CONFUSING ACTIVITY WITH RESULTS IN MARKETING
Not too long ago, on a rare slow Saturday afternoon, I caught a re-run of the show Restaurant Impossible. If you’ve never watched the show, it’s like any other business makeover show: a host comes in, identifies problems, gives the restaurant a facelift, everyone cries and the credits roll.
I don’t know if every episode is like this, but in the particular episode I watched, I saw a picture perfect example of what I wrote about in my last two articles.
(If you haven’t read them, check out “Can You Stop Pencil Whipping by Removing the Pencil?” and my most-recent article “Are they Selling You Activity or Results?“)
How to Kill Your Shop in One Easy Step
I’ve been hammering home the problem of focusing on activity instead of results. And the restaurant owner was suffering from that problem in every area.
- He hadn’t taken a paycheck in six years.
- He was adding more services like catering that were losing money.
- He had resorted to making his wife wear a hot dog costume to try to bring in customers.
- He was working harder than ever in the hope that working harder would mean success. His relationship with his wife and his kids suffered, but he continued to work more and more hours hoping it would mean that his business would succeed.
The owner was confusing activity with results in every facet of his business. His marketing, his services, his family. He believed that because he was busier, he was working in the right direction. By the time the host of Restaurant Impossible showed up to get to the bottom of the problem, they were busier than ever…and six months from closing their doors.
The owner had no idea where the leaks were. He didn’t know his profits, didn’t know how to attract customers, didn’t know how to price his food, didn’t know how to fix his business or who to ask for help.
He was on the verge of losing his life savings, his dream business, and everything that he’d worked so hard for.
Confusing activity with results kills businesses. And most aren’t lucky enough to hold on until a television host can swoop in and fix everything in a 42 minute episode.
There’s a lot to digest here, and a lot of ways in which shop owners can get trapped by focusing on activity instead of results. Since I spent the last two articles talking about inspections, I wanted to shake things up and talk about marketing in this article.
‘Being Busy’ Isn’t the Answer
There’s a quote that applies perfectly here: “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”
In other words, anybody can have a busy shop. What kind of customers do you want to be busy with?
After all, you can be busy anytime you want. All you have to do is make your services as cheap as possible and do a discount coupon and the customers will come running.
And even better, advertising to lower-end customers like this isn’t even that expensive!
Right?
How Cheap is Cheap Advertising?
If you gauge the effectiveness of your marketing only by how many customers come through your doors then it’s hard to be more effective than going cheap. Your shop will be slammed. And you’ll hate yourself for it.
Because you spent money to run that ad.
You’re giving money away on every coupon.
You’re losing money on every car when your inspections don’t mean more sales.
If you stick with this model, you’ll do it again and again because those customers are only loyal to the cheapest price.
And because the focus is on the activity — how busy you are — your marketing company will spin this downward spiral of lost money and missed opportunity as a success!
We confuse activity for results when we lose sight of the end goal. In the failing restaurant, their end goal had become “own a restaurant,” which is why it made sense to them to simply work more hours.
It’s the same way with marketing.
Focus On Relationships and RESULTS
Our goal in marketing should be to attract people who trust our recommendations, who want a relationship, and who refer friends and family. That’s thinking in terms of results instead of just activity.
With that result in mind, it’s easy to back up and see the path to get to those results: attract high-quality customers who value superior customer service, and retain loyal customers who want a shop they can trust.
And if you back up one step further, it’s obvious that the starting point is marketing that sets your shop apart, that builds trust, that targets and appeals to those great customers.
Is your marketing doing those things? Are you attracting just any customer, or are you attracting great customers? Does your marketing company even know the difference?
Your answers to these questions are the difference between working harder only to find yourself losing more ground….or growing sales and getting the shop and customers you’ve always wanted.
It’s the same way in every area of your business: changing your focus from the activities to the results is what guarantees success. Stay tuned for the next article, where I’ll cover how this concept works when it comes to fixing your shop’s internals.