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The missing link in marketing’s most venerable formula

Posted byIan Brodie on October 6th, 2019.

I got an email from a subscriber whe, like me, is a lover of magic. He wanted to know if and how he could make use of his hobby in his marketing.

The answer was “maybe” and I'll explain in a second.

I'm a big fan of one of marketing's oldest formulae: AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action).

But as it's often taught, there's a missing link.

Because the important point about AIDA is that you're not just looking to get anyone's attention. You're not just looking to get them interested in anything or to desire anything or take any action.

It's all got to be aligned.

You want the attention of the people you specifically want to take your action. So whatever you use to get attention must target those people.

You need to get their interest. But not just in anything. It needs to be in something related to the action you want them to take.

You need the desire you build to be about the action you want them to take.

Often, you see AIDA applied without that alignment. Especially the attention part.

People will try stunts and tricks to get your attention – like the Facebook ads you used to see with red boxes around them or attractive faces (and other body parts) that had nothing to do with the product they were promoting.

They got attention all right. But the attention of the wrong people with no real interest in the product.

In the case of my subscriber wanting to use his magic hobby in his marketing, the key is to make it relevant and aligned with what he wants to sell.

You can get someone's attention with a magic trick. But if that attention isn't related – even tangentially – to what you're promoting, then it's wasted.

For example, if you did a magic trick where you burned a $100 bill, then magically restored it – that would get attention. But it would need to be linked to some sort of product that helped you avoid “burning money”. 

That would make sense and would flow nicely on to building interest and desire in the product and to people taking action to find out more.

But if the product was completely unrelated it would fall flat. It would be like shouting “fire” to get attention then saying “now that I have your attention, I'd like to talk about our new range of kitchens”.

That kind of attention-grabbing just annoys people.

So in all your marketing, make sure there's a link between how you grab their attention and what you then do to build interest and desire and the action you'd like them to take. 

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Action Breeds Action

Posted byIan Brodie on September 29th, 2019.

Last week I mentioned that getting your audience to take action is an immense step towards getting them to buy from you because it gives them confidence in their own ability to achieve something.

Ideally with your help, of course.

There's something else action does.

It breeds more action.

When we receive emails or any communication we tend to mentally classify them into a few distinct piles.

There's a pile of stuff we're going to ignore.

There's a pile of stuff we're going to take action on.

And there's a pile in between. A pile we'll read and take notice of, but not necessarily act on.

Hopefully, your marketing doesn't end up in the first pile. And if you're sending people useful, relevant, interesting information it probably won't.

But there's a good chance it will end up in the “read but don't do anything” pile.

Generally speaking, most people read email newsletters – even great ones – and don't do anything.

They might think “good idea” or “I'll try that at some point”.

But it's relatively rare that they do anything in the next 48 hours directly resulting from the email.

That's not because the email isn't good. It's just that it's not immediately actionable.

That's fine: not every email could or should be immediately actionable.

But if you go for a long time without any immediate actions your readers can take, they begin to see your emails more as entertainment than advice.

Nice to read. Nice to re-affirm their beliefs. Nice to get some new ideas they might do something with someday.

But not emails where they immediately expect to do something when they see your name as the sender.

The downside of that is that eventually, you really do need them to take action if you want them to buy something from you (or get on a call to discuss it).

Because if they've never taken action on any of your emails, then asking them to buy something is a heckuva first ask.

On the other hand, if they expect to take action on your emails then when that action is to click to buy something or to set up a call with you, it's much less of a jump.

Go check your outbox: what was the last email or other communication you sent to potential clients?

Did it have an action in it that was easy for them to do?

What about the one before that? And the one before that?

If you have to go back a long long way before you find something that isn't purely educational and instead suggests an action, you might have a problem.

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Why action is your greatest marketing weapon

Posted byIan Brodie on September 22nd, 2019.

If you think through the reasons why you typically hesitate to buy something big when you're a potential client yourself, it can give you clues on what you need to do in your own marketing.

Let's say I was looking to hire a personal trainer.

I'd want to know if the trainer was good at their job, of course, and had successfully helped people like me get fit.

But at the back of my mind, I'd always be worrying: “maybe it worked for them, but I'm different.”

Maybe I won't be able to do the exercises. Or stick to the plan. Or find the time. Or a whole host of other reasons why it won't work for me specifically.

If you perform a service for people, or coach them or advise them or train them then they're likely to have similar concerns.

“Will this service work for me? Am I coachable? Will I be able to follow this advice? Will I be able to implement what I've learned in the training?”

Normally, of course, we call those things objections and salespeople learn techniques to overcome them.

But overcoming objections is tough.

It means being persuasive enough that the person with the objection ignores it or overrules it.

And that's not easy when the objections are primarily about the person themselves being unsure if they'll be able to do something. How do you persuade someone of that?

A much better approach is to get the person to take action that will prove to them – at least in a small way – that they can do this.

If the personal trainer sent me a video with a couple of simple exercises and got me to do them every day for 5 days, then that would give me much more confidence that I'd be able to do the full program than any amount of clever persuasion techniques.

And it's why, in your marketing, you should be trying to get your potential clients to take action.

A lead magnet is a great place to do this.

Normally with lead magnets we focus on them being attractive so that potential clients sign up to get them. And we focus on them delivering value, because that raises our credibility.

But ideally, we should also use our lead magnets to get our potential clients to take action. 

Even if it's a small action, if it gets results for them it will significantly raise their confidence that they too can do this. And that will go a long way to getting them ready to buy something from you.

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“Persuasion” is the enemy

Posted byIan Brodie on September 15th, 2019.

If you pay a lot of attention to what's in vogue in marketing then you'll know that the dominant theme over the last decade or so has been persuasion.

Whether that's copywriting or NLP or all sorts of tricks and techniques to try to get people to do what you want: persuasion is sexy.

We've come to believe that marketing is all about persuasion. Take what you have and convince people they want to buy it.

The best selling books on marketing are titles like Influence, Persuade and Hooked.

They're all about clever tools and techniques you can use to get people to do what you want.

Persuasion is sexy to marketing people because it puts them at the centre of the universe. It spins a tale where no matter what the product is, give it to a great marketer and they'll persuade people to buy it.

And it's nonsense.

Or more accurately, while a great marketer can improve the sales of any product; their skills at persuasion are by far the least important thing in marketing.

Years ago, back when I was still active in the world of close-up magic, I was lucky enough to attend a small workshop with one of the world's few true geniuses, Juan Tamariz.

At the workshop, Tamariz talked about what made a great magic trick. At the time (and still today in fact) the dominant school of thought in magic was that presentation was the most important factor in a great trick. You have to engage your audience, entertain them, tell great stories.

“No” said Tamariz.

Presentation is important. But it's just the final layer.

Much more important than the presentation is the trick itself and how magical it is.

If you could walk into a room and suddenly levitate and start flying, it wouldn't matter how you presented it; it would be utterly magical.

On the other hand, if people see through your trick and guess how it's done it doesn't matter how well you present it, it's not magical. It might be a good story, but it's not magic. 

Next in importance is how you routine the trick so that your audience's focus is in all the right places. So that they see the magic and not the secret moves.

Finally comes the presentation. The layer of entertainment you put on top to enhance the trick.

Marketing is a lot like magic in my experience.

We think that persuasion is the most important part, just like many magicians think presentation is the most important part.

But much more important than persuasion is your offer.

Creating a product or service that your ideal clients actually want.

That's the first and most vital job of marketing. Understand who your ideal clients are and what they value; and make sure your product or service delivers that.

Next is clear communication. Making sure, just like with magic, that your audience is focused in the right places. In other words, they “get” the value that your product or service is going to bring them.

Only then does persuasion kick in.

Persuasion can enhance a great offer with clear communication.

But it can't replace it.

It's trendy to talk about clever persuasion techniques and to think that somehow this is where we should be focusing. 

But the good news, especially if you don't have months to spend learning these fancy techniques, is that what really counts is the fundamentals.

Make sure you're offering something that your clients truly want. Make sure you communicate the value to them in clear and simple terms. 

Do that and you won't have to worry too much about persuasion.

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Don’t let the next big thing ruin your current good thing

Posted byIan Brodie on September 1st, 2019.

There's a phrase I hear a lot when I talk to people about their marketing. it runs something along the lines of…

“Yeah – we did that and it worked really well for us…then we stopped doing it.”

I hear versions of it time and time again. Often in groups where people ask what someone's experience of a certain technique or approach is.

There's always someone who's done it, had good success with it, then stopped doing it.

And often they follow up with “…perhaps we should start doing it again”.

Written out like this it seems mad that you'd stop doing something that's working for you. But I've done it myself many times.

The old thing becomes boring. And something new and exciting comes along that promises even better results.

So you stop doing your old, boring-but-successful thing and try the new thing.

Usually it doesn't work as well.

But then you move on to the next new thing. And the next.

We all do it.

But maybe next time the urge comes to change what you're doing, rather than thinking about the next big thing, have a look at what's worked for you in the past you could try again.

Maybe jazz it up a bit, make it even better. But give that old, proven thing a try again. it's got a pretty good chance of working for you.

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What’s your “on ramp”

Posted byIan Brodie on August 25th, 2019.

In his book Retention Point, membership and subscription expert Robert Skrob talks about the importance of having a “Member On-Ramp” to get your new subscription members up and running and getting value from their membership quickly.

Key activities include:

• Reselling the benefits of their subscriptions (so they're motivated to take action)
• Getting them to set a realistic short-term goal to work towards
• Getting them to free-up time to do the actions they need to do to benefit from their membership
• Giving them some quick win activities to get results fast

All aimed at what I talked about last week: time to value. Getting new members to experience the value of their subscription quickly so they become loyal customers rather than quit their membership.

Of course, you probably don't run a membership site or do subscription boxes. But the On-Ramp concept can still work for you.

For new clients, the faster they get results from working with you, the more motivated they become to do the work needed to get long term results and the more likely they are to retain you for future business.

A good On-Ramp can get you over the inevitable hiccups and roadblocks you get on many projects. I know to my own cost the problems that can happen when a client doesn't schedule enough time to work with you or assumes it will all be plain sailing.

And you can apply the On-Ramp to new contacts and subscribers too.

Every email list has a huge amount of churn: subscribers who sign up but then leave after a few emails.

Subscribers who get value from your emails quickly, however, tend to stay as subscribers for life.

Building an On-Ramp isn't hard. We just have to think about what we need to do, then make sure we do it for every new subscriber (through the initial emails they get) and every new client (through our personal interactions with them),

You can get started by asking yourself these questions:

• What can I say to remind my new subscribers (or clients) of the value they signed up to get and why it's worth following my advice? How can I paint a picture of what things could be like if they do what I recommend?
• How can I get them to set a realistic short-term goal for their work with me? 
• What advice can I give them to free up time to do the work they'll need to do to achieve that goal?
• What is one thing they can do quickly that will bring them an immediate return on investment?

Good answers to these questions will make sure your new clients and subscribers stay engaged and loyal rather than drifting off.

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What’s your “time to value”?

Posted byIan Brodie on August 18th, 2019.

In the “Software as a Service” world they have a metric they pay a lot of attention to: “time to value”.

It's the time from someone signing up for a service (for example on a free trial or paid plan) to them first realising how valuable the product is going to be for them.

Once they realise that value, of course, they're hooked.

If they don't realise the value before their trial ends or they have to pay another monthly subscription, there's a high chance they'll quit.

Realising the value doesn't mean they need to have already got all the end results they're looking for from the service. Just enough of an indication of what they're likely to be.

Dropbox, for example, know that once someone has added a file to their shared folder, they'll “get it”. Facebook know that once a new user connects with ten friends, they'll begin to get things on their feed they're interested about and get engaged.

So not surprisingly, the goal of these SaaS companies is to get their new users to take those actions as soon as possible.

So they make it really simple. And they lead them through taking those actions as part of onboarding them into using the service.

And if they don't take those actions, they remind them in the app or by email.

They obsess about this because they know that the number one determinant of whether someone will stay with them is how fast they get value or at least see what it's going to be.

Not how much they sell the service. Or the quality of their copywriting. Or how well they build a relationship.

They know it's time to value because they measure everything obsessively.

Now most of us run human businesses, not software businesses. But there's a lot we can learn from this approach.

Firstly: do you know what value your potential clients are looking for from you when you first connect with them?

A quick hint here: people who connect with you on Linkedin or meet you at an event are looking for something very different to people who sign up for your email list.  

Secondly: are you doing everything you can to deliver the value they're looking for as fast as possible? Minimising time to value.

Do you “onboard them” when they first meet you like a SaaS firm would do?

Do you know what actions will lead them to see the value they're looking for? Do you lead them step-by-step through those actions?

Because if you don't get them to see value quickly you'll lose them.

They'll unsubscribe or stop paying attention to your emails. They won't make an effort to speak to you at the next event you're at. They won't pick up when you call.

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A surefire way to establish marketing habits

Posted byIan Brodie on August 11th, 2019.

Last week I talked about how important it was to establish marketing habits: something you do every day or every week on the marketing front.

It's less important what you do than the fact you do something consistently.

But how do you establish those habits?

I'm sure you've tried in the past to get into the habit of doing regular marketing. But it's just not that easy to keep something up that doesn't necessarily feel natural early on.

One of the best ways to establish a new habit is to use what BJ Fogg of Stanford University calls “habit stacking”. In essence, you stack a new habit you want to do on top of one you already have.

For example, I recently found I needed to wear a heated eye mask for 10 minutes a couple of times a day to deal with a little eye problem I had.

The problem was, I always seemed to have something more important or urgent to do than heat up an eye mask then lie down for 10 minutes with it on.

I went for days where I just wouldn't wear the mask at all. And that wasn't doing my eyes any good.

In the end, I cracked the eye mask habit by stacking it on top of my coffee-drinking habit.

I made a resolution that whenever I had my morning coffee or my first coffee of the afternoon, I would use the mask.

And it worked.

I didn't have to think about anything. I just made my coffee, drank it, bunged the eye mask in the microwave for 30 seconds to heat it up, then lay down in the living room with it on.

The two habits kind of merged. I did it without thinking.

You can do exactly the same with your marketing habits.

Write down the habits you already have that you do in a similar place or time to the new habit you want to establish.

For example, if you want to write a blog post every week, what else do you do every week at a consistent time that involves sitting at your computer?

Frankly, for most of us, it should be pretty easy to find a regular slot at our desk. But you also want one when you're fresh and ready to write and be creative, not worn out.

So “5pm on Friday after I've just processed all the remaining emails for the week” is probably not the best habit to piggyback on.

But if you have a habit like I do of planning your week first thing on a Monday morning, then that can be a great habit to build on.

Turn that habit into “First thing on Monday morning I go to a coffee shop with my laptop and plan my week. Then I spend an hour writing a blog post.”

Work on one habit at a time.

Once you have your new habit established you can add others stacking on the back of other regular activities.

Or you can stack on to your new habit. So Monday morning becomes “First thing on Monday morning I go to a coffee shop with my laptop and plan my week. Then I spend an hour writing a blog post. Then I spend 30 minutes emailing and calling my top clients and prospects in rotation to keep in touch.”

Keep doing this and you'll become an incredibly effective marketer without it ever being hard work.

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Progress, not perfection

Posted byIan Brodie on August 4th, 2019.

Here's something that can help you get more clients no matter what stage you're at in your business.

One of the things that defines top performers in any field is the habits they've developed.

Great athletes train habitually. Great writers write habitually.

And if you want to be successful with marketing it needs to become a habit for you.

Not something you do when you have time. Not something you binge at when you need clients. Something you do week-in, week-out like clockwork.

The good news is that great habits start out as small habits.

If you're not doing any regular marketing at the moment, then start by picking one simple thing to do for 15 minutes a day.

That could be emailing old contacts to keep in touch. Writing a blog post or email for 15 minutes. Connecting with potential clients on Linkedin.

And if you are doing regular marketing, you can add just 15 minutes a day to it and achieve a lot.

Make it just one thing you do each day. Don't try to do writing one day, keeping in touch the next, connecting the next.

Just keep going with one thing for a week.

Then two weeks.

Then a month.

Then 60 days.

Pretty soon you have a marketing habit and you can add something more.

And like compound interest, all the little things you do week in, week out will multiply and over time they'll have a huge impact.