Ian Brodie
https://www.ianbrodie.comIan Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and the creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.
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Posted by
Ian Brodie on May 20th, 2018.
In last week's email, we looked at how to analyse your competitors' marketing by looking at major elements like their primary promise, additional benefits, key features, primary marketing approach and espoused differences.
So right now you should have sitting in front of you a chart with each of these elements for your top 3-5 competitors (if you don't, I suggest you refer back to last week's email and create one).
Your next step is to review each element looking for common themes. Do all your major competitors make the same basic promise to their clients? Or perhaps each solution has the same basic features (e.g. everyone does training but no-one does coaching)?
When I looked at my marketing for Momentum Club recently I noticed that all the major competing marketing programs either had a simple promise of “get more clients” or claimed to help their buyers “get more clients without being pushy”.
In other words they were either going for a general appeal, or for people who felt uncomfortable with marketing and sales.
What I noticed was that many of my clients were talking about how they struggled to find the time for marketing and how useful it was to have bite-sized lessons they could fit into a busy schedule.
And yet no one else seemed to mention this vital aspect in their marketing. Either because their programs couldn't help, or they just didn't realise how important it was.
So I started adjusting my marketing to stress the time-saving side of Momentum Club.
It doesn't take precedence over the core promise of winning more clients, but it's something that makes my program that much more attractive to the many people for whom time is an issue.
You can do the same for each of the elements in your analysis. There's almost always something you can say about your products and services that your competitors can't or don't say.
Don't change everything. Just highlighting your difference in one or two key areas is enough to set you apart and give potential clients a solid reason for choosing you.
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Posted byIan Brodie on May 13th, 2018.
One of the best uses of competitive intelligence (aka spying on your competitors) is to learn what not to do.
I don't mean that in the sense that they must be doing something wrong (though often they are).
I mean it in the sense that you need to stand out and do something different, even if what they're doing works for them.
I went through this exercise myself a while back, here's a quick and effective way of doing it.
Firstly, list the people you think compete directly with you. That means the people your potential clients would consider as an alternative to you even if they don't do precisely the same thing as you.
For example, if you do leadership coaching, maybe your client would consider training or a mentoring program or online learning as an alternative.
Be realistic: as a leadership coach you're unlikely to be competing head to head with Marshall Goldsmith, for example. Pick the people who end up on the same shortlists as you.
Then look at their marketing: their websites and any other promotional activities they do.
For each of your main competitors look at their main service or product offering and make a list of:
- What their primary promise is. What's a one-sentence summary of the main thing they say clients will get if they hire them?
- The additional benefits that clients will also get from hiring them. For example, the primary promise of a business coach might be to double your sales. Additional benefits might be to give you more free time, improve the capabilities of your staff, etc.
- The main features of their service or product. If they're a coach, do they meet face to face with clients? Over the phone? Is it weekly or monthly? Etc. If it's a product, is it online? Is it a one-off or ongoing membership? Are there live-calls? Etc.
- Their primary go-to-market strategy. Do they win clients through networking? Do they do seminars? Are they running online ads? Do they have a defined “funnel”?
- Finally (and most importantly) what do they say about how they're different? More experienced? A different way of doing things?
I'm going to show you how to analyse this information next week, but for this week your task is to do this analysis for your top 3-5 direct competitors.
See you next week!
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Posted byIan Brodie on May 6th, 2018.
I've come over all philosophical today.
In particular, I was musing on how strange a world it is where we can all, no matter how small our business is, reach an audience interested in what we have to say (as long as it's interesting).
And we can all, within reason, find a market willing to buy what we want to sell.
It's not easy, of course. But with work it's possible.
And strangest of all, we can market in ways that those of us who aren't so outgoing can enjoy.
And that's very different to what business was like even just a decade ago where you almost always had to market in traditional ways to traditional customers with traditional products.
Nowadays it's no big deal to do something different or be someone different. In fact it can help you get noticed.
All it takes is a little bravery to try something off the beaten track. And a little application and persistence to keep at it to make it work.
Because when it works, doing what you really want to do rather than the “same old same old” as everyone else is hugely rewarding.
How strange then, that more people don't do it :)
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Posted byIan Brodie on May 2nd, 2018.
It's awful being considered “just a vendor” by your clients.
In fact, if you're seen as a vendor they're not really “clients”. More like “buyers” or “customers”.
That's why one of the most common pieces of advice you'll hear is to “stop being a vendor, be more like a doctor”.
“Customers tell vendors what they want…but doctors diagnose their problems and tell them what to do. Be like a doctor, not a vendor”.
The trouble is that while flipping the relationship so that you're the one with all the power may boost your ego, it's not a healthy relationship for either of you.
And these days, it's increasingly unlikely to work.
The thing is that while in previous generations we might have unquestioningly done what doctors told us, these days we check out our symptoms on the web and we want a discussion, not just to be told what to do.
The same goes for being an authority in any field.
Authority these days doesn't mean being some distant expert who expects people to bow down to their genius and who deliberately makes themselves difficult to reach.
Today we expect authorities to be open. We expect them to be human. We don’t expect them to play power games.
Experts: absolutely. But ones we can talk to adult to adult, not child to parent.
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Posted byIan Brodie on April 29th, 2018.
“Strategy beats tactics”.
I'm sure you've heard that more than a few times.
But what does it mean when it comes to marketing?
Strategy is understanding what your clients care about and what will motivate them to buy. Tactics are the latest whizzy survey tools.
Strategy is knowing that winning clients takes multiple steps. That you need to attract them and then nurture your relationship with them before they'll be ready to buy. Tactics are things like Facebook Advertising that might work today, but will be rather less effective in a few years time. Or the choice of which email marketing system to use (which tends to occupy 10x the amount of time as writing effective emails despite being 1/10 as important!)
Strategy is knowing that it's way easier to sell more to an existing client than to a cold one, so investing in marketing with lifetime value in mind. Tactics are which lead magnet or initial product you sell them.
Tactics are important, without them your strategy just doesn't work.
But good tactics last a few years. Good strategy lasts a lifetime.
Understand strategy and you can pick the right tactics and outsource them to others if needed. Fail to understand strategy and you jump from silver bullet to silver bullet and are at the mercy of every vendor who tells you their tactic will “explode your business” or whatever the latest hype is.
So…what's your strategy?
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Posted byIan Brodie on April 22nd, 2018.
Nobody wants to be pitched at.
You know this from your life outside of work. We don't willingly invite people in to pitch their services at us. In fact many people have signs outside their houses telling salespeople exactly where to go.
Yet when it comes to work, we often forget that there are alternatives to pitching stuff at clients. Much better ones. All it takes is a little thought.
Example: one of the easiest “sells” you can get is for existing or ex clients to buy more stuff from you.
But how do you offer that stuff to them?
If you just call to ask for a meeting to talk about some of your other services they might value you're basically saying “let me come and pitch at you”.
Not surprisingly, you won't get many people saying yes.
It's similar with asking to find out more about their business. They know what's coming, and there's no value for them in telling you all about their business and their issues.
Instead, put a bit of time into how you could make the experience valuable to them.
You still want to find out about their issues that you could help with. You still want to show them some of your services they might value.
But instead of a pitch, turn it into something where you share valuable information in those areas.
A simple example would be to create some case studies from clients you've worked with who've made improvements in the areas that you think your other clients would like to improve too.
And then offer to come and share those case studies and show them what these companies did that enabled them to make those big improvements.
(Please note: by case studies I don't mean the usual salesy nonsense you often see on websites that just basically says what the client problem was and the improvements you got. There needs to be real valuable information in the case studies about what they did and how they did it. Something the people you present it to would find useful).
How much more appealing does that sound than an offer to come and talk about their business or tell them about your services?
Lots.
They get useful insights that will help them. And, of course, if they're interested you'll end up talking about their issues in that area and your services that might help them.
But with no pitching needed.
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Posted byIan Brodie on April 19th, 2018.
Of all the problems I hear from people struggling to win enough clients, probably the most frequent is “I just can't find the time for marketing”.
It's an insidious problem. No matter how smart you are, no matter how brilliant the marketing strategies you're trying to implement: if you can't find the time for them then you won't get results.
And it's such an easy trap to fall into. If we're not naturals at marketing we probably don't know how to do it efficiently. And we probably don't enjoy it, so we kid ourselves that we're doing OK, we have enough clients for now, something will turn up anyway…and so we avoid doing the marketing we really need.
But it absolutely is possible to fit effective marketing into a busy schedule. What it takes is a combination of mindset, ruthless prioritisation, scheduling and techniques for doing your marketing efficiently.
And those four factors are exactly what you'll learn in my new “Ultimate Guide” – How To Make The Time For Marketing.
If you're struggling to find the time to do the marketing you need to win clients then it could be a real help.
>> Click here for details <<
And, of course, please do comment and share if you find it helpful.
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Posted byIan Brodie on April 16th, 2018.
Of all the problems I hear from people struggling to win enough clients, probably the most frequent is “I just can't find the time for marketing”.
It's an insidious problem. No matter how smart you are, no matter how brilliant the marketing strategies you're trying to implement: if you can't find the time for them then you won't get results.
And it's such an easy trap to fall into. If we're not naturals at marketing we probably don't know how to do it efficiently. And we probably don't enjoy it, so we kid ourselves that we're doing OK, we have enough clients for now, something will turn up anyway…and so we avoid doing the marketing we really need.
But it absolutely is possible to fit effective marketing into a busy schedule. What it takes is a combination of mindset, ruthless prioritisation, scheduling and techniques for doing your marketing efficiently. And that's exactly what you'll learn in this guide.
Click here for the Ultimate Guide to Making the Time for Marketing »Featured
Posted byIan Brodie on April 15th, 2018.
When you're worried or struggling with something, there's no more reassuring phrase you can hear than “I'm on your side”.
You don't necessarily need a solution or an immediate answer to your problem. You just need to know you've got someone in your corner looking out for you.
Friends normally perform that role. But you can do it as a service provider too.
If your clients really feel you're on their side: that you understand them, want them to succeed and will do your very best to help them – then that creates a tremendous amount of loyalty.
Because if your clients know you're on their side, they'll try to reciprocate and be on your side too.
That means not only will they be loyal, they'll promote you to others and defend you against detractors.
What can you do to show your clients you're on their side?
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Posted byIan Brodie on April 8th, 2018.
I'm writing this email sitting in our lounge on a Saturday evening with a trashy comedy playing in the background. One of Owen Wilson's less successful exploits.
And as I racked my brains trying to think of a subject to write about, I realised there just might be a lesson in that trashy comedy.
It's not a classic by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing I would have paid to see. But it's kept me amused for an hour or so. And I'm glad I watched it.
And you know what? Sometimes our marketing can be like that too.
Not every blog post we write or email we send has to be a work of genius. Not every conversation needs to be sparkling. Not every follow-up needs to inspire your client to start working with you right away.
Sometimes a bit of light entertainment or a heartfelt message or just a call to say hi is just what the doctor ordered.
So don't beat yourself up if not everything you do is the epitome of insight and knowledge in your field. You need those super high-value pieces too, of course. Just not all the time.
And in fact, your audience doesn't want to have to put on their thinking cap every time they get something from you. Like me tonight, sometimes they want something a bit lighter.
Ian Brodie on May 20th, 2018.
