses; if you ask them what they wish they could have more of in their business, they would say: "If only more of our best prospects knew about the unique service or product we offer and how it will solve their problem." More brand familiarity is a legitimate desire and lament. It speaks to why anyone markets and advertises anything. Mike Higgins, Co-Founder of Align2Compete and my business partner said it best: "There are more people in the world not on your website right now than those on it." A cold and undeniable truth. In a client discovery meeting, we will ask, "OK, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, where do you think your company ranks on the familiarity Index with your best prospects?" The client pauses and fires back, "I think we are a 2". We then ask, "Where do you want that number to be in two years?" If you say, "I want to be at a 7 or an 8 ". That is an ambitious goal, and we all have extensive work to do. That work requires money, resources, and an equivalent measure of expertise. But everyone wants easy, correct? Growing brand familiarity requires time and consistent, agile actions; there is no easy way around this. Getting the word out the right way. Getting the word out the right way requires disciplined audience message repetition that a talented agency is ready to handle, just like you know how to run your business like no one else. Agencies have channel, audience, and messaging cadence expertise you most likely need. A one-time or annual big event could be coming up, or you have to nail a limited time frame open enrollment period as a success. I call that significant short-term pressure. Allow me to share a story of when I was in the newspaper industry decades ago. A local air show featured the famous UNITED STATES NAVY Blue Angels flying their jets. Excellent stuff, yeah. The problem was that I was an Ad Director for a chain of suburban papers that was temporarily understaffed. We promised The Air Show leadership a 16-page section published to our audience on a particular date, which meant we had to sell 12 advertising pages to meet our advertising/editorial profit matrix. If there are not enough ads, then there could be no section. Time was short, and my team needed to move the needle. I had to step up and sell 10 of the 12 pages myself. The Air Show folks loved our section. I didn't sleep well for those two weeks; that was real pressure. If you need to turn up the messaging flame fast, then a monthly budget does not make sense, but a more extensive project budget does. In this case, your agency can do many good things for you on a $4,000 to $10,000 budget. You may not remember what you spent on marketing. However, you will remember if your event was a complete dud and people got fired. Use an agency if you lack in-house expertise. As an owner or senior leader of an emerging business, marketing is a hat you should not be wearing any longer. It's a total time-suck; the detailed work necessary can be overwhelming. Your work-life balance could be suffering as well. Some owners are good at marketing; they built their business cost-effectively as a low-cost provider. I call you "consciously competent." We love talking to you because you know the power of a well-executed campaign and have a feel for channels that work well for your business. But if you have fished every "word-of-mouth" fishing hole, and marketing is starting to crush you from a time and energy dimension, there is trouble brewing. You don't file your corporate tax returns without a tax advisor, do you? You hire experts to save you time, avoid costly errors, and give you an edge. Hire an agency and give them a monthly budget to support the resources to get the job done right. Key takeaways: One of Warren Buffett's, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, advice tips for any business is to reinvest profits back into the enterprise to fuel its growth. This is a hard pill for owners to swallow, especially when the money starts to flow. When I have an electrical or plumbing issue at home, I pay a professional to fix the problem. I believe they will do it right, and I will save time. I will gladly pay for their expertise and experience. A marketing agency can do much the same for your enterprise. They know the right tools and when and how to use them. As a metaphor, the great agencies will tell you when you only need a bolt tightened, and they will charge you for the minimum service call today, or they will also tell you that your water heater is about to blow because someday, very soon, it will flood your home with 3 feet of water. Dave Hiebeler is an Agency Principal at Align2Compete, LLC. He writes about small business marketing, audience strategy, and demand generation. Based in Colorado, Align2Compete is a specialized marketing agency that helps emerging businesses turn strangers into customers. He is also a freelance writer.

by Dave Hiebeler | Jul 29, 2022 Click here to listen to the podcast From the show notes: Every business, every owner, every employee has lots of great ideas. The crucial part is how one should nitpick and prioritize their tasks. “Experience” is not getting what you want. You can hire seasoned mentors to avoid making mistakes, period. Hiring trained professionals saves you time, avoids costly errors, and gives you an edge. If you think that doesn’t make a huge difference, think again. At Align2Compete, you have access to industry experts who could drive you to your fullest potential. Today, we invited Dave Hiebeler and Mike Higgins, co-founders of the organization, to give you a run-through and a clear picture of what they do. Dave Hiebeler is an Agency Principal at Align2Compete, LLC. He writes about small business marketing, audience strategy, and demand generation. Based in Colorado, Align2Compete is a specialized marketing agency that helps emerging businesses turn strangers into customers. He is also a freelance writer. Mike Higgins is an Agency Principal at Align2Compete, LLC. For the past 25 years, he has worked in all things digital sales and marketing. Mike also founded Brushfire Sales, which assisted companies in optimizing outbound sales channel efficiencies. As a digital pioneer, he was on the ground floor at MapQuest and Weather Labs, a start-up that the Weather Channel acquired.

By Dave Hiebeler | July 26, 2023 (Above image source: 123rf.com) Disclosure: The following article was authored 100% by a human with experience in the category; it includes proper sourcing and fact-checking. Marketing agencies talk about brand recognition frequently when discussing the goals of a marketing campaign. But what does your business do about low brand recognition when you are in an emerging stage? Do the ideal prospects you claim are in "your patch" know you are a viable option? This article is meant to give you a way to assess your brand familiarity index, set a realistic long-term goal to improve it, and commit to a disciplined plan with buy-in from your team. Let’s call this article a fun marketing strategy intervention. So, instead of being frustrated by spending money on marketing and advertising, you will out-fox your closest competition. I like your chances. You know it’s a problem; it’s why you are advertising, but As a marketing-advertising agency, we work in a world of frank assessments of clients’ business familiarity from the perspective of: “If your best prospects were going to buy your product or service, are they aware of you as a short-list option?” It measures how steep of a hill we need to help you climb. How easy or dangerous is this mission going to be? And since marketing and ad budgets are not unlimited, let’s get real and review your businesses’ familiarity with prospects that are only in the patch that makes the most sense for you to own. Isn’t it interesting that the words “own” and “won” have the same letters? Defining your realistic patch Mike Higgins, Principal at Align2Compete, believes that every business should have a definable “Patch” in which they should be known as the first place to go for help. “Better yet, he says, if you decide to own your patch, you should soak it with your message.” I agree with him, and it is what top brands do. Let's say you have a home garden, a community garden, or a farmer's field that you take ownership of as a metaphor. A marketing patch can be both geographic and an audience demographic. A zip code, a county, a major metro, or a state could be a business patch. Your defined patch could be a networking, church, or social media group. Many fledgling companies overestimate the size of their patch, and it causes focus problems. Some businesses decide that a major metro city or a region is their patch. But they must realize they will need an aggressive budget to grow Familiarity with it effectively. You could be more effective in owning a handful of zip codes/neighborhoods instead of the entire city. Whatever your resources for marketing, the key is to decide to increase your brand familiarity only in your patch over time. Anything outside that goal will likely exhaust time and money resources and have low business value for you. How to Assess Your Familiarity Matrix or Score? This question is most important when you think it is time to get the resources and energy together to launch a fresh marketing campaign. Take this on in-house or with the help of an agency. Ask yourself/your team: How much awareness does your target audience have about how your services/products can solve their problems? Now let's attempt to evaluate this by determining a familiarity matrix score. Familiarity is not mystical, either. With the Familiarity Matrix, no algorithms, A.I., large surveys, or secret math are involved; that is for the big cats like Hilton Hotels and BMW. It is more of a gut feeling for the owners of the businesses. And it's usually accurate because you live, eat, and breathe in your business daily. You know what prospects say about you and your customers too. How does a close competitor stack up? With one being the lowest and ten being the highest, how do you rank your prospects/customers' awareness of what you do, who, and how you help? Initially, you might overrate your score if you have been around for a while, which is human nature. To help you, think of a target competitor that's been at it longer than you; what do you think is their score? Then plot how you relate to them. For advertising campaign purposes, we view the Familiarity Matrix with five main components: The starting familiarity score with your brand for your patch (maybe you are a 4.5 right now out of 10). Good; you have built some equity, and well done. Your past and current message delivery cadence (is it once per month, every ten days, weekly, or daily)? Your past and current omnichannel placement choices (are you showing up in multiple channels like social, direct mail, email, and Google Ads)? What does the local village say and feel about you (does your Google footprint have good reviews/bad reviews, good press, and helpful content you authored)? Do you have a good mousetrap? Does your Website educate, inform, and ask anyone to do anything? And for a business, this is REAL POWER. When your small business looks at the goals of a marketing plan campaign through the lens of the familiarity matrix, it forces expectations to be much more realistic on what good results should look like. Instead of focusing on buy-now short-game thinking, the focus turns to long-game thinking. I'm talking about a legitimate demand generation strategy over time; you choose the realistic tactic of growing your Familiarity in your patch. You might rate yourself a "2.5" score today, but if you have a 2-year goal, such as getting that to a "4 score", achieving this type of realistic strategy change makes you a powerful foe to your closest competition. Are we conceding defeat too early? One of our agency clients, Gary, a veteran of the financial service industry, once reminded me of a profound lesson in how to view a campaign's success in its entirety. I was reporting to him on the short-term results of a mortgage campaign directed at local consumers. The email open rate was excellent, and their landing page had strong click-through activity from the blast. This was solid top-funnel demand generation. Their prospects were becoming aware of their solution to their financial problems. They were engaged with the message, but there were no low-funnel conversions in the short term yet. A savvy observation indeed. I told Gary that from our internal view of his new campaign, we liked the level of prospect's reactions to his company's message; we see hundreds of these client reports. I asked, "What are you seeing on your end, Gary?" He replies, "We have not seen the phone ring yet, Dave, but I worry that we are conceding defeat too early?" Those were words of wisdom from Gary. He is a competitor from way back. He played high school football but never played college ball because he blew out his knee; he played the safety position with a hard-nosed attitude.  He reminded me that when you quit mentally early, you have already decided to lose, and the result will match your mental construct. It is self-fulfilling. An ad campaign will not fail because you overestimated your familiarity index score. A campaign will fail if you quit it too early because you deemed it was not generating enough instant revenue conversion in one month, quarter, or half-year. You conceded defeat too early because you are measuring the wrong things. As social animals, we buy based on Familiarity, which leads to brand trust and acceptance. You must recognize your ideal prospect's buyer journey. In the automotive world, shoppers consume over 24 online and offline information sources. They are the most open to being influenced by you or your competition at the mid-funnel stage of that journey. Do not quit if you believe in your patch. Some business ad message campaigns need to be more capitalized going in. It takes a time commitment to grow brand familiarity and trust. It takes money and buy-in from your internal team; this will take months and maybe years to develop. Some business ad message campaigns need to be more capitalized going in. Some campaigns are set up for failure before the first ad runs. And taking the same budget and spreading it over multiple channels is not the answer to growing awareness either; you won't have any worthwhile frequency repetition. Identify your patch instead with a Trial and Soak mentality. Seasonal businesses. Every business is seasonal, event-driven, or a combo of both. If you own a landscaping/contracting business, it's seasonal for you, and spring and summer is the time to run at optimum efficiency. You value greatly that your patch of zip codes knows about you as a choice for your seasonal engagement matrix. Your likelihood of making a sale in your patch is very high right now. You are in a handful of channels during that time, like social, direct mail, Home Advisor, email, door knocking, and Google Ads. You hit the gas; your cadence is weekly during pre-season and in-season. Frank Azar, “The Strong Arm” Auto dealers, plumbers, and personal injury attorneys have a weekly or daily advertising messaging frequency cadence. They realize that people have unplanned events like their car breaking down, their water heater failing, or, God-forbid, a car accident that requires quick decisions and immediate action. At that point, they will have more trust in brands they are aware of. These businesses have soaked their patches with constant omnichannel messages because planning when their services are needed is tough. In your city, you would probably rank their brand familiarity as a "9 out of 10" score. I have lived In Denver, CO, for a while, and if you are buying a new or used vehicle, you know who "Dealin' Doug Moreland" is with his local dealerships. Or if you need a personal auto accident attorney, then you know about Frank Azar, "The Strong Arm" as a choice. There was a time in the late 1980s when Azar was an unknown attorney with a new firm, but he kept at it. He and his team identified their demographic patch smartly and decided to own it by growing their Familiarity over time. You have not lived in Denver for long if you do not know who Frank Azar is and what he does. Moving forward, take these steps: o   Realistically Assess your Score for your Patch. Set the basis comparison point with how you will measure real marketing growth. o   Create an achievable tactical plan to increase your familiarity score over the next two years. If you are at a "4" now, how can you reach a "6.5"? What are the obvious things that are weekly process actions? o   Commit to a disciplined plan to grow Familiarity with educational repetition. Get top-down buy-in from your internal team and gauge achievable mileposts. Examples of mileposts are things like Website's unique visitors, social followers, buyer journey content, Google Reviews, first-party subscribers to your newsletters, and revenue increases. Measure mobile device I.D. cross-shop activity with your brick & local-mortar competitors. Ask yourself, in 3-6-12 months, are these things going up or down? They are very measurable. o   Decide to Soak Your Patch and own it at the expense of your competition. Our most successful agency clients decided long ago to own their audience patch over time. They also concluded that demand conversion is their responsibility alone, and demand generation strategy is their agency's job. Long-term campaigns are a major paradigm shift for growing businesses in thinking; it packs power. Dave Hiebeler is an Agency Principal at Align2Compete, LLC. He writes about small business marketing, audience strategy, and demand generation. Based in Colorado, Align2Compete is a specialized marketing and advertising agency that helps emerging businesses turn strangers into customers. He is also a freelance writer.

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ADVERTISING CASE STUDY: BMW Dealer Franchise Stores About this client . This family-founded, owned, and operated BMW dealership is dedicated to providing its customers with the ultimate motorsport experience. Their unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction has recently led to the expansion of a second dealership location. Their family brand for BMW has become one of the largest pre-owned centers in their local designated market area and earned BMW’s highest customer satisfaction ratings. The local franchise has continued to expand its market footprint by introducing the latest BMW models, adding a MINI franchise, and opening a new location within 20 miles of its founding store. They are on the leading edge of Electric Vehicle Sales and the Hybrid model lifestyle revolution. The owner honors his father’s commitment to customers and the local community – and views each client as part of their founding family. He likes to say, “We are your BMW center.” Results Client: BMW Franchise Dealer Stores. Location: Northeast, United States. Industry: Automotive. Time Frame: Annual Campaign. CONSISTENCY OF MESSAGE CAMPAIGN ATTENTION 6 MILLION EMAILS SENT 50,000 PER MONTH, EVERY MONTH FOR 10 YEARS 1.08 MILLION EMAILS OPENED AND READ RETURN ON AD SPEND 70 VEHICLE SALE MATCHBACKS PER MONTH FROM EMAILS SENT GROWN OVER TIME USED TO BE 25 PER MONTH Services used: Permission-Based Email Marketing, Retargeting Display Ads, Vehicle Sales Email Matchbacks. We want to dominate and own our local franchise market; how do we get there? Like every dealership, we are looking to gain an edge over our closest local competition. We actively market in all the typical places and channels that our competition uses each month. But here is where we are different; we look for unconventional places we can dominate with our brand message that our competition for luxury vehicles are not active in. Execution, stamina and long-term commitment to a solid strategy is key here. If the right vendor has that solution then we are all-in. We recommended a non-obvios tactical channel that the dealer had to warm up to. Having purchase intent data is a strong advantage over standard age, income, and education typical demographics. "Auto-Intenders' are ideal for a store to reach in that they are in a buying research process that they are most apt to be influenced with the right messages. They are in mid-funnel stage and can be nudged over time to the next step. We were able to isolate these auto intender prospects by geo to the two top counties this dealership identified as their core market. 1 Dealers value most Auto Intenders , those open to influence now. 2 Time, frequency and consistentcy win the day! This seems so obvious, but it cannot be underestimated: It is the reason this dealership succeeds with our agency. On Thursdays at 8 a.m., the third week of every month, we send out 50,000 broadcast emails to luxury auto intenders in two counties in their trade area. It's always the same two counties, always the same count. Each month, they inform this audience of prospects about the new and pre-owned vehicle specials they have for that week. The email always has the same creative brand look. This audience, conditioned to see their specials every month, clicks on ads like this one over 1,000 times per month. Each vehicle listed in the email has its own page on their website. We effectively turn a complete stranger into an engaged prospect who is deep into their site. 3 Then change the channel and retarget the same audience This is where creative strategy meets with just enough message repetition to get attention without being annoying. Over the four weeks of the open enrollment campaign, we sent out five email blasts of 25,000 each time for 125,000 email sends. Each school's target market was the focus with the intent of reinforcing, with repetition, the core message that open enrollment was here for great school choices for the parent's children. So given what you have just read, do you feel that your current marketing team and resources are fully aligned with your business objectives? Where do you see disconnects or areas for improvement? Results that put students in open classrooms. 1-Month marketing campaign. 23,157 EMAILS OPENED AND READ. 1,867 CLICKS TO OPEN ENROLLMENT LANDING PAGE AND OPEN HOUSE INFO. $1.58 RETURN ON AD SPEND COST PER CLICK. FULL CLASS ROOMS MET THEIR OPEN ENROLLMENT GOAL. This campaign put butts in seats. Your agency allowed us to specifically target the parents of families with school-age kids in the household. This email marketing tactic was delivered to our school when we needed it. It is 'our new go-to strategy' because it puts new students in our classrooms when we have open seats. -Admissions Director Colorado STEM/Charter Middle School Are open classroom seats weighing on your mind? We might be able to help. If the next step is a discussion, then choose your preferred means. Contact Us

Dave's story For over 35 years I have been fortunate to have a varied career in marketing and advertising helping customers get the word out. I have served clients while with large-scale media channels like The Denver Post, Freedom Communications, Cars.com, and Trulia, a Zillow Company. As a Principal and Co-Founder of Align2Compete over the last 5 years, I focus on using my market instincts and insights to crawl into the heads of what motivates your best prospects. I directly oversee campaign strategy, results analytics, creative, and business operations. Building our marketing and advertising agency into the customer-centric brand that it is today has been one of my joys. As a freelance ghostwriter, I also founded SoultionsDH, LLC to help clients generate professional content articles that give them the confidence to publish and improve their brand. I have a passion for golf and a degree in Economics from The University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. I look forward to collaborating with you to improve your business significantly. Mobile : 720.218.2374 Email: Email Me LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davehiebeler/ Dave Hiebeler Principal and Co-Founder Align2Compete, LLC