Even If You Build It, They Won't Come -- Unless You Tell Them!

“Shoeless Joe,” and the movie from that book have both been misleading people for years. “If you build it, he will come.” That’s the biggest load of malarkey. That doesn’t work for “Field of Dreams” in the real world. No one comes to a concert, book launch, website, or restaurant unless they know about it. They only know your product or service exists because you tell them. Which means -- you need to market the thing. 

(00:03):
Welcome to the launch with words podcast, with your host, Bridget Willard. We're going to talk about all things. Content, blogging, articles, videos, whatever has words and it goes on your website.

(00:21):
Hey, welcome to episode six. "If you build it, he will come." Famous quote from the book, "Shoeless Joe" and the movie about the same thing, "Field of Dreams." The field of dreams is simply that. It's just a dream. Because guess what?

(00:40):
You can't build anything -- a stadium, a team, a restaurant, a product, a service -- without telling people. There's no way. It's insanity for us to think that just because we have a website, that people will know about it for one thing. And or that they will magically happen upon a website. It's not something in the mall that we walked by. But even, even a store in the mall, isn't magic. It happens to be next to other stores and they market together. Whether it's Norton Simon, or, you know, some kind of outlet mall, that it's not by chance. All of that is intentional marketing.

(01:28):
So if you think that writing a book will automatically get you book sales, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it's not going to happen. If you think that producing a CD and selling them and you know, making your dreams come true. And just thinking that people will happen to do it. This is not going to happen.

(01:52):
Um, some of these things sounds so obvious. It sounds like I'm patronizing you. I'm not trying to patronize you. I have been consulting with high-end C-suite and entrepreneur clients for over 15 years. Or yeah, basically. So guess what? You have to tell people about it. You have to tell people. It's really not that difficult.

(02:25):
It takes work. It takes work to tell people that you have a thing.

(02:29):
It takes some humility and mixed with bravery to tell them that you built a thing. You know? You have to care. You have to care about your business more than your employees. You have to care about your business more than the marketer that you hire. You really do, because you're going to be part of it. But you also have to dedicate the time and the budget. So many of the customers that I've talked to, of the people that I've consulted with say, well, I don't really have marketing budget. Oh okay. But do you have money? Like, do you want your business to succeed? Or do you want to be just another cliche restaurant that closes because nobody knew it existed. I mean, this is the reality. This is absolutely the reality.

(03:22):
And I love that I have this five to seven minutes with y'all and I could just say stop being so bleeping stupid. Stop being naive. Stop being lazy. Really. Because you're not foolish. You're not stupid. And surely you're not naive. You're an industry expert. That's why you started your business. You know how to get clients. That's why you're still in business. But that half-life of referral by referral, by referral that just, uh, just, you know, magically happen. I mean, whether you bought your dad's company, inherited your mom's company, bought a business that was existing. You think you're going to keep those customers just because they were already there?

(04:15):
No. Loyalty has to be both created and maintained. And you maintain customer loyalty -- one of the reasons, one of the ways -- is by having good marketing. You have to t