Core Marketing Fundamentals – with Sean Castrina

Arlen
[00:00:57]
Welcome to the e-Commerce Marketing podcast, everyone. My name is Arlen Robinson, and I am your host. And today we have a very special guest, Sean Castrina, who is an Entrepreneur, Bestselling author, Founder of the Weekend MBA and host of the 10 Minute Entrepreneur Podcast.Welcome to the podcast, Sean.

Sean
[00:01:21]
Great to be on the podcast.

Arlen
[00:01:23]
Yes. Awesome. It’s great to have you. You’re pretty much a marketing veteran. I know you’ve been in the game for a long time working with businesses and helping small businesses to market with the agency that you have. And so today we’re gonna really kind of be diving deep into what really are some of the core components of a successful marketing strategy. What does it look like? And regardless of the type of business that you have, whether it’s e-commerce, whether it’s a brick and mortar, whether it’s a mix of both, as you and I know, core fundamentals of marketing go across the board no matter what type of business that you have. And so I know you’re gonna enlighten us on that. But before we do get into all of that, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and specifically how you got into what you’re doing today.

Sean
[00:02:07]
I went to college on a athletic scholarship division one athletic scholarship, and figured I would just kind of get a graduate degree as well. And, and I took a job right outta college in DC for a nonprofit, and I figured I’d just eventually be a CEO and make a lot of money. I mean, that’s kind of how my brain works. You seek, destroy, climb, seek, destroy, climb, and, and then I lost my dream job. The words you never want to hear ever, unless you’re in a vehicle, unless you’re in a car with someone, you never want to hear Sean. We’re going in a different direction Right. When you want to hear. So I heard that and, and that just kind of changed my entire way. I thought where you could be let go at any time for nearly any reason, changing leadership. Sure. The finances aren’t as strong as you may think the company is, and one day they look at it and realize they’re gonna cut the company in half or whatever that may be.

Sean
[00:02:57]
So once I experience that, then my entrepreneurship stepped over and it was kind of like I could put this same amount of helping another company into my own company. And I did that. And I think it created what I believe are the marketing basics, because I think that a lot of startups, you’re really great, probably veteran business, you guys have been around 22 years, So I find that it’s the early startups that really mess it up the zero to five years. Yeah. I I find that they violate the rules of marketing so bad and then it’s an uphill climb the whole way. Right,

Arlen
[00:03:32]
Right. When you think about it, like you said earlier on, we worked for the company, it’s probably like the end of the world that you hear those words, we’re going to different direction. And so you already know when, when you hear those words, that’s the, your

Sean
[00:03:43]
Whole life passes before.

Arlen
[00:03:44]
Yeah. The act is about to come out. So people are, we’re all familiar with that, but you know, in hindsight, I’m sure when you think back it’s just, it’s probably a blessing in disguise because you were able to to to create and birth your own agency

Sean
[00:03:57]
And Absolutely. And, and income wise, there’s no comparison to what I make as owning numerous companies. Right. So in the end, it all worked out well for me. And I, and, and as we always heard, when a door closes, a window opens. It’s just all how you, you take the situation, what you milk from it, you can make nearly any situation a growing experience. Some in most cases. I, there’s obviously tragedies out there I don’t wanna touch, so I’m just gonna say in most cases, Right, I understand because I didn’t have a business degree. I never went to college for business. To me, it was just, it forced me to come up with like fundamentals of business. I don’t bet on outliers, just in general. An outlier is something that’s a rare situation. Right. So I want to know the fundamentals, and I think that’s the same thing in business and in marketing and, and I think a lot of startups fail in that. I could go through a few of those with you if, if you’d like to, but where I think they mess it up and makes it really hard to market their companies sometimes when they start off with the basics, like I, I see companies like startups with like a bad name. It’s amazing. Like, I have a store in my area, it’s called Fruit Fix It, They fix apple cell phones. I I have, I have been in that shopping center for five years. Yeah, yeah. And I thought it was a smoothie shop. Yeah,

Arlen
[00:05:16]
Yeah. As soon as you said that word, I thought maybe organic.

Sean
[00:05:21]
Yeah, exactly. I was thinking something on the sides and other ones that I, I bet that try to be so cute. Like it sounded like, Okay, what’s cute, maybe when you heard it, but unless you’re Hulu and Google and Bing, and if you like that again, they’re outliers, but is a general rule, pick a name that somebody, once they hear it, they know what it is you do and sell.

Arlen
[00:05:44]
Yep. Exactly.

Sean
[00:05:45]
Just to make it simple, Don’t make it limit. You don’t like do it territorial to the point like, like, like Afton Plumbing or something like that. Or Afton Digital Marketing. No. Expand it to some degree Mid-Atlantic Global or something like that.

Arlen
[00:06:00]
Regionalize it. Or at least give people,

Sean
[00:06:02]
Give it some level of scaling. Sure, sure. Where you have the opportunity scale, but these are just two of the early on big mistakes people make. Yeah. Either a, they pick a name that nobody understands what it is they do. Or number two is they pick a name that makes ’em so small that they limit their chance to scale it. They’d almost have to rebrand it anyway. Yeah,

Arlen
[00:06:23]
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. So Sean, when we’re thinking about marketing, there’s really a lot under the whole category of marketing. And when you’re thinking about creating a marketing strategy for your business, whether it’s an e-commerce business, whether it’s any type of business, what are the kind of core steps that you think any business needs to follow when they’re creating a just a marketing plan for their business?

Sean
[00:06:45]
I think the first thing is what are you selling and who’s buying it? That’s the core of what it is. Okay. What is it I’m selling? Who would I bet my life on is the most likely to buy it? That’s your target customer. So I, I’m selling widgets. Let’s say the person who’s most likely to buy it is age 40 to up because they maybe own a house. Whatever it is, there’s a target person. We tend to wanna start a business and we think everybody’s gonna buy it. And that that’s not true. So the first thing I think you gotta find out, okay, I’m selling this and the person who’s most likely gonna buy it is this. And one of the big mistakes we make is the market is so small that it’s not big enough. I always say I want something that somebody would buy from me every day if they could.

Sean
[00:07:28]
Yeah. Yeah. I can’t lose with that. I want something, if I went into a restaurant, if I walked into a McDonald’s and I went to 10 tables and I said, Would you buy something like this? I would want know that 50% would say, Yeah, sometime in the next year I would buy something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Because unless you’re selling islands, planes or high end watches, I mean, you have a very limited market and that may work for somebody, but what am I selling? Who am I selling to? And then what is the messaging I need to use in whatever I’m doing? What is it that I need to communicate that would make them buy from me immediately? The way that I always put it with my clients is this, is that what’s the one promise that if you could make and deliver on your target customer would chase you down for your business.

Sean
[00:08:14]
Their product has that. They do this, I gotta call them. That’s what you want to communicate in your marketing. Right? For sure. Something that’s so clear. Dominoes did it. It’s old now, but you know, at the time when Dominoes was selling pizza, everybody had delivery. Joe’s Pizza had two white Ford escorts out there. Right. And they would run, everybody was selling pizza. But when they said, Well, okay, what would be an audacious promise? Okay, we’re gonna deliver you a hot pizza under 30 minutes. Mm. Well, a lot of people may have forgot that, but that took them from nowhere to the most dominant and still to this day. Yeah. A dominant pizza delivery company of that one value proposition that they used for 20 years.

Arlen
[00:08:54]
Yeah, it’s very true for sure. But

Sean
[00:08:57]
You think how bold that is, that promise and now fulfilling it’s, is the hard part. But you need to have a promise that’s that strong. And if you do that, it so separates you from your competition.

Arlen
[00:09:09]
Yeah. For, for sure. You mentioned a couple of the key things as, as well as far as creating the, the marketing plan and then making sure that there’s that audience for it. Because you’ve been around a while, I’ve been around a while and I, I know you’ve seen it, but there are some products that are very, I guess you could say, kind of niche where, like you said, they don’t fall in that category of, Oh, okay, I’m, I’m, I’m a consumer and I need to buy this every day, every week. This is something I need. But there’s, there are a lot of products where it’s like, okay, you buy it one time and that’s it. And so I guess my question now is, okay, there may be a market for it. You may have a particular niche product and yeah, there could be a lot of people either locally or globally that can utilize it. But how do you determine, I guess you could say, if that particular product or that particular idea is really kind of worth you kind of going all in

Sean
[01:10:03]
Beta test, beta test, beta test. I, I always say, Listen to me before you sell the suit, test the suit. Perfect example. My son’s 21 and he was looking at buying a software company. Okay. And I’m playing the devil’s advocate in this. Now I’m a traditional business guy. I’m a brick mortar service company. I own a very good digital marketing company, but I’m just trying to give you, it wasn’t my strike zone, but this goes back to fundamentals. I said, Well, what does the software do? He said, It does cover letters for people looking to get a job. My immediate brain said, It’s not enough.

Arlen
[01:10]:3
Right,

Sean
[01:10:36]
Right, right. I said, Now, wait, okay, cover letter. I said that that’s okay, but does it do a resume? I said, My natural follow up would be, yeah, send a cover. They need a resume. Does it do a follow up letter after the interview? Yep. And that was just in like one minute. I mean, I’m just, we ran it by messages too thin. Number one, the people that are buying it are gonna be like college kids. It’s not enough money. It’s not a repeat sale. Once they get a copy of that letter, they’ll just do their own. Yeah.

Arlen
[01:11:04]
Yeah.

Sean

[01:11:04]

But that’s how you gotta think. You gotta look at your product and really drill down on a little bit and go, Does it have legs?

Arlen
[01:11:11]
Gotcha.

Sean
[01:11:12]
Okay. Who’s gonna buy this? I didn’t have to even bathe The test isn’t fairness, but I would beta test anything. I would do a, a website with a product on it and I would pre-sell it. And the biggest problem you could have is sending that email to them. We’ve gotten such a demand for our product that we’re, we’re three weeks late on delivery or six weeks late, but we’re gonna send you a, a gift product with it however it is, but beta test it before you dive all in. Do some type of testing.

Arlen
[01:11:40]
Yeah. That’s very key. Now you, let’s say the business owner has gotten to the point where they’ve got the idea, however niche the product is, they’ve beta tested it. They see there’s definitely a solid market for it. They’ve got the numbers there, substantiate that, and then they want to basically get it out there to the world. Yeah. Now you and I know and our listeners know that there are 1,000,001 marketing tactics available. Yeah. So how does e-commerce business or any business know really what specific marketing tactics to use or that are gonna be right. For their type of business?

Sean
[01:12:14]
Okay. This is why I personally love being in a competitive market. Example. We, the old three is, is you want blue ocean. Blue ocean means it’s, it’s a first time to market type of thing. Yeah. Well, guess what? Google was 13th. GM came up with an electric car. Tesla was way later. Yeah. The Tesla said, We’re just gonna have the best looking electric car and the fastest. And that carved out their niche. They get like a, like a one year back order on them. So when you have this product that’s gotta stand out in such a unique way. But when I try to launch something, I wanna look back to my target customer and a couple things I would do. One, I like competition cause I’m gonna steal what my competition does. So going back to that, I literally had to come, my brain shut down for two.

Sean
[01:12:57]
It was going so fast. And I goes, Okay, there it is. That’s what you were thinking. I look at what my competition does and I try to carve out a better niche. If my competition’s doing this advertising, this advertising and this advertising, and they’ve been in business for a decade, it probably works. The question is, can you make a better mouse trap? The first thing is I wanna see what my competition’s doing. Because again, success tends to leave footprints. Exactly. But then I go back to my target audience, who’s most likely to buy from me. And then I go, and what’s the least expensive way to attract that customer? Again, I know who that customer is because I, I did my testing to find out my target audience between 18 and 25 male female. So your cost to acquire a customer you’d like to keep down.

Sean
[01:13:41]
So I, I would look at my cost to acquire that customer and I would beta test a few different methods. Example, I own a digital marketing company, but I also buy Super Bowls. Why? Well, the Super Bowl gets a lot of eyes. I mean, I just pre bought my ad today for our Super Bowl in our regional area. I don’t have to by the nation, but it’s pricey of course. And digital marketing creates one third of all my, all our customers come in a third through digital marketing, but Okay. Whereas the other two third, well another third comes in through referrals and repeat customers. But the other third is tv. Still. People still turn on the tv. We still do radio ads just to get in their subconscious mind so that they kind of heard about us. Yeah. We’ll do like a six weeks campaign of nothing but testimonials.

Sean
[01:14:26]
So every objection that would keep somebody from buying our service company, we have a TV commercial to overcome it. So they’ve just heard it. Yeah. So my point is, you find your target customer, then you find your least expensive way to acquire them. After you tried what your competition’s done to a better mouse trap, then you’re just, you gotta throw some things against the wall and see what grabs my experience. So with advertising is if it doesn’t work and quickly it doesn’t work. Yeah. No matter what anybody’s told you, and I’ve been in marketing directly in marketing for over 20 years, It works or it doesn’t work. The idea that you need 90 days to do it, I don’t buy 90 days may make it better, but I have found when it’s crickets for 30 days, it’s crickets.

Arlen
[01:15:04]
It’s not, it’s not gonna work. Yeah.

Sean
[01:15:06]
It it’s not gonna work. That’s

Arlen
[01:15:08]
So true. Now, okay, let’s say, okay, we’ve gotten to the point where we’ve beta tested it. We’ve determined by doing some trial runs on different types of marketing strategies, whether let’s say maybe you do a email campaign, maybe you also do some Facebook marketing, maybe you do Google ad campaigns, you do all that and you kind of throw some things at the wall and then you get the data back, like you said, fairly quickly, less than 30 days. And you’re starting to see, okay, which particular strategies are working, which particular marketing channels are, are working for you, in your opinion for the companies that you’ve worked with? And just in your experience, because I’m all about being organized and kind of keeping things on track, does that make sense to create like a, a marketing calendar for business at this point? And if so, should that be done annually, semi annually?

Sean
[01:15:57]
I have, I have, It’s funny you say that in my phone. I get a spreadsheet at the end of every single day. Okay. Every day. And if there’s a column, it’s probably 13 sources of how we get business. Okay. And, and in the digital will create the number one and then it’ll go tv, radio vans, referral, boo postcards, and it runs like really long across. Yeah. I wanna keep track of every way that somebody can find out about us because that’s gonna eliminate the things that I’m gonna continue to do and it’s gonna make me double down on the things that work. Okay. I think one of the big mistakes that business owners make, they have no idea what works and what doesn’t work.

Arlen
[01:16:33]
Yeah.

Sean
[01:16:34]
I mean, not to the point where I like, I don’t have to make an emotional marketing decision. I got the data. And so the things that don’t work anymore, I don’t do as much of, or none of the things that work for me I double down on. So I think keeping track of it, you should be a data driven business owner. Yeah. I always say I don’t wanna make decisions based on emotion because that’s a motion. It’s easy for me to do a lot of digital advertising when I see the numbers. I don’t mind doing a Super Bowl ad when I know that I’ve gotten $200,000 customers out of it. Cuz I tracked it and they say, Oh, all your Super Bowl ad. That was incredible surprised to see a small business owner buying such a you whatever. Yeah. So when I hear that, I double down on it.

Sean
[01:17:17]
So I’ve, I’ve bought a Super Bowl ad probably for nearly the last decade. But if you’re not tracking it with your customers, that is like, we just track everything. We want to know how they heard about us. If you ask people to answer, if you don’t ask, they’ll, you’ll never know. And then you need to be able to have that information at your access so you’re able to use it in making future decisions. But again, most people are just happy their phones ring and they don’t know what’s working. If I may throw in one other piece of advice, having businesses over 20 years, whatever’s working at some point will not work for you. So always look for, for the next best thing that works. Yeah.

Arlen
[01:17:51]
Very, very true.

Sean
[01:17:52]
We tend to get comfortable.

Arlen
[01:17:54]
Yeah. Yeah. Right. I’m glad you, I’m glad you mentioned that. Especially kind of in our space. Space that I’ve been in as a SAS company and just seeing how things change so quickly. And a lot of times business, like you said, they get comfortable, especially when you’re dealing with some of the things that are outta your control. Like let’s say Google for instance, even if you’re, let’s say, listed in Google, your organic keywords are ranked pretty well against your competition. All of that can change overnight. As you and I know Google can make a slight change to their algorithm and you’re at the bottom or you’re on the second page of the results, third page of results. And then that can eliminate a huge portion of your business. And if you don’t have that next thing immediately lined up Yeah. That you can kind of take the resources that you were spending in Google and put it into that next thing, then yeah, you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be lost. You’re gonna be struggling to try to make things for work.

Sean
[01:18:43]
Always look for, And I always say you kind of, you picture you’re trying to get all these little waterways building into like your, your pond. If your pond, you’re trying to get all these multiple things feeding fresh water into it and, and over 20 years, I, it’s things that I thought would last forever did. You’re right about algorithms change and just certain things that work just don’t work anymore at the level they did. Or they’re not bringing you, your target customer that they once attracted. Yeah. So never, ever, ever stop looking for more ways to bring in customers. And I would even put it, this is how strong I am about it. I look at it like it’s the way that you truly scale your company. Example, if I have four things that bring in about a quarter of a million dollars a year into my company and it makes me a million dollar company, I would make it my life’s mission to figure out what the next fifth quarter of a million thing is. Yeah. Worst case scenario, my company grows 25%, but if one of those four that were once working doesn’t work anymore, it slides into that place. But what most business owners, they hold onto what’s working and then one drops out and then the other one drops out and then they’re, they’re doing 50% of what they once were and they can’t catch up. They don’t have the cashflow to do it anymore.

Arlen
[01:19:55]
Very, very true. Well, as get ready to wrap things up, I wanted to see if you’ve dealt with, of course a lot of businesses, businesses that you’ve ranged yourself, businesses that you’re working with. I wanted to see if you could highlight an example of a business that used a specific marketing strategy that really kind of propelled them and got them to really meet and exceed their expectations. What specifically did they do and what were some of their kind of core tactics?

Sean
[02:20:20]
Two illustrations, cuz I think it shows old school, new school. One company I own a really, one of my companies is a construction company. It does incredible. Which is odd because I don’t know the difference between two screw drivers and I literally have a plastic toolbox that I got when I was married.

Arlen
[02:20:35]
Gotcha.

Sean
[02:20:36]
Don’t know anything about it. Couldn’t assemble a three piece birdhouse. Mm. But I’ve made millions and millions of dollars with this company. One of the things that we did early on that still works is, is that that when we would buy newspaper ads, we’d buy it in the business section. We would create our own infomercials creating the perfect experience and people would read it and would look like it was written by the paper.

Arlen
[02:20:58]
Okay.

Sean
[02:20:59]
It looks credible, it’s in a newspaper now I’m cuz I’m showing two ends of the spectrum. This is old school. Right. But again, we would buy ad space in the business section and kind of create our own infomercial new to the area. If we’re launching a company in a different area, new to the area, Johnson, whatever, one of the best rated companies in the B B B A plus rating, they’re specialized in blah blah blah blah, blah half page. Got it. Okay. Looks extremely credible. Second thing is, is that when all my competition switched over to digital marketing and I knew nothing about it, I started a digital marketing company. And this is the the funny story. Everybody tried to pitch me digital marketing, the, the Super Bowl TV people came over, everybody in radio and TV and traditional marketing all had a digital marketing end. Yeah.

Sean
[02:21:42]
So they all come into my conference room over like a one month period to pitch me on it. Yeah. The radio company, one person in that meeting was like four of them had worked with Fortune 100 companies, Super sharp guy, quietest guy in the room, called him the next day. I said, I’ll give you my business if you handle my account. I worked with this guy for three years and we launched Gig Strategic who can look it up online. It’s an incredible digital marketing company. But the point is, is that when I realized I was losing it, I got aggressive and instead of just buying Ad Space, I bought the company.

Arlen
[02:22:13]
Gotcha.

Sean
[02:22:14]
I founded the company cuz I’m like, I don’t ever want to be dependent on this one eyed Lecan handling my digital marketing because over the years they’d come and gone. Yeah,

Arlen
[02:22:24]
Very

Sean
[02:22:24]
True. Yeah. Every time I found somebody that worked, they, I couldn’t get in touch with them or they moved on. So I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum, but it shows you how aggressive I feel like you need to be, Again, I creative an infomercial ad and then to the point where I buy and start my own multimillion dollar digital marketing company.

Arlen
[02:22:42]
Yeah.

Sean
[02:22:43]
I just think you have to be very aggressive with marketing. I’ll closing with this. Everybody knows Budweiser sells beer. Guess what? They’ll spend 25 million at the Super Bowl to remind you. And every single person in the United States of America probably knows that Budweiser sells beer. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah,

Arlen
[02:23:00]
For sure. For sure. You hear that name

Sean
[02:23:02]
Right? You know what it is and they’re still gonna tell us

Arlen
[02:23:04]
That’s what you gotta do. Well, yeah, thank you Sean for sharing those, those closing tips and you’re, you’re really so right about kind of those core things and just reminding people about your business and then just always kind of getting out there. It’s, regardless of how big you

Sean
[02:23:18]
Are, never stop marketing. That’s my best advice. Never, never ever, ever, ever stop marketing. Never. Yeah.

Arlen
[02:23:24]
Very true. Very true. Well that’s awesome Sean. I definitely have learned a lot today. Thank you for joining us and I know our listeners have as well before we do let you go, I always like to switch gears here so our listeners can get to know you just a little bit better. So if you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know.

Sean
[02:23:44]
I mean, other than getting fired from a job I did standup comedy on a Bet. Okay. So that was, and a huge thing called Clash of the Comics, which is really cool cuz they start out with 16 and I was a finalist, so that’s, and that was totally on a dare. Okay. So, but, so that’s probably the craziest thing I’ve ever done.

Arlen
[02:24:02]
Okay, awesome. Well yeah, if you decide to reinvent yourself again, you do, You may have a career in, in comedy. So

Sean
[02:24:09]
I always said, told my friends, when I get old, I’m gonna, seriously, I’m just gonna go to cities under an alias. Okay. And just, just go and go on stage and just rattle some stuff off. It’s a lot of fun. Yeah,

Arlen
[02:24:20]
Yeah, definitely. That, that sounds good. Thank you for sharing that Sean. And lastly, before we do let you go, why don’t you let our listeners know what would be the best way to reach you if they wanna pick your brain anymore about all things marketing,

Sean
[02:24:33]
Get a free book. If you go to sean casta.com, you can get my AUM Breakable Rules for Business Startup Success, Countless New York Times bestselling reviews on the back of it. It’s, it’s just a really good book and if you like something simple, I’m very quick to the point. I host the 10 Minute Entrepreneur podcast and I think either of those will be of great help to you.

Arlen
[02:24:51]
Okay, great. Great. Thank you for sharing that, Sean. Definitely encourage people to go to your site to take advantage of that free resource, sean katrina.com. We’ll have that link in the show notes as well. Thank you, Sean, for joining us today on the e-Commerce Marketing podcast.

Sean
[02:25:04]
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1
[02:25:06]
Thank you for listening to the e-Commerce Marketing podcast.

Podcast Guest Info

Sean Castrina
Founder of the Weekend MBA