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Don’t reply – do this instead

Posted byIan Brodie on April 1st, 2018.

I don't know about you, but every now and then something I see in an email or posted on a website or on social media will get me really riled up.

Usually, it's when the author is just plain wrong. Like today when I read an email talking about how all marketing is becoming content marketing because of something Starbucks said (and missing the point that Starbucks were using the word content to mean traditional adverts, not what most people call content marketing).

Or the blog post that looked at the data on the best time to send emails and wrote off the fact that the highest opens and clicks were at weekends because “fewer emails get sent then” (yes – and that's exactly why you should send at weekends).

Sometimes I'll even reply to those emails or blog and social media posts to “correct them”. I can write a veritable essay in response to someone when I'm worked up!

And that's such a waste of time.

If you want to be seen as a leader in your field it should be you doing the publishing and having people respond to you – not you doing the responding.

In fact, if I took all the energy I've spent responding to other people's content I'm sure I could have written a couple of books by now. 

But for some reason, it's easier to respond than it is to initiate.

I'm getting better these days. I sometimes catch myself about to start writing a minor masterpiece in response to someone and think “hang on, maybe this would be better as an email I send out or a post of my own”.

I'm going to suggest you do the same. Rather than responding to things, initiate them. Use your energy in ways that are going to make you more prominent, not ones that are going to draw attention to others. 

(Even if it means you don't reply to my emails ;) )

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What’s the point of marketing?

Posted byIan Brodie on March 28th, 2018.

I've been a little quiet recently.

Partly because I'm in contemplative mood at the moment, pondering the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

And partly because Kathy's got me working behind the scenes on marketing for her latest Early Years Summit.

Watching Kathy's summit progress is fascinating. It's commercially successful, but it's much more than that.

For her audience (early years practitioners and educators) it's one of the few chances they get to experience free high-quality training from leading experts in their field. So when we run ads promoting the summit instead of the normal muted or sceptical response we get people enthusiastically sharing the ad with their friends or commenting on how much they're looking forward to it and how brilliant the last one was.

And when we post up screenshots of the day's videos and ask people what they learnt, the #1 message that comes through is how inspired people feel as a result of the summit.

Inspiring 10,000 or so people every six months is a pretty neat thing to do I think.

Which brings me back to the question “what's the point of marketing?”

If I look in my inbox at the emails from the dozens and dozens of marketing people I follow, a huge number of them just focus on the bottom line like it was the only thing that mattered.

Subject lines today include thing like “How I went from struggling to 2.5 million in sales”, “How to break through $1 million in organic sales” and all sorts.

And when I read their emails the central tenet seems to be that it's your job to do whatever it takes to “get the money”. And that if a ton of money is rolling in, you must be doing the right thing.

Now I'm not going to get all soppy here and say that money isn't important. Without money, most of us simply wouldn't be able to do what we wanted to do.

But sometimes it seems we lose track of what we really want and end up doing what others tell us is best.

I see coaches who love working with people 1-1 waste months of their lives and tons of money trying to create online products because some guru has told them they “shouldn't be exchanging time for money”.

I've seen great consultants switch from helping people to setting up Amazon businesses and trying to succeed in the cutthroat world of e-commerce because the guru they followed decided that selling courses on Amazon was more lucrative for him than selling courses on how to become seen as an expert.

I often look at all these emails in my inbox and all the amazing courses out there and think “wow – if I just did that…”. If I just did a big high-end event I could make millions. If I just did a little tripwire funnel I could make millions. If I just…

Yet whenever I've done what seemed the easiest or the most lucrative I've done OK – but have always ended up switching back because it just didn't meet a real need inside me. And it just “wasn't me”.

I love my membership program. I don't like working 1-1 so much. I love writing emails and making videos. I don't like reaching out to new people or anything with the word “cold” pre-appended to it. 

We all have preferences and things we're good at. And things we want to achieve that are more than just money. Maybe yours is to inspire thousands like Kathy's summit. Or to make a difference to a few important people. Or just to have a bit of fun.

The point of marketing is to ensure you're able to achieve your goals in ways you enjoy. So make sure you use marketing that lets you do that, rather than marketing that's worked for someone else with different goals and different preferences.

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Every client engagement should have one of these

Posted byIan Brodie on March 25th, 2018.

Do you do “post-project reviews”?

Not necessarily anything fancy, just giving some time for free to your clients after your work with them has finished to come back and review how that work went.

Done right, they can be both a great source of feedback and also a brilliant source of new work.

“Done right” means that you don't just focus on the work you did. That's important and feedback on it will be useful to you.

But far more useful to your client is to discuss what they need to do next.

What did they learn from your work together that they should apply to new projects?

What are the key barriers they're currently facing to continuing to make progress?

What's their vision for what comes next?

Not only are the answers to these questions helpful to your client, they also “tee up” the opportunity for you to talk about working together again.

What could be more natural after they've just talked about the barriers they face and their vision for the future than to talk about how you might be able to help them with that.

It's often difficult to get into a sales discussion without it feeling stilted. But in this case it's the most natural thing in the world.

So make sure you take advantage of it and get those meetings scheduled for every piece fo work you do.

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Two shortcuts to loyal clients

Posted byIan Brodie on March 18th, 2018.

OK – so right at the start before jumping in to shortcuts I want to say that obviously if you want loyal clients you have to do a great job for them and make it a brilliant experience.

That's your baseline. You can't just “hack” your way to loyal clients – you've got to do things right.

But there are some areas you can especially focus on to make it more likely that satisfied clients become loyal ones. And perhaps even into referrers or promoters for you.

The first is to make sure they get some kind of quick wins.

Even if it's something small, getting results fast gives you confidence. It means that for the rest of their relationship with you they'll assume things are going to work out well. They won't second guess or doubt.

And because they look at everything through a positive lens, every small win will seem bigger. Every setback, just a minor roadblock on the route to success. They'll stay with you through tough patches when they might have bailed if they hadn't had those early successes.

Or to turn it around, if you don't get them some results quickly then they might not stick around long enough to get the big, long-term wins they signed up for.

The second thing you can do is to quickly get them interacting with other people like them who are part of your community.

There's something very reassuring about knowing you're not alone. That others are going through the same things as you. That there are people you can talk to who are just that bit further on their journey than you.

Once your clients become active members of your community they'll gain value from those interactions themselves rather than just the work they do with you. They'll feel part of something bigger rather than just having a transactional relationship with you.

That community could be face to face: an invite to a free client and/or ex-client workshop.  It could be online in something simple like a Facebook group or forum. Or it could be a virtual mastermind for your clients using Skype, Zoom or one of the myriad of free video conferencing tools we have these days.

That interaction with others and the sense of community it creates is much stronger than you could ever get just by doing a great job alone.

And frankly, it's not that difficult to do if you put your mind to it.

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The authority from Lynemouth

Posted byIan Brodie on March 11th, 2018.

Back when my Mum was growing up in the little mining village of Lynemouth she used to sit on the school bus next to a kid called Sid Waddell.

Now if you're over 40 and British you'll know exactly who Waddell was. For over 30 years he was the “voice of darts” on British TV. He was so synonymous with the sport that when he died in 2012 they renamed the trophy given to the PDC World Champion as the Sid Waddell Trophy.

Sid was a smart kid. He won a scholarship to Cambridge. And as the biographer of many of the greats of the game his knowledge of darts was pretty strong.

But Sid wasn't the leading authority on darts just because of his expertise. There were plenty of darts experts. Sid had something more than that.

Firstly, he was a true champion of the game.

At Cambridge, he fought tooth and nail to have darts become a recognised sport worthy of a coveted “blue” (the award you get for representing the college in a match against Oxford) and managed to get it to “quarter blue” status. He championed the cause of darts with the BBC and then Sky Sports, helping it become one of the most televised and watched sports in the UK.

Secondly, he had personality.

His love of the sport shone through in all his commentaries. And he was known for his over-the-top quotes when describing matches…

“The atmosphere is so tense, if Elvis walked in, with a portion of chips… you could hear the vinegar sizzle on them.”

“William Tell could take an apple off your head, Taylor could take out a processed pea.”

 “When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer … Bristow's only 27.” (on Eric Bristow winning his 4th World Championship)

“Look at the man go: it's like trying to stop a water buffalo with a pea-shooter.”

“If we'd had Phil Taylor at Hastings against the Normans, they'd have gone home.”

If you're setting out to become known as an authority in your field you could do a lot worse than learn from Waddel. Rather than just focusing on your expertise, let your passion shine through. Become a champion for your clients and what they do. And if you can add a bit of humour into your work, so much the better.

It'll make you memorable.

And being memorable is the hallmark of an authority.

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Everyone’s an expert these days it seems

Posted byIan Brodie on March 6th, 2018.

I heard an advert on the radio earlier today for “Volatarol: experts in pain relief”.

Now Votarol is an over the counter gel you can get in any pharmacy or supermarket here in the UK. So I began to wonder who these pain relief experts were and where you could find them? Presumably not standing next to every tube of Voltarol on the shelves.

And it's a drug that's been around pretty much unchanged since 1973. So it's not as if there's a team of pain relief boffins beavering away in R&D somewhere to consistently innovate the product.

But it just goes to show the power of being seen as an expert when they're using that line to sell over the counter pain meds.

So if pretty much every Tom, Dick & Harry is claiming to be an expert, how do you set yourself apart if you genuinely are one?

The answer isn't to claim you're an expert. It's to demonstrate you are.

That's the real value of blogging, lead magnets and email marketing for us consultants and coaches.

We're never going to attract millions of visitors or hundreds of thousands of email subscribers through our content – it's too specialist (and we probably couldn't cope with those numbers anyway).

But what we can do is use our content to prove our expertise to the small number of people who are perfect as clients for us.

So whenever you're blogging or writing emails or creating a new lead magnet, don't just take the quick and easy route. Don't just recycle the “same old same old” that everyone else is saying. Get your own unique ideas and insights out there to prove you really know what you're talking about.

That'll make a real difference.

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Why advanced marketing hurts your sales

Posted byIan Brodie on March 4th, 2018.

Everything seems to be “advanced” these days, doesn't it?

Normal stuff just doesn't cut the mustard any more. Everything has to be advanced, killer, controversial, surprising, hidden or game-changing somehow.

And it's understandable that people want to badge their stuff that way. After all, who wants to be seen buying the basic beginner's version of something?

We all like to think we're advanced, not beginners. Or more importantly, we all like other people to think we're advanced, not beginners.

The problem is that for most of us, the advanced level of most things we do won't help us. In fact, it'll hurt us.

I've seen many people trying to run before they can walk with their marketing. And I've done it myself too.

Trying a major product launch before you do a simple pilot with your existing customers.

Making a fancy video lead magnet instead of a text document.

Building complex “funnels” instead of simple email sequences.

In theory, more advanced marketing should get you better results. But it rarely does.

Firstly, it takes too much time for most of us to get advanced marketing up and running. Time we just don't have. So it doesn't get done or gets done very slowly.

Secondly, advanced marketing tends to be “set in stone” and difficult to change. If your audience doesn't react well to your free ebook you can quickly edit, tweak and try again. But it's a huge job to reshoot a video.

If you have simple email sequences then changing a few emails doesn't affect the sequence much. If you have a complex funnel you have to worry about which path each subscriber goes down, what emails they see, how to get them on the right path with the right emails, etc. A small change to a sequence in one place can have knock-on effects in completely different places in your funnel.

Finally, advanced marketing is simply too difficult for most of us to master. It tends to require a lot of knowledge and experience and detailed planning to get to work. Much better to be great at the basics that try something clever and fail.

Many times I've tried to implement complex marketing funnels to find they only performed a little better than the simple way I was doing things previously. All that increased effort simply wasn’t worth it.

Of course, if you're a big business with lots of people to work on your advanced marketing then go for it.

Or if you’ve already mastered the basics and are getting good results it could be time to upgrade your marketing.

But for most of us, simple is the best.

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A little used method for breakthrough ideas

Posted byIan Brodie on February 25th, 2018.

Last week I mentioned that the key to great content that gets you clients isn't the volume of information you share, it's your ability to create “lightbulb moments” for your potential clients with that content.

It's these breakthrough ideas that show them you're a real expert and can offer something different to everything they've tried before.

But, of course, real breakthroughs aren't easy to come by.

Here's a technique I've been using for years that works well for me and I think could work for you too. It's got three simple steps.

The first step is to identify conventional wisdom in your field. What is it that everyone believes to be true? For example in sales, conventional wisdom says that you shouldn't reveal the price of your product or service until you've had a chance to establish its value. That's because most customers don't initially realise the size of their problem, so telling them the price of the solution when they don't realise they have a big problem will scare them off.

The second step is to turn that conventional wisdom on its head.

In our example that would be to say that you should tell people the price of your product or service up front before anything else.

Now, of course, just saying the opposite of what everyone else in your field says may set you apart. But if it's not correct then it's not really a great idea to share with your clients.

And typically, if you simply reverse conventional wisdom then it will be wrong. After all, conventional wisdom is conventional wisdom because it's usually right.

That's where step 3 comes in.

You see, conventional wisdom is right most of the time, but not all of the time. There are exceptions to every rule.

If you can find the exceptions where your reversed idea is correct, then you're on to a winner.

So in which circumstances would telling people the price of your product or service before you established its value be the right thing to do?

Well, if everyone already knew the value for one. That's unlikely to be the case. But there will definitely be some people who already know the value.

So what if you had so many potential clients that you can afford to scare off the majority and focus only on the ones who already know the value of your solution?

That would make sense. You can avoid wasting time and focus your efforts on the people it's going to be easiest to sell to.

So for the situation where you have a lot of leads, it can actually be best to narrow them down by telling them your price up front.

Do you see what we've done there?

We've taken something that's the opposite of conventional wisdom and found a situation where it's true (I'm sure there will be other situations too).

So now we have an idea (tell people your price up front) that runs counter to what all our competitors are saying – yet is true for a specific group of people (those with many leads).

If we focus on those people as potential clients we have a real breakthrough idea that's valuable to them and is different to what everyone else is telling them.

All from a few minutes thinking.

I'm sure you can do it for your business too.

Just start with conventional wisdom in your field.

Turn it on its head.

And then find the circumstances or group of people where it's actually true (because conventional wisdom may be true the majority of the time, but is never true all the time).

Good luck! 

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Real engagement means…

Posted byIan Brodie on February 22nd, 2018.

A couple of days ago I mentioned some nonsense I'd read in an article which purported to show you how to get more engagement from your emails but actually did nothing of the sort.

But it did beg the question, “so what actually does get more email engagement?”.

Well, let's start off by admitting that “engagement” is a hugely abused word.

Rather like “authenticity”, it's come to mean some sort of generic, ill-defined good thing.

So the first thing to bear in mind is that engagement isn't your goal.

If you're doing email marketing, your real goal is to get more sales (or perhaps get more people to contribute to your charity or whatever your business objective is).

Engagement is just a means to an end.

It doesn't matter how engaged your email audience is, if they're not buying you're wasting your time.

So with that in mind, I've found that three things lead to the kind of engagement that gets you more sales.

Firstly, if people aren't opening and reading your emails, they're not going to buy anything. So that's your first goal: get them to actually open and read your emails.

And the simplest way to get people to open and read your emails is to write about topics your audience cares about, and to write in an interesting way. Tell stories. Use unusual examples. Write about things your folks can relate to.

Secondly, the more your audience is used to taking action when they open one of your emails, the more likely they are to take action when you ask them to buy.

So make sure that almost all of your emails have a call to action.

Sometimes that can be small: hitting reply to say they've received something, liking something on social media for you, hitting reply to ask you a question or complete a survey.   

If someone has taken a small action today, they're much more likely to take a big action later. They kind of get in the habit.

So make sure your emails have actions your readers can take, big or small.

Finally, what gets people to take that final big action of buying is simply that they're ready. All their questions have been answered and they feel comfortable buying from you.

So make sure that over time you've answered all the key questions someone would need to know and feel to be ready to buy from you. And make sure that you've shown them the value of solving their problems.

Some of that can be done through case studies. Others through an FAQ email or emails which answer questions people have asked you which you know your readers are probably asking themselves too.

And sometimes you can just ask them to send questions in to you and answer them in your next email.

Now those three points might not sound like engagement in the sense you often hear it talked about. There's not necessarily any liking or sharing going on.

But it's the type of engagement that leads to sales. And that's what counts.   

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Sometimes, this is all you need…

Posted byIan Brodie on February 20th, 2018.

It's so easy to get overwhelmed with all the advice coming your way about marketing.

I'm supposed to be an expert, but honestly, I hear so much conflicting information that sometimes I sometimes have to sit back and think “hang on, does this really make sense?”

Take an article I read today for example. It was about increasing engagement with your email marketing.

It had a couple of useful tips, but also included gems like:

“Make sure you include links to your social media profiles in all your emails”, and…

“Use a beautiful, professional-looking template”.

Ostensibly, sensible advice. Stuff you'll often hear repeated. Until you actually think it through using common sense.

So firstly, how does having links to your social media profiles increase engagement with your emails?

If anything it'll decrease engagement because people will click through instead of actually reading or replying.

And if someone is already a newsletter subscriber, do you really need them to follow you on social media too? Usually, the flow is from social media to email.

Perhaps a link every now and then with a specific call to action would work. But having links to your social media profiles in every email like a signature line will actually hurt your email deliverability. You should really aim to have only one or at most two links in each email otherwise the receiving email systems tend to flag it as spam or promotional.

Similarly with a fancy template, it's going to be more likely that your email ends up in the promotions tab or spam folder because it will look like commercial email.

And think about the emails you engage with the most…

Are they “professional” looking emails with banners, background colours and multiple columns?

Or are they the plain and simple emails your friends and colleagues send you?

Unless you're very weird it's the latter. So doesn't it make sense for the emails you send to subscribers to look like the sort of emails they normally read and reply to?

Of course, they'll know it's a newsletter type email. But if it looks and feels and is written like an email from a friend then subconsciously they'll tend to react to it in the same frame of mind as to an email from a friend.

So here's the point of all this…

…You didn't really need me to tell you that fancy emails with social media icons won't increase email engagement.

All you really needed was to think it through a bit and apply some common sense.

As I said at the start, sometimes when you're getting hit by a ton of “useful advice” you need to take a little bit of time to sit back and think.

Ask yourself whether the advice seems true from your own experience.

Apply a little logic, like thinking “why would a social media icon get me to read and reply to an email more?”. 

Common sense isn't always right. but 95% of the time it is and that helps you cut down on all the clutter and conflicting advice.

And it'll also give you a bit more confidence in your own marketing capabilities when you see how flimsy much of the advice from experts really is.