Dear Reader,

Do you know the difference between strategy versus tactics?

Strategy is the long-term belief system and framework that guides every decision. It’s what you believe will work and how you align with customer truths.

Tactics are the short-term tools, executions, and levers you pull (ads, discounts, headlines, bursts). They get responses, but without strategy, they fade.

Good tactics are easy to come by.

Read the first book by Alex Hormozi, and you will have dozens of tactics that will absolutely work. But just like those offers, they work for A Limited Time!

That’s not shade, it’s just the facts. Those tactics are designed to generate a fast response and get quick results. They just don’t last. Go get the book. 100M Leads should be in your library. It’s full of great tactics, but it’s very short on strategy.

A great strategy requires a poodle and a vamp.

Bambie is a purebred poodle.

She is loved by her owner and is well taken care of. In fact, Bambie is a prized show dog. She has won first in class for 6 years in a row. Winning first in class for 1 year could be a fluke. But to do that 6 years in a row is no accident.

To win 6 years in a row requires long-term thinking and planning about Bambie’s diet, exercise routine, vitamins, even the perfect day to get her groomed before the show.

All of these future thoughts accumulate in a long-term plan that has brought home the big trophy 6 years in a row. And this year won’t be any different.

The long-term plan is a strategy. Something that will work every year, because there is a strong belief and a strong system designed around that belief.

The linchpin in all of this is the vamp.

You’ve seen the vamp at a dog show. They are sometimes called the handler.

The vamp is the person who brings the dog out on the floor.

The vamp has two critical roles:

• One: Design the strategy based on the beliefs of the owner.

• Two: Execute the strategy in the public market.

The vamp knows how to make Bambie look like a winner when it really counts. The vamp is your strategist.

Do you have a Strategist?

In today’s episode, Roy and I will unpack exactly what you need to build a long-term strategy that works.

Watch / listen above or read below

Todd Liles: Welcome to Episode 20, How to Build a Media Strategy That Works. Now, the purpose of today’s episode is to teach business owners the core principles behind an effective media strategy based upon Roy H. Williams’s foundational thinking. Now we’re gonna break down how to buy media that builds long-term brand dominance and how to balance frequency and reach, and also how to avoid the common traps of short-term thinking.

The source for today’s information is coming from three of the Monday Morning Memos. Number one, The Radio Success Formula. Number two, Advertising Oversimplified. And number three, Media Measure Mistakes, specifically chapter two. We’re gonna dive deep into these memos and unpack timeless knowledge from Roy himself. Let’s discuss reach and frequency because here’s a little insight for you.

Frequency is what wins. And the goal isn’t to whisper to a million people. It is to shout clearly to a few over and over again until they respond with conviction. One of my favorite quotes from Roy is the following: “Let’s reach 10% of the city and convince them 100% of the way.”

Roy, today we’re gonna talk about strategy, and specifically I want to talk about the science as well as the art because it is both. And I’ve heard you mention that art is about intuition where science is about formula. Neither one of them are bad. They’re both good to have. And I want to take a dive in it, and to begin with, I want to talk about reach and frequency. So, Roy, you believe very strongly in reaching 10% of the population but convincing them 100% of the way, as opposed to reaching 100% of the population, convincing them 10% of the way. Where did this belief initially come from?

Roy Williams: Failure.

Todd Liles: All right, the great teacher.

Roy Williams: No, I’m telling you. Anytime you ask any broadcaster, whether it’s a television station or radio station, it doesn’t matter even if it is a podcaster, okay, if you said, “Okay, how big is your audience?” There’s actually two ways to answer that. Now, reach is how many people are you reaching? Now, what’s called cumulative reach, it’s abbreviated cume. There’s a daily cume, there’s a weekly cume, monthly cume, a yearly cume.

And cume basically means unique visitors, so to speak. And so in the cume, nobody’s counted twice. And so let’s say 100,000 different people will watch this TV show this year. All right. How many are watching on the average Wednesday? Okay. It’s an hour show. How many are watching during the typical commercial break? And there’s four commercial breaks in the show. So the show has 100,000 viewers or a million viewers or however many viewers. Or the radio station, “How many listeners do you have?” “252,000 listeners.” Are they all listening right now? No.

Todd Liles: Not at all.

Roy Williams: No. Now, so they’re talking about cume. But see, people understand reach is the number of people being reached.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Frequency is just a fancy word for repetition.

Todd Liles: Gotcha.

Roy Williams: And so this schedule, this specific number of ads run at these specific times of day, these specific days of the week. We know very scientifically because of the portable people meters. Nielsen is measuring this with as much technology and as much granular digital data as Google or Facebook is using. And I’m saying people don’t realize that about broadcast TV and broadcast radio. The numbers, the actual numbers are not being measured by recall or by survey. They’re being measured by a digital device that knows what you’re doing even if you’re not aware of it. If you don’t know what you’re watching or what you’re listening to, the device knows. Don’t worry about it.

Now, the point being this, reach is a vanity number. Net reach is how many people you’re reaching with sufficient repetition to move the needle. And so the total number of people who hear your ad is utterly irrelevant. Utterly. How many of them heard it with enough repetition to actually expect a result? You have to… That’s called frequency. How frequently does the average person hear the ad? Now, what else is an important variable in this? Hugely, hugely, hugely important.

We’ve talked enough about the message. Yes, yes, yes. The message is always preeminent. The message is always more important than anything else. But you have to protect frequency at all costs. Frequency must be protected and it has to be within seven nights sleep. Seven nights sleep, weekly. How many times are you reaching this person in television, in radio? How many times are you reaching them with your billboards, with your signage within seven nights sleep? Because sleep erases, erases memories.

And so the ratio of repetition, frequency of hearing or seeing the message, of encountering that brand, frequency within seven nights sleep. So the weekly frequency, every week, same typical week, 52 weeks in a row. And that’s how you become a household word. And so a lot of people are spending enough money, they’re just spreading it too thin, trying to reach too many people because, “Oh, we don’t want to leave these people out. We don’t want to leave these people out. We don’t want to leave these people. Oh, don’t leave those people out.” I’m going, hey, you don’t have the money to reach everyone. Calm down and do not try to reach more people than you can afford to own.

You never give up repetition. Protect repetition at all cost. Nobody understands that. Nobody believes that. And those who do believe it and do understand it are reaping the benefit. These are the people that are building massive, massive household brands, that they’re just dominant kings of their categories. And everybody thinks, “Well, I’m gonna copy what they’re doing.” Yeah, trying to adapt their ads won’t work because that ad was written for their brand, not yours. You don’t have the markers to make that message ring true. And so copying their ads is utterly stupid. Number two, you have no idea how often they’re reaching the average reader, listener, or viewer. And I’m saying, and so everybody has to do their own math. Everybody has to create their own ads. 

You can have an ad for a product that everybody sells. If they all sell the same product, it’ll work for all of them. It’s about the product, not the company. But when an ad is about the company, it has to be about that company. Right? And this is where I say, message repetition, message repetition, message repetition, message repetition. The media doesn’t matter, the repetition matters, and the message matters. That’s it.

Todd Liles: I want to read something to you. And when I was doing the research for this, I was doing research internally for what I know that we believe about reach and repetition and frequency. And then I wanted to see what other advertisers believed. And this sentence I pulled directly from another site. But what I realized is I kept seeing this come up a lot. And I found myself going, I don’t want to sit in judgment. I instead just want to read it to Roy. So I’m gonna read it to you.

Roy Williams: Okay, sure.

Todd Liles: And we’ll give it, quote. “If you’re trying to raise awareness of your brand, you should focus on reach. But if you’re trying to drive sales, you need to focus on frequency.” What I was thinking to myself is, is this just blatantly wrong, or is there a time when that philosophy might be correct?

Roy Williams: Okay. I’ll tell you when it would probably, when you said, “If you just want your brand to be known.”

Todd Liles: “If you’re just trying to raise awareness of your brand.”

Roy Williams: “Raise awareness of the brand.”

Todd Liles: “Focus on reach.”

Roy Williams: Let me tell you, local political race where nobody gives a crap about who wins. County Commissioner. Who cares who’s County Commissioner? Now you’re gonna vote for a County Commissioner, and you know the one you’re gonna vote for? The one whose name you’ve heard more often. And so as a fact, the one whose name you’ve heard of at all. And you know what happened? You hadn’t heard of any of them. You vote for the one with a name that just makes you feel the best.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And you know what? There’s been books written about this.

Todd Liles: Or just the one that aligns with your political party, if it’s only one.

Roy Williams: Here’s a weird thing. It was in their first book. This would have been way back 40 years ago. It was… It’s not Ries and Trout. Yeah, it was. Al Ries and Jack Trout. There was a first book called Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. It’s a thick book. Positioning, colon, The Battle for Your Mind. And there’s a chapter in there about the power of names. We’re back to the County Commissioner’s race.

And they said they tested this many, many, many times with substitute teachers. And they said if you go into a school classroom and the teacher’s sick and there’s a substitute teacher, what they did is they would turn in homework assignments from the kids. And remember, the teacher doesn’t know the kids, but she’s grading the papers even though she doesn’t know what kid goes with what name. And a kid named John got a full letter grade and a half higher on the same homework paper than a kid named Daryl.

Todd Liles: Oh, yeah. Well, John’s smart, Daryl’s dumb.

Roy Williams: What I’m saying is then they had a whole list of names, and they say, “These are names that people associate with just not really being razor sharp.” And I’m just going, “Yeah, I got kind of a dork name, Roy.” People name their dogs Roy. It’s like nobody’s named Roy in this generation. I’m actually the third, my grandson’s the fifth. And so my point being, I don’t know why we do that because it’s a loser name. And they demonstrated this with deep research and data.

And then they were talking about the difference between being known by your initials and being known by an actual name. And they say people think that initial companies are so famous that they should just have initials. He goes, “Nope.” Initials become famous when you know the name the initials stand for. IBM was International Business Machines for decades before it was IBM. And HP was Hewlett-Packard for decades before it was HP.

And there’s a chapter in that book, it’s really an amazing book, everybody listening should get that book and read it because it opens your eyes to things. Then they start talking about a bunch of Fortune 500 companies. And then they said, “How many of these brands have you heard of?” And it’s all brands with names. And you’ve heard of most of those names. “And how many brands of these have you heard of?” And they’re all on the New York Times stock ticker, the…

Todd Liles: Yeah. Nasdaq.

Roy Williams: Nasdaq. Now, the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. There you go. And then they have these other names, they’re all initial companies. And there’s only out of 40 or 50 of them, there’s like six you’ve heard of. 100% of the initial companies were actually bigger companies than the companies with names. And you have never heard of the companies with initials. And it’s because they got really big and they changed to these initials after they got big.

And most of the time, if you’re not really a daily name that’s used, the initials are never gonna work. And so there’s all these illusions that people used to believe. And these guys, it’s like MythBusters, investigated all this stuff very, very deeply and then just published, “Yeah, this is the real truth.” And so if you begin a career by reading the guys that actually research things with real research and it’s peer-reviewed type research, it’s never not valuable. It’s always amazingly valuable. And you realize, “Yeah, I don’t need to make that mistake.” I don’t know why I took off on that tangent, but the idea is when you’re bringing in, “This is what people believe and it’s not the truth,” I’m going, “It’s not that hard to learn the truth, man.”

Todd Liles: Let’s continue down that philosophy too. ‘Cause we’re 20 episodes into this now. And if we were to identify what is a big goal for this. And by the way, just to give you some feedback, I had a client send me… Eduardo Acevedo, shout out to Eduardo. He sent me a screenshot of I think it was episode 12 and said, “I get it now. I understand why I’ve been advertising.” So which, it’s working.

Roy Williams: Oh cool. He’s a small business guy. He’s in our small group program, not even a million dollars. And I can remember a long time ago we had a great conversation about what he should be doing, and I said, “That’s not what you should be doing. You need to do these things.” Going back to it. But people are still hyper-obsessed. They think the only thing that they should be doing is spending money that has only one purpose, which is to create a direct response, direct call-to-action. “I’m not gonna spend a penny unless it generates a phone call.” Now, in the world of strategy, and we’re talking strategy, that’s not really a strategy, it’s a tactic.

No. If that’s what you deep down believe, then it is your strategy. In other words, what you’re doing flows from what you believe will work. Your strategy is what you believe will work. And so when you develop a strategy, if you actually know what works, then you develop a strategy based upon the things that you know always work. And then you decide, of all these infinite huge number of things that are trusted and reliable, what combination of those am I gonna put together? And then how will I manifest those things in this specific campaign?

Now, whenever you simply say, “Well, I believe that it’s an organized universe and for every effect, there’s a cause that causes that effect. And if you want this effect, you just have to trace up the causal chain and do the thing that generates the response.” And so when people believe that it is pulling a lever or pushing a button, and, “these are the phrases that make the phone ring,” and all this kind of stuff, I’m like, all right. Now, what’s interesting is, that will make a very positive difference very quickly. It will. And then when it has showed you that little trick, you will believe it’s scalable.

Todd Liles: Stops working.

Roy Williams: And you’ll believe it’s scalable. Oh, it’s not scalable. What happens is when you go from not asking for the sale to where suddenly you’re asking for the sale. Okay, yeah, that makes a difference. And everybody goes, “Okay, I have discovered the secret to advertising is always be closing.” And I’m going, nope. When you start thinking about advertising, the metaphor you want is not the rat that presses the button and the pellet drops out, the food pellet. And you just teach him to press that button and the food pellet drops out. That’s a loser’s game.

You gotta think of it as agriculture, Todd. You gotta think of seed time and harvest. And there is a time to harvest, but there’s also a time to plant and water. And two-thirds of your time you should be planting, watering, and weeding. And one-third of the time, you should be asking for an action to be taken. And so two-thirds of your ads should not say, “Call now. Operators are standing by.”

Todd Liles: Let’s now discuss laying the foundation before you build the buzz. Now, Roy emphasizes that consistent use of mass media plants your brand in the minds of future buyers. So before urgency, before events, before promotions, you must first become familiar and trusted.

Roy, as I was sitting here listening to what you were saying, you said something profound, which is once you realize that you start asking for something to happen, things start happening. It’s like, “Oh, wow, people are responding.” It’s not a bad thing. And we should be doing that a section of time. And it immediately it made me think about why people might struggle a little bit with brand. And I don’t think it’s because that, it’s they can’t believe in it once they understand it.

I think it’s because sometimes they’ve tried to do it poorly without someone who really gets what’s going on and they think, “Oh, wow, that was a waste.” And, yeah, it actually was. I think a lot of people have probably wasted a lot of money trying to do branding under a bad campaign.

Roy Williams: As you know, I prefer not to use the word branding…

Todd Liles: Yeah. Relational marketing.

Roy Williams: Because customer bonding. Relational marketing. Relational marketing is building relationship. It is customer bonding.

Todd Liles: Customer bonding.

Roy Williams: And the reason they buy from you is because you believe what they believe, and you feel the way that they feel. They see in you a reflection of themselves and they go, “I like this person. He sees the world the way that I see the world and he’s talking to me in a language that I prefer. He’s talking to me in a language I understand. I get him, and I think he gets me.” And so I’m using the masculine pronoun there, but it goes for both genders.

The point being, whenever you are building a relationship with prospective customers, it is customer bonding. You’re trying to build a bond with that customer. And the way to build a bond is not always saying, “Hey, do you wanna sleep with me tonight? You wanna sleep with me? Is tonight the day you wanna sleep with me? You wanna sleep with me tonight? I really wanna sleep with you. You know how much I wanna sleep with you? You wanna sleep with me tonight?”

Todd Liles: It’s getting weird now.

Roy Williams: No, but I’m saying. But listen, that’s exactly what it feels like to the customer who’s saying, “You wanna buy this today? It’s just 10% off. It’s not… Tomorrow it’ll be 20% off, but you don’t know that yet.” And I’m just sitting there going, when you’re always just pimping for the sale, I’m going, people just write you off as twitchy. And it’s like you don’t have any substance. You’re not reliable. You’re not trustworthy. You’re not a serious player. I don’t feel like I know you because you’re always trying to dig around in my pocket. Get your hand out of my pocket. Quit digging around. I don’t like you. Get away from me.

And who do they bond with? The people who talk about things that these people care about. And I’m saying, whenever… In 1994, when De Beers flew me to London and wanted me to speak to all the jewelers of the United Kingdom; England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, 1,500 jewelers, everybody’s in tuxes. And I spoke to them and I said, “The reason that I sell such a huge, vast number of diamonds in America,” that’s why they asked me to come out, “is because I know that nobody wants diamonds. It’s a rock that you guys dig out of the dirt in South Africa for free. It’s a rock. It’s a pebble. It’s shiny, but it ain’t $10,000 shiny. Are you nuts?”

And I said, “Quit talking about the diamond. Talk about the woman.” And I said, “It’s the woman that he cares about.” I said, “What he’s buying is the reaction of the woman he loves.”Talk to him about what actually matters to him, not what you think should matter to him. And you keep trying to tell him that diamonds matter and he needs a diamond. It’s like, no, “Diamonds are Forever.” They were actually talking about your love for the woman, and everybody knew that. Nobody had to have that explained to them.

Do you understand? It was a symbolic message. Diamonds are forever. It wasn’t about the diamond. It was about the relationship. And when you understand, yeah, talk to people about what they actually want. Do not talk to them about what you would like them to buy.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: If you talk to them about what you would like them to buy, they go, “I don’t care what you want me to buy. I have my own beliefs and my own values.” And guess who they’re gonna give their money to? The person that they feel connected to.

Todd Liles: That’s right. Roy, I wanna talk about something that Google is doing that’s new. First of all, we know that they’ve always sold more clicks than there are actually calls. And just for clarity, I wanna unpack that statement because I don’t want someone to accuse me of saying that Google is doing something illegal. They’re not. But what I mean by that is that if there is 10 requests for air conditioning, they will sell as many as people are willing to purchase. There’s nothing unethical about them selling 40 of those. As many clicks as you wanna get on it.

Now, what they’ve done that’s new that some people go, “Well, wait a minute now. That feels like it’s crossing the line of relationship that I’ve agreed with you.” If I’m the consumer, right, I’m the plumbing company buying your ads, which is at the very top now, they have a header that says, “Get multiple bids.” So now if you’re a homeowner and you go in and you search air conditioning, plumbing repair, all the sponsored ads come up. Way below is the SEO and the things that you’ve done organically.

And then at the top now, there’s a new little button says, “Get multiple bids.” Some of the contractors are referring to it like Google is now becoming Angie’s List. So they are saying, “Hey, get multiple bids.” You get into the system, and now not only do they have control because you’re paying sponsored money, but now they’re actually taking over lead flow control. To me, it just seems like this on the digital side is just more and more of an attempt to become brandless. And you’ve always talked about buy your own key names. But if I’m searching your key name, that’s because they were influenced by actual branding.

Roy Williams: Right. You’re talking about branded keywords.

Todd Liles: Branded keywords.

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: So, I guess the point I’m making, I don’t even know if there’s a question here. I guess I’m really just making a point is that people that are just so 100% dependent upon, “I’m gonna turn on my computer, I’m gonna build a PPC program, I’m gonna hire someone else to do it, and that’s all I really need,” it just feels to me like that game is getting more expensive and more…

Roy Williams: It is. I don’t think anybody would dispute, Todd, that the costs are spiraling upwards and that Google is getting increased control over lead flow. And they have trained everyone. They have trained everyone. “We are the God of business.” And as a matter of fact, one of our partners, Cedric Yau, said several years ago, he said, “People think about Google the way they think of a pagan god. We must please the Google so the Google will bless us with leads.” And I remember going, “That’s kind of what it feels like.”

Now, I’m gonna use an analogy. I could take you to it right now. I could drive you right where it is, or used to be 20 years ago, this amazing Indian food restaurant. We used to go there a lot. A lot of our friends used to go there a lot. Everybody used to go there a lot. It was always booming, always thriving, always busy. And then they suddenly closed. So I started digging into it and I found out what happened is actually very, very, very, very common.

When you have in a building that you don’t own a really, really good restaurant, you don’t have a landlord, you have a business partner. And that business partner is not an idiot. And they’ll look at your restaurant and they can pretty accurately calculate how much you’re probably pulling out of that sucker. And they’re gonna keep raising your rent to where, alright, you’ve got a great business here, and it’s like paying the mafia. It’s like, “And this is how much you’re gonna have to pay me to keep that business.”

Because what happens is to move a restaurant is to close down and reopen another location that you had to build out and furnish and equip. And you don’t know if people are gonna follow you to your new location. See what I mean?

Todd Liles: Absolutely.

Roy Williams: You just don’t know. And so what happens is every once in a while, a landlord will get greedy. And it’s happening right now in Fort Worth a lot. A lot. Is all of the heritage restaurants in downtown Fort Worth are empty. And it’s because the same landlord owns all of those places and they’ve decided they want to go more upscale. And so all of these places that were just the soul, the heart and soul of Fort Worth, there’s empty buildings there now. And I’m looking at it and I’m going, yep, this is an instance, I’ve seen it many, many times. Now I’m comparing this to Google. Don’t lose the train of thought here.

Todd Liles: I’m with you.

Roy Williams: I’m comparing this to Google.

Todd Liles: Google’s raising the rent on a platform you don’t own.

Roy Williams: Exactly. And what I’m saying is, people, as you said, Google is brandless. People don’t love you. They just know they need a product or a service right now. So they type in the name of that service. And then Google says, here is a list of people for you to call. Now, here’s the thing. The only way to beat that system is, see right now, you know who Google gives you? People that do not have a preferred provider in that category.

What we’re talking about, Todd, what we’re talking about, Todd, what we’re talking about, Todd, is becoming the preferred provider in your category. And Google works only by sending people to you who have no preferred provider. And they’re gonna cost more and more and more money because everybody is bidding higher and higher and higher prices. It’s an auction. Google’s not dishonest. They’re a very honest auctioneer.

Todd Liles: There you go.

Roy Williams: And they’re auctioning these leads, and people keep raising their bid because we can’t live without these leads. And they’re giving up more and more margin and having to raise prices higher and higher. And I’m going, guess who’s not playing that game. The people who say, hey, how much does it cost to become the preferred provider in the category? Well, really good ads. And then choose which mass media you’re gonna use and make sure you do not have too little repetition. Make sure you don’t try to reach more people than you can just really afford to dominate.

So client called me from Dallas. A wannabe client. I’m not gonna work with them, but they called from Dallas. They’re spending $100,000 a month on Google Ads in Dallas. That’s 1.2 million a year. And I said, “Dude, for $100,000 a month, I can own 40% of Dallas and carry it around in my pocket.” I said, “I can make you a household freaking word with 40% of Dallas for a million two a year.” Maybe probably a million a year, you could get it done. High 30s, more than a third, less than half for sure.

And you’re talking about two, two and a half million people that you can reach and own and absolutely have these people heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul. I’m going, yeah, you got a couple million people that every month you’re increasingly becoming the company they think of first and feel the best about when they need what you sell. I’m going, “Yeah, become the preferred provider.” It takes patience, but it has a future.

You know what doesn’t have a future? Being the high bidder for the rest of your life for customers who have no preferred provider in your category. For the love of God, become the preferred provider, people.

Todd Liles: You’re the high bidder on the lead. And unless in most cases you are the lowest bid, you are also…

Roy Williams: The lowest price.

Todd Liles: Yeah, the lowest price, you’re also the loser. And it’s just not a winning strategy.

Roy Williams: It is no. As a matter of fact, what it means is a very, very, very, very small profit margin that you can only make up for with volume. And guess what you have to do to get more volume? Raise your bids.

Todd Liles: Wow. Time, not timing. That’s what great campaigns are about. They are not event-based, they are evergreen. Your biggest wins will come from staying in the customer’s head before they need you. Used consistently, mass media will cause your company to be the one customers think of immediately and feel the best about when they finally need what you sell. I want to talk about why it’s time, not timing. If you don’t mind, explain why a 52-week campaign or 104-week campaign always outperforms in the long run just the burst.

Roy Williams: Oh wow. Because of sleep. Remember what I said about sleep erases advertising? Here’s what I want you to think of. It’s a very steep mountain and it’s always raining on that mountain. So it’s muddy. It’s a muddy, slippery mountain. And so you climb up the mountain and slide back down, and you climb and slide. So it’s three steps forward, two steps back, three steps forward, two steps back, three steps forward, two steps back. And guess why you keep sliding back? Because people go to sleep.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And so just so you’ll know… The next time we record, I’ll bring these really new pieces of data from the big, big, big researchers. And the stuff that they’re learning right now, we’ve known for 30 years. And they’re now people that never heard of us, people have never heard of me, and never heard of us, they’re proving stuff that we’ve been telling, we know this is true. And now they’re demonstrating, oh, wow, this is what really matters.

I’m going, thank you. Thank you for finally figuring that out and demonstrating that. And one of the things is that whenever you’ve got the momentum, if you turn off the juice, you slide back down the mountain. And it’s like, nope. What you have to do is as much, as high as you can get up that mountain before you start sliding back down.

And so if you say, “Well, I’m only gonna advertise during the season.” Well, guess what? You have very, very, very little, very, very little remaining from what you did last year when you start up next year. You’re a brand new company every year. And I’m going, I don’t think…

My definition of a seasonal business, Todd, is very unusual, but it makes sense to me. If you leave the telephone on, if the telephone bill is being paid every month, you have employees that are being paid every month, and you have insurance and electricity every month, you’re buying gas for your trucks every month, that’s not a seasonal business.

Todd Liles: That’s a year-round business.

Roy Williams: That’s a year-round business. And it’s kind of like, so guess what? If you’re just gonna wait until customers volunteer to start calling, there’s people all year round they’re buying stuff. You know who they’re buying it from? The people they think of. And guess what happens at the end of the season? All the morons quit advertising.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And I’m going, you know who keeps advertising? The tortoise. The rabbits run, run, run, run, run. Season’s over. Now we’re gonna cool our heels and we’re gonna save up all of our money for next season and try to survive, try to survive. And I’m going, no. The tortoise says, the rabbit quit running, “We’re just gonna keep on trucking.”

And as a matter of fact, the very first jewelry store that I made super rich and important is… I wrote about him recently in one of the memos. He’s dead now. He died 14 years ago, and I still think about him a lot. But I told him, I said, “Hey man, listen, here’s the deal.” I was helping him for free because he was a friend of my dad. I said, “Listen.” He was talking about the importance of just keeping your powder dry so at Christmas, you could absolutely just pound, pound, pound, pound, pound at Christmas because one-third of all the jewelry sold in America is sold between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. One-third.

And he says, “Man, if you don’t have a good Christmas, you can’t pay your bills on January 10th.” And I said, “Guess what? I know a secret.” He says, “What is it?” And I said, “Two-thirds of the jewelry being sold doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas.” And I said, “If we could get you a big chunk of that two-thirds, you could just close your doors on Thanksgiving Day and take a month off and not have Christmas.” And he started thinking about it and he goes, “My God, that makes sense.” And I said, “Let’s do that.” And he said, “How are we gonna do that?” I said, “We’re gonna go on the radio late at night and sell engagement rings to kids out running around after dark.”

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And I said, “We’re gonna sell engagement rings with super cheap radio between 8:00 PM and 1:00 in the morning.” And you know what? We tripled his business in a year. And then we went on… He was one of the two jewelers that was… Well, actually inducted into the Jewelers Hall of Fame. 30,000 jewelry stores in America, Todd. The man became so huge in Springfield, Missouri, that him and the CEO of Tiffany were inducted in the Jewelers Hall of Fame that year.

The point is, what was the strategy? Fish where nobody else is fishing. Fish every week. Never quit fishing. And we built such a monstrously huge engagement ring business right out from under the nose of all the mall stores and just made relationships with these kids. There’s a moment, Todd. I’m gonna talk about diamonds for a second because it’s easier to believe something when it’s not your own category. When you talk to people about their own category of business, they doubt you.

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: But they all trust me with the jeweler because, “Well, yeah, that makes sense.”

Todd Liles: Sure, of course.

Roy Williams: Now, here’s the point.

Todd Liles: I got no dog in that hunt.

Roy Williams: Got no dog in that. And all of a sudden that makes sense. And I said, when a bunch of boys and girls are running around after dark, they’re on dates. There’s a window of time that night when you can talk to them about getting married and they think that might be a pretty good idea. And you know what? The only person that’s out running around with them is the jeweler. The jeweler’s the guy in the backseat going, “Hey, if you guys ever decide to get engaged, remember…” And they feel like they know the guy. He’s been on every date with them they’ve ever been on. That is strategy. Does that make sense to you?

Todd Liles: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me. I’m gonna tell you how I connect it in my brain. It feels very similar to dollar cost average, and specifically I’m talking about in the world of investing. And Shannon and I have been putting money into the stock market since we were 22 or 23 now. Maybe 21. It was early. And we didn’t have a whole lot of money, so we’re just gonna do a little bit.

And early on, I was told that, “Hey, you know what, you can put more money in when you have it.” Like, hey, you get a big bonus check, just put the whole thing in. But then also said, “But if you just dollar cost average it, just pick an amount of money that you’re gonna invest consistently over time, never not put that money in, and as your real economic scenario changes, i.e., you’re making more money so you can save more, just increase your dollar cost average.” So we’ve been doing that for a very, very, very long time.

And some people go, “Oh, that’s stupid. You should time the market. You should only buy when it’s low and then you sell when it’s high,” and all these things. Well, there’s been many, many, many, many, many studies that people that time the market, because they fundamentally do not have a crystal ball, even though they’re timing the market to the best of their ability, they try to time it on the low, they try to get on the high. They still do not outperform the simple little strategy, “I’m just gonna put the same amount of money in every single day.” And if I come across a windfall of 20,000, great, I’m just gonna divide 20,000 by this year and I’m just gonna drip it in. Dollar costing over time over the long haul always beats the big drop in the bucket.

Roy Williams: And what you’re talking about is customer bonding, relational marketing, is just continually…

Todd Liles: It’s the continual investment.

Roy Williams: That’s what I’m saying. Sleep is the enemy.

Todd Liles: It’s the investment.

Roy Williams: And you don’t wanna fade from the customer’s mind.

Todd Liles: Love it. Last, we’re gonna discuss strategy over tactics. Strategy is what makes an ad work. It’s not clever copy. It’s not creative gimmicks. As Roy says, “You can’t advertise your way out of a bad product or a bad plan.” Quote, “Accomplished ad writers believe in strategy. Good ad copy flows from strategy.” Roy, now let’s talk about strategy over tactics.

We’ve sort of been blending this whole conversation, but there’s a couple quotes here that I really like from you. I’m gonna read two of them. One is from, “Creating an advertisement is overrated. Accomplished ad writers believe in strategy and good ad copy flows from strategy.” Every time you say that, I love that. Here’s probably one that I like even better than that. “Advertising cannot, in fact, sell things that nobody wants.” In your own words, how would you define the role of strategy in effective advertisement?

Roy Williams: Defining the role of strategy in effective advertisement is you have to weigh when you’re developing a strategy. I’m gonna give you two answers. The first one is the way I go about it. The second one is the outcome that we’re looking for. The outcome can be said in just very few words. But whenever you set, “Okay, how do you develop a strategy?” Well, you have to decide, “What can I say that they will recognize as true?”

Todd Liles: Yes.

Roy Williams: In other words, unsubstantiated claims is ad speak. That’s just the way that ads are. It’s just ad speak. It’s just that noise and this false promises and whatever. But whenever you make a statement and people actually believe it, why did they believe it? And then it says, “What can I say that’s true that people would actually accept as the truth?” Not just because I said it was the truth, but they would go, “Yeah, that resonates with me. That makes sense. I get that.”

And I’m saying, “So what can I do? What can I do?” And then you have to say, “Okay, here’s what I could do.” Now, what do they actually care about? What do they actually want?” And you’re looking for some marriage between what I call unleveraged assets. You look in the pantry of the advertiser’s message components, all the different things. And it’s like right now, I love working with Aaron Gaynor. I just love working with Aaron. Do you know why?

Todd Liles: Tell me.

Roy Williams: There are so many amazing things that he believes, that he’s committed to, that nobody else believes and nobody else is committed to. I have so much stuff that I’m just giddy with the ads I can write because he is willing to do things, he is willing to say things that nobody else is willing to do, nobody else is willing to say. And I’m just talking about audacity, balls. This guy’s got balls. And I’m sitting here going, “Man, it is so easy to write ads for him.”

And because he’s given me so much to work with, and I’m going, “And it’s bulletproof believable.” It’s like, well, once he tells you what he’s gonna do and why he’s gonna do it, you’re going, “I believe him. That makes sense to me.” And then you’re just going, “Yeah, can it be that easy?” It can. You know what the difference is? Courage. Just mind-bending courage. And I’m going, “Okay.” So he gives me so much stuff to work with, and then figuring out how to relate that to what I know people want, easiest thing in the world. And I’m going, “Man, this is great.”

So strategy, and the copy just, I have spewed out more copy for him. We’re like a year ahead on ads for him because there’s just so much wonderful stuff to say, I just keep spewing it out. And I’m going, “Guess what? If other people knew what the ads were, they wouldn’t run them.”

Todd Liles: The thing that I like what you’re saying here is because it goes into the second part of what I wanted to talk to you about here. There is a danger that we don’t fall into if we’re wise, and others won’t either, where they’re like, “Hey, I wanna advertise, I wanna advertise, I wanna advertise.” And then they want to blame the advertisers for what really isn’t an advertisement problem, but it’s really an in-house problem. No, no, no. You’re getting calls. You’re not converting the calls because either you’re not well-trained or you’re not…

Roy Williams: Here’s the way that we put this. So I tell all the partners, I say, “Look, always be really careful who you work for because a lot of businesses can run people off faster than you can bring them in.” And they will always say, “Oh man, if you just double our leads, we’d double our sales.” And I’m going, “Well, you know what? Your conversion rate is so horrific and you don’t want to address it.” And this is why all the partners, it’s not because we love you… We do love you, but that’s not why we tell clients, “You really should hire Service Excellence.” You know why we tell them that? Because we want their conversion rate to go up. We want them to sell a higher percentage of the leads. Because if a person is selling… Everybody thinks their conversion rate’s higher than it really is.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Everybody. Everybody thinks it’s higher than it really is. But in truth, do you know what the real conversion ratio is nationwide for most businesses?

Todd Liles: Tell me.

Roy Williams: Three out of ten. Most businesses are selling three out of every ten people. And this was actually measured by, I think it was either Fortune magazine or Forbes magazine. It’s been 25 years or so ago, but they actually did this. Now, remember, this is a sample size. When you want to measure accurately, remember the Gallup poll is 1,050 people in the final tabulation. This was 54,000 people. 54,000 people.

Now, here’s what they found. Out of every ten people that walk into a place of business or contact a business. They contacted you, they walked in the front door of your store or they called you up, they contacted you. Eight out of ten, approximately, are in the market for that product and intend to buy it today. Eight out of ten intend to buy it today. The average company will sell three of those eight, or three of the ten, rather. They’ll sell three of the ten, which leaves five that did, in fact, contact them. So they sold three of the ten, but eight were sellable. Okay, now wait a minute. Without generating additional leads, Todd, if you sell one of those remaining five that are ready to buy today and they did contact you…

Todd Liles: You just boost your business substantially.

Roy Williams: Oh, you’ve increased your business by one-third. You increase… Wait a minute. What if you sold two of those five? Your business is up 66.6% with no additional advertising, no additional lead gen, no additional trucks, no additional technicians, no additional expense of any kind. All you did was convert a higher percentage of the leads. God forbid, what if you could sell three of the five that are currently leaving and walking away disappointed because they contacted you because they hoped that you were the company for them? You turned out not to be.

So they contacted you. Five out of ten are leaving disappointed. Two aren’t in the actual market today, but eight are. You’re typically selling three. And if you sold three, you’ve doubled your business, Todd. And you’ve only sold three of the five. Yeah, two of the five that are ready to buy today, yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re not gonna sell them. But if you just sell three of the five that do want to buy today and did contact you, you’ve doubled your business with no additional lead gen, no additional ad budget, no additional spending of any kind, no additional nothing. And I’m going, “Find me that guy. I want to write ads for that guy.” You know why? Because he’s not gonna run them off faster than we can bring them in.

Todd Liles: Roy, I’ll tell you what’s interesting is that we have stepped into companies where their average ticket is like 400. And we’ll take them to 1,800, we’ll double their closing ratio, we’ll do all these things. And this is part of the reason why I went on the journey of going, “You know what, I gotta get connected with the Wizards.” Because something amazing will happen. That average ticket and those close ratios can maintain, and we are continuing to do the things that we’re supposed to do.

But in the mind of a homeowner, when their lead volume slows down… Or a business owner, I should say, when their lead volume slows down, oftentimes they begin to look for cuts. And we’ve been cut from companies that we’ve absolutely done the work that we were supposed to do. And by the way, I will say to them, it’s like, “Where were you? Where are you now? What do you think will occur?” “Oh, no, we’ll be able to maintain it.” “Why?”

Roy Williams: “Why do you think so?”

Todd Liles: Yes. Six months to a year later, they come back and they are back at the position that they were, but now they’re worse because they still don’t have the leads and they’ve cut their business in half to a third sometimes. It’s like this is a very bad move.

Roy Williams: And what I’m saying is the reason that… I’ve been doing this for 45 years now, and I tell the partners, “Guys, look, here’s how to spot people you don’t want to work with. These are the markers. This is what to look for.” And I’m sharing this with your audience because they need to know that people who are really good at building businesses are also pretty good at finding the people who are actually capable of growing their business.

Because if you believe crazy things, no one can help you. If you have fixations and if you have these deep-rooted fears or deep-rooted convictions that are just horribly wrong, no one can help you. And you can bark all you want about, “I just need leads, bring me leads.” And it’s like, guess what? You’re giving me nothing to work with. There’s no reason a person should call you, number one. And number two, if I did bring them to you, you’re just gonna run them off. So, no, I don’t want to play this game with you. And so I’m not saying that to be a jackass. I’m saying that because you have to be good at what you do if somebody’s gonna help you get to that next level.

You have to care and you have to be open to understanding the things that really do work and the things that don’t. Or you can just keep trying to be the high bidder on the Google game.

Todd Liles: Well, we’re gonna do something different for the ad segment. Typically, I put a real ad up here that’s been in the marketplace. I want to play a scenario game.

Roy Williams: All right.

Todd Liles: And in this scenario, it is someone who has said, “Hey, I want to come spend a day with you.” You famously give people a day for $7,500, which is way less than what your time is worth, but you’ve told that story before. Someone did that for you and it’s made a big impact, so you keep repeating this for others.

So here in this scenario, what you have is you have someone who’s very open-minded and they’ve come to you and they say, “Hey, I’ve been listening to you guys for a long time and I came up with this rename of my company. We call ourselves Mr. Dependable. And what we’ve been saying is we show up when others don’t. So here’s my idea. Imagine I’m the client. Roy, we don’t exactly know how to execute on all the things, but I want to get your opinion on this. We’re thinking that because we offer seven-day service and we go until 8:00 PM, those are our normal hours, our clients are always saying to us, ‘Man, aren’t you dependable? Aren’t you dependable?'” We hear that all the time, “Aren’t you dependable?”

So we’re thinking we want to go with this new rebrand here called Mr. Dependable. We show up when others don’t because of what we’re already doing. We don’t know if that’s a good idea or if that’s something that we could actually make work, but that’s what we’re thinking about. Totally changing our name, going with Mr. Dependable because of what we already do and clients just love it and we want to come spend a day with you and say, “Hey, could you make us better? Could you tell us where we’re going in the wrong or right direction?”

Roy Williams: All right, let’s assume. Remember, I’m not having this conversation when they’re thinking about coming. That never happens. I have this conversation when they’ve walked in the door on the day that we get together.

Todd Liles: Yeah. So this is what they told you in the opening.

Roy Williams: If they showed me this logo and they told me what you just said, I’d say, “Okay, we can make that work, definitely. But first we need to get some information on the table.”

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: Because the first thing I need to understand is, “We come when others don’t.” Is that it?

Todd Liles: “We show up when others don’t.”

Roy Williams: “We show up when others don’t. We show up when others don’t. We show up when others don’t.” Okay, help me understand, when is it that the others don’t show up?

Todd Liles: Typically what we’re finding is that if it’s after 5:00, they won’t show up or they charge after-hour service calls, and we do seven days a week until 8:00 PM, even on Saturday and Sunday.

Roy Williams: All right, so how many other companies work seven days a week?

Todd Liles: Right now in our marketplace, I know there’s two others that do it, but they charge overtime and when you call them, it’s not actually convenient. It’s like jumping…

Roy Williams: You know what I’ve already learned, Todd?

Todd Liles: Yes. What’s that?

Roy Williams: Now, by the way, this is just between me and you. The other guy, I don’t want to say this in front of him, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. He’s in a really small town. You know why?

Todd Liles: Tell me.

Roy Williams: Because there’s no meaningful town in America that doesn’t have guys working until, well, the big boys are working till midnight seven days a week, with no extra charge.

Todd Liles: It is a small town. There’s only 50,000 people.

Roy Williams: That’s my point. So if there’s only a couple of other guys that are willing to work past 5:00, that’s a Dairy Queen town. They’re not big enough to have a McDonald’s. And I’m saying, so okay.

Todd Liles: Think Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I think they’re about 54,000.

Roy Williams: There we go. There we go. So my point is we’re in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. What I’m looking for is this is a commitment and an offer that he’s making the public that would not work in a bigger city. It would be a nose-picking, punk-ass, lightweight, weasel offer that I would laugh at.

Todd Liles: Because 8:00 PM’s not impressive.

Roy Williams: No. And seven days a week isn’t impressive. And so I’m going, “Yeah, that’s not really a message in any place but Hattiesburg.”

Todd Liles: Now let’s imagine you said that to me and I’m the client. Because I came here, I know you…

Roy Williams: It would be too early to say that. You know why?

Todd Liles: Let’s say it’s deep into the day.

Roy Williams: All right, so here’s my point. Now that I know he’s in Hattiesburg, you don’t have to be good. You just gotta be better than the rest of the idiots. And I’m saying, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. He could be terrible in most towns, he can be the king of Hattiesburg. And so the reason I ask all these questions is it’s not like this is always a great idea everywhere or this is always a bad idea everywhere. The reason I wanted to figure out really, is this a thing that matters? My first question was, “Who doesn’t show up?” He said there’s only two other companies.

I’m going, “All right, that’s all I need to know.” He’s in a tiny town. He didn’t need to tell me he’s in a tiny town. If there’s only two other people that work past 5:00 and they both charge extra, he’s in a very small town. And I’m going, “Okay, so yeah, we can ride that horse. This’ll work.” Now, don’t you go to Atlanta thinking you’re gonna do this and it’s gonna work, because it’s not gonna work in Atlanta. You’re gonna get eaten alive and then spit out. And so the point is, it’ll absolutely work in Hattiesburg. And I’d say, “Sure, let’s do this.”

Todd Liles: All right, very cool then.

Roy Williams: And does that shock you?

Todd Liles: No, it doesn’t shock me.

Roy Williams: I’d say, “Yeah, let’s do it. I think it’s a great idea.”

Todd Liles: Now let me talk to you about the tagline, Roy, because this is what we put on paper: “We show up when others don’t.” But I’ve listened to some of the things that you’ve said, and I wonder if it should be, “We show up when others won’t,” so we get all the W’s in there.

Roy Williams: Now, listen, I think that’s a great idea. I wish I’d have thought of it.

Todd Liles: We show up when others won’t.

Roy Williams: Yeah, you’re doing my job for me.

Todd Liles: And what about the, “Aren’t you Mr. Dependable?” Because that’s what they say to us, Roy, when we go and we take care of…

Roy Williams: Whenever you use the word “you,” you’re now talking to the customer. You’re talking to the customer.

Todd Liles: That’s what they say to us, though.

Roy Williams: Yeah, but, see, when you say it, you’re saying it to the customer.

Todd Liles: I was imagining we had some funny radio ads where the customers would say that to us.

Roy Williams: Well, we can do that. But when the customers are saying it to you and it’s not you saying it, then what are you gonna say back to the public? You’re gonna say, “We show up when others won’t.”

Todd Liles: “Well, we show up when others won’t.”

Roy Williams: Yeah, “We show up when others won’t.” Now, here’s the point. In your ads, you wanna know what else you have to put in there besides “We show up when others won’t”?

Todd Liles: What’s that?

Roy Williams: You have to name the times that others won’t.

Todd Liles: Wow, good call.

Roy Williams: And so the question is, when you’re making a statement, the statement triggers a question. Anybody that hears that statement, “We show up when others won’t,” it triggers a question. If you don’t know the question it triggers, you don’t know that you need to answer that question because they don’t get to ask it while they’re listening to the radio. They don’t get to ask it when they’re watching TV.

It’s a one-way communication, so we have to anticipate what they’re thinking. We have to anticipate what their question is so that we can answer it. And so, “We show up when others won’t,” like after 5:00 PM. And guess what? There’s a couple of companies that’ll show up after 5:00 PM. They’re charging you extra for it because they really want to be home eating fried bologna.

And so whenever you say, “But hey, we eat our dinner late so that we’re happy to come until 8:00 PM,” and, “We don’t come when it’s convenient for us, we come when it’s convenient for you,” and so blah, blah, blah, blah, you can build a whole campaign out of that. And if there’s only two other guys doing it in Hattiesburg and both of them, you know what’s gonna happen, though?

Todd Liles: What’s that?

Roy Williams: When this starts working, they’re both gonna start staying open till 8:00 and not charging extra.

Todd Liles: And then they’re gonna have to push it later.

Roy Williams: And then the race is on. And what I’m saying is…

Todd Liles: And the whole tide rises the boats.

Roy Williams: Yeah, a high tide raises all ships. What I’m saying is there’s no horrible ideas. Remember what I said earlier? Everything depends on the town you’re in. And I don’t think people heard me say that. Everything depends on the town you’re in. And so a lot of times, I can figure out everything I need to know just by asking some pretty obvious questions, and the answers tell me. Because I’m going, “Well, when do the other guys not show up?” because I’m thinking big city thoughts here. And when you said, “Well, there’s only two other companies that’ll show up after 5:00 PM and they both charge extra for it, but we work every night till 8:00, seven days a week, no extra charge,” and I’m going, “Oh, that’s a tiny town.”

Todd Liles: I’ll tell you why I picked this town, Roy, because I’ve thought about it a whole bunch, and I’ve even posted on this long before our relationship. If I were to one day decide, “You know what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna start an air conditioning company,” I would pick a town like Hattiesburg. 50,000 to 75,000. I know it’s not gonna be a $50 million business, and I don’t care. I would dominate it, own it, and love it.

Roy Williams: And are you ready for the big surprise?

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And we’d buy television.

Todd Liles: Oh, let’s do it.

Roy Williams: We’d buy TV in Hattiesburg. Do you know why? Because there’s only four stations that are gonna be playing the 10:00 news. And there’s a whole bunch of radio stations and not enough people for any of them to have a very big audience.

Todd Liles: Maybe we should run an experiment, Roy.

Roy Williams: We might. I’ll tell you what, because in a town like Hattiesburg, as I’m saying, now all of a sudden, in a huge city, even a small station has a gigantic audience. A small station in a huge city still has three times as many people as live in Hattiesburg. Hattiesburg’s still gonna have half a dozen stations.

Todd Liles: Sure. If you talk about the realistic serviceable area, Hattiesburg, Petal, Laurel, you’ve probably got 200,000. Maybe we should run an experiment, Roy. Maybe we should just…

Roy Williams: Open an air conditioning company?

Todd Liles: Why not?

Roy Williams: All right.

Todd Liles: We might have to talk about that. All right, but for today, that’s enough. I think we did a good show.

All right, everybody, if you’ve enjoyed today’s show, then make sure you like it, share it. If you’re not subscribed, subscribe. And let us know what you’re doing. I would love to hear in some of the comments what some of your taglines are.

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