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We are talking about no bullshit marketing and we have the perfect guest to help us talk through that.
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Dave Mastovich, welcome to the show.
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Hey, thanks for having me.
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So why don't we start off by you just giving a submitter to a little bit about who you are and what you do?
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Sure, I am the CEO and founder of Mass Solutions and we tongue-in-cheek say we're the world's only no-bullshit marketing consultancy, and I built that company started about 20 years ago.
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We just celebrated our 20th anniversary.
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I come from a background of turnarounds and startups and driving growth at large companies, one of which was $1 billion when I got there with a B and $10 billion within three years healthcare system.
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I also did turn around a couple of radio stations, so all of that enabled me to feel like I had experienced marketing, both the bullshit kind and the no bullshit kind.
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And so we built our no bullshit marketing system years ago and the book came out in September and reached number one Amazon bestseller.
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And that's really what it's all about, I guess.
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Congrats.
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20 years is a great milestone and the book is a great way to sort of memorialize some of the strategies that you've put in place.
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So excited to talk about those, why don't we jump in?
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And if you can share a story, we're ready to be inspired about some of the best no bullshit marketing that you've been able to do in recent times.
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Sure, and it's tough to always pick the best.
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So I'll give you one story that I think encapsulates a lot of what I strive to talk about, with what real marketing is and what no bullshit marketing is.
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And so you, as a marketer, and all of your subscribers and audience knows how challenging marketing is for those of us that do it to try to convince our clients of it.
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And one client that I worked with and my team worked with was we were brought in when this company had about 19 locations and they were looking to drive massive growth, and the credit goes to the leadership team and their employees for that massive growth.
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But we were a part of it because they entrusted us to drive both customer acquisition and also employee retention and acquisition, and also employee retention and acquisition, and those things led, our efforts led that company to end up growing from 19 locations to about a hundred and their enterprise value grew to the point where they wanted it to grow to and they were able to then sell that company at the multiplier that they wanted to achieve.
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And a lot of that happened because we were able to do the key marketing to their three key target markets, their three right fit target markets, and we're able to define those markets, drill down into those markets and really understand them, talk to them, hear from them and then build the marketing based on the science and math that we had done in the systematically gathering insights phase of our no bullshit process.
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And so we were able to work with them and continually enhance and tweak their marketing, their patient acquisition, their customer acquisition, and ultimately it resulted in that 5X growth and the growth of their enterprise value and the sell of the company.
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And I tell that story because it encompassed really all of what we do over a number of years and truly was no bullshit marketing.
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So that's a great story.
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5x growth is definitely remarkable.
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Let me ask you, what is bullshit marketing?
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Look like, like.
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What is the enemy here?
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Okay, so bullshit.
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Marketing is a couple of things.
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It's starts with, I guess you'd say, random acts of marketing.
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That would be the first thing that I would describe.
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And random acts of marketing are when people are doing marketing tactics, marketing tax uh tactics and uh marketing campaigns and so forth that are marketing task oriented.
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And so they're random acts of marketing because the phrase you hear a lot is oh, they made this look pretty or they were able to turn this into a video.
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And those random acts of marketing end up frustrating pretty much everyone involved.
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So if you talk to a CEO or an owner entrepreneur of a company or their CFO or even their COO, what you'll hear is a frustration with marketing.
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They say things like I don't know what goes on once we send it down there to marketing.
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I don't know what I'm spending my money for, I don't know what my ROI is, and that all comes from it being random acts of marketing as opposed to having a systematic way to gather insights and define the target markets and hear from the target markets voice of the customer research, drill those target markets down and build the story based on what you've learned from behavioral science and then have campaigns that work around that.
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So far too often we as marketers have caused the problem in that we have not taken the time to do the systematically gathering insights and let the behavioral science, the math, drive our decision-making and make the creative about that, or it's gone the whole other way.
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Now there are quants involved with marketing who go way too far on the quant side and think that every single thing in marketing can be measurable and they lose track of the emotion side of it.
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So it's reaching that balance and ultimately it's also about the six target markets that matter, and that's the key to no bullshit marketing.
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And you've developed a number of ways to fight against the bad practices there.
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I think you outline 17 strategies in your book.
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Can you talk a little bit about what some of those are and why they work?
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Yeah.
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So the most important one is knowing and living with and driving towards reaching, connecting, engaging those six target markets that matter.
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They're the six right fit target markets and I'll go through them quickly.
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So the first is one everyone will know, and that's current customers.
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Okay, so you got to focus on that.
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The second one everyone will know, and that's prospective customers.
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I think marketers tend to know those and do those, maybe, okay, but then it's current employees and prospective employees.
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That's four.
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And then current referral sources or centers of influence and prospective referral sources or centers of influence and prospective referral sources or centers of influence.
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Those are the six right fit target markets that matter.
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First, defining that and acknowledging that that's the key audiences and then drilling down each of those six audiences.
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That's the first key point.
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There'll be a second one, but I want to pause to let you, in case you have any questions, about the six right fit target markets that matter.
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I think that's great.
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I do think that having that mindset of employees, current customers, prospective customers and referrals I think people undercook the referrals part of it a lot.
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So I think having that framing is a good place to start the framework.
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So continue please.
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So that means business to everyone.
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B it's a good place to start the framework so.
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So continue please.
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So so that that means business to everyone, b to E, and that's what we talk about.
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B to E is business to everyone.
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It's those six right fit target markets that matter.
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So it's not about B to B and B to C, it's about B to E and it's not saying that every single human being with everyone, that's it's being dramatic.
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And saying business to everyone means the six right fit target markets that matter and drilling them down.
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Now, once you've done that, the second is understanding, clarifying and defining your advantage.
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I talk to customers and prospects on a daily basis and if I go into a new client which we just added one last week, and when we go in this week to this new client, we'll end up talking to probably five, six people on the leadership team separately.
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And when we ask them what's their differentiator, what's their advantage, what's their competitive advantage, what's the one thing that makes them unique, we will get five different answers.
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If we talk to five people and if we talk to their customers, we'll get a different answer.
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So the first thing is clearly is those right fit target markets.
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Make sure you define them and understand them.
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The second is go out and talk to those right fit target audiences to understand what your advantage is and once you've defined that advantage around your big idea your why or reason for being and your customer's why or reason for buying answer those two why questions and come up with one big idea your why or reason for being, your customer's why or reason for buying.
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That's defining your advantage.
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So if you have those six right fit target markets and then defined your advantage, it's then about the execution.
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The problem is, far too many marketers jump right to what's the creative going to be, what's the execution going to be, what's the campaign going to be, but they haven't done those first two things well.
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I think that's a great framing and solves the problem of random acts of marketing.
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Like you were saying, you have a strategy, you know who you're going after, you know what you're going to say and that's probably where the rubber meets the road.
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The rubber meets the road.
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What percentage of people do you think don't have this framework in place and are just out there doing random marketing?
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It seems like it's a higher percentage than people would guess.
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Probably it's got to be huge.
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I don't want to be negative, but I'll just say it's the majority and it's a significant majority, and part of the problem is us.
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Part of the problem is marketers.
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So what happens is somebody becomes an expert in, let's say, google ads, so they think Google ads is marketing in their mind.
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Another person becomes a good salesperson, so they think sales is marketing.
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Another person becomes good at video, so they think video is marketing, and so on down the line.
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It's more about that broader perspective of understanding that marketing is about systematically gathering insights so you can define those target markets, find out what they want, develop it and give it to them when and where they want it at a price they're willing to pay, and then tell them about it again and again.
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The problem is that last piece.
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To tell them about it again and again is what all those examples I gave you think about.
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The Google ads person thinks about how do I tell them about it again and again?
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The video person thinks how do I tell them about it again and again?
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The person that does sales thinks how do I tell them about it again and again?
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But it starts with clearly defining those six right fit target markets and drill them down then find out what they want so you can develop it.
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Tweak what you already have, develop it based on what you learned.
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Give it to them when and where they want it, at a price they're willing to pay.
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Pricing is part of marketing.
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When I talk to people early in their marketing career, I say, if you're doing marketing in the proper format and you're defining these target markets and you're going out and hearing from them, you can play an impact on what the price ought to be and develop the price for your product and you can help tweak the service.
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You know how many times when I was in.
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I'm in a lot of healthcare experience and I have people say to me what are you doing, telling us what we need to do?
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You're not a doctor, you're not a nurse, and I say but I'm the one and my teams are the one that understand what the customer wants and needs.
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So we have to give them that.
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If we want to be competitive, we have to make that our advantage.
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We have to tweak our product and service in a way that achieves what the customer and the market bears, and that's why pricing is part of marketing and that's why the actual service offering is part of marketing.
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You play a role in all that if you're doing your job.
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Instead, when you're in marketing and doing the random acts of marketing, they put you off in a corner.
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They don't even give you a seat at the table.
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Or if they give you a seat at the table, they don't listen.
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The leadership table is what I'm talking about.
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They put you off in the corner, don't really hear from you, don't give you proper authority, because they're saying to you you're going to make it look pretty, you're going to do what we tell you to, you're going to go market what we think needs marketed.
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Well, that's okay, they might have a general idea, but they're not the main people.
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The customer is those six right fit target markets have to be asked what they want and think.
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And then you come back and tweak it.
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So when you're the one that's being told, go create an ad for this reason and go do this event and make it look great.
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You had one person got evaluated.
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We were doing a mentoring program for that client.
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They said would you mentor our one of our marketing leaders?
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And she said you know I, I get evaluated on the golf outing.
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That's one piece of how I get evaluated.
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And I said what if it rains?
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And she said I guess things go a mess.
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And I said, yeah, and you had nothing to do with the rain, unless you have some powers I don't know about.
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So you want to be able to have had the true marketing seat at the table, not just making the golf outing look good and hope it doesn't rain and not just making the video look good.
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So that's part of the problem is we've got people in the space who aren't understanding their more global perspective or aren't pushing for it, or they're trying to get it and their leadership's not going to allow it.
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I think it's a great point that a lot of times marketers just get focused on the campaigns, the programs they're running, what channels and tactics they're using and they don't really have the overall strategy there with clients.
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Over the years.
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Has it driven great results like the 5X growth that you were talking about?
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Have you seen different flavors of that happening?
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And I'm curious, employees being great advocates because they understand the message and referrals.
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I'm curious.
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What percentage of the pie are those when people are living the dream?
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I'm curious what percentage of the pie are those when people are living the dream?
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Well, there's a couple of things the acquisition of employees I guess acquisition is not the greatest word, but I'm comparing it to customer acquisition and employee acquisition.
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When you land the employees and the talent that you need, that drives growth.
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So, for instance, there's certain industries in healthcare, one being, let's say, physical therapy.
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Right now, physical therapy probably has as much of an employee acquisition challenge as they do patient acquisition.
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I think many physical therapy places have more of an employee acquisition problem than patient acquisition.
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They probably have enough patients.
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They need to find the employees.
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So part of this whole strategy of these six right fit target markets is helping to have your cultural messaging be in a way that's accurate, Not bullshit.
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Accurate Because if you tell people like, for instance, when someone sees Mass Solutions, there's this button, it's the no bullshit button, similar to the Staples button.
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That's bullshit yes, that's my voice.
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Well, if you want to work here and the word bullshit offends you, you're not going to apply, because my cultural messaging and my team's cultural messaging is accurate.
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We are no-nonsense people.
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We're compassionate and passionate.
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So we're compassionate towards each other and our clients, but we're passionate.
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I'm not here to sell you on a commercial for me.
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I'm trying to explain.
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So when we work with any of our customers, we want them to be accurate in their cultural messaging, because then they're going to land people that fit and stay, and that's a big challenge right now in this talent situation, especially in healthcare, which is probably half to 60% of our business, although 40% or more is other all kinds of business, professional service, et cetera, manufacturing.
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So that's what to answer your question the employees, the prospective employees becomes a big part of it.
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And then referral sources.
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Here's what typically happens with referral sources.
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Let's take outside of healthcare first.
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If you're a B2B company, someone in your company is out there getting centers of influence to refer to you, someone is, and usually it's one or two people that have great relationships.
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But if those two people get hit by the bus, the old line you got hit by a bus got to make sure you got hit by a bus that goes away because they've not systematically looked at how that was done.
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And you're not going to take someone who's not good at that and make them great.
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But you can take someone that doesn't see that as a passion and make them better.
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You can take someone that's pretty good and make them really good and the people that are really good.
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You keep them happy and stay out of their way.
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But what ends up happening instead is there's not a systematic way to look at referral source marketing, so you're reliant on one or two people.
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At a company that has 50 attorneys, you rely on one or two people to bring in all the business, and those two are eventually going to leave or retire or something else.
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So referral sources become important.
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So all of these different elements are hugely significant and referrals in healthcare are pretty much everything.
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You have to get one doctor to refer to another, you have to get a hospital's case managers to refer to someone, so the referral sources become huge.
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But the key word is prospective, prospective employees and prospective referral sources become huge.
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But the key word is perspective, prospective employees and prospective referral sources, because many marketers out there will say, yeah, we worry about our employees, but not prospective ones as much, and there needs to be that whole selling and marketing of your company through cultural messaging.
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I like it because for a lot of businesses that are services oriented which is the physical therapy example you gave professional services there's a lot of businesses where you just need great people in the business that match your culture.
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I think for a lot of companies that's not their primary focus and I can see how their growth can be determined by putting that in the forefront.
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And I really like the referral aspect and the prospective referrals because it's really one of the most cost-effective ways to grow as compared to, say, advertising, which can just be really expensive.
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I mean, it's a tactic but it's expensive and some people do have good results with it.
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But you know, I think that the referrals the word of mouth is is one of the best ways.
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I think a lot of people should check out your book to get into the details of how to execute what you shared here.
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How could people get people get your book and learn more about these strategies?
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I'm going to make an offer for your subscribers, viewers and listeners.
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If anyone watching this goes to masssolutionsbiz masssolutionsbiz M-A-S-S-O-L-U-T-I-O-N-S.
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Dot B, as in boy I-Z, if they go there and subscribe to the podcast.
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When they subscribe, just go ahead and give me a mailing address and I will sign a copy of the book and mail it to them at no charge, because I believe in you and I appreciate you having me on the show and I know you've got people out there that are real marketers.
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I'd be happy to do that, so that's a way to get my book.
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Amazing.
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Thank you very much for making that offer.
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I'd be happy to do that, so that's a way to get my book Amazing.
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Thank you very much for making that offer.
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I encourage everyone to check it out.
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I think the things you've shared here should be inspiring to a lot of people to do no bullshit marketing.
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I'm going to link to that in the show notes so you can easily get to it.
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Really appreciate you being with us today.
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Thank you so much for spending time with us.
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Thanks, thanks for having me Enjoyed it.
