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Story prompts to speed up content

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 31st, 2022.

One of the biggest killers of productivity in marketing, for me at least, is struggling for ideas.

It's difficult to be prolific if most of your time is spent staring at a blank screen.

I've mentioned before I started using the “zettelkasten” method of note-taking to make sure I always have a good base of ideas to write about. But sometimes I get stuck knowing how to illustrate those ideas in a non-boring way.

In other words, what story am I going to use?

Here's where story-prompts come in helpful. Little triggers to stimulate your creativity.

The ones that work best for me are often time based. I've used similar ones when I've run “writing challenges” for Momentum club members.

All I do is ask myself about an interesting thing that happened at various times in my life.

For example, a story my parents told about me as a very young child (with a lesson for today).

Or something painful/fun/weird that happened to me as a teenager (with a lesson for today).

Or when I hit a problem early on in my career and what I learned from it.

Or when I was riding high later in my career but found out I wasn't brilliant at everything.

Or a piece of wisdom I've learned through the benefit of age and experience.

Or something that happened yesterday that made me angry/happy/confused.

Or something that's just happened right now.

For example, a very good friend of mine told me that yesterday he'd just written an article for marketing purposes when the tool he was using blew up and lost it.

Undaunted he got his head down and wrote an article about how his system had blown up and lost his work – and how a stoic mindset helped him get refocused quickly rather than wallowing in anger and self-pity.

Your long term past and your immediate experiences are rich seams for mining stories. You can go through the list of timeframes I've just shared almost like a checklist and use it to trigger ideas for stories to illustrate a business point.

Or if you've got a particular topic in mind (e.g. that you've been exploring in your Zettelkasten) then you can run through them thinking “is there a story from my early work years that illustrates this topic? etc”

It doesn't work 100% of the time. Nothing does.

But I'd say at least 80% of the time it triggers ideas for a good, interesting piece of content. Often more than one, so you can “bank” the idea to use later.

It gets you productive fast rather than being stuck staring at that white screen of frustration.

– Ian

PS as you can probably guess, today's post was inspired by the last of the timeframes. Me being short of ideas and thinking “what can I say about what's happening to me right now?”

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Online Courses

Fast feedback is today’s key to all your marketing

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 25th, 2022.

If there's one thing that I've learned from creating multiple online courses over the last decade or so it's the power of fast feedback.

That's been amplified by what I've heard from the successful course builders I've interviewed recently.

You see it in the idea of pre-selling your course. And in piloting it once sold. The faster you get feedback on whether it's a good idea or whether the course is working, the faster you can adjust.

But it's much more than that. It's a different way of working, and it applies to so many different aspects of marketing and business.

Back in the day, the “right” way to create a course would be to do a ton of research, think about it deeply, create a detailed specification, build a brilliant course and then go big on your launch to ensure your success.

Except often it wasn't a success. Or at least anywhere near what you'd hoped.

Often the topic of the course wasn't the right one to inspire your audience. Or it just wasn't the right format. Or you were selling it to the wrong people. Or any one of a host of reasons you can only really find out by trying things in the real world.

Today a lot has changed which makes fast feedback much more possible.

You can reach a warm audience much easier. People are much more willing to take part in pilots and tests. The technology means you can quickly knock up a half decent version of a course and polish it later. You can get instant feedback and work with people on live video calls.

But fast feedback isn't just about the course itself.

How do you know what topic to focus on?

In the past you'd have picked a problem you thought was a big issue. Or if you were lucky, one that clients had told you was important to them.

Today you can start publishing content about a handful of problems on Linkedin or Twitter or Medium or email or whichever media reaches your audience. You can see which one really clicks with them and gets them engaged.

You can double down on it and go deeper. You can interact with them to see which aspects are important to them.

And then you can punt a potential course on that topic.

You can find out in days what might have taken you months or longer in the past. And that takes the guesswork out of creating courses – and so much of your marketing too.

And it gives you confidence too. You don't have to spend months squirrelling away in the background on your masterwork hoping that when it sees the light of day it'll be what people want.

You can build in public and make sure it is.

Don't market in the dark. Test different options. See which works. Go deeper.

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Marketing you hate just doesn’t work

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 22nd, 2022.

One of the things I really enjoy doing is exploring research and ideas that are a little outside mainstream marketing – and then seeing if they can be applied back in my world.

It was through that exploration I bumped into the work of Michelle Segar – a researcher into sustainable behaviour change in the areas of health and exercise.

Segar's contention – backed by a ton of research and experience over the last 30 years – is that trying to motivate people to lose weight and exercise to improve their health just doesn't work.

It's too focused on a potential future benefit rather than immediate gratification. And too often it gives people yet another thing to try to cram into their busy lives.

It sounds a lot like trying to motivate people to do regular marketing like writing emails or following up with contacts.

The benefit of more clients happens in the future, and is far from certain. And it's yet another thing that you have to cram into a busy workday.

Segar's work has shown that it's better to get people to focus on the immediate gratification they'll get from exercise – for example feeling better and less stressed – rather than the long-term gains.

And if you can show them how exercise gives them more energy which makes all the other things they've got to do much easier, you're on to a winner.

But I think most importantly when it comes to marketing, Segar's research showed that it's much better to allow people to do the imperfect exercise they enjoy rather than the perfect one they hate. And to allow them to find that exercise they enjoy themselves.

In marketing (and business generally) there's way too much “this is the best way to do things” advice.

Often it's done with the best of intentions. Sometimes it's done to sell you a shiny new toy or course.

But none of it is done with the realisation that the only marketing that works is marketing you actually do, and do regularly.

So if you enjoy the third best or the seventh best or second worst way of marketing and you'll keep at it – that could well be the “best” marketing for you.

At least for now.

Segar's research has also shown that starting with a small good habit you can do often leads to taking on something bigger and enjoying that too.

And if you don't enjoy any marketing?

Keep trying different approaches until you find one you do. Or think creatively about how to make something you do enjoy work from a marketing perspective.

Remember at the start I said “One of the things I really enjoy doing is exploring research and ideas that are a little outside mainstream marketing”?

Emails like this and similar content I create are my way of turning that thing I enjoy doing into something that works from a marketing perspective for me.

There will be something you can find for you too.

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Online Courses

A great way to pick your course topic

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 20th, 2022.

I just finished a great interview with productivity and time-management expert Alexis Haselberger for Course Builders TV.

We were talking about how to pick the best topic for your online course and Alexis made one of those points that seems so obviously right in hindsight that you wish you'd come up with it yourself!

Most advice on picking your topic is a variation on the theme of picking a big problem your clients typically have. Ideally an urgent one with significant financial impact they'd be willing to pay to get rid of.

But what Alexis pointed out was that for an online course, the problem also has to be one they can fix themselves.

If you think about the work you do with clients there are some problems where, once they know what the issue is, you can just say “go do this”. Those sorts of problems are good topics for online courses.

But there are other problems where you need to delve deeper with a client to diagnose things. Or give them regular feedback to help them course-correct. Or where they may need lots of personal support and motivation.

Those aren't such good areas for online courses.

Now obviously some online courses include an element of group coaching too, or the occasional one-to-one call. So the rule isn't a hard and fast one.

But generally speaking it's a very good criteria to use. Just ask yourself “if I told my client what to do in this area, would they be able to just get on with it and get great results by themselves?”.

If so you may be on to a winner.

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Online Courses

Wow your audience with pinpoint precision

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 18th, 2022.

A final way of getting a “wow” from your audience for your course is pinpoint precision.

In other words if they see your course as the absolute perfect fit for their very specific problem. The final piece in the jigsaw.

Here's the thing though. Every would-be marketing guru will repeat the standard advice that you need an ultra-specific niche. “An inch wide and a mile deep” is the mantra.

You want to be the perfect solution for someone, not the second best for everyone. But your common sense also tells you if you go too narrow you shrink your market.

In the real world you need to do both. You have to maximise the benefits of narrowing down but avoid reaching the point where you stop benefitting from it.

How do you find that point? Ask yourself 3 questions:

By focusing on this specific area, will customers feel the course will be better for them? Are there specific problems and challenges they face in this area that the course can focus on?

For example, my guess is that lawyers would feel that because of their client relationships and legal restrictions, a marketing course for lawyers will be more useful to them than a more general one. On the other hand they probably wouldn't see any particular value in a course on Excel skills for lawyers.
By focusing on this specific area, will it reduce the amount of work you have to do creating or marketing the course?

For example, a course on marketing for corporate lawyers could focus on relationship building with senior executives rather than on more general broad brush marketing and advertising – giving a major reduction in the amount of training material needed. And by marketing the course only to law firms with significant corporate law practices you can use more direct, high value approaches and avoid wasting time and money on more general marketing.
Do the increased attractiveness of the course and decreased amount of work needed to create it outweigh any reduction in market size?

You have to think realistically here. If, for example, you do hybrid courses with a significant live component then you'll have limited capacity. So a decrease in potential market size from a million to half a million won't make any difference to you as both are exponentially bigger than you need. On the other hand, if you do low-cost self service courses then a big reduction in market size for a small increase in the attractiveness of the course might not be worth it.

At the end of the day, it's a judgement call and relies on your knowledge of your customers and course. But asking yourself those three questions means you'll be making an informed decision, not just picking a focus for your course because you hope everyone will buy it or just following generic advice to narrow down.

And the thought process you go through to make that decision will also help you make a better course.

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Online Courses

Wow your audience with a brand new promise

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 11th, 2022.

The second way of getting a “wow” from your audience when you announce your course is to make a brand new promise.

And obviously, it needs to be incredibly attractive promise to them to get that “wow”.

Now the reality is that today, all the big promises have been made.

Get rich, lose weight, meet your ideal partner, get more clients.

No one is going to go “wow” if you just repeat one of these old, worn-out promises unless they've been living under a rock for the last few decades.

So there needs to be a (truthful) twist on the promise.

One way to do that is with a “without clause”.

That's where you enhance the promise by removing something they don't want that normally comes with it.

Lose weight without diets. More clients without endless posting on social media.

It has to be true of course. You have to be able to deliver on that promise.

But if you can it can be very powerful…

…provided they've not heard the exact same promise before.

In some markets a simple “without clause” will sound brand new. In others – like marketing for example – it's probably already been done countless times.

Getting more clients even if you hate marketing, if you have no time, if you're an introvert…all done many times before.

So it's trickier in mature markets. But not impossible.

I've been around the block more than a few times, but Jon Buchan's big promise of teaching you to write cold emails so engaging and charming that people would enjoy and appreciate getting them was new to me. And I did indeed go “wow” and buy the course.

Another way of getting a wow from your promise is to pick a smaller but highly unusual promise.

I bought a course a while back on being 10x more productive with my writing.

That's not a big end-result promise like more clients. But in a mature market where there are lots of people who know that being 10x more productive with their writing will bring them big results, it works.

Another course I bought recently was on running mini-workshops. The promise was to teach you how to set up and sell a lot of places on low-cost live online workshops which would eventually lead to more high value clients.

It was an unusual offer I'd not seen before and to convince me to buy they needed to convince me that mini workshops would be easier to sell than something high ticket…but could lead fairly quickly to those mini workshop attendees buying something bigger.

They did.

That's the trick with a smaller but highly unusual promise. By definition it's something no one else is offering. But to get a wow you need to show people how it can give them something big in terms of end results.

That sudden “hang on, I've never considered this before but blimey, this could absolutely get me what I want” realisation is amazingly powerful and a big driver of sales.

It needs you to think through “what can I promise that's different, but that leads to a big result (and that I can prove leads to that result)”.

It needs a bit of creativity. But it can really pay off.

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The drumbeat of productivity

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 8th, 2022.

One of the things I learnt when managing big engagements back when I worked in corporate consulting was the importance of establishing a “drumbeat” for the project.

A weekly progress meeting with each of my teams. A 5-minute daily “standup” to get focused and motivated for the day. A monthly or quarterly offsite to look at bigger issues and make sure everyone was headed in the same direction.

It's the same now I'm working on my own. I think everyone needs that sense of momentum and rhythm.

Personally, I do all my big plans in quarters. Building a new course. Trying out a new marketing method.

You can get a lot done in a quarter if you focus on it. Give yourself a year and you tend to put it off. Give yourself just a month and it's difficult to get anything big done.

A quarter is just right. For me at least.

Weekly is where the action really happens. Taking the big priorities for the quarter and planning what I'm actually going to get done this week. Then allocating out big tasks per day.

It's also where I reflect on what happened last week. Did I get all the big tasks done? Did I manage to exercise every weekday? Did I manage to learn something and create something every day?

I covered daily planning last week and how I use it to keep my big priorities front of mind to ward off distractions.

It's the weekly planning that makes sure I have those priorities right and everything is headed towards achieving the overall plans.

I suppose that all sounds very logical and structured. In practice it's not quite so organised.

I'm a late riser and a night owl, so “morning planning” tends to happen at some random time after 10am.

And some days I'll wake up with something big on my mind and start on that straight away rather than starting with planning the day. Not surprisingly on those days I tend to get less done overall.

That urge to “jump in” and do something straight away is sometimes overwhelming even though I know I'll be less productive overall.

But the important thing is I manage to keep on track 80% of the time. And not only does that mean I tend to be quite productive, it also makes me feel good too.

There's a real sense of forward momentum towards big achievements rather than just having “done some stuff” each day.

And that sense of progress makes it even more likely that the next day I'll make progress too. Then the next.

Sometimes that psychological side is the most important part of being productive.

– Ian

PS did you know that Top Cat was called Boss Cat when they showed it on the BBC in the 60s and 70s because we had a brand of cat food over here called Top Cat?

Only the title changed though – he was still TC in the show itself.

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Online Courses

How to become a “wow” person fast

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 6th, 2022.

I said last time that one way to get your potential customers excited at the prospect of buying your course is if it's delivered by someone who gets them to think “Wow! I'd really like to learn from them”.

You don't have to be famous to get this wow effect. You don't even need to have built up a relationship with them for years like the example of Steve Folland I shared last time.

What matters is that they believe you have unique insights that will help them, and they feel they know you and like you.

A great way to do that is to consistently add value over time in emails like this or a podcast show like Steve's.

But you can accelerate the process too.

You have to draw a balance between adding lots of value and building a relationship fast with the people who are ready, and overwhelming the people who aren't. But thanks to a bit of tech cleverness it's all doable.

For example, on the “thank you” page people get to after they sign up for your emails you can offer them a one-click signup for an upcoming webinar or a series of videos.

In that webinar or video series they can see and hear you which accelerates your relationship. And if you pack it with some of your best and most surprising insights it'll build your credibility fast too.

And since they have to click a button to sign up for it, only the people who are ready will get it and you won't overwhelm the people who aren't.

You can do the same with your early emails after someone signs up.

I always send more frequent emails after someone has just signed up under the logic that the reason they signed up was because they're actively interested right now. So it's unlikely you'll be overwhelming them.

But you can take it one step further. If you have a lot of ideas to share in one area, put a link at the bottom of the email which they can click to get more content. And ideally make that content video based so they can see and hear you to build your relationship faster (though a comprehensive article can work too).

Just to clarify: I'm not saying the only thing in your email is the link.

I'm saying put in a great tip or idea like normal (for your typical subscriber) and then have a link to bonus content for those that are especially interested.

Again, it means that those who aren't ready right now don't get overwhelmed, but those who are ready can get more and build a relationship with you faster.

That way you can become that “wow person” in weeks or even days (for some of your subscribers) rather than months or years.

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Online Courses

3 sources of “wow” for your online course

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 4th, 2022.

If you want people who aren't actively searching to buy your course you need something that makes them sit up and take notice. A “wow” factor.

I've found there are three big ways to get that “wow”.

The first is the person delivering the course.

Most people aren't going to get excited by the prospect of yet another course on cookery or photography. But Gordon Ramsay's first ever course? Or Annie Leibovitz? That's different.

You don't have to be world famous for this to work either. Just famous in your little corner of the world.

I've just interviewed Steve Folland for Course Builders TV, for example. Last year he launched a course for people just starting out as freelancers.

Why did people buy his course? Primarily because his Being Freelance podcast has been running for nearly a decade. To them, hearing that the OG of freelancing was putting out a course was a “wow, I must have it” moment.

The second way of getting a “wow” is a brand new promise.

All the big promises have already been made of course. Get rich. Save money. Get productive. Get fit. Lose weight. Find love.

So brand new promises are usually exciting new ways of achieving those big goals.

Years ago I bought a course on cold emailing from Jon Buchan of the Charm Offensive. The promise behind the course was learning to write cold emails so engaging and charming that people would enjoy and appreciate getting them.

Now I don't do cold email or cold calling or anything like that. But I bought the course.

For me, the skill of writing so engagingly that people who weren't expecting your email would enjoy and appreciate it was a “wow, I must have it” moment.

The third way of getting a “wow” is pinpoint precision.

If your course promises to do something for people that they believe is their specific, almost unique problem then hearing your course exists can generate a “wow, this is perfect for me” moment.

For years Mark Dawson has run a very successful course on Facebook Ads for fiction authors.

Part of the success, no doubt, is that Mark is a very successful author himself, so it has a bit of the person wow factor.

But a large part of is is because it was the first course of its type specifically targeted at fiction authors.

Before that, almost all Facebook ads courses were either generic or focused on ecommerce or online marketing or business type products.

This was the first course that fiction authors could look at and think “wow, this is perfect for me” and not worry that the techniques taught wouldn't work for their type of business.

Precision doesn't have to be for a type of business either. It could be a very specific problem. Or a goal for people with a specific roadblock (sales techniques for introverts, for example).

Of course, pinpoint precision means a smaller potential market.

But it's much, much better to have a small market that thinks your course is perfect for them than it is to have a huge market that thinks it's no different to anyone else's.

And you'd be surprised at just how big the market of fiction authors wanting to sell through Facebook ads is, or the number of introverts who need to sell.

There are other ways of getting a “wow” too, if you get creative. I was wowed by the first video product launch I saw. And the first cohort-based course. And great production values and little different twists always impress me.

But the easiest ways of getting a wow are though who you are, the new promise you make, or the precision of your offer.

Are you using these to get a wow for your course?

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How to slay the dragons of distraction

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 1st, 2022.

I'm absolutely world-class when it comes to distracting myself.

Checking email, checking Linkedin, checking the football news. Checking out that “important” new piece of tech someone recommended.

Anything rather than focus, concentrate and push through any creative blocks I happen to have.

I mentioned last week that simply being aware of our tendency to distract ourselves has helped me a lot.

Another powerful but simple technique I use is just to write down what your big goals are for each day. And to list a couple of important tasks you could be doing if you get a few minutes of spare time.

Please don't write this off as too simplistic or “beneath you”.

It sounds ludicrous to suggest that we “forget” our big goals and important tasks. But we do.

Or more accurately, we don't keep them front of mind enough.

So when we get a few spare minutes during the day, instead of springing into action on an important task we umm and ahh a bit and the moment is lost.

Or when we're writing an article or email and it gets a bit hard to think of what comes next; we allow ourselves to get distracted because it doesn't feel like such a big deal.

What I find time and time again is that if I write down my big goals and tasks in the morning every day and keep them open next to me on my desk it tends to focus my mind and keep me on the straight and narrow.

If I get a few minutes spare I know exactly what useful things I can do with those few minutes and I do them. Or if not a quick glance reminds me.

If I'm struggling a bit and get tempted to check email or the news, I'm reminded that I've got a lot to get through during the day and I need to keep focused.

Most times, it's enough.

I also find that writing things by hand keeps them top of mind much more than typing them. So I get the best of both worlds by hand-writing them onto my iPad.

As I say, “writing down your big goals every day so you keep them top of mind” sounds way too simplistic to be effective. But I promise you it's not.

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