Example conversations with Marketing
Vague question
You
How do I do marketing?
Marketing
Marketing usually starts with understanding your audience, then choosing channels that reach them. Common options include social media, local advertising, search, email and referral schemes. It helps to set a budget and measure results so you know what is working.
Would you like me to go deeper on any of these?
Would you like me to go deeper on any of these?
Correct, useless. It could have been written before you existed.
Same question, with context
You
I run a two-van plumbing business in Leeds. Most work comes from word of mouth and it has been flat six months. I have a small monthly budget. Where should it go?
Marketing
Flat word of mouth with two vans usually means you have saturated your existing network, not that the marketing is broken.
First, and free: your Google Business Profile. For local trades this outperforms almost any paid channel. Complete it, add photographs of real jobs, and ask every customer for a review on the day you finish.
Then, paid: Local Services Ads if they run in your area. You pay per lead rather than per click, which suits a business your size far better than broad search ads.
What I would not do yet: a rebrand, or social media. Neither generates emergency plumbing enquiries.
Want me to draft the review request message?
First, and free: your Google Business Profile. For local trades this outperforms almost any paid channel. Complete it, add photographs of real jobs, and ask every customer for a review on the day you finish.
Then, paid: Local Services Ads if they run in your area. You pay per lead rather than per click, which suits a business your size far better than broad search ads.
What I would not do yet: a rebrand, or social media. Neither generates emergency plumbing enquiries.
Want me to draft the review request message?
Two vans, Leeds, word of mouth, flat six months. Four facts, completely different answer.
AvoidHow do I do marketing?
Do this insteadI run a two-van plumbing business in Leeds. Most work comes from word of mouth and it has been flat six months. I have a small monthly budget to spend. Where should it go?
The second names the business, the constraint and the problem. Every one of those changes the answer.
Build yours now
This part of the lesson is interactive: open it in the Academy.
Try it on your business
Every lesson ends with a question to hand to a Greymill specialist, who answers with what it knows about your business.
More in Ask better questions
- Say what you want backOtherwise you get paragraphs when you wanted an email.Read the lesson
- Push back on the first answerOne question, one answer, silence. That is where most people stop, and it is the worst way to use this.Read the lesson
- Pull in a second specialist mid-conversationMention them and they arrive having read the whole thread.Read the lesson