How to Create a Winning Marketing Strategy with Wayne Mullins of Ugly Mug Marketing

I’m doing great. Shane, how are you today?

Yeah, it comes from a quote by a gentleman—sorry, by David Ogilvy Mather fame. He supposedly had this quote: “I would rather an ad that’s ugly but effective than one that’s beautiful that isn’t.” So for us, it’s kind of our North Star in the world we live in. Design awards are a thing—people pursue those. It’s trying to keep us focused on what matters most, which is the results for our clients.

I did. I grew up in a small town called Alexandria, Louisiana. For most people listening, when they think of Louisiana, they typically think of New Orleans. So if you envision all the sights and sounds that come to mind when you think of New Orleans, and then picture the polar opposite, that is Alexandria, Louisiana. That’s where I grew up.

There is Louisiana college is right here in the state. Are in the in the town, and then there’s an extension of LSU. LSU Alexandria is here as well.

Yeah, down in Lake Charles.

I should get a commission check from the tourism bureau here. I’m gonna keep working on you.

Yeah, so growing up, it was just my parents and my brother and I. So it’s the four of us, and that was it, just a small family in a small town.

He’s younger. He’s about three and a half years younger than I am.

Um, not really. I mean, we weren’t—it’s not that we weren’t close. It’s just, with that four-year gap—it was really three and a half years, but in terms of grades, it was four years apart. So we were never in school together. He had his group of friends, and I had mine. And yeah, that’s how it unfolded.

Yeah, you know, when I think about fun or interesting facts about this town, I ruin it all with the joke about New Orleans. I don’t know if there’s much left. Another interesting fact about Alexandria, Louisiana, is that during the Civil War, the town was actually controlled by Union troops. The river—literally two blocks from where I’m sitting right now—saw the Navy come down with gunboats. Supposedly, when they departed the city in May of 1864, they burned most of it down, and the city had to be rebuilt. It’s super fascinating because I’m here in downtown, and two blocks away is the river where so many of the businesses and homes once stood. Just to think back, it sounds like a long time ago, but really it wasn’t that long ago that the city was completely a different place.

Yeah, I can imagine it was a vastly different time. In the history of that, it kind of says that most people ended up living in the forest and the timberwoods surrounding the area because there was just nothing left of the city.

Yeah, so the Town Alexandria is about 48,000 people. So, you know, pretty small town right across the river is another town, Pineville, Louisiana, about 15,000 give or take.

I did. I went to Louisiana College, which, again, is about two miles from where I’m sitting right now, not very far from where I currently live. You know, always say that I haven’t made it far in life, you know, I was born two blocks down the street that way. I live just a couple miles that way. You know, I work here, so, you know, haven’t made it far in life, but I’m still working at it.

Yeah, most of our family is right here. We were very intentional—once we started having kids, we wanted them to be around their grandparents, aunts, and uncles. So we decided that, for the foreseeable future, we would be here.

I originally started out as a nursing major. I decided that I wanted to be a nurse anesthesiologist—or I think a nurse anesthetist is the proper way of saying it, you know. And it was after my very first anatomy and physiology test that I knew that was the wrong path for me—that 17 written across the top of the page really kind of stamped that you better find another major. Yeah, yeah, I switched over to business at that point, with a specialization in marketing.

My first job out of college, thanks to Zig Ziglar, was in selling. In my junior year, my parents gave me some Zig Ziglar CDs—I’m dating myself a bit—and I don’t remember the exact title or program, but it was about selling. During that program, Zig sold me on the profession, so I knew I wanted to go into sales. As soon as I graduated, I looked for sales jobs and spent my first three years selling.

Yeah. He was prolific, for sure, absolutely.

Yeah, so, ugly mug, you know, in hindsight, happened on accident. It was never intentional. Even though my degree was in business, the intention was never to have a marketing company. So, as I mentioned, I started out in sales. I initially was absolutely horrible at selling. But over the years, after studying and reading and just trying and failing over and over again, I became good at sales. And one day I realized that my paycheck didn’t reflect what I was selling. In other words, I was selling a lot for this company, but I didn’t feel my paycheck reflected that. So I had this crazy idea that I would do something on my own. I sat down, Shane, and I said, “Okay, what skills do I possess?” Well, selling was one of them, and the only other skill I could come up with was cutting grass. To the dismay of my parents and a lot of people in my life, I decided to leave a very good paying corporate job in sales and start a lawn and landscape company. Fast forward over the next three years, I grew that company to a very large size, ended up selling it, and it was in the course of that growth that we actually had clients from the lawn company coming to me saying, “How are you growing? What are you doing to grow the company? Can you help? Can you teach me what you’re doing?” In the beginning, I didn’t think anything of those conversations—it was more just, you know, glad to help. But as it unfolded, I realized there was a need in the marketplace for what we were doing, and out of those conversations, eventually Ugly Mug Marketing was born.

That was pretty much the conversation. It was, you know, the expensive college degree—not that I went to an expensive school, but any college degree is not cheap. And it’s like, you could have bypassed those four years and the big fees you sent to the school and just done this. But little did I know that would be the path and where it would lead.

Yeah, so we’ve been in business 12, almost 12 and a half years at this point. One thing I’m gonna jump back to real quick, Shane, before I go forward, is this: in hindsight, when we look back at these things, we’re looking through a rearview mirror. When I look back at my journey, it’s through the rearview mirror, but when we’re in those moments, we’re looking through the windshield—which is often full of bugs, debris, and grime from the road—and it distorts our view. We don’t often understand where that decision may lead us. For me, we can’t make decisions by looking in the rearview mirror; we have to look forward. One thing I’ve learned through those experiences is that there’s a big difference between taking a risk and being reckless. I’ll borrow this from Amazon: they talk about the difference between a one-way door and a swinging door. A decision that’s a one-way door could be a reckless decision—in other words, you step through that door, and it’s almost impossible to get back to where you were. But if it’s a swinging door, you step through, you take that risk, and it’s not impossible to get back. Yes, it may be difficult, and yes, there may be obstacles, but the door goes both ways. For me, that’s been a learning process over and over again as we launch new products and enter new areas of business. The question is: is this a risk, or am I being reckless—taking unwarranted risk?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, first of all, most people don’t really understand what marketing is. Most people confuse marketing and advertising and use those terms interchangeably. For us, when we begin a conversation with a client, we often have to make sure we’re on the same page about what this thing called marketing is that we’re going to be doing. We like to use a simple definition: marketing is your ability to attract and keep a customer. So it’s about attracting—which is typically the advertising side—and then it’s about the keeping side.

From there, we talk about the difference between a marketing strategy, a marketing tactic, and a marketing framework. I’ll use a quick analogy: think about a train or a railroad. The framework would be the actual tracks. It represents where we’re trying to go and what we’re trying to accomplish—our destination. The strategy then becomes the actual type of train. Depending on where you’re trying to go and what you’re trying to accomplish, you might need a locomotive that can pull lots of cargo, a bullet train, or a passenger train. So while the framework remains constant, the strategy varies based on your destination. The last piece is the tactics—the individual pieces that make it all work. That’s like how you actually operate the train on those tracks.

Yeah, I would say the first one that comes to mind is that marketing has to be complex, complicated, and expensive. The reality is that when you’re strategic and put that strategy on the right framework, it doesn’t have to be those things. It can be simple. It can be linear or progressional—in other words, one step leads to the next. So often people, when they approach marketing, turn to a variety of tactics they see online, grabbing bits and pieces, and try putting them all together, and it doesn’t work. That would be like, “Shane, if I came to you and said, ‘I want you to build the best car in the world,’” and you did a study and went out and said, “Okay, Rolls Royce makes the best engine, so we’re going to take a Rolls Royce engine; the best transmission might come from BMW, so we’ll take a BMW transmission; and then the best, strongest, longest-lasting body might come from Ford or whoever.” If you put all those pieces together, you’re not going to have a beautiful, great car. What you’ll have is a Frankenstein that probably won’t work, because you’re trying to match an engine with a transmission that weren’t designed to go together, and then you’re trying to stick that into a body or frame those two things weren’t designed for. And that’s a mistake I see so many entrepreneurs and marketers make—they just go around picking bits and pieces from what I’ll call gurus, throw them in a bag, shake them together, and think, “Okay, here’s my strategy. I’m gonna dump this out. This is gonna work.” And they end up frustrated. They end up believing that marketing—whatever platform they choose—doesn’t work or isn’t effective. So that would be, that would be a couple of things that I think are misconceptions or myths that people run into

Yeah, absolutely. I think, Shane, one of the first places to start is with the definition of marketing. Marketing is your ability to attract and keep customers. So the first question to ask yourself is: pull out your marketing budget—whatever that is, whether it’s $5 a month, $50 a month, $505, whatever the number is—and do a litmus test. Ask, “What percentage of our marketing budget is allocated to attracting customers, and what percentage is allocated to actually keeping them, or more specifically, turning customers into evangelists for your brand?” That would be step one, step two.

Then I’m going to use another analogy, if you don’t mind. Think of an old round analog clock with an hour hand, second hand, and minute hand. When you look at that clock, there’s 12 o’clock at the top, three o’clock, six o’clock, and nine o’clock. At the very top, at 12 o’clock, we have strangers; at three o’clock, we have friends; at six o’clock, we have customers; and at nine o’clock, we have evangelists.

Let me quickly walk you through this. This is what we call the natural progression. This is the way every single human, no matter what product or service you sell, makes buying decisions—based on basic human psychology. At the top, we have strangers. Strangers, at 12 o’clock, are anyone we believe could benefit from our product or service. It’s not everyone in the world—just those we believe could benefit. At three o’clock, we have friends. To move someone from a stranger to a friend, they have to first know about you, and then they have to like what you provide. Then, to move someone from three o’clock to six o’clock—from a friend to a customer—they have to trust that your product or service is going to be more valuable to them than the money they’re going to part with in exchange.

It’s basic human psychology: no one’s going to buy your product. They won’t pull out their wallet and hand you money if they first don’t know about it, then don’t like it, and finally, don’t trust that it’s going to do what you say it will. And here’s the thing—for marketers, we so often violate this. We set up an ad or a campaign and expect that single effort to take people all the way from stranger to pulling out their wallet.

So the place we love to tell people to start is this: start with one campaign to get strangers to know about your product, develop another campaign to get them to like your product, and then another campaign to get them to trust that your product will deliver value. When we break it down into that framework, it gives us bite-sized pieces to develop. When we’re talking about getting people to know about us, we can measure impressions, reach, and all these things. When we talk about building trust, we can discuss social proof—testimonials, endorsements, and so on.

We love using that framework to walk people through this simple progression. And the last step is creating evangelists. The only way people will tell their friends and family about you is if your product has exceeded their expectations. The beauty of it is that when they do, it bypasses the whole stranger phase. They’re going to tell their friends, who already know about you because their friend shared, they like you because their friend told them, and there’s already an element of trust.