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Clarity Trumps Persuasion

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 20th, 2013.

“Clarity Trumps Persuasion”

Confused It's a phrase much beloved of marketing and conversion expert Dr Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments.com.

And it's really been brought home to me recently as I've been reviewing a number of websites from consultants, coaches and professional speakers.

One of the things I see so often is sites that jump too fast to persuading. Here's what I mean by that…

Click here to discover what to do BEFORE you jump to persuasion >>

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21 Of The Best Resources For Improving Your Website Conversions

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 9th, 2013.

Conversion Optimization A couple of weeks ago I published a monster post chronicling how I was increasing my email subscribers using a variety of different techniques.

Since then I've had a few people ask about other resources to learn about conversion rate optimisation. So here's my list of the best resources for improving conversions on your website with a special focus on increasing email optins.

Click here to see the Top 21 Resurces >>

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Project 10K: Getting More Website Traffic

Posted by

Ian Brodie on February 26th, 2013.

We're a week in to Project 10K, my public quest to get 10,000 engaged email subscribers by the end of the year. My focus so far has been on identifying how I'm going to get more of the right sort of website visitors to hit my 10K target.

Here's the way I've looked at things: you may find it helpful yourself:

Firstly, let's think about how we're going to get more email subscribers (optins). Clearly the number of optins is dependent on the number of website visitors we get and the percentage that opt in to our emails.

Subscribers = traffic x optin%

In this post we're going to look primarily at ways of increasing the first of those variables: traffic. We'll cover increasing conversions in the next post.

Click here to see the detailed analysis >>

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Project 10K. Look Behind The Scenes At How I’m Growing My Business.

Posted by

Ian Brodie on February 15th, 2013.

Project 10K OK – this is a little bit scary. I'm going to make a very public commitment and then regularly report on my progress.

If you get my Insider Strategy emails (and if you don't, you should, they're the absolute favourite thing I do, click here to sign up) you'll know my focus for this year is on three things:

Simplifying my business – in terms of types of clients, products and services and marketing approaches I use
Speeding up how I do business
Getting more scale

Of all three, the biggie is going to be scale.

Click here to read the details >>

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Online Lead Generation – Creating The Right Lead Magnet

Posted by

Ian Brodie on January 30th, 2013.

Today's blog post is by Margaret Adams, a writer and speaker on inbound marketing. Margaret's article gives you some rock solid advice on creating a “lead magnet” to generate leads – a topic I know a lot of people struggle with. Over to you Margaret…

If you want to generate more leads for your business online, you will need to encourage visitors to your website to join your e-mail list. Many professionals write a special report or “lead magnet” to help them do this.

However, creating an appealing report is difficult. Before you put time and effort into your document, it’s worth checking that you’re planning to write a report that will work hard for your business. Use the following guidance to help you.

Click here to read Margaret's guidance on creating a Lead Magnet >>

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Your Content Sucks – Fix It!

Posted by

Ian Brodie on August 14th, 2012.

If you've read my free tutorial series on How To Get Clients Online you'll know I believe that blogging is a brilliant strategy to attract potential clients, demonstrate your credibility and build relationships.

But only if the content of your blog is useful, valuable and insightful.

Sadly, most blogs aren't.

Blogging isn't an SEO strategy. It isn't just a way of getting a bunch of stuff on your site and links to it to impress google. The primary purpose of blogging for business is to provide a quick and easy way to build credibility and trust with your potential clients.

The biggest reason people won't hire you isn't that you cost too much. It's the fear that you won't be able to do the job right.

Having content on your blog that makes people think, that gives them “lighbulb moments”, helps them understand their situation better, see new opportunities – that will convince them that you know your stuff. It gives them the confidence to pick up the phone or drop you an email.

But if you're a social media consultant and the sum total of insight on your blog is that “you can use social media to grow your business” then it's not going to work for you. If you're a marketing consultant and your blog posts share stunning insights like “you need to stand out from the crowd” then it's not going to work for you either.

Some weak link between what you do and the Olympics doesn't impress anyone either.

And please, no more “work smarter not harder”, “think out of the box” or “work on the business not in the business”.

Now I'm not saying that every blog post you do has to be jam packed with new insights. Or that you have to fill it with rocket science level material. Your content needs to be at the right level for your audience.

So a small business owner with limited experience in marketing isn't going to learn much from a post on using factor analysis to do market segmentation. But they might learn a lot from some simple ways of splitting their market into parts that they offer different services to.

Whatever you blog about, it needs to be both useful and non-obvious to your readers.

So whenever you write a post read it back (out loud) and think “what would my ideal customer think of me if they read this?”. Someone they'd love to work with? Someone they'd regard as a real expert? Or just someone regurgitating the same old stuff that everyone else is?

What about you? How do you ensure your blog content offers something new and valuable to your readers?Post your ideas and experiences in the comments below – thanks!

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Email Marketing for Coaches and Consultants

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 20th, 2012.

As I wrote in The Truth About Email recently, email marketing is still one of the most powerful tools any business can have in its arsenal.

But what about email marketing for coaches, consultants and other professionals?

Will it work for us?

After all, most of the email marketing you see focuses on promoting products. Yes, there's an element of giving value and relationship building. But by and large it's about offers.

And that style of email marketing won't work for professionals.

Our long term goal is to sell our high value services – not low value products. And before a client's going to be ready to hire us for those high value services, we need to have built up a high degree of credibility and trust.

That doesn't happen overnight. And it doesn't happen if most of your emails are promotions.

The best way for a professional to use email marketing is to use it to nurture a relationship with high potential clients. To give value and so build credibility.

The way I like to look at it is “what would an email from a trusted advisor look like?”

So imagine getting an email from one of your trusted business advisors. Maybe it's your accountant, or a consultant you worked with once before. Maybe it's an ex-colleague whose advice you value.

When they email you, what's in it? What does it look like?

Trusted Advisor Emails

Well, chances are it will often contain valuable insight a lot of the time, of course. And it won't be generic advice you could hear parroted anywhere like “work on the business, not in the business”. It'll be specific to your situation and your goals.

It'll be written personally too. Your trusted advisor won't write to you like they don't know you or you're some kind of anonymous prospect on a list. They'll write as a friend writing to a friend and using language that reflects that.

It won't be formal and stiff. It won't feel like they spent hours carefully constructing it to get the wording exactly right.

(Even though they might need to spend hours to get it to feel like that!)

And it won't feel like they're selling to you all the time.

If they suggest a course of action, they'll give you the reasons. But they won't turn it into a sales pitch.

And they won't be serious all the time either. The people I value advice from have become friends. Every now and then they send me something lighter too. A link to a joke or a video that amused them.

Now I'm not saying your email marketing should consist of a string of jokes. But I am saying “lighten up”. You want people looking forward to your emails, not thinking it'll be a burden to read them all the time.

The Secret of Effective Email Marketing for Coaches and Consultants

And that's really the secret: write like a trusted advisor.

Use the content a trusted advisor would use. Valuable, insightful business advice that builds credibility and trust.

Use the format a trusted advisor would use. A simple, plain email with no fancy graphics that looks like a human being sent it, rather than a pretty template that looks like a big company with a graphics department sent it.

And use the style a trusted advisor would use. Write like a business friend. Short sentences. Short paragraphs.

Contractions (e.g. “it's” not “is is”), slang and abbreviations where appropriate.

Exactly how you'd speak to a business friend if you were advising them over a coffee.

All the data says email marketing can be incredibly effective. But you need to do it right. You need to focus on building to win a long term client relationship, not a short term sale.

So, what's your experience of email marketing been? Has it worked for you? What are your secrets of success?

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Business Blog Writing: How To Create Valuable Content

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 6th, 2012.

business blog Probably the biggest question I get asked about blogging for business is how to come up with ideas for blog posts. Here's my method:

Creating Content for a Business Blog: Getting Ideas

It all starts with building deep understanding of your ideal clients.

Do research and surveys. Ask new subscribers questions. Spend a day in their life doing what they do. Draw up “pen pictures” of typical clients.

Get inside their head somehow.

Then brainstorm their goals and aspirations (in the areas where you can help). What they'd like to achieve. Who they look up to and admire, who they'd like to be like.

And then move on to where they are today: their problems and issues (again, in the areas where you can help). The day to day challenges they face.

Then take a piece of paper and in the top right hand corner write in a little summary of the goals and aspirations you identified. In the bottom left do the same for the problems and challenges they currently face.

Then draw an arrow joining the two.

That's the journey you're going to take your potential client on should they hire you.

Now look at that journey. Think about all the steps your client is going to have to make to successfully achieve their goals. And think about all the potential barriers they're going to have to overcome to get there.

Write those steps above the line on the map, and write the barriers below the line. Try to brainstorm as many as you can. It doesn't matter if all your clients will have to do all the steps, or will hit all the barriers – try to make the list as comprehensive as possible.

That things on those lists of steps and barriers are going to be what you write about on your business blog.

The first big barrier they face (or “speedump” as I like to call it, as the goal is that they get past it!) will form the core of the lead magnet you use to motivate readers to subscribe to your newsletter or other communications. But the other steps and barriers are perfect candidates for blog posts and newsletters.

So it could be that – to take leadership development as the field – a potential client for leadership coaching might have barriers like a lack of confidence, they might not know what their team needs from them, they might not have a clear picture of where they want to take their organisation. All these can make great topics for a business blog.

Next, I add to the mix what I believe the potential client will need to know and feel before they're ready to hire me. As well as providing ideas for blog posts, the “know and feel” factors can guide me to how I should write the post.

For example, If I decide that potential clients need to know and feel I've worked with people just like them before they'll be ready to hire me, then I'll try to cover many of the points using client case studies. And I'll make sure they get to see who they client was so they know whether someone in their situation was able to achieve great results by working with me.

I keep this “masterplan” for the blog near at hand when I'm writing or trying to come up with ideas. I don't use it every time. Much of the time I'm just inspired to write on a specific topic,

But having it nearby and reviewing it whenever I'm stuck for ideas is really helpful. It gives me the confidence to know that if I can write good content in these areas, then my business blog will work to help me bring in clients.

And don't forget: to learn how to turn those ideas for business blog posts into valuable content fast – tune in to my webinar with Danny Iny on Fast Easy Blog Writing.

Click here for details.

———-
Photo Credit: Andy Piper

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Linkbait on Steroids…

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 28th, 2012.

<--- Warning: this post is going to get a little technical! --->

If you're interested in getting clients from your website, you'll no doubt know that the most important factor in getting your site to show up highly in the search engine results – by far – is the number and quality of links to your site from other people's sites.

Google takes it as a vote of confidence in your site.

The assumption in the algorithms is basically that links are “natural”. In other words that people link to pages on your site if they genuinely like the content there and “recommend” it.

Historically though, search engine optimization experts have been able to use links to manipulate rankings. They've bought links on other people's sites. Or created huge networks of websites under their own control and pointed links at sites they want to rank highly.

What it's meant is that despite google's best intentions, it's always been possible for someone with deep pockets to buy their way to the top of the results.

But recently google have really started to shake things up. They've been actively searching for these networks of sites and removing them from their index so that the links don't count towards search engine rankings.

As a result, websites that have achieved high google rankings because of these networks have dropped like a stone in the results pages. One of the networks that's been hit, “Build My Rank”, has had to close its doors to paying customers as the majority of its sites have been deindexed.

And this is actually all good news for the rest of us.

I'm guessing that very few people reading this article have participated in this kind of link buying. Mostly our search engine rankings have come from natural links. People genuinely linking to us because we've created great content on our site that they'd like to share with others.

With the recent changes google is making, these natural links have become even more powerful.

One great way to get these natural links is to create what's known as “link bait”.

These are blog posts or other resources on your site that you've deliberately created to attract links.

A classic example is the “top 10” post. Where you list the top 10 of something or other.

People always find these list posts interesting and often link to them or mention them on social media. I'm not fully sure why – but given a choice between a thoughtful, in-depth article and a list, most of us (me included) click over to the list to see what's on it.

You can get even more pulling power if rather than just a list of things, you make a list of people.

The top 10 marketing bloggers. The top 20 women in management under 40. 5 writers on strategy you probably don't know about but should.

Why do people lists make even better link bait?

Because the people you mention in the list are flattered by it and promote the list for you – often without you even asking.

If someone appears on your list of 10 influential and insightful marketing bloggers, the chances are that influential marketing blogger will want to tell everyone he's on the list and put a link up to your post from his (influential) blog.

End result: valuable links and traffic to your blog post.

And yesterday, I found the very best example of this strategy being used I've come across.

In this case, salesforce.com (the guys who make the online CRM system) didn't just create a top 10 list – they made a “dream team”. A fantasy football team comprised of influential bloggers on marketing, sales and social media.

They gave them all positions, created little icons for each player, created a little bio for each player.

Really fun stuff. Stuff that even a hard bitten blogger who knows exactly what's being done couldn't resist.

Then they emailed all the bloggers to tell them they'd made the team (there's a European Dream Team and a US Dream Team).

Not surprisingly, the bloggers have begun to link to the post. All adding interest, generating traffic and vauable links to salesforce.com's website.

Very smart.

How do I know about this?

I made the team. Number 10 for Europe. The Lionel Messi role.

And even though I know exactly what's going on, I think they've done it brilliantly. And they deserve this link to the #SocialSuccess Dream Team.

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How to profit from other people’s marketing

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 11th, 2012.

Do you have a “swipe file”?

What's a “swipe file” I hear you ask.

Well, OK, I can't actually hear you. Email's pretty good these days, but not that good…

But if you're wondering what a swipe file is, it's simply a collection of examples and templates of proven, effective marketing you've “swiped” from other sources.

Now the idea is not to copy the marketing directly. Apart from being unethical, it might not work as the target client of the marketing piece may be different to yours, the benefit being promoted different, etc.

But swipe files are amazingly effective for inspiration.

One of the most opened emails I've ever written was entitled “5 crippling beliefs that keep consultants and coaches in the poor house”.

That was based on an article headline from Copyblogger entitled “5 Crippling Beliefs That Keep Writers Penniless and Mired in Mediocrity”.

When I'm writing emails, I'll often look to previous emails that have worked either for me or for other marketers and I'll follow the same basic structure.

It's the same with presentations, blog posts, even videos.

Not that you'll notice. I try to pour a ton of me into everything I do.

But more often than not, I like to start with something I know works.

How do you build up a swipe file?

Start with your own effective campaigns: emails, letters, whatever marketing you do.

But not just the ones YOU thought were good. Or the ones you got compliments on.

Base it on results: ideally clients or sales gained as a result. If you can't directly measure that, then use responses, clicks, whatever indicates the marketing piece is having the desired effect.

When it comes to other people's marketing, sometimes you can buy complete swipe files including their results.

For example, a few years I bought a review from veteran copywriter Bob Bly of all the emails he'd sent out, how they'd performed and what he'd learned from them.

Denny Hatch published a collection of some of the most successful direct mail pieces of all time with commentary (you can get a copy here)

Pure gold.

You can also judge what's working by what's long-lived.

For example, Martin Conroy's “Two Young Men” advert for the Wall Street Journal ran pretty much unchanged for 28 years.

The reason: it worked. They kept testing it against other ads but it kept winning, so they kept using it.

If the same ads keep appearing in the publications your clients read, then the chances are they're working.

Or if the same ads keep appearing for your keyword phrases on google searches (you can check the history using tools like Keyword Spy) then the chances are it's because they're profitable.

So take a copy of them. Analyse them. See how you could learn from them. What benefits do they focus on? What's the offer? What wording, style or structure do they use?

Or, if you're lucky enough to be similar to your clients (you sell to CFOs and you used to be one, for example) then pay attention to the marketing that works on you.

What got you to buy? Or to take some action like subscribe to a mailing list, send an email, or even just to think “I could work with this guy”.

Take a copy of whatever it was that triggered it and store it away.

Then when you next come to do any marketing, pull out your wipe file and see what you could learn from.

It'll save you a lot of blood, sweat and tears…

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