Like a few hundred million others I watched the Champion's League final last night between Chelsea and Man City.
I always prefer it if the final is between teams from two different countries. But last night was a chance to see some real cat-and-mouse tactics from two teams who knew each other well.
Man City were the overwhelming favourites having absolutely dominated the Premier League this season. In fact their victory was seen as so certain that the main article in my newspaper in the morning was “Leonardo, Einstein…Pep? The Genius of Guardiola”.
Fate and Football didn't see it that way.
City barely threatened Chelsea with only one shot on target all game. In fact, it looked to all the world like Chelsea's new manager, Thomas Tuchel had thoroughly outfoxed Guardiola.
My feeling though was more that Guardiola had outfoxed himself.
Despite Man City's dominance in the league, Chelsea had beaten them the last two times they played and it seemed to weigh heavily on Guardiola. It seemed to me that rather than picking his best team and formation, his tactics were designed primarily to surprise and fool Tuchel.
They certainly surprised the pundits, the City fans, and apparently his players too.
In essence, he overthought the whole thing when a much simpler plan of playing his best team in their preferred formation would have worked much better.
(At least that's my view. In truth, my stature as a football coach is ant-like compared to Guardiola. But bear with me for the purposes of this analogy!)
Overthinking is a trap many of us fall into with marketing and something I know all too well myself.
You end up worrying so much about how people will react, going round in circles, procrastinating umming and ahhhing.
Then in the end, in order to try to cover all the different shades of grey you dreamt up, you create something either so complicated or so middle-of-the-road that it just doesn't have much impact at all.
I've realised over the years that I need to take a step back when something is taking me a long time. Take a look and if what I'm working on feels complicated it's probably not going to work.
Far better to go right back to first principles and do something simple.
On our recent More Clients TV video I mentioned that brand-building marketing (or building a reputation and authority in our cases) has the very highest ROI when done right.
That's because it creates long-standing changes in perception that trigger future actions.
I saw that play out this week.
My wife Kathy's annual Early Years Summitstarts soon and we've been running Facebook ads to get signups.
As I'm sure you know, Facebook ads can be very expensive these days. And negative comments on ads can be a real problem that drives up that cost.
On Tuesday we got a comment on our biggest ad that said “this event isn't free, it's just free registration”. The kind of inaccurate comment that could kill signups.
So I set off typing a reply to explain it absolutely was free and you could watch any or all of the interviews completely free during the week of the summit.
But it turns out my reply wasn't necessary.
By the time I'd typed it, three complete strangers had also replied explaining it was indeed completely free, buying the recordings was optional (but worth it), and that they'd been to the previous year's summit and how brilliant it was.
Those replies were much more powerful than me saying it was free.
In fact they were so enthusiastic and real I'm sure the whole conversation will have increased conversions on the ad as they answered the “is it really free?” objection that many people will have no doubt been thinking.
And that enthusiasm is a direct result of the reputation and brand Kathy has built over the years for the summit.
Now I tell you this not to show off…
(Actually, it is to show off a bit – I'm so proud of the amazing work Kathy's done with her summit).
But mainly it's to show one of the unexpected but important ways that building your reputation can help you.
In this case, “long term” marketing boosted our “short term” ad campaign.
But it can work the other way too. “Short term” investments in marketing to win clients right now can also build your reputation and brand for the long term – if you do them right.
Kathy's annual online summit kicks off in 2 weeks time so we've been “all hands to the pumps” preparing for it.
For obvious reasons, the job of marketing the summit falls to me. And it's actually very valuable for me to keep my hand in marketing a business that's quite a bit different to my own.
Over the years there have been two valuable lessons I've learnt and relearnt from the summit.
The first is the power of having something immensely valuable to offer for free.
In the case of Kathy's summit she usually has about 20-30 interviews with leading experts from around the world on whatever topic in early childhood education she's focusing on that year.
And by leading experts I mean really leading experts. From internationally known authors to professors revealing their latest research to practitioners sharing their innovative practices.
The kind of people you'd normally have to pay hundreds of pounds to see speak, all gathered together and free for a week.
For many of Kathy's audience it's the highlight of their year. And they share details of the summit like crazy whenever it's announced.
We had 34,000 people sign up last year and the vast majority came from online word of mouth and sharing.
And what drove it wasn't incentives or tricks. It was simply that the summit is such an amazing event they wanted to share it.
The second big lesson is about listening to your data and not making assumptions.
When we ran the first summit we didn't really know what marketing would work best. So we tried quite a wide variety and monitored where our signups were coming from.
We assumed that the most effective social media would be Twitter because Kathy had quite a big following there, whereas she barely used Facebook or Linkedin.
But in fact it became very clear early on that the place people were sharing and talking about the summit was Facebook.
So we quickly shifted our focus to posting there and running Facebook ads. A strategy that's worked really well ever since.
No matter how much of an expert you are (or think you are), the real world has a habit of throwing regular surprises at you. So it pays to try different things every now and then, monitor your results and adjust if needed.
A few weeks ago I was asked to contribute my thoughts to an article on B2B (business-to-business) email marketing.
I thought I'd check out what others were saying on the topic and came across this humdinger from one of the world's biggest CRM companies on what they think is the difference between B2C (business-to-consumer) customers and B2B customers…
My assumption, based on their advice, is that they're either living on a different planet or perhaps have just never actually met a business-to-business customer in the flesh.
This idea that somehow people check in their emotions at the door when they enter the workplace is as pervasive as it is muddle-headed.
Of course, business-to-business buying decisions tend to be bigger. But if anything, that means there are more emotions involved, particularly fear.
I'm sure you've seen many, many cases where the “logical” and “financially best” solution lost out to an alternative that was seen by buyers as being less personally risky.
And business-to-business purchases tend to involve multiple people. meaning that politics and personal rivalries rise to the fore too.
So of course, logic and finance are important for business-to-business decision-making. But don't let anyone, even huge companies who should know better, tell you that emotions aren't vital too.
When you're marketing to businesses, you're not marketing to the business itself. You're marketing to human beings who work in that business.
And just because they work for a business doesn’t mean they leave their humanity, their emotions or their sense of humour at the door. Far too much business-to-business marketing is bland and corporate and devoid of personality and interest. As a result, the human beings on the receiving end just ignore it.
As a small or solo business you have the tremendous advantage that you can afford to be different, to take a few risks to actually be funny or angry or joyful in your marketing.
Stuff a big company either wouldn't dare to do or would water down through endless committees.
You can talk to potential clients like they're real emotional human beings, not logic and finance-driven robots.
That's a huge advantage you have over bland corporates and the people who believe the nonsense about corporate buyers being all rational and emotionless.
I discovered this week that Ogilvy are doing online courses.
One of the world's most prestigious (and expensive) advertising agencies are doing courses on behavioural economics and social media for £90 a pop.
Will it ruin sales of marketing courses for those of us who are a tad less well-known?
Or will it bring lots of new buyers into the market and grow it for all of us?
I suspect the latter. But there's no real way of knowing for sure.
What is certain though is that things will change. And keep on changing.
And some things will always stay the same.
People will always buy things they want and need from people they know and trust who've demonstrated they can deliver.
Your real battle isn't with Ogilvy or McKinsey or that annoying leadership coach who your clients keep talking about.
Your real battle is to make sure you deeply understand what your clients are hungry for, that you're building credibility and trust with them all the time, and that you offer them something that feeds their hunger and does them good.
Competition kind of becomes irrelevant if you do that.
I bought a bucket hat this week in the colours of my team, Newcastle United, from back in the 1970s when Supermac was marauding up the pitch for us and smashing in the goals.
Probably my earliest football memories are of our cup run in 74. And although we didn't win, I still get a warm glow thinking of that time (and I can still sing “Howay the Lads” – our cup single by the Barrie Brothers).
I think one of the attractions of nostalgia like this is that we remember when things were simpler.
Our lives seem so complicated these days. So much pressure, so much to do. And nothing seems easy.
It's little wonder we get a warm feeling thinking back to a time when the weight of the world wasn't on our shoulders and everything seemed so straightforward.
Given the pleasure that simplicity gives us, it's strange then that in our marketing we seem to end up making things much more complicated than we need. Both for ourselves and especially for our clients.
We seem to get so tied up trying to be clever or persuasive or influential that we end up just confusing our clients.
I can't tell you the number of times I've seen people offering products and services where I can't figure out what on earth they're supposed to do or why I would be interested.
Or where I would need a PhD to figure out how I'd benefit from them.
One of my golden rules for marketing is to make things as clear and simple as possible.
All these clever tricks of persuasion people tell you about run a very poor second to simply being clear about what you're offering and what people will get from it.
Don't make people guess or jump through hoops to figure out what buying your products or services will mean for them and their business. Spell it out in simple terms.
It may not be clever. But my word, it's effective.
We've got a lot going on chez Brodie at the moment, so when I dragged myself reluctantly out of bed this morning and slurped down my extra strong coffee, I jumped straight to work.
A couple of hours later after recording and uploading a Course that Sells bonus video I realised I'd forgotten to write and send today's email.
Doh.
Back when I was running consulting teams pretty much the only “leadership” thing I was good at was getting buy-in from clients and involving them early so that everyone was on the same page and we didn't have to persuade them about recommendations later – they'd been intimately involved in working on them themselves.
It meant my teams got off to slower starts than my peers who rushed off to get the job done. But we finished faster and got much better results.
A decade or so ago when I started writing more, I discovered that a few minutes spent outlining what I was going to write saved me a ton of wasted time and effort later – and resulted in much better articles and emails.
And today I've been reminded that a few minutes “wasted” first thing in the morning to review your priorities makes sure you're doing the right things in the right order.
Aside: it was about two years into my first job when I realised I could no longer carry my to-do list around in my head and it made sense to write it down. Nowadays I struggle to remember where I've put it :)
So the desperately dull but much-overlooked secret to consistent and effective marketing is to think first and think consistently.
Make a quarterly plan for big projects. Plan your week. Review your priorities first thing in the morning.
It's easy to push out marketing in favour of client work (or frankly, anything you find easier).
It's rarely a good idea.
Keep putting off your marketing and you eventually won't have any client work to get in the way.
Just a few minutes spent each quarter, each week and each morning will keep you on track.
And unlike me, you won't have to apologise for failing to send out your email :)
The “always be closing” school of thought in sales is much derided these days.
The world has realised that for most significant sales you need to build credibility and trust before someone will be ready to buy. Or at minimum, if you push too hard before the time is right you'll lose someone who could become a great client later.
But the opposite approach of feeling you need to spend weeks or months nurturing a relationship before you ever offer anything for sale is equally wrong too.
The reality is somewhere in the middle.
For any given product or service, the majority of people won't be ready to buy straight away.
But some will. And they're incredibly valuable to you.
So are the larger number of people who might buy later.
So your challenge is to make sure the people who're ready to buy straight away (or after a week or a few weeks) do. But in the process you don't repel the people who aren't ready yet. And ideally, you strengthen your relationship with them
There are a bunch of ways to do this, but the simplest is to give something of value first, then offer the next (paid) step.
In essence, you're saying “here's something great. By the way, would you also like this amazing thing that complements it and helps you get results faster?”
(It's the opposite of those awful timeshare sales people who offer you a carriage clock but won't give it to you until after you've sat through their 3 hour presentation. Here you give them the goodies first, then ask if they'd be interested in your paid thing. Not the other way round).
If people sign up for your free report, you can tell them it'll be in their inbox shortly and ask if they'd like your video training course that gets them going and gets results fast.
Nobody (or hardly anybody) is going to object to that.
If you do a free video with 5 tips on something, at the end you can tell them about your paid product where you do everything for them to get them the results they're looking for.
Nobody (or hardly anybody) is going to object to that.
As long as you give value first and you offer something relevant without being super pushy about it, you'll get sales from people who are ready now, and you won't lose the people who aren't ready yet.
Kathy and I watched the last episode in the current series of Murdoch Mysteries last night.
We don't watch a lot of TV but I realised that we've seen a full 14 series of a show about a turn of the century Canadian detective and his colleagues.
That's a lot of attention we've given it. Sustained over time.
I know there are a lot of people, when it comes to content or email marketing, who worry about whether they have enough interesting things to say to sustain the interest of their audience over time.
Or who get stuck when they're trying to write an email or make a video because they worry it just won't be valuable enough or interesting enough.
What we've found with Murdoch Mysteries and all the series we've watched over long periods, like Elementary or Fringe or the CSI shows is that variety really is the spice of life.
Some of the shows have complex plots. Sometimes there's tension as the characters are put in grave danger. Sometimes they address important issues.
It's the equivalent of your best, most in-depth content and ideas.
But I don't think we'd have kept going for 14 series had everything been deep, complex, tense and dark.
There needs to be lighter periods to relax the tension. More whimsical episodes. Simple, action oriented episodes.
You need to be able to breathe before being gripped by the tension again.
It's the same with your content.
Filling every email or blog post or video with in-depth, super insightful content is not only a huge task – it also overwhelms people.
People tend to tune you out for one of two reasons.
Either when what you send them stops being relevant, valuable or interesting.
Or when it's just too much for them. And that's not just the volume you send them – it's the mental capacity it needs for them to process it.
It's vital that you build credibility and share your best ideas.
But you should also learn from the best in entertainment and have both shadow and light. It's not just OK to have lighter, easier to consume, more casual content. It's necessary.
Be like Murdoch (or insert your obsession of choice here).
I've been hearing an advert a lot on the radio recently for the UK census which is due in today.
In it a mum is encouraging her student daughter to complete the census because “it will inform decision-making about your future”.
“Inform decision-making” is the kind of language bureaucrats and advertising executives use. It's not something that would emerge from the mouths of ordinary mums and student daughters in a million years.
It's incredibly easy to get trapped in your own bubble and assume everyone thinks and talks like you. But it's lethal when it comes to marketing.
I've made that mistake many times. I spend so much time reading articles and watching videos aimed at marketing experts it's easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking everyone is motivated by the same things and reacts to the same type of messages.
But it's just not like that in the real world.
Last week we launched my wife Kathy's annual summit for early years practitioners and educators. They're a very different audience and a great reminder of how you need to get inside the head of your clients and talk to them in ways that are natural for them, not you.
The first email we sent out announcing the summit was a bit “rah rah” with emojis in the subject line.
It did OK.
But the second email we sent out to people who hadn't signed up after the first did way better. The subject line?
“your invitation”
Not only did we get more people signing up (and buying the recordings), we got a whole bunch of replies from people saying how much they'd enjoyed the previous year's summit and thanking Kathy for inviting them this year.
We wrote to them in their language and they responded.
It wasn't massively different to the first email. Just a change in tone really.
But it made a big difference.
I think whenever you've spent a lot of time inside your bubble with people who think and talk like you, you need to remind yourself of what your actual clients are like before marketing to them.
Read the emails they've sent you or what they post on social media. Recall conversations you've had. Remember what it was like when you were in their situation.
Those small changes could make a big difference for you too.
Ian Brodie on May 30th, 2021.
