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What sets this podcast apart? We believe in the power of meaningful marketing—a holistic approach that prioritises authenticity, connection, and purpose, whilst still turning a profit.
Chantal Gerardy is an International Award Winning Marketing Strategist who empowers purpose-led businesses to revolutionise their online marketing approach and create a brand that resonates deeply with their online audience. If you're tired of cookie-cutter marketing advice, and seek strategies that truly make a difference, this podcast is for you.
If you are a business owner feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or struggling to cut through the noise online? We've got your back!
Our podcast is tailored for entrepreneurs hungry for clarity, confidence, and tangible results in their online marketing. Our podcast isn't just about boosting sales; it's about creating an efficient marketing machine that reflects your values, passion and purpose. Whether you're stuck or looking to maximise your marketing, we're here to guide you every step of the way.
Our episodes dive deep into practical skills, customer-generating strategies, and streamlined systems to help you thrive without relying on paid ads. From mastering social media, creating content that converts, ranking on google, getting your website to work, lead list building and email marketing, each episode is packed with tips and techniques to help you thrive online.
Join me each week as we explore management and monetisation online marketing strategies designed to reduce your time online while increasing your impact. With our guidance, you'll align your business and marketing team more closely, ensuring every effort moves you towards growth. From overcoming challenges to seizing opportunities, each episode is packed with actionable advice to help you thrive in the world of online marketing and effective management.
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[00:00:00] This podcast is brought to you by pod pro Australia,
social media, Google, email marketing systems, website traffic, and the endless content creation that comes with marketing. It's overwhelming, right? Say goodbye to endless stress and hello to clarity with the meaningful marketing podcast. In this podcast, I will share with you fast and free practical methods to help you manage monetize and market your business all infused with a healthy dose of motivation.
Let's do this.
Hey, this is Chantal Gerardy from the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. And in today's episode, we have our very first guest, John Dwyer. Now, John is here today. He lives on the Gold Coast, so super convenient to come down to our studio in Burley. And as I start my first series of guest interviews, I'm going to start with what I always say, and that is [00:01:00] Marketing is not what you do that's the same as everyone else, but it's what you do that's special.
So John is such a humble man. I'm going to ask John to tell us a little bit about what makes him special. Tell us a bit about your business. Well, my humility for a start, of course. And look, thank you very much for bumping who you did have for the first podcast. It was Elon Musk, wasn't it? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So thank you for that. I love being first. Um, yeah, look, our business is called the Institute of Wow. Um, and what we do is help businesses with direct response marketing. Chantal, it's a, a lot of people who are running a business out there, of course, as you well know with what you do for a living is that they are concentrating money on branding and there's nothing wrong with that.
You know, we buy Kellogg's because it's Kellogg's, but at the end of the day, they might not be a big enough business to be just concentrating on that. And what we say to them is that they might like to concentrate on direct response marketing. Sure. So for those out there who are not sure about what direct response marketing is, how would you explain it?
Pretty much advertising on Facebook today and getting a result tomorrow. So instead of [00:02:00] putting your face on the side of a bus or the back of a taxi or sponsoring the local netball team, which is great, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that that won't necessarily put food on the table tomorrow.:
So, you know, a lot of people that we come across who are business owners, um, come home from work and they say to the kids at the dinner table, look, we've got 150 likes today. And they say, Daddy, we're hungry. Is there any food to eat? So you want to get away from vanity metrics. And, uh, and particularly if you're a small business and what you want to do is be able to use direct response tactics to make money tomorrow.
Yeah. Excellent. I always talk about having a strategy. Um, and for those that haven't heard my, the first episode with my story, 2008. And, um, That is exactly the story that I had. I knew no one had no money and I had to feed the family. Uh, so I had to teach myself social media marketing and I couldn't afford for my content not to work.
The content had to convert. Also, I wouldn't be able to feed the kids. So I completely love everything that you've said there. So tell us a little bit about the [00:03:00] story of. John, so something that we may not know about you, um, a little bit of your hero story. Look, I'm glad you asked. I've got some baby photos here from many years ago.
My first role in marketing was at Roseland's shopping center in Sydney, which is a big Westfield sales shopping center. And I got the job as the promotions assistant there. And it was a really good learning curve because. Me being a complete idiot, I decided that on a Thursday night, when shopping centres would bring a lot of crowds in, because Thursday night was a new thing back in those days.
We're talking the 1800s, right? And, uh, so therefore, we would put on a pop star or something like that on a Thursday night and pack the shopping centres. But guess what? There were just schoolgirls coming to see the pop star. So I was a complete moron. Uh, which meant that we had 15, 000 screaming girls in the shopping centre and most of the shops pulled their shutters down and closed.
So Yeah, I got taught a lesson big time that no, it's not about the numbers, it's about the quality. And so therefore, of course, I moved on from there and became the advertising guy in the Woolworths empire and learned a lot about direct response marketing because those who might be close to my vintage might [00:04:00] remember that in the days, Woolworths and Coles would hold stamp collection promotions.
So for every time you spent 10, you got a stamp. You licked it and put it onto a saver sheet. And then you could get cookware and glassware for special prices. And that as a stimulant for like stickiness was unbelievable. And then we moved on to scratch games. And we did a whole lot of things that were loyalty based.
And I thought to myself, look, this thing is working. Why don't I leave and set up my own thing? So that's what I did. I left the Woolworths and set up my own thing and that's where we are today. Yeah. Excellent. That's so good. So, um, if we go to your website, we've got Jerry Seinfeld all over the website. So tell us the Jerry Seinfeld story.
Chantal, I've never told this to anyone. I have milked the daylights out of them. Oh, good boy. Good boy. Well, it's funny, you know, because it was a, uh, it was a client of mine called the Greater Building Society and, um, they were a client for 10 years. They ended up being a client for 10 years, but when I got involved they were doing exactly what the big banks were doing.
They were selling home loans on price 6. 2 percent and the [00:05:00] Commonwealth Bank would beat them at 6. the big four banks. And whilst the Greater Building Society is the 250th, you know, biggest business in Australia. They're not going to beat the Commonwealth Bank. So I said to them, I don't know what you guys are smoking, but you're not going to beat the Commonwealth Bank or Westpac on interest rates.
You're a challenger brand. So as a challenger brand, you do things differently. And they said, well, what? And I'd been doing some TV commercials for a travel company, a discount travel company. So I introduced them. And what we did is that we stopped the honeymoon rate and just gave that to the travel company.
And they gave us a fantastic deal on it. And so therefore we launched a campaign which said get a home loan, get a free holiday. The thing went nuts. And, uh, again, because I'm a moron, uh, I didn't charge a percentage of the increase in home loans. They took an extra 15 billion, not million, billion dollars worth of home loans in the first few years, and this moron got a consultancy fee.
And then about four years into it, then we took it up a level, and I won't bore you with the details, but I convinced, after annoying him for six months, I convinced Jerry Seinfeld to be the [00:06:00] spokesman for the bank. And so when he came on, it just went to a whole new level. Yeah, so I'd go to New York, um, throughout the three years, and, uh, yeah, Jerry would basically stand in front of a mock up bank.
building society and tell gags and of course we captured those to put them on tv as tv ads and once cypher got involved the results just went up again. Yeah. Awesome. So just getting an influencer involved and being able to leverage them online. It makes sense. So what other meaningful strategies would you have for marketing that you can share with our audience today?
None. That's pretty much it. That's it. That's all you got. We're out. I've always wanted to do that. Well, what you should do as a host is actually call my bluff and go, okay, well, that's it. Cheers. Let's go to the pub. That Um, look, my view is :for any small to medium sized business, and I suggest a lot of the audience for this probably would be small to medium sized businesses.
Um, try and make sure that you've got something that's going to distract them from price. And the reason I say that is because, uh, If you're a small business, [00:07:00] let's say you're a corner shop and you think you're going to beat, um, uh, let's say you're a hardware store and you think you're going to beat Bunnings across the road, that's not going to happen on price.
Whereas if you said, look, for every time you spend X dollars with me, I'll give you a wheelbarrow or I'll give you a, you know, a pitchfork or whatever it might be, then they'll take six months worth of meetings to actually even think about combating that. They can't. All the big guys move very, very slowly.
And I know because having come from a Woolworths background, they move pretty slow. So if you're a small business, you can be nimble. And my view is, is that what you need to do is to look for a Happy Meal toy. And, uh, being the father of six, and they're all growing up these days, but we had six under twelve at one stage, and we spent seven billion dollars on Happy Meals, just to shut those little rats up in the back of the car.
It had nothing to do with the hamburgers, you know, being a mum. Uh, it had everything to do with the free toy. And so, therefore, McDonald's had been clever enough to take our eyes off the price for about forty years. Kellogg's have done the same thing. So my view is, is that what a small business should look for is [00:08:00] what Kellogg's and McDonald's have been doing forever.
And that is some sort of incentive. to actually take their eyes off your price. Because if you think you're going to be Kmart or Big W or Bunnings on price, then you're in Disney World. Yeah, absolutely love that. I always say to everyone, it's like, if you make it about the price, if you start going value, price, upsell, downsell, and you start drawing their attention to it, you're stopping them from actually focusing on your point of difference from the value that you're offering.
Frank and your special glitter or juice. So we make it more about you, make it more about your point of difference, make it more about your niche and what it is that you do. That's different from everyone else. And that's why I love this whole concept of meaningful marketing. Cause it's meaningful for you and it's meaningful for them as well.
You know what happened though? Chantelle's a result of the Seinfeld thing. Uh, a travel company contacted us just before COVID and they said, look, you look like you've got half a clue when it comes to marketing. We're a travel company and we've got access to unsolved hotel rooms around the world. I mean, okay, yeah, go on.
And they said, well, do you want to join forces where you actually package up the holiday vouchers and [00:09:00] give them to businesses to use as a happy milk toy? You know, my words, not theirs, but nonetheless, that's what they meant. And I said, well, yeah, okay, but I turned it upside down because I've seen every travel scam there is, and you wouldn't too, because being in the marketing, yeah?
And, yeah, it was all, You know, to use an Australian term, it was fair dinkum, and uh, all it was was the hotels, uh, basically outside of school vacation periods, they've got about 30 percent of their rooms vacant every night. So they give them up in the hope that whoever stays there as a free guest will spend money on food and beverage.
And it's a beautiful win win for, you know, the business wins and the hotels win. So what we've done is we've packaged that together these days for businesses whereby they get a, um, they get a voucher that's probably three to seven night voucher that's valued at about 1, 000. And we give it to them for less than 50, would you believe?
And what they do is that then they hand that out when someone buys their product or service. Now that's the happy meal for heaven. The reason, the reason I bring that up is to demonstrate that the reason McDonald's have done so well is that toy cost them 22 to make out of China, but it's worth 4 And the [00:10:00] reason that that really works is because it's a low cost but a high perceived value.
And if you're looking for an incentive, then that's what you're after. So can you imagine if you've got a three or four night vacation for 50, but it's worth 1, 000, then your customers are going to be pretty turned on. Yeah. Excellent. You definitely need to turn them on. That's for sure. Um, so can you think of three other strategies for, um, you spoke about direct response marketing, three other stress strategies or methods or tactics that business owners can use right now to make their marketing more meaningful?
Oh, I can't, I'm sorry. I'll have to go. It's pub time again. Uh, number one. Yeah. Take their eyes off the price with an incentive. Okay. So that's number one. Number two is to, uh, ensure that whatever you offer, whatever deal it is, whether it's buy the refrigerator and get a free holiday or buy this and get free movie tickets or buy this and get a dining voucher, whatever your incentive might be, make sure that you either have a quantity or time limitation, um, because people will sit on the fence.
And you know that and I know that if they don't have a time limitation, of course, they will take forever [00:11:00] to talk about it with their partner or people else or somebody else in the business. And the third thing is, is to position you or your business as the expert. Um, And I'm sure because you do a similar thing to me, you teach people how to do marketing.
They are coming to you because you positioned yourself as the expert and, uh, and likewise in my instance. And, uh, and you know, without being silly, uh, you know, I think both you and I've got the runs on the board to demonstrate that you are good at what you say you're good at. And so therefore, find an incentive, take the rise of the price.
Number two, make sure that you actually have a quantity or time limitation. And normally it's time limitation. Get in by Friday at five o'clock and you get the special deal. And then number three, position you or your business as the expert. So, you know, if your business is the expert, that's fine. Uh, and you might want to back away a little bit and not be the front of the business, that's fine.
But promote either you or your business as the expert because people gravitate to expert. I mean, Gordon Ramsey is a great example of that. He's probably got a lot of other people who are as good a chef as he is, [00:12:00] but he's better at marketing himself as the expert. I always say that whoever does marketing best gets the customer.
So at the end of the day, you've got all these people out there and whoever does it well is going to get the client at the end of the day. So I love what you said there, you know, number two, for me, it's always around FOMO, having early birds, you know, um, that scarcity thing, I'm going to miss out if I don't, you know, don't purchase.
And people need that right now because there's so much free choice out there. And with being able to save links online now and. Take screenshots and that, um, they know that they can just go to Google, they can price compare, it's so easy. So you really have to do well and you've got to get them in, else it's just not going to work.
But there's no, nothing evil about it. A lot of people think, Oh, well, you've got to give them a time deadline by Friday, five o'clock, you know, there's nothing evil about that. When Mr. Whippy used to come around. When I was a child with the, you know, the Greensleeves music and he would have the ice cream and, you know, we'd beg mum to go out and buy the ice cream.
He was gone. Like if we didn't, that was a time limitation, he might not have put it on his little Mr Whippy van, but he was gone in five minutes. We missed out on the ice cream. Yeah. It was so good. That's when the children actually get their run in. [00:13:00] Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, and then you spoke there on credibility as well and positioning.
And I think that's important because a lot of business owners can be a little bit shy when it comes to this and they don't want to position themself online. Many don't want to have a public profile either. And I say to them, if you understand your privacy settings, you can have a public profile. But as soon as you go and make yourself super private and take yourself out completely makes it really difficult for you to connect with people online.
Yeah. Because nowadays people choose you for you and that's really what social media marketing is about. It's about the connection. It's about the relationship and people now, because it's so sport for choice, they actually want to do business with people. So they want to get to know who you are. They want to find out your idiosyncrasies and they want to see, um, and you may not be everyone's cup of tea, but you might be someone's champagne.
You know, and so I think looking for that credibility, you know, whether or not it is awards, whether or not it's years experience, whether or not it's, um, experiences that you've had in your life, whether or not it's registrations, licenses, insured, [00:14:00] so important to use it. In fact, we did something with tradies and if on a website, you don't, you say licensed and insured, they're more likely to get traffic and hits, even though the other tradie may also be licensed and insured.
If they don't say it, they'll get less hits. Yep. So, so important to include. Such great points there. Thank you so much. So, is there anything else that you'd like to share with our audience today before we, uh, come to an end? My auntie, uh, Teresa, who was known probably by you and others as Mother Teresa, um, she taught me, uh, a phrase which was live to give.
I'm being sarcastic of course, uh, and so therefore, Chantal, I've brought this along with me because given that this is a video podcast, I thought I'd show you, when people ask me to write a book, I thought, well, we're called the Institute of Wow. com, I'd better make sure that it's a big book, and this is ridiculous of course, but anyway, it's the size of a tabloid newspaper, and inside here is the last 15 or 20 years worth of all the direct response campaigns that I've had that worked.
I didn't put the ones in there that didn't work, I thought. [00:15:00] We don't need those ones. I was smart enough to leave those out, yeah. Um, and in this book, uh, is case study after case study after case study, and they're all timeless ideas, so it wouldn't matter whether some of these ideas may have worked in 2009, they'll still work today.
So it doesn't matter whether the communications medium may have been radio or TV or newspaper at that time, now it would be online. It's the idea. that makes a difference. So I would like to give that as a gift to all of your viewers stroke listeners. And, um, if they want that, do you mind if I tell them where to go?
Yep. Go ahead. That's not quite the way to put it. I'd tell them where to go. Uh, if I go to, it's called the wow manifesto. So if I go to wow, manifesto. com forward, stroke free. Excellent. And we will have that in the show notes as well. And for those of you who are listening on the audio podcast, John has just put up a ginormous book, which reminded me of a book that my twins hit my youngest daughter over the head with.
It was a Winnie the Pooh, massive cardboard book where they went here, Hannah, and they literally threw the book onto this, [00:16:00] my baby child in her cot. Anyway, they were trying to be helpful, but literally it's the size of that massive Winnie the Pooh. Book for those of you who cannot see, um, so you can go on to his website.
We will put the link in the show notes as well, and you can go in and download that resource. Um, and have a look at some of the direct, direct response marketing tactics that are working right now, but what they can do, they can just swipe them seriously. I mean, although it sounds ridiculous when I'm being sarcastic and say live to give, the thing is, is that within that book, I can just swipe these things and use them themselves.
So it's not one of those, whereby look, you know, you get into the book and it goes halfway through the idea and then stops. They can actually, anyone can take the ideas and just use them. And there's like 15, 20 years worth of ideas there. Yeah, that's super good. I mean, I always encourage everyone to obviously make sure that they respect their audience and respect their business and their strategy as well, and make sure that it's relevant.
Um, because of course then it will be so much more meaningful as well, but with such a huge, uh, I'm sure you're going to find some pretty cool ones there that [00:17:00] you can take advantage of. So thank you so much John Dwyer for being with us today. This is the Meaningful Marketing Podcast and if you've enjoyed today's episode, go ahead and like, uh, share, rate, comment, or do whatever you want to do on your favorite platform.
This is Chantelle Jurati and John Dwyer. Thanks for listening in. Meaningful Marketing is all about you making your marketing meaningful. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please hit that subscribe button. For subscribing means that you won't miss out on future episodes all about marketing and motivation.
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