Marketing guarantees are fucked

 

How To Handle Clients Who Want Guaranteed Audience Growth in Addition to Audio/Video Production Services?

• March 24, 2023
• Chris Curran
• No Comments
• Daily Goody

A podcast producer friend of mine offers social media video creation in addition to his regular podcast production services. Recently a potential client asked him specifically about “concrete deliverables” in terms of how many new subscribers the clients’ podcast can expect to gain due to these social media videos. Basically, the potential client wanted to know what his return on investment (ROI) would be — a perfectly fair question! 

My friend asked me how I deal with this question from potential clients and I responded:

“Ahhh, …unfortunately this is the major difficulty when dealing with marketing and ROI, which is why I’ve always avoided it — I only ever offer audio production.

“I know how marketing companies usually handle this — they never guarantee anything and they convey that clearly to the prospect, because they simply can’t guarantee any specific results. Every time I’ve tried to hire a marketing company, this is the part that always confused me as well (mostly because small companies like mine can’t afford to invest in marketing and then get little or nothing in return because that would literally put me out of business).

“If you speak with a marketing expert they would probably be able to explain this conundrum in more detail and give you more clarity and options.

“In general, you could:

• Explain that you can’t guarantee anything, and that no marketing company can ever guarantee anything, and that you understand completely if they don’t want to move forward with the marketing aspects of the agreement. You could sign him up as a client for audio/video production only and then recommend several marketing companies for him to contact.
• You could estimate the expected amount of growth in subscribers (in raw numbers or percentage), but not “guarantee” results. And plan on reviewing the actual results of the campaign with your client after 6 months to decide whether or not to continue the campaign.
• Some combination of the above.”

How do YOU handle this situation? Comment below!

"if you could measure anything what would you measure? Not Clicks and views that's for sure, it would be trust."

Everyone is lying about the numbers, the social medias have made up how long someone is exposed before it counts (hint, it's a couple of seconds). There's click farms, bots and new ones which are tried to "pay to play" online games and you either pay or have to consume something that, you guessed it, inflates the numbers.

People who want guarantees are either entitled or afraid. Can Hollywood guarantee a hit? How bout a superstar artist having a song released? A book? The best and the brightest can't make it work all the time so how could anyone? The reframing is "how much is trust in you worth it to you?" Most of our work is in service of attention so people gives the message a chance and if the message finds it's mark you build the start of trust. Do that enough times with generosity, knowledge and bravery and you can reach the goal.

Never even give possible numbers if you aren't controlling the content 100% or if they are brave, patient, teachable and knowledgeable. There is no substitute for thinking deeply for a long time about the thing that matters.

"Your can have it your way, or we can maybe have a hit, but we can't have both."

Not the head, but the centre

Society ordained men the head of the house. That's the narrative in 2023. But were they really?

This isn't a conversation about today it's an explaination about what might have worked in the past and how history is framed today... But I need a favour. I need the cynicism to be shut off for 5 minutes. Just 5, then you can switch it back on, promise!

We've overlayed modern meanings to what the head, the 'boss' of the family means - that they have the final say, they order everyone around and everyone in the family serves them and have no accountability because they're in charge.

Swap that out for the term "bad manager" at work, all those descriptions above is exactly what a bad boss is and does in modern times.

Men were not "bad managers" of a business.

The man was the head of the family, but the woman was the centre of the family.

Perhaps that's just semantics? Word play? Nope.

Let's set up a parameter:

In your belief or experience, how many bad people are there compared to good? ....

10% bad? 50% bad, 97%? If you've used online interactions to form your belief, hang on tight. If you've used others driving cars only, it's pretty bleak, so what you're going to do is  rate it based on every person you've ever physically connected with, or audio, no typing only interactions.

Has that number changed? Yes? 

What about just family what about all the men you know well? 

What I'm doing is setting a base line so we're not adding bad people into the equation, people that want to abuse power. This isn't that conversation it's about regular ordinary folk poor to middle class trying to make their way in the world.

The man was the head of the family, but the woman was the centre of the family.

Being the head actually means being responsible for when things go wrong, being responsible for safety which could be literally (physical) or figuratively (resources, money). The more power the more responsibility, whoever is greatest is the greatest servant.

The centre of the family is different, it's about peace, order, prosperity, details. Similar responsibilities to the head but on a local level rather than a global level. The centre of the family has more power on a weekly basis. They are both equal but different. But when thinga fell apart someone had to be responsible and that was the man. It's not division of labour today only, it's over time, many days points over time. Together they are solving problems in the name of a common direction of peace and prosperity in the family, today, tomorrow, next year, next decade, until death.

A phrase we need to say a lot!!!

 "How do you know this is true?"

A reshuffle of life's deck of cards

 AI will need good bookends.

At the start you'll need to know what you want and need to know how to be a prompt engineer. The AI does all the work in the middle, but at the end it'll always need verification - verification scientist.

If it can be automated, it will. But the book ends are going to be very human because we're trying to solve human problems.

The deck of cards is being reshuffled, what news hand will you get? More importantly, how will you play your hand?

This was not written by an AI lol.

Here's a good video for creators.

https://youtu.be/P1BusWrlwSA

People aren't changing fast enough for you.

Would you rather someone change their actions or their heart?

Now that you've answered, answer this: is how you try to change people helping with that?

Stop thinking, stop doing!

Strike a balance between thinking and doing.

It's time to be honest with ourselves about which one we need to focus on.

Recognize when we need to stop thinking and start doing, or vice versa.

For those who tend to be doers, take a step back and think before jumping into action. For those who tend to be thinkers, put our plans into action and not get stuck in the planning phase. Let thinking and doing, coexist and not allow either one to consume all of our time and energy.

Working with audio is difficult

 

• "Audio is elusive, like a ghost, because it is nothing more than the movement of air particles."
• "The ephemeral nature of audio is a result of its essence being mere vibrations in the air."
• "Sound, with its fickle and intangible quality, is simply the manipulation of air molecules."