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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.

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What to give away (and what not)

Posted byIan Brodie on February 18th, 2018.

It seems to be an endless debate in marketing: how much should I give away in order to attract clients?

And different experts give wildly different answers.

Some say you should give away all your best material. That you can't give away enough.

Others say you're devaluing your work if you give away your ideas and content.

My experience: asking “how much should I give away?” is the wrong question.

It's not about how much, it's about what.

You can give away tons of information and still have potential clients feel short-changed. Or you can give away hardly anything, yet have them feel they're getting tremendous value from your free content.

The key is what type of information you give away.

And by that, I don't mean the old “what not how” advice. I've never found that to be useful since one person's “what” is another person's “how” depending on how much they already know.

My advice is to give away content that triggers “lightbulb moments” for your potential clients. Something that challenges their thinking and gives them new ideas. That helps them see their problems in a new light and uncovers the root causes of their issues or gives insights into potential solutions they'd never considered.

If you can do that, it doesn't really matter how much information you give away, your potential clients will feel inspired and energised. They'll feel you've given tremendous value.

On the other hand you can give them acres of material they already know about and they'll feel short changed.

“How much” isn't important, the new insights you give are.

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The quickest way to build deep client insights

Posted byIan Brodie on February 11th, 2018.

Cast your mind back to last Sunday's email where I asked you that trick question about the difference between corporate and non-corporate clients. 

The answer being, of course, that it's irrelevant.

What's important is not some big lumpy group like “corporates”. What's important is your specific ideal clients and building a really deep understanding of their goals and aspirations, hopes, fears, problems and challenges.

The better you know them, the better your marketing will work.

But how do you get those deep insights?

Well, frankly, the easiest way is if you are one of them.

If you're very typical of your ideal clients (for example you used to be a salesperson and now you do sales training) then you'll find it relatively easy to understand what makes them tick.

If that's not you (or it used to be you, but you've been “out of the field” for a while) then I've always found the best form of research is to speak 1-1, directly to your ideal clients.

Nothing beats genuinely listening to your clients and potential clients explaining in their language what's important to them.

That said, you have to ask the right questions and respond in the right way.

A little while back I did an interview with Chris Laub on my podcast about how to do these 1-1 interviews to draw out the most insights for your potential clients. Chris shows us when research like this works well and when it doesn't, what sort of questions to ask to get beneath the surface and find real insights, and what pitfalls to avoid when doing research.

Click here to listen to the interview, I'm sure you'll find it helpful:

>>> Chris Laub Podcast with Ian on Client Research <<<

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The secret of writing interesting emails

Posted byIan Brodie on February 6th, 2018.

Something I know holds many people back from doing great things with email marketing is a fear that they just won't be able to write interesting emails. That they'll bore their prospects and lose them.

It's true, of course. No one ever bored someone into buying from them.

But the secret of writing interesting emails isn't as difficult as most people imagine.

It's not about clever headlines, though that can help.

It's not about brilliant writing, great stories or the use of humour. Though again, those can all help.

And it's not about images or layout.

The secret of writing interesting emails is… 

…drum roll…

…to write about interesting things.

Or more exactly, to write about the things that are interesting, valuable and useful to your ideal clients.

What fascinates them may bore the pants off everyone else. But that doesn't matter. All you care about is whether your ideal clients find your emails interesting. Not your friends, your colleagues, your significant other, your inner critic. 

Just your ideal clients.

Of course, all that extra stuff helps. Great stories, metaphors, pacing, characters. All icing that makes the cake taste sweeter.

But you need the cake itself to taste great before you worry about the icing.

So…

Do you know what your ideal clients really care about and find interesting?

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Start now, the bar is soooo low

Posted byIan Brodie on February 4th, 2018.

I reckon the best thing to give you confidence to properly get into email marketing is to sign up for the newsletters of some of your competitors and see just how bad they are :)

Honestly, it's almost like someone created a Wikipedia entry for email marketing that says “Just send some promos for your events and services every now and then. Or tell them about awards you've won and new clients you've signed up”.

It really is that bad at times. You can do much, much better.

A few years ago a friend of mine signed up for a course on “advanced email marketing” from a well known UK marketing guru.

The course came on a set of DVDs (yep, it was a little while back – though not as long ago as you might think, most of the world had moved beyond DVD by then).

My friend's verdict: “awful”. It was apparently the same basic content recycled a dozen times for a dozen different types of emails.

“You can send an email to your existing customers…”

“You can send an email to your ex-customers…” 

“You can send an email to people who made enquiries…”

That's 3 of the modules right there.

But I honestly believe that awful though it was, the course made a lot of money for many of the people who bought it simply because it got them going and their competition was so weak.

Send useful information to your potential clients rather than straight up pitches or boring news and your emails will stand out.

Wrap them in a bit of a story or link to something interesting and people will enjoy reading them and keep coming back to them.

Add a call to action at the end to a related product, service or the opportunity to call you to get more useful info and you've got yourself a decent email marketing system.

Time to get started?

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The difference between corporate and non-corporate clients

Posted byIan Brodie on February 4th, 2018.

The difference between corporate clients and non-corporates (small businesses and individuals) is…

Irrelevant.

Yes, there are many differences in general between big clients and small ones. But those differences are insignificant compared to the differences between some big clients and other big clients. Or more importantly, between your ideal clients and people who aren't – whether they're in corporates or not.

Let me put it this way. Let's say you needed to hire a tall person. I'm sure there'll be some law against that, but let's just say you did.

And let's say that you had two candidates. A man and a woman. Who should you hire?

We know that generally, men are taller than women. So does that mean you should hire the man?

Of course not.

You hire the person who is actually taller. You ask them to stand up, or tell you their height or whatever.

But you go on the differences between the individuals, not on the differences between the huge and heterogeneous groups they belong to.

Whenever you're trying to plot the best way to market to your ideal clients, try to think of them specifically, and not just the big amorphous group they belong to (like corporates).

So don't ask “do corporates use Facebook?”. As “do my clients use Facebook?”. What you'll find is that some sectors within corporates are heavy users, others aren't. Some different types of functions are heavy users, some aren't. Some age groups are heavy users, some aren't, etc etc.

Same goes for any marketing question. The more you understand your ideal clients, the less you need to rely on gross generalisations which are probably completely inaccurate.