About Marty Gould
Marty Gould is a marketing and media expert who has bought and sold tens of millions of dollars in advertising. His experience on both sides of the desk, as a media owner and as a strategic positioning consultant, gives him unique insight into the challenges local companies face when making decisions about their marketing and advertising.
As a radio station owner in Ohio, Marty developed innovative and practical marketing strategies for hundreds of local advertisers. After selling his stations in the mid-90s, he began consulting companies all over the United States. While his client list included major companies like General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi and Lennox Industries, the majority of his work continued to center on assisting smaller local companies get the most from their marketing investments. He has been a featured speaker at international trade shows, newspaper associations, non-profit organizations and many colleges and universities across the U.S.
About Focalize Consulting
After ten years as an Emmy Award-winning television journalist and eleven years as a successful owner/operator of radio stations in Ohio, I formed a consulting company in 1996 to help local businesses navigate the treacherous waters of media and marketing.
I did quite a bit of marketing and promotion work for some really big companies: General Motors (when they were still considered “really big”), Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, Lennox Industries, even the Professional Bowlers Tour (not-so-big, but still national!).
But, my passion and focus has always been on helping companies and organizations that don’t have access to big ad agencies, top-line creative talent or in-house marketing experts. In fact, most of the advice they get comes from the people who are trying to sell them advertising! I know how it works. Heck, I did it myself.
A lot of small business owners are pretty savvy marketers. They have a great feel for what their customers want and have built fantastic local brands with great awareness and reputations. But things are moving so fast today that even the best local marketers are having trouble keeping up and making sense of the seismic shifts from the one-way broadcasting of “ads” to the two-way conversations business and customers are now having online.
So, my job now is to help companies figure out a way to stay relevant to their customers and prospects by guiding them through a process of self-discovery:
- Deciding what makes their business distinctively different from their competitors in the minds of their customers.
- Identifying the people who are most likely to buy what they’re selling.
- Developing an authentic, informative message that’s relevant to solving their customers’ problems.
- Creating a media strategy that’s affordable, sustainable, measurable and effective.
It’s not rocket science, but it takes time, energy, commitment, resources (that’s code for money, but often less than you think, even if it is more than you’ve ever spent before) and, yes, even a bit of science once in a while. But, when it works (and it usually does, but I have to admit, not every time- even the rocket scientists misfired a few), the result is a sustainable system of business re-generation that embraces customers, energizes employees and improves life for everyone touched by that organization.
