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Why copycat marketing is the first step on the road to ruin

Posted byIan Brodie on August 25th, 2013.

What's the first thing most people do when they start to work on their marketing?

Usually it's to look at their competitors.

If it works for them, it'll work for me, right?

They go to business breakfasts and chamber of commerce events? So should I.

Their website has lots of nice images and a clever slider thingy? So should mine.

They have a social media manager posting on Twitter and Facebook all the time? You get the picture…

The trouble with this is twofold.

Firstly, of course, the chances are it's not working for them. Most professional businesses are woeful at marketing and just stumble through more by luck than design.

And secondly, even if it does work for them, just doing the same sort of marketing isn't going to work for you.

Here's the thing. Your clients often have very little to judge you and your services on in advance of working with you. So they go by what they can see.

If your marketing is no different to your competitors, what are they going to think about your services?

Unfortunately, they're going to infer that your services are no different to your competitors either.

Being conservative with your marketing, just copying what others are doing: far from being the safe route, it's a surefire step on the road to ruin.

Don't do it.

I'm sure you wouldn't, of course. So maybe pass this message on to someone weaker-willed who might ;)

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Stop chasing…really

Posted byIan Brodie on August 18th, 2013.

Have you ever watched one of those romantic comedies where the hero or heroine spends the entire movie chasing after unrequited love, only to discover their true love was right under their nose all the time?

You know the ones. They send them gifts. They do them favours. They put their jobs or reputations on the line for them yet they get nothing back.

A bit clichéd really. And in the real world, sensible people don't really chase potential lovers quite so desperately unless they get some form of reciprocation. Some sign the other person is really interested. Some commitment and action from them too.

But in the world of marketing and selling, we often do chase desperately after potential clients who've shown no real interest in us. And just like the movies, the more we keep chasing the less interested they get.

It rarely turns out well.

Chasing clients. Nagging them to see if they've looked at your proposal. Calling and emailing again and again to see if they'll have a meeting with you.

It's all much more likely to push clients away than to bring them towards you.

No one likes being chased. It makes you feel guilty. And it makes the person doing the chasing look desperate.

And even if you do manage to land the client, it starts your relationship off on absolutely the wrong foot. You're supposed to be an equal partner. A trusted advisor. Not a needy, clingy puppy.

Why do we end up in chase mode?

Desperation I think. If we've only got a handful of leads in our pipeline then we need to land every one we can. So we chase after lost causes. We push potential clients harder than we should because we need something to happen now.

The answer?

Not sales training. Not getting better at closing.

The answer is to have more leads. To not be reliant on that potential client you feel you have to chase.

When you're confident there are genuinely “plenty more fish in the sea” (or plenty more leads in your pipeline) you can let that client who's not responding move on and focus your energy on something more productive.

And the confidence you get will make you better at selling too.

So stop chasing. Start generating more leads.

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Presentation secrets from 1935

Posted byIan Brodie on August 11th, 2013.

Perhaps the best book ever written on giving presentations first took breath back in 1935.

It was written by Richard C Borden, Administrative Chairman of the Department of Public Speaking at New York University and a highly successful public speaker in his own right.

“Public Speaking As Listeners Like It” pre-dates Powerpoint, Overhead Projectors – even the venerable old flipchart.

Here's one of the gems from inside – it's the Borden Formula for structuring a powerful presentation…

What you have to do is imagine your audience shouting out the following four phrases to you in order:

>> “Ho Hum!”

>> “Why Bring That Up?”

>> “For Instance?”

and

>> “So What?”

Here's how to use it in practice…

Imagine you're about to present, you stand up, legs quivering, and the audience shouts out “Ho Hum!”. In other words, they're expecting yet another dull talk.

So you have to break through the Ho Hum barrier. Open with something interesting that grabs their attention.

Instead of saying “I'm going to give you an overview of the impacts of work-related stress and how to reduce it in your business”, say “10.4 million working days were lost in the UK last year due to stress. It's now the biggest single cause of work related illness”.

Shock them. Surprise them. Intrigue them. Interest them somehow. Or they just won't listen to the rest.

So you've grabbed their attention. Now they shout out “Why Bring That Up?”. In other words, why is this topic relevant for them? They're not going to pay attention for much longer unless they can see how the topic impacts them in their business or lives.

So in our example, if the speaker was talking to small businesses she could go on to talk about how work related stress impacts small businesses in particular – and the things a small business can do to avoid it.

Next question: “For Instance?”.

Human beings understand things best with concrete examples rather than abstract concepts. So find a way of making the concept real for your audience with examples. Our heroine could talk about a specific business and the measures it took to reduce work related stress.

Finally, “So What?”. What do you recommend they do? Our speaker could list the steps the audience should take to reduce stress in their workplace.

And, of course, make sure your call to action includes some way of you keeping in touch with them. Speaking to you after the talk. Signing up for your free report and emails that go into more detail.

Despite changes in technology (and attention span), Borden's tips from 1935 are just as valid today as then. Make sure you're using them!

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Here’s where I screwed up

Posted byIan Brodie on August 4th, 2013.

About five years ago I took on a client I knew I shouldn't have.

You know how it goes. The negotiations get a bit painful. They seem to be a bit too interested in what happens if things don't go well rather than in discussing how to make sure they do go well.

You just don't get the feeling that they're going to be easy to deal with.

But in the end, they offered a deal with a big upside so against my better judgement I agreed to take on the project.

It went fine at first. But the more time went by, the more difficult it became to get hold of their senior executives. Despite the fact that the success of the plan we were developing was hugely dependent on the leadership of their senior team.

As time went by, actions were left undone, important conference calls just never happened.

Everything kind of fizzled out.

And, of course, the big upside that made the deal look attractive never materialised.

Over the years I've often thought about that project.

I used to think of all the things I could have done to make it work. I could have been more insistent on getting their time. Forced the issue when I saw that it wasn't going to work. Maybe even come up with a strategy that was less reliant on the senior team to make it work.

But eventually, I came to realise that by far the easiest solution would have been simply to avoid the project in the first place.

Projects and clients like this are a huge drain on your time and energy. They distract you from what's important. Cause you to question yourself.

Even if the money looks good, they're NEVER worth it.

Don't screw up like I did. If something feels wrong with a client or project, walk away.

Invest your time and effort in finding clients that are going to be great to work with. Who are going to energise you rather than drain you.

You can use the practical, client-winning strategies I share in Momentum Club.

Or you can develop your own approaches to generating enough leads that you don't have to say yes to every potential client.

Whatever route you go down, save yourself a lot of time, energy and heartache by working only with clients who are perfect for you.

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Seriously?

Posted byIan Brodie on July 28th, 2013.

Kathy has this phrase she uses when I've done something wrong. Just one word.

“Seriously?”

I can tell from the intonation just how much trouble I'm in.

And sometimes other people or businesses get the phrase too.

We were in Wilmslow a while back and needed to grab a bite to eat. As our usual place was full we took a look at a new cafe that had just opened up.

It's based in an ex-bank – so looks a little bit forbidding. And the windows are so high up you can't see in without jumping up. A bit of a challenge for a cafe where seeing a full house of happy diners is one of the main ways you can tell if it's any good.

So you'd expect a sensible business to compensate by creating as much visibility as possible elsewhere.

Not a bit of it. Instead of a glass door where you could see in, it was heavily frosted with a fancy logo on it. So no way of taking a peek to see if it was the sort of place you'd like to try out.

Seriously?

And where cafes normally have menus either side of the door so you can see if they do the kind of food you want and if the prices are in the range you're looking for – instead we got more logo and a “now open” sign.

Seriously?

Kathy tried the door, but it seemed like it was jammed shut despite there being people inside. In the end it just became too embarrassing to almost have to force the door to get in so we left.

Seriously?

None of this is rocket science. If you set up a new restaurant you must make it appealing for people to come and try you out. Let them see inside and let them see all the satisfied customers.

Let them see what you have to offer rather than making them ask.

And for heavens sake, make it easy for them to get in the door.

Obvious for a restaurant. What about your business?

How easy is it for your potential clients to try you out? How easy to “see” all your satisfied customers?

How easy to see the menu? To know what they'll get from you without having to embarrass themselves by asking questions?

How easy to find you online and offline and actually get in the door?

It's easy to spot the problems with other people's businesses. But how many are looking at yours and thinking “seriously?”.

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Hey!

Posted byIan Brodie on July 21st, 2013.

There's a reason for me saying “Hey” in title which may surprise you…)

In the last presidential race, almost all of Obama's $690m funding came from fundraising emails.

And it turns out that his campaign team were obsessively testing different types of email behind the scenes.

They'd send out test emails to a sample of supporters with different variations of subject lines, amounts asked for – even fonts and buttons. Whichever raised the most money was then used as the main email to send to everyone else.

And they found out some pretty interesting stuff that we can all definitely learn from.

Firstly, a causal tone worked best. After the election was over, Toby Falsgraff, Obama's email director revealed that “The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your in-box from other people”.

Nothing clever. No screaming headlines. Just emails that looked and felt like they came from your friends and colleagues.

In fact their best-performing headline way simply “Hey”.

Dropping in the odd mild profanity worked too. Again showing that we respond best to emails written to sound like human beings talking to us – not formal corporate speak.

And they also found that people were very happy to receive plenty of emails. “At the end, we had 18 or 20 writers going at this stuff for as many hours a day as they could stay awake. The data didn't show any negative consequences to sending more.”

So here's the thing. If frequent, casual emails work best for the president's supporters to raise the most funding – might something similar work for you?

When I work with clients on email marketing their initial fear is often that they need to send “professional” emails (and professional usually means boring and stiff).

But every time we test it we find that more casual emails – written to a “good business friend” get a much better response.

Try it.

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The 20% rule

Posted byIan Brodie on July 21st, 2013.

For years I've been teaching that if you want to run a thriving business you need to be spending 20% of your time on marketing.

One day a week. Two half days. 90 minutes a day.

However you cut it, you need to devote that 20% of your time to make an impact.

Sure, you can let it slide for a while. Live off past investments.

But in the end it'll catch up. You'll go from feast to famine.

One of the best decisions I ever made early on when I was setting up my business was to invest more than 20% of my time on marketing. More like 40% really.

And yet a lot of people I speak to struggle to hit 20%.

It seems like a vicious circle. You need to be billing all the time, so you can't spare any time for marketing. And because you're not marketing much, you have to accept whatever clients come along. Usually not the highest paying ones. So you have to bill all the time to make ends meet.

And so the circle continues.

If you're going to break the circle you need to make a sacrifice. (Sorry, the alternative of just getting lucky isn't something I'd recommend waiting around for).

That might be taking home a lower income for a while (or burning up some savings) while you build your pipeline and your marketing assets.

Personally I sacrificed time. When I wrote my first lead magnet, Client Breakthrough, I did it over a couple of weekends. And I'd regularly stay up beyond midnight after a long day working with clients to do a blog post or to study a training course on a marketing technique I wanted to master.

I still work pretty hard today. But the investment's given me a lot more freedom and a business that's not reliant on my personal time to make money for me.

Are you investing 20% of your time on marketing?

If not, and you see yourself in that vicious circle, how are you going to break out?

Don't just think about it or worry about it. Make a plan for how you're going to deal with it. Then do something about it.

Joining Momentum Club so you get a shortcut to the most effective marketing strategies for professionals might be a good start.

Dedicating extra time every evening to blogging, or creating a lead magnet, or working on your social media presence could help.

Getting out and meeting potential clients at events they attend will help.

But you gotta do something.

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Yikes

Posted byIan Brodie on July 14th, 2013.

I was over in Geneva a whle back doing a marketing strategy workshop for a client.

As sometimes happens with workshops, we overran by 30 minutes or so. Combine that with a snarl-up on the roads on the way to the airport and I only just made my flight. Yikes!

In fact I had to run to the gate, and I was too late to check in my bags so I had to jettison all my toiletries on the way as, of course, you can't take liquids in your hand luggage.

As I collapsed in a heap in my seat before take-off, I wondered just how we'd managed to get so far behind.

The workshop was well planned and we'd been pretty much on track for most of the day.

But I just hadn't paid attention to the time when it got to the critical last hour or so. The team had come up with some great ideas and we allowed ourselves to get sucked into a few interesting but lower priority side discussions.

If I'm honest, I sometimes let the same thing happen with my marketing too. I wonder if you're the same?

It's easy to start out with a solid plan, but to get sidetracked by things that are interesting, or we enjoy or feel comfortable doing; but just arent real priorities.

You fiddle about with making your website looking pretty instead of focusing on the content. You get comfortable delivering a presentation again and again, even though it doesn't bring you any leads.

And while missing your flight is a pain in the butt, missing your financial targets because you let your marketing get off track is a whole lot more serious. A big “yikes”.

In the same way that I should have kept an eye on the time, you need to keep track not only of sales but of “lead flow”. How many initial contacts are you getting with qualified potential clients? How many meetings? How many people are opting in to your newsletter?

Whatever the right metrics are for you, check them weekly. Keep yourself on track. Don't end up metaphorically running through the airport and having to ditch any liquids you're carrying.

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“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more”

Posted byIan Brodie on July 7th, 2013.

If you're a certain age like me, you'll remember Peter Finch screaming that line in the brillant “Network”.

If you haven't seen it and you consider yourself any sort of aficionado of good films, you MUST watch it. It won Finch an Oscar for best actor, the first to be posthumously awarded. And well worth it.

In the film, Finch's character, an evening news anchor, learns he has just a few weeks left on air because of declining ratings. In his last broadcasts he starts ranting about what he sees wrong in the world and the program's ratings see a sharp upward spike.

Things don't end well for Finch in the film, but there's definitely something we can learn from the way that Finch resurrected his audience's interest by opening up his heart and talking honestly about what made him mad.

Now I wouldn't recommend ranting and moaning all the time. No one likes to be around someone who complains incessantly.

But every now and then it can be incredibly powerful to “tell it like it is”.

Especially when your rant about something also helps your clients.

If you're slaying sacred cows for example. Or fighting against sharp practices. Or warning them away from bad advice.

Or standing up for them when they're under fire (I swear I'm going to punch the next person who complains about consultants “borrowing your watch to tell you the time” when my memories of my consulting colleagues are all of them being completely dedicated to helping their clients succeed. And of staying in the office to ensure that success long, long after the clients themselves had gone home).

So shoot down some sacred cows in your industry. Tell your audience (email subscribers, blog readers, seminar audience, whoever) just how you feel about important topics.

It'll cement a strong bond with those who share your views.

It'll provoke a reaction amongst those who don't agree – and get you talking to them.

It'll position you as a leader in your field – someone prepared to take a stand for something they believe in.

And ultimately, that will draw more potential clients towards you.

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The artisan market success secret

Posted byIan Brodie on June 30th, 2013.

A year or so ago a couple of enterprising women in our area decided to help revitalise the local economy by organising an Artisan Market.

To cut a long story short, it's been a huge success. Every month or so a ton of specialist food and craft stalls set up for a day in Wilmslow. And the town gets flooded with folks like Kathy and me wandering round buying stuff.

It's worked so well they've started up similar markets in three more of the surrounding towns.

What's been really interesting for me is just how willing people are to pay “top dollar” for stuff that's been cooked or crafted with care.

Personally I can't really tell the difference between an artisan-crafted spelt flour loaf and a half-decent one you might get down the supermarket. But it just feels good to buy stuff from someone who cares about what they do, and does it with skill.

It's the same with our clients.

If we could stop trying to appear “professional” and “corporate” for just a minute we'd see that many clients like to buy from artisans rather than supermarkets.

They want to see authenticity, passion for what we do and deep capabilities. Not just dull uniformity and a safe corporate pair of hands.

Of course, not all clients want to hire artisans. And most of us buy our basics at the supermarket. It's only when we want something special we call in the artisan.

But for me, I'd much rather be an authentic artisan than a buttoned-down corporate any day.

How about you?

Would you rather be an artisan?

And if so, what are you doing to ensure that's how your clients see you?