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Don’t be a bully

Posted byIan Brodie on April 17th, 2016.

As you'd probably expect from someone who's written a pretty decent-selling book on Email Marketing, I subscribe to a lot of emails. Particularly emails from people who have a reputation for being good at it.

There's a pattern I've seen over the last few years from some of these “email experts” that I find pretty distasteful and I want to call it out to help you avoid falling into the trap yourself.

One of the things I like is “edgy” emails. People who aren't afraid to express a strong opinion. To point out things they think are wrong or disagree with. To highlight hypocrisy and call out fakers. 

The thing with expressing a strong opinion is that some people will disagree. That's only natural: if no one disagreed then it would be a pretty bland opinion.

But some people with edgy opinions appear to be pretty thin-skinned.

Worse, they seem to be so insecure that they find it necessary to belittle people who disagree with them.

I see it time and time again. Guru X will send out an email with a deliberately provocative opinion in it. Then they'll get some complaints from people and their next email will be spent telling you why you shouldn't care about people disagreeing with you while simultaneously demonstrating they absolutely do care about people disagreeing with them because they spend most of the email belittling the people who disagreed.

Here's the thing: it's great to have strong opinions and to call out people in power for things you disagree with.

But to belittle email subscribers who write in to you who have no means of redress and no power themselves. That's just bullying.

You upset them. Live with it. Don't go all sulky and try to justify yourself and get some validation from your crowd by having a go at them.

Email bullies think their nastiness and rabble-rousing builds a strong following which leads to more sales.

And, of course, all bullies have their gangs of cronies who hang on their every word and cheer their nastiness.

But I don't want those sort of people as clients. I bet you don't either. 

So please. If you're subscribed to someone's emails and you see them repeatedly belittle the dissenting voices in their crowd and then tell you that you should do the same – don't listen to them.

Be the kind of person who stands up for the little guy, not the kind of person who bullies them.

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Enjoy the silence

Posted byIan Brodie on April 10th, 2016.

A bit of a break from marketing tips this week – and instead something about how to have more good ideas.

It's a simple tip really. It's to increase the amount of time you have in silence.

What I mean by that is that next time you're driving somewhere, don't switch on the car radio. Next time you go for a walk or run, don't plug in to your favourite music or podcast.

Instead, give your brain a dose of silence.

Even better, set your brain a task to work on in that silence. Something like “I'm going to come up with 10 ideas for new blog posts” or “I'm going to outline my next webinar”.

I started listening to podcasts when I went out on walks a while back. I thought it would help me be more productive by learning while I was doing other things.

But the truth is that few of need more inputs. We need to do more thinking.

We've found so many ways to avoid the hard work of thinking these days.

It's too easy to flip our screens to email or Facebook instead of powering through a few moments of writer's block. 

It's too easy to listen to a talk show or blast music into our ears on a long drive to avoid having to listen to our own thoughts.

But in our sorts of business, those thoughts are our lifeblood. They're where the solutions to problems come from. Where ideas for content come from. Where new products come from.

I've gone back to walking in silence and now driving in silence too.

The temptation to flip on the radio is irresistible sometimes. But when I do persevere I always come out with something useful for my business.

Try it :) 

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Why it’s OK to be rubbish at selling

Posted byIan Brodie on April 3rd, 2016.

I was never a natural at selling, but over the years I got quite good at it. It was very hard work, but I learned how to do it in a way that felt comfortable to me.

Fast forward a decade and frankly, I'm back to being pretty hopeless.

It's been so long since I've had a proper sales meeting that although I know what to do, it would all be very stilted. And honestly, I'd rather not have a sales meeting if I can avoid one.

What I'd much rather have is a meeting with someone who already wants to work with me, just to confirm what we'll be doing together.

Peter Drucker famously said “the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

I always kinda doubted it. When I worked for big firms we always had to pitch to win things. Same when I first started out.

But over time, something changed.

Turns out Drucker was right. If your marketing is really working. 

Not the kind of marketing I did in the corporate world that's all about telling people how great you are.

But when you do marketing that adds value to potential clients and helps them before they ever pay you a penny, something different happens.

And when you do it week in, week out you build the kind of relationship that means you don't need to sell to people. They come to you wanting to work with you.

So you can be rubbish at selling and still get sales :)

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A marketing tip from Kembleford

Posted byIan Brodie on March 27th, 2016.

Kathy and I have been watching a bunch of old episodes of the BBCs “Father Brown” recently.

It's the lightest of light entertainment.

Nothing deep. No great drama or particularly clever writing.

Just a fun 40 minutes solving crime in the company of a genial priest with an inquiring mind and insight into human nature.

We're quite addicted really. And I many ways it's a nice escape from the turmoil going on around the world.

It struck me today that when we're keeping in touch with clients and prospects, we can learn a trick or two from easy-going entertainment like this.

Most of us feel quite pressured to make sure that everything we send or do with our clients has to be super insightful and deep and world-changing.

And since producing that level of content is so hard, we end up not communicating at all.

That's a big mistake. Not everything we do has to offer stunning new information they've never heard before.

Sure, we need strong content. A distinctive point of view. Valuable insights.

But we don't need every single communication we send to be jam-packed with them. A bit of light entertainment is often all we need.

Something to raise a smile. Make an interesting point. It's often all that's needed to keep you top of mind.

So if you're struggling to come up with ideas for blog posts, articles or emails – maybe you're setting the bar too high. Maybe a bit of light entertainment will do the trick.

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Some feedback is better than others

Posted byIan Brodie on March 20th, 2016.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions they say.

But I've found that some feedback is more important than others. If particular, if you do surveys and get input from potential clients you should pay special attention to a particular type of input.

This is something I heard first from researcher Glenn Livingston many moons ago. It's simple really, but most people don't realise it…

Whenever you do a survey or ask for feedback and ask open questions, pay the most attention to the longest answers.

It makes sense really. If someone invests a significant amount of time to write you a long, detailed answer to a question, then the chances are they really care about the problem or challenge you asked them about. Much more so that someone who just writes a few words.

I had the same thing when I used to do face to face interviews to kick off consulting projects.

Most people would give decent answers to questions. Some people would give more thorough ones. And some people went on and on and on…

I was always frustrated by the folks who wanted to pour out their souls. After all, I had 5 or 6 interviews to do a day and I didn't have the time for each one to drag on.

What I didn't realise at the time was that these were the people I should really be paying attention to.

When I look back now, it's easy to see just how insightful some of them were. They really cared, and they wanted to share what they knew.

Make sure you pay attention to the long answers whenever you get feedback. Don't get frustrated because you'd prefer a quick summary. The long answers are where the gold is hidden.