Episode 1958 – A Healthy Marketing Mix for 2025 (Briana Heatherington)

A healthy marketing mix is roughly 40% digital, 30% non-traditional, and 30% traditional; being 80-100% concentrated in any one channel (as many were during COVID with digital or canvassing) makes it hard to grow and leaves you exposed.

Track the full funnel of KPIs by source: raw leads to set appointments to issued appointments to demos to closes, then spend vs net sales, so you can find the holes in the business.

Non-traditional (face-to-face) marketing produces warm set appointments, not raw leads, so it lifts conversion across the board; start with shows/events (year-round, 'money waiting to be taken') then retail partnerships (Home Depot, Lowe's, Costco).

Rich's objection-overcome for 'we don't have bandwidth': if you're doing $4-5M you have $10K/month to invest, so hire the right person to run face-to-face and it starts returning next month.

Split traditional into hunting (spend today, lead today, e.g. shared mailers/VPAC, PPC) vs farming (plant now, harvest later, e.g. radio/TV, SEO); small companies start with hunting, then invest in farming/brand as they hit $3-10M.

Cause marketing (e.g. 'every appointment gets us closer to sending Lily to Disneyland') gives the whole company a purpose beyond sales, and roofing suppliers will often donate free roof materials for a charity job.

Backwards-forecast example: $500K goal / $15K ticket = 33 sales; at 30% close = 111 demos; at 80% demo rate = 138 issued; up through set appointments to ~434 raw leads; at 12% marketing spend ($60K) that's ~$138 per quotable lead, then distribute across the mix (aggregator leads run ~$30-90 and convert 10-25%).