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Posted byIan Brodie on October 17th, 2021.

I've just got back home after my (now resumed) annual pilgrimage back to my North East roots to see the South Tyneside International Magic Festival.

It was somewhat reduced this year, and a lot less international for obvious reasons. But it was great to see some live entertainment. And especially great to see my old friend (and officially the world's most generous man) Norn.

We did our usual pre-show curry in the Spice Garden and after-show drinks in The Marine. 

I must admit to having a bit of a “moment” looking round The Marine. It kind of felt natural and comfortable to be there. I've been going for 18 years now but after missing last year for obvious reasons I'd wondered if I'd ever be back.

I'm someone who normally values novelty. I'm forever trying out new flavours, new TV shows, new marketing techniques.

But there's also something wonderful and reassuring about the familiar. About old friends. About being able to relax knowing you're in good hands.

I think the best marketing manages both.

Regular communication – like this email – gives you a chance to add value and build credibility.

But just as important is that you're also growing familiarity. Becoming an old friend in the inbox. Having your subscribers feel safe in your hands. 

When they feel safe, when they know you do good stuff, you can begin to experiment and try new things. Share new ideas.

(My life changed when the Spice Garden first introduced me to chilli naan for example ;) )

Your first job then, is to build that familiarity. To be a trusted friend. And that only comes from regular communication.

– Ian

PS – bonus tip: if you're struggling for something interesting to write about, write about something interesting that happened to you in the last few days no matter how “off topic” it seems. There's always a useful lesson to be learned from just about anything.

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Big content or little content?

Posted byIan Brodie on October 9th, 2021.

When you're trying to attract and win clients through your content there's often a dilemma about where to spend your time.

Because, despite what some content and seo gurus seem to imply, we don't all have 12 hours a day to spend or a team of people all working on content. We have to prioritise our time.

So should you write big, long articles or short, conversational pieces.

In my experience you need to do two things:

Firstly, you need at least one big piece of content that stakes your claim as an expert in your field.

It could either be an “ultimate guide” to an area that's a core part of your offer to clients or it could be some kind of unique point of view. Or both combined.

In my case I have ultimate guides on my site to building an online course, value-based marketing, winning corporate clients, follow-up and finding the time for marketing.

All key areas I help clients with.

Each one took a few weeks to develop. They're like little mini books.

But they do two things for me:

• Because they're big and contain new and valuable ideas they tend to get shared and linked to. So they attract traffic from google and social media.
• Once people visit my site and read the articles, they're left in no doubt that I have a lot of expertise and experience in those areas.

So each big article both attracts potential clients and moves them closer to being ready to buy.

You don't need as many of these big articles as I have – but I'd advise having at least one that gives visitors to your site that “wow” moment. Especially when they compare it to the typical quality of marketing content on most sites.

Once you've got that one big article, I'd focus on shorter, more conversational pieces of content.

These are essentially to keep you top of mind. 

The way I look at it is my big content gets me to pole position. Once I'm there it just needs a little nudge every now and then to keep me there. It doesn't need another huge article.

And the shorter conversational pieces of content do something else too: they build a more personal relationship.

With emails like this it (hopefully) feels like I'm chatting to you.

The stories and occasional bits of fun help to make me seem more like a real person you could work with.

And I can make little calls to action to ask you to email me, or call me to talk about a project, or click a link to see a new product I'm offering.

I've found that this mix of one or more big pieces with regular little conversational pieces is the best mix of content.

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How often?

Posted byIan Brodie on October 6th, 2021.

One of the questions I (and anyone with a background in email marketing) gets asked the most often is “what's the best frequency to send emails?”.

And unfortunately, there's no simple one-size-fits-all answer.

Anyone who tells you that the “best” frequency for everyone no matter what their situation is daily or weekly or monthly or whatever is either trying to sell you something, or they've just not got a lot of varied experience.

But over a decade or so of sending an awful lot of emails (and advising and helping on an awful lot more) I've picked up a few interesting observations.

Firstly, every survey I've seen where people are asked if they want more or fewer emails has come back overwhelmingly “fewer”.

Yet at the same time, I've never seen a case of someone decreasing their email frequency and making more sales. Or even getting better engagement.

And I've seen many, many cases where people have increased their email frequency and got more sales, more clicks and more engagement – including myself.

So the first conclusion is that email frequency is one of those unusual cases where customer opinion is not a good guide to what to do.

Even direct feedback to you isn't a good guide either.

People's tolerance for email frequency is very variable. Some are at the very limit already and even a few more emails will push them over the edge. But most won't even notice.

So if you increase the frequency of your emails what happens is the people for whom it's now too much will complain.

But the people for whom it's now the right frequency and will get you better results than a lower frequency aren't going to email you and say “hey, I'm glad you're emailing more”. You'll only notice the difference in terms of actual results. 

(And in fact, you may well get better results even from the people who say they want fewer emails).

And truth be told, our emails are only one tiny part of our subscribers inboxes – so an increase from us rarely makes much of a difference overall.

That said, you don't want to be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I wouldn't recommend immediately jumping from a monthly newsletter to a daily email. The difference will freak out your subscribers and there's a good chance you won't be able to keep it up anyway.

So what do I actually recommend?

Firstly, it's worth remembering that frequency is a function of value. If your subscribers find your emails really useful, you can send more.

Secondly, the people most likely to buy from you are likely to want to hear more from you rather than less.

Of course, we've all got stories of clients who barely opened an email for years, then popped up and bought a huge project. But those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

By and large, people who find your content useful and relevant and like your style are the most likely to buy from you, and they're the most likely to want to get more of your content.

Thirdly, your subscribers are likely to be at their most enthusiastic and open to receiving more emails just after they've signed up.

Most normal people don't sign up for “get my free report on the solution to problem X and my regular emails on how to implement it” and then think “well, I hope he doesn't send me too many emails about that thing I wanted I just signed up for”.

That means you can send emails more frequently in your “welcome sequence” of initial emails than you might later.

Fourthly, the biggest issue isn't really frequency, it's time.

I find it easy to squeeze in 5 or 10 or 30 minutes here and there to browse the web, read the sports pages and watch a couple of TV shows every week. I find it really hard to imagine finding 2 hours and 43 minutes all in one go to watch the latest Bond film.

So it's better to send short emails more frequently than a really long email once in a blue moon. (And yeah, I know this email breaks that rule – sorry!)

And finally, the best email frequency is…well, it's a process not a destination.

Bearing in mind the previous points hint that you can probably get better results by emailing more frequently, I would start by trying to email just a bit more often.

If you currently email monthly, try every two weeks.

If you email every two weeks, go for weekly (generally speaking I find weekly is a good default for most people). 

If you're emailing weekly, throw in the occasional additional email midweek.

Track your results.

Are you getting more clicks to your website and (eventually) more sales? Or more enquiries or more email replies.

If it works, increase a bit more.

Then a bit more.

In theory, stop when your results stop improving.

In practice though, nine times out of ten, you'll run out of the capacity to write more frequently well before your results stop improving.

Personally I've settled on twice a week.

I did monthly a long, long time ago.

I got better results from weekly (and was able to keep up the habit easier).

I tried emailing 3-4 times a week. It got better results than weekly (not 3-4 times as good, but definitely better). But I struggled to keep it up – I was spending too much time writing emails and not enough time on my other marketing.

So I've settled on twice a week.

It's a habit I can keep up. And it gets good results for me.

You have different clients to me with different expectations and different inboxes. Your answer will be different to mine.

But gently tweaking over time works for everyone.

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Weird coincidence

Posted byIan Brodie on October 3rd, 2021.

So here's a weird coincidence.

Last email I promised I'd send you an advanced tip on how to focus your offers on the people who are actually interested in what you're promoting and avoid pushing stuff at people who aren't.

And then a couple of days later I got asked to contribute to an article on email segmentation on the exact same topic.

I guess there's just something in the air :) 

The issue the tip relates to is when we have a product or topic that might be of interest only to part of our list. Or for times when our product has a long sales cycle so at any given time most people aren't ready to buy.

If we try to message our whole list with our offer we have this dilemma of knowing that more emails will result in more sales. But more emails will also annoy potential customers who just aren't interested in this particular offer or just aren't ready quite yet.

In other words we end up in this trade-off between emailing more to get immediate sales, but risking losing high value potential customers for the future. So usually we end up going for what we think is a safe “middle ground” of a few emails but not too many.

The problem with that is that the middle ground actually means you're sending too many emails for the people who aren't interested but too few for the ones who are.

It's the worst of both worlds.

A better method is to use an initial email to try to identify who's interested in the topic and then mail more to them and less to the people who aren't.

A simple way of doing this is to send a useful email on the topic to your entire list, and in the call to action ask them to click if they'd like more on this topic.

Then you can follow up with the people who clicked with more useful information knowing they're interested so you're not mailing too often. And you don't send the follow-ups to the people who didn't click.

And what that means if you have a relevant product or service is that including calls to action to offer that product or service in the follow up emails won't be seen as too much full-on selling.

Now of course, it's not 100% accurate. There might still be some people who are interested in the topic right now but not in a product or service that could help them with it.

But the vast majority of people interested enough to click a link to hear more about a topic aren't going to get upset if your follow up emails mention a product or service which helps with that topic.

So instead of trying to find a middle ground frequency and tone for everyone, you send more to those who are interested and make more offers; and send less (or nothing) to those who aren't.

And it really does work.

Whenever I launch a new product I try to use this strategy to focus on the people who right now are interested in the areas the product helps with.

I still do one general email to offer the product. But the people who are interested will get at least 3 or more emails on the topic with useful information and the offer.

And I find that almost all my sales come from those who clicked that initial link and got the additional emails.

Net net, I get more sales, but fewer unsubscribes from “not ready now but could be in future” potential customers.

And honestly, it's not that complicated to implement. Just send the initial email, tag anyone who clicks, and then send the next emails to the tagged people.

So while it's an advanced tip conceptually. In practice it becomes quite easy to do.

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A leap too far

Posted byIan Brodie on September 26th, 2021.

What has to happen before someone buys from you?

We've talked about various beliefs that need to be established over time.

But for most of us there's also something simpler.

They have to talk to us. Or at the very least experience us in action like on a webinar.

So for all the cleverness about understanding motivations and psychology, we mustn't forget to ask people to take a simple action that gets us interacting with them.

I'd advise thinking hard about what format that action should take.

I see a lot of people offering a “quick chat” or “let's hop on a call to discuss your needs” or some form of strategy session.

Better than nothing (which is what most people offer). But in my experience, those “quick chat” offers just don't come across as very attractive to potential clients. 

If I'm going to give up my valuable time I want it to be for something that's going to be more useful to me than a quick chat or telling you about my problems. I want to get some value from the time I invest.

And there's something a bit scary about a 1-1 call.

Most have us have been burned at least once by hopping on a call we thought was just a chat or was supposed to be about giving us some ideas – but turned out to be a thinly disguised sales pitch.

Sadly the coaching and consulting worlds have been inundated in recent years with “experts” teaching how to do strategy sessions and enrolment calls that are repackaged boiler room sales techniques.

So clients have got a bit more wary.

I you're going to offer a 1-1 call of some kind, make sure it's very specific, the value from it is clear, and you don't just follow some kind of “tell me your goals, visualise how much achieving them would mean to you, I can help you get there if you pay me a fortune” type script.

Personally I prefer regular webinars or group calls as ways of potential clients getting to interact with you, see you in action and get value from you. Without the risk of it turning into a high pressure sales call.

And, of course, they're a bit more efficient for you.

But however you do them, the key is to plan them, be really clear on the value people will get from them, and then offer them regularly. 

Next time, a little tip on how to make more of these call to action offers – without it seeming like you're offering more or being pushy in any way.

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Sequences that sell

Posted byIan Brodie on September 15th, 2021.

You may have noticed that in this series of emails about content publishing I've been encouraging you to try to write in sequences rather than one-offs.

Two reasons really.

One is the obvious one: sequences sell better than individual pieces of content.

A sequence of emails about one topic (for example) allows you to explore the issue more to highlight how big it is.

It lets you bring in different ideas and examples to demonstrate the breadth of your expertise and experience.

It gives you more breathing room to tell a story or two that help to build your relationship.

If you think about those beliefs you need to establish before someone will be ready to buy as a ladder you climb step by step, it's much easier to climb one ladder at a time by using an sequence of content than to climb multiple ladders at once by switching between topics repeatedly.

But there's another big reason for using content sequences.

It's much easier on you.

Now obviously writing a whole sequence of content isn't easier than writing an individual piece. But writing a sequence of 5 pieces of content on the same topic is much easier than writing 5 pieces of content on different topics.

The biggest block for most people with their content is coming up with the idea and getting started.

Once you have a decent idea, the writing usually flows.

If you write in sequences you only have to come up with one decent idea, then expand on it. You don't have to start from a blank sheet of paper every time.

Starting the sequence could be as simple as picking a topic and breaking it down into half a dozen sub topics. Then you can get going on the first.

Or you could write them all in a batch.

Or do what I've done with this sequence: just start off with a big idea, write the first piece of content, then for each following piece, just pick up where you left off.

All you have to do is re-read the previous piece and you can get back in flow quickly.

Much, much easier than staring at a blank sheet of paper (or screen) and thinking “what should I write about today?”

And, of course, the same principle applies to making videos or any type of content.

Think hard once. Then reap the benefits.

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How to craft persuasive content

Posted byIan Brodie on September 12th, 2021.

The story so far…

• To get people ready to buy, you need to establish certain beliefs (e.g. that they have an important problem worth solving, that you have a unique solution that will work for them, etc).
• But to establish those beliefs you need their attention and interest.  To do that you must focus your content on the things they care about.

What I'm about to describe is a simple method for doing that.

It'll feel a bit mechanical the first few times you do it. But over time it becomes second nature and you do it without even really thinking about it.

Your starting point is a problem or goal your potential client has that you can help with.

Whenever you create content about your clients' biggest problems or goals you're on safe ground. You know that inherently they're going to be interested in the topic.

Your next step is to find a hook. Something interesting about the topic that will get their attention and get them to read or watch or listen for long enough for you to get your message across.

From my experience, there are a handful of hooks that will consistently get the attention of potential clients:

• Revealing the real root cause of the problems they've been having
• A diagnostic that will allow them to understand their problem better
• Benchmarking and examples of what their competitors or other successful businesses are doing about the problem/goal they have
• Quick wins and immediate actions they can take to make progress on their problem/goal
• A roadmap, masterplan or step-by-step guide they can follow to achieve their goal
• A new insight, idea or method that will give them an edge and allow them to achieve a goal or solve a problem in a new way
• New research or insights from other fields into the problem they're facing (e.g. new psychological research into motivation)
• New examples of famous people dealing with similar issues they're dealing with (e.g. lessons from sports stars, historical figures, business leaders)
• Your own experiences with the problem/goal

There are many others I'm sure, but this is a good starting point. For any particular client problem or goal you can look down this list and find at least 2 or 3 different ways you could talk about the topic.

The next step is to then think about how you can use that topic to establish one of the beliefs you've listed as being necessary for someone to be ready to buy.

The hooks I've listed tend to lend themselves nicely to some beliefs:

• Root causes and diagnostics can build the belief that they have an important problem they need to address.
• Benchmarking and new research can highlight that what they're doing now won't get them to a solution.
• Quick wins, roadmaps, and talking about your own experiences with a problem can all establish your credibility.

For other beliefs you have to work a bit harder.

For example, if you want to show that you'd be great to work with a good way to do it is to talk about a client's success and mention a couple of things you did with them.

You could do that when you're teaching a quick win by talking about what the client did to get quick wins. Or show how they applied your roadmap or new methodology.

Or you could mention some of your clients in the form of benchmarking best practices.

All it takes is a little thought and you should be able to find a way to illustrate or explain the topic in a way that gets across the beliefs you're trying to establish.

As I said, it can feel a bit mechanical and forced the first few times you do it, but simply going through each of the topics and hooks you've come up with one by one and thinking about which of your target beliefs you can establish with them really does work.

You might not be able to weave every belief into a short content series, but you can always do enough to serious increase your chances of getting someone ready to buy.

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Before you can persuade you must do this

Posted byIan Brodie on September 8th, 2021.

If you've been following along this email series then by now you should have:

• Identified the beliefs your potential clients need to have to be ready to buy
• Added to those with objections and questions they need answered
• Ordered them into a rough sequence based on the order they need to be addressed in

But if you want to turn them into a sequence of content that really persuades, you need to do one critical thing first…

You need to package up those beliefs, objections and questions in a way that's interesting and valuable.

Because the thing about content is that reading it (or watching it or listening to it) is optional.

Just because you need people to see how big their problem is and to understand how great you'd be to work doesn't mean you can just tell them that.

A series of emails or blog posts or videos telling people they've got huge problems but not to worry because you can fix them and you're a great person to work with is not exactly the kind of riveting entertainment  people voluntarily tune into every day.

Not to mention the fact that just telling people how great you are isn't all that believable.

If a magician wants you to believe a deck of cards is perfectly ordinary does he just tell you it is?

Nope: you wouldn't believe him and it's not very entertaining.

Instead, he casually hands the deck of cards to an audience member and asks them to shuffle them.

That's much more interesting, and it's much more likely to get you to believe the cards are ordinary because you come to the conclusion yourself (“if that guy shuffled them they must be OK”).

Persuasion with content is best done indirectly – embedded in something that's inherently interesting and valuable.

Don't tell people you have new ideas on leadership. Demonstrate it by sharing leadership tips they haven't heard before.

Don't tell people you're great to work with. Tell an interesting story about a successful client and let them come to their own conclusion that you must be great to work with.

The trick is that although your goal is to get across your message, you need to start with their goal of reading something entertaining and valuable. Then you weave in your message.

We'll talk about how to do that in the next email.