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Even the best marketers overlook this

Posted byIan Brodie on February 8th, 2015.

I've been doing a bunch of “marketing critiques” this week for Momentum Club members.

As part of their monthly membership, MCers get to send me one piece of their marketing every month for personal feedback on video.

Sometimes it's web pages. Sometimes sales letters. Sometimes emails. Anything marketing related really.

One of the critiques this week was of a sales letter. The writer obviously knew what she was doing. The letter was well structured. It included all the classic elements of a great sales letter: strong headline, lots of details on the problem she was solving and what people would get from the solution. Testimonials. Details of what you got when you bought.

The biggest thing that was missing – and this is very common even with very experienced marketers – was detail on the real benefits. The impact of what she'd listed as benefits.

Like all good service providers, the letter writer really knew her offer and what her clients got from it. In this case it was greatly increased confidence and much improved presentation skills.

But what she missed out in the sales letter was details of what her clients got from that increased confidence and presentation skills.

It's easily done. When you know your service well it seems blindingly obvious what results people will get from it.

But your clients usually don't know your service as well as you do.

They hear “improved presentation skills” and they think “OK, so I'll be able to present better, I won't have nerves, people will enjoy my presentation more – that sounds good…”.

But they often don't move on to the real benefits. “…and that means people will get my message better. And they'll be much more likely to buy from me. And I'll do better in sales presentations and win more business. And…”

You've got to add 2 plus 2 for them and show them it's 4. You've got to spell out what these improvements will really mean for them and their business or lives.

Being a better presenter is something you'll pay a little bit for. Being able to win a load more sales is something you'll pay a lot for.

A small bit of extra work for you to think it through. But it makes a big difference.

Don't rely on your potential clients to fill in the blanks. Make sure you do that thinking for them and spell things out. It'll make a big difference to your success.

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The real reasons I follow up

Posted byIan Brodie on February 5th, 2015.

My emails this week have focused on follow-up.

Mostly we do follow-up for short-term reasons. We chase up someone to see if they've done what they said they were going to do. Or we want to create a good impression after meeting someone, for example.

But follow-up can be much more strategic than that.

My regular emails are follow-up and they're about much more than just keeping in touch. Any systematic approach to follow-up works the same.

The more often I write, the more likely it is that I'll hit on something that makes you think “hey, that guy knows what he's talking about” (assuming I write decent emails, of course).

The more often I write, the more likely it is that you'll feel you kind of know me (assuming I can write in a friendly way and that I'm open to sharing more personal rather than just purely business information).

The more often I write, the more likely it is that you'll remember me.

When we need to memorise something we repeat it over and over again. Repetition reinforces neural pathways.

The same works if I want you to remember me. The more often you hear from me, the more likely you are to remember me at the right time later on (assuming I'm writing about a topic that it's useful to be remembered for). 

And the more often I write, the more often I get replies. The personal interactions that follow build much stronger relationships.

Almost all forms of regular follow-up work the same way.

Of course, you can take it too far. I know I email too frequently for some people. And if you're busy you might not be able to read everything I send all the time even if you really wanted to.

I can live with that, because the upside of building credibility, building trust, being memorable and triggering discussions is a big one :)

Could you up the frequency of your follow-up to get bigger, better results?

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The most important follow-up you can do

Posted byIan Brodie on February 4th, 2015.

Yesterday I sent you an email about simple follow-up strategies you can use to build relationships with potential clients or influencers in your field.

But the most important follow-up of all is, of course, how you follow up with your clients and customers.

After any purchase “buyers remorse” often kicks in. Especially if the purchase was a large one.

The more you can do in that period to reassure your customer that they've made the right decision, the more likely they are to stick around for the long haul and buy more from you.

Any kind of personal message from you will help. Not just an automated email but a genuinely personal message, perhaps a written letter or a personal video.

An unexpected gift or bonus can work really well. In the retail world many stores give away a coupon to new customers which they can redeem against future purchases. There's no reason why we can't do something similar for professional services too.

Paradoxically, re-communicating your guarantee or any money-back offer in an early message makes it less likely they'll call on it because it reduces their anxiety about having made the right decision.

If your product or service is complex then a “getting started” guide can be very helpful by showing new clients how they'll be able to get going fast and get value from you.

In fact the biggest impact you can have with early follow-up is to get your new client using and getting benefits from your product or service quickly.

Once they're getting value they're unlikely to waver. But if they delay getting started then buyers remorse can grow stronger and you can lose them either immediately or over the long run.

So, what follow-up do you do to make sure your new clients or customers have a brilliant initial experience?

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An example of simple yet powerful follow-up

Posted byIan Brodie on February 3rd, 2015.

I got an email a couple of days ago from Charlie Poznek who runs the Boomer Business Owner podcast. A little while back I did an episode for Charlie's show on Email Marketing for Entrepreneurs.

Charlie's email was to inform me that my episode has passed the 2,500 downloads milestone.

Now in truth, I have no idea if that's good or bad compared to other episodes. But it certainly felt good to get that email from Charlie congratulating me and giving me a special badge I could put on my website to indicate the achievement.

This is an example of “semi-automated” follow up that I think we could all do more of.

I'm certain that Charlie has a system that regularly reports his podcast stats that can tell him when his guests have passed a download milestone. 

And I'm certain that he has a bunch of pre-prepared email templates he uses to send out rather than creating the emails from scratch each time.

So it must only take him a few minutes each time to create a positive impact with his guests to build his relationship with them. And, of course, that enourages them to share the details of podcast more like I've just done.

The key that makes it efficient is the little bit of preparation Charlie did to figure out a system for identifying people to follow up with (based on podcast downloads) and a system to make that follow up easy (the email templates).

Could you do something similar in your business?

I've found that when we have to create our follow up from scratch each time it's too much hard work and we rarely do it. 

But if we have an easy way of identifying who to follow up with each week and a starting point of templates or examples we can use for the content of the follow up, then even the least organised of us can manage to do it.

The system for identifying who to follow up with could be as simple as a list of key contacts you want to keep in touch with monthly. Or it could be as sophisticated as using something like Contactually to identify which of your top contacts you haven't been in touch with for a while.

Or like Charlie's system it could be based on some kind of trigger. For example, you could decide to send a personal email to people who open all your regular email marketing broadcasts. Or you could follow up personally with people who download your free report to check how they found it.

And by putting a bit of thought in advance into templates you can reuse, you make doing the follow up much easier too. That could be a “library” of useful articles you could email to contacts over time. Or some pre-printed “thank you” cards you can use to send to people in the post.

Anything as long as it makes follow up easy.

Because follow up is what gets results. But only if you do it :)

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Create, don’t wait

Posted byIan Brodie on February 1st, 2015.

I organise a monthly event with speakers for my fellow alumni of Manchester Business School. After this month's event I was approached by one of the attendees asking for a bit of advice.

He'd just started working for a firm offering leadership training and coaching and wanted to know the best sources of information on upcoming tenders and RFPs.

We ended up talking about alternatives because honestly, waiting for tenders and RFPs to reply to is an awful strategy.

It's fine if you already know a client, you've built up credibility and trust and they approach you.

But if you're hoping to win a lot of business scouring websites and journals looking for open tenders you can bid on you're really on to a loser.

The mindset behind this thinking is “we're great at what we do, if only we knew which clients needed our types of service we could speak to them and we're bound to win some work”.

Unfortunately, that's rarely the case.

Turns out most of your competitors are great too. Or at least that's what they say.

And without a pre-existing relationship with your potential client, and stuck within the confines of a formal tender; your chances of proving you're actually different and better are very slim.

My advice: if you don't already have a pre-established relationship with a client then looking for and replying to tenders is a mugs game.

You're much better off looking for opportunities to connect with potential clients about ideas and problems in the early stage, well before they go looking for a solution.

If you take them a new idea that clicks, you'll be in pole position to win that piece of work.

If you take them a new idea that doesn't click, you'll still be positioned as someone who adds value and someone it's worth speaking to; even if that specific idea wasn't right for them.

From there you can continue to build your relationship so that you get the inside track on future tenders if that's what you want to go for.

Much better than just being one of the bunch.

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How to get tricky stuff done

Posted byIan Brodie on January 29th, 2015.

Tuesday's email was a bit of a tongue-twister: “Why don't we do what we know we should be doing?”. Try saying that after a few drinks :)

But it was also a very important point.

The reason many of us aren't achieving what we want in our business usually isn't because we don't know what to do. It's because we know, but we find it difficult.

I find in my business there are a bunch of activities I find easy. Responding to emails. Reading articles or books. Investigating new online tools.

And there are a bunch of activities I find rather more difficult. Writing. Planning. Thinking.

Not that I find them impossible. It's just it's easier to reply to emails or check out the latest blog post from someone I follow.

So if I have 30 minutes free, chances are I'm going to do one of the easier things. Or I might start a difficult task but as soon as I get a bit stuck instead of persevering I switch to responding to emails or reading blog posts.

The easy tasks are important too. But it becomes dangerous if I do them to the exclusion of the difficult ones.

One thing I've found that helps a lot is to get the environment right for my challenging tasks.

If I'm going to be doing planning I sit by myself in a coffee shop with my notebook and calendar. I *don't* bring my computer and I switch my phone onto silent.

I write my marketing emails and blog posts late at night when everyone else is in bed and the house is quiet (it's 1am right now as I write this). 

Changing your environment can be a big help to changing your behaviour. And it can begin to establish positive habits by building an association between the space and efficiently doing task you want to do.

Next time you're a bit stuck, try changing your environment. Move to a different room in your house. If you work in an office, book yourself into a meeting room by yourself for a couple of hours. Or head out to a coffee shop.

It can make a big difference. 

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Why we don;t do what we know we should be doing

Posted byIan Brodie on January 27th, 2015.

Most of the important things in life aren't rocket science. They're just difficult.

Most of us don't eat healthily or exercise enough.

Yet the problem isn't that we don't know about healthy food and exercise. We just never get round to it. Other things take up our time for exercise or we think “that one extra slice won't make much difference”.

“I'll start the diet tomorrow”.

And we never do.

Marketing is similar. Most of us know the basics. If we want a successful online business we need to communicate with our audience regularly with valuable, interesting information.

Yet most people struggle to do a weekly email or blog post.

Much easier to “work” by checking emails, facebook or twitter than to write. And then to say dolefully “I couldn't find the time to work on my marketing”.

Doing a training course on blogging or email marketing won't help. You already know the important 80%. 

You need to turn that knowledge into action.

And I think we can learn from the people who do succeed with things like diet and exercise.

Many people who suddenly start taking diet and exercise seriously do it because of a health scare. It jolts them into action.

Hopefully we don't have to have big scare in our business to jolt us in to taking our marketing more seriously. But we can do a health check and look properly at what the numbers tell us. Do we have enough new leads and clients to fuel our business in the future? Are we growing steadily or hoping for something to turn up?

Others who succeed in getting healthier do it through social support. They go to clubs or enlist the moral support of their friends and loved ones.

We can do that with our marketing too. Join a mastermind group and share our plans. Get feedback. Give them permission to nudge us when we're falling off the wagon.

Others turn their healthy lifestyles into habits. Always exercising at the same time every day until it feels stranger not to exercise than to get on and do it.

With marketing I've found that carving out time in the mornings works well. Don't go to your office or normal place of work. Find somewhere you can work alone and switch of emails and your phone and get on with your key marketing tasks.

Make it a habit.

Finding little measures that track your progress helps a lot too. You don't lose weight every day, it fluctuates. But you can track your steps and your food intake (I lost over a stone simply by tracking what I was eating in an app. Now I'm tracking my steps thanks to one of those fitness bands and it's already getting me out and about significantly more).

Similarly, sales take time to come in. And they can fluctuate seemingly randomly at times. But you can track your wesbite visitors, your new email subscribers, people taking action on your emails. And you can track your activities. Are you making the calls, sending the emails, writing the blog posts you need to hit your goals?

Add a bunch of those “healthy habits” together and all of a sudden your marketing starts to work. Without needing any miracle cures or crash diets!

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The big changes in content marketing

Posted byIan Brodie on January 25th, 2015.

I've noticed a big change recently in content marketing. Have you?

Back when I started blogging in 2007, frequency was the name of the game. The more you blogged, the better your results.

Since then we've seen different types of content hold sway.

For a long while, short tips seemed to be the way to get readers. The web filled up with “how to” articles with simple tips for every topic under the sun.

Every accountant had a list of tax tips. Every marketing consultant told you to find a niche. Every web expert had 7 tips for getting more web visitors.

More recently we've seen a plethora of copycat “Upworthy” type articles. You know the ones. Headlines crafted to get clicks like “15 unusual holiday destinations. Number 4 blew my mind”. Or “No one noticed the quiet guy in the corner of the room, but you won't believe what happened next”.

Unfortunately, the list of holiday destinations very rarely blows your mind. And the video shows the guy doing something completely believable.

But look past the acres of mediocrity, and I think you'll see something new emerging.

Look at what Neil Patel is doing over at QuickSprout. Bryan Harris at VideoFruit. Peep Laja at ConversionXL. Noah Kagan at OKDork.

Each of them is either writing or championing “deep content”.

Not just a few quick superficial tips, but long, in-depth, insightful articles.

And the articles aren't just opinion pieces or collections of anecdotes. They're based on detailed research and extensive testing.

They show you the facts and the data that back their opinions.

I think this is the way of the future.

I've seen far too much “become a sought-after expert in your field by blogging, writing, speaking” type advice that focuses on the mechanics.

On taking any old idea or piece of knowledge and spinning it into an article or presentation. Based on the idea that if you do enough of these and they're half decent, somehow it's going to make everyone think you're an expert in your field.

I don't think that's going to pass muster for much longer.

The stuff that I want to share and that people like me want to share is in-depth, enlightening content. Not yet another “7 ways to get more twitter followers” or other superficial nonsense.

My advice if you produce content: do less, but better stuff.

If you're not spending hours on each article and you're not researching and include examples, case studies, analyses and statistics then you're probably just producing more crap the world doesn't need to see.

But if you do produce breakthrough ideas and comprehensive reference material, it'll get shared and you can build a strong reputation very quickly.

Because not many people have the brains or the application to do it.

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How to produce great content without it becoming a barrier

Posted byIan Brodie on January 21st, 2015.

Hi there – had some really interesting responses to Tuesday's email where I encouraged everyone to set the bar high in terms of thought leadership.

I got lots of “you're so right” responses form many people who clearly share my dislike of mediocre content.

But I also got some very sensible warnings too: because the downside of setting the bar high for thought leadership is that it can overwhelm you and become a barrier to creating great content rather than a help.

Here's the thing: I was making a point about aiming to create something insightful and super valuable as a counterpoint to the flood of mediocre articles, blog posts and emails we typically have to put up with.

But I'm not saying that 100% of what you produce has to be earth-shattering, nobel prize-winning material.

Firstly, not everyone needs to be a thought leader. Far from it. Most service providers are good, solid, results-getters rather than absolute leaders in their field.

If that's you, then the content marketing you do is more to establish yourself as a solid deliverer than an innovative thinker. I'd still try to put your own spin and stories on things rather than using the same simple tips as everyone else; but you don't need new, ground breaking content. 

Secondly, you can be a leader in a small market. I use big names like Michael Porter, Tom Peters and Seth Godin because many people will know them. But in a smaller field you don't have to pitch quite so high.

And because different ideas and strategies get adopted by different sectors, countries and types of people at different rates, sometimes thought leadership for your market is more about how some of the new techniques from other sectors can be applied rather than completely original thinking.

Finally, you don't have to produce completely new, original, ground-breaking material all the time.

If you read articles or books or watch videos from leading experts you'll see that 80% of what they say is basic common sense. It's the 20% that sets them apart.

If you really do want to be seen as a leading thinker in your field then you need one or two concepts or ideas or ways of looking at the world you can call your own. Things that, in your field, are recognisable as being yours.

But that doesn't mean you have to sit for hours agonising over every article you write or video you make.

Sometimes you can just expand or give examples of your “big ideas”.

Other times you can talk about how to implement them. Or how they work in different situations.

But most of the time you'll just be writing good, useful information that your potential clients will find helpful.

Make sure it's not the boring mediocre stuff that's on a million websites already. Put your own spin on it. Give examples from your experience. Tie it to something happening in the news. Enliven it somehow.

But don't get bogged down aiming for a nobel prize every time :)

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What thought leadership really means

Posted byIan Brodie on January 20th, 2015.

Hi – hope this week is treating you well already.

I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. Made my first ever batch of home made hot sauce with last year's crop of “7 Pot” chillies. Turned out brilliantly (apart from the fact that we couldn't go into the kitchen without goggles and breathing masks for a few hours :)

Anyway, more seriously, I've been taking my own medicine and looking at how I can enhance my own market leadership this year (check out my video series on market leadership here if you haven't seen it yet).

One of the things that's become increasingly clear to me in the last couple of years is that most standard advice about becoming a leader or go-to-expert in your field just doesn't work.

The advice is always about the mechanics. The “necessary-but-not-critical” step of writing articles or doing videos or emails or speaking on stage or any one of a myriad of methods for getting your message out there.

The trouble is that most people don't have a message that's worth getting out.

So they publish books that add little or nothing to the body of knowledge in their field – merely regurgitating what people already know. They write blogs with the same old trite “7 tips to grow your business” advice that all their competitors have on their site.

Sure, you have to “publish” to become known as an expert. But it's what you publish that makes the difference. Not the mechanics of the channel you're using.

Michael Porter isn't known as the leading expert on corporate strategy because he published a bunch of books on the topic. Thousands of others have published books on strategy and never been heard of again.

Porter's known as the leading expert in strategy because of what was in his books. The new ideas, theories and models he introduced or popularised.

If you want to become known as a thought leader in your field you can't just spend your time publishing. You have to think. Deeply. There's a clue in the name “thought leader” ;)

You have to publish ideas that resonate with your audience. That simplify and clarify the world for them. That help them make sense of tricky situations. That give them new ideas and hope. That trigger lightbulb moments.

Writing, making videos and audios. Presenting. It's all easy compared to the real work of creating that inspiring idea in the first place.

Now I'm not saying lock yourself in a darkened room until you emerge with an earth shattering idea. That's not how creativity normally works. It normally strikes when you least expect it after getting really engaged with a problem.

But what I am saying is don't be satistfied with publishing the mediocre, the average, the merely good.

Keep striving to create something brilliant that will make a real difference to your clients.

That's what REAL thought leadership is about. 

That's what makes real authorities and go-to-experts.

And when you have that something, then get out and publish and promote the heck out of it.