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Familiarity breeds?

Posted byIan Brodie on November 14th, 2021.

I drove Kathy to the train station early doors yesterday. She was meeting up with some of the folks she'd done her masters with a decade or so ago.

I haven't done much driving recently for obvious reasons.

In fact, I went over a year without needing to fill up the tank. And it's been nearly two years since I drove this particular route to the station.

I was mildly shocked at how much I'd forgotten the route.

I couldn't remember which lanes were right turn only and which were straight ahead. Or quite where the semi-concealed entry to the station car park was.

And I found myself having to concentrate much harder than usual just to drive. I was quite worn out by the time I made it home.

It's a bit like that with marketing.

If you only write emails once in a blue moon, each one is hard work and you forget the shortcuts and the right buttons to press to get things set up.

If you don't do Facebook Ads week in, week out, then the interface and algorithm will no doubt have changed since the last time you did them.

If you haven't done a webinar or live presentation for a while then the next one you do won't be anywhere near as effective as when you do them regularly.

It's why trying to do too many different things in marketing is always a mistake. You end up being rusty and less than effective at all of them.

Of course, you have to experiment a bit and try a few things to find out which works for you.

But once you've got something that works, stick to it.

Don't get grass-is-greenered by the latest shiny technique or because some marketer somewhere tells you they're “crushing it' with a tactic you're not familiar with.

It's almost certain that the fancy new approach won't work as well for you – and especially if you split your focus and try to do too many things.

Much better to do one or two marketing things really well than be mediocre at 3 or 4 of them.

Because familiarity breeds competence.

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How Easy is it to Refer You?

Posted byIan Brodie on November 10th, 2021.

Back when I did a lot of consulting and training about face-to-face marketing I used to talk about how to be more referable. And one of the biggest factors was simply how easy it was to make it happen.

Last night for example, we had an amazing pizza at Pizza Punks in Newcastle. Later in the evening one of our friends wanted to recommend them to someone he met, but couldn't remember where they were to give directions.

Luckily I remembered. But it would have been rather easier if, for example, they'd have given us some kind of fun keepsake with our bill that had their address on that he could have to referred to.

It's the kind of thing that sounds small and a bit trivial and you find yourself thinking “surely anyone who really wants to refer me will remember me”.

And some people will.

But some who could have referred you won't because it's a bit difficult.

And that small number of referrals that either happen or don't happen because of how easy it is can make a big difference.

The same thing can apply online too.

I recently had someone email me to say they'd like to recommend my regular emails to others but didn't know how.

Initially I found myself thinking “come on, it's easy, just send them to my home page there's a signup form there”.

But of course, it's just like my friend not being able to remember the address of Punk Pizza. They probably assumed their address was obvious or that someone could look it up.

But if something is just a little bit difficult it often doesn't happen.

So I could have made myself much easier to refer by having some kind of “forward this email to a friend” system or just a link at the bottom where people could go to sign up.

And the few extra subscribers I'd get from that could well mount up over time. Especially as they're people who are recommended by a friend not people who randomly found me.

Have a look at how easy it is to refer you and what little barriers might get in the way. You'll probably find it's quite east to fix them.

– Ian

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“…you’ll never know”

Posted byIan Brodie on November 7th, 2021.

The ridiculously-prolific author Nora Roberts said “if you don't ask, the answer is always no”.

In the world of marketing it's probably more accurate to say “if you don't ask, you'll never know”.

Usually, we don't ask, of course.

We cling to one of two convenient lies.

Either that we already know what people want.

Or that people don't know what they want.

(Don't get me started on the misuse of Steve Jobs' smoke and mirrors quote about not using market research).

If you can find a way of asking people about their problems and challenges I've found that the answers are always useful.

A simple example from my business recently is when people sign up to get a pdf copy of my Ultimate Guide to Creating an Online Course.

After signing up I send an email with a link to download the pdf, but also ask them to hit reply to tell me what their biggest challenge or problem is with creating online courses – or what they'd like me to cover in upcoming content.

And to make sure I get a decent number of replies I promise to send a link to some training videos I developed on creating sales pages for online courses.

And surprise, surprise, despite the fact I was convinced I knew what people wanted from Course Builders TV, I found a ton of new stuff being suggested.

Frankly, enough for me to create a year's worth of content.

If I'd not asked, then right now I wouldn't know and I'd be stuck in the usual loop of “what on earth am I going to write about?”.

Instead, my only problem is having too much.

Any time you can create an opportunity for people to tell you what they want from you, ask.

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Big content or little content?

Posted byIan Brodie on October 9th, 2021.

When you're trying to attract and win clients through your content there's often a dilemma about where to spend your time.

Because, despite what some content and seo gurus seem to imply, we don't all have 12 hours a day to spend or a team of people all working on content. We have to prioritise our time.

So should you write big, long articles or short, conversational pieces.

In my experience you need to do two things:

Firstly, you need at least one big piece of content that stakes your claim as an expert in your field.

It could either be an “ultimate guide” to an area that's a core part of your offer to clients or it could be some kind of unique point of view. Or both combined.

In my case I have ultimate guides on my site to building an online course, value-based marketing, winning corporate clients, follow-up and finding the time for marketing.

All key areas I help clients with.

Each one took a few weeks to develop. They're like little mini books.

But they do two things for me:

• Because they're big and contain new and valuable ideas they tend to get shared and linked to. So they attract traffic from google and social media.
• Once people visit my site and read the articles, they're left in no doubt that I have a lot of expertise and experience in those areas.

So each big article both attracts potential clients and moves them closer to being ready to buy.

You don't need as many of these big articles as I have – but I'd advise having at least one that gives visitors to your site that “wow” moment. Especially when they compare it to the typical quality of marketing content on most sites.

Once you've got that one big article, I'd focus on shorter, more conversational pieces of content.

These are essentially to keep you top of mind. 

The way I look at it is my big content gets me to pole position. Once I'm there it just needs a little nudge every now and then to keep me there. It doesn't need another huge article.

And the shorter conversational pieces of content do something else too: they build a more personal relationship.

With emails like this it (hopefully) feels like I'm chatting to you.

The stories and occasional bits of fun help to make me seem more like a real person you could work with.

And I can make little calls to action to ask you to email me, or call me to talk about a project, or click a link to see a new product I'm offering.

I've found that this mix of one or more big pieces with regular little conversational pieces is the best mix of content.

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How often?

Posted byIan Brodie on October 6th, 2021.

One of the questions I (and anyone with a background in email marketing) gets asked the most often is “what's the best frequency to send emails?”.

And unfortunately, there's no simple one-size-fits-all answer.

Anyone who tells you that the “best” frequency for everyone no matter what their situation is daily or weekly or monthly or whatever is either trying to sell you something, or they've just not got a lot of varied experience.

But over a decade or so of sending an awful lot of emails (and advising and helping on an awful lot more) I've picked up a few interesting observations.

Firstly, every survey I've seen where people are asked if they want more or fewer emails has come back overwhelmingly “fewer”.

Yet at the same time, I've never seen a case of someone decreasing their email frequency and making more sales. Or even getting better engagement.

And I've seen many, many cases where people have increased their email frequency and got more sales, more clicks and more engagement – including myself.

So the first conclusion is that email frequency is one of those unusual cases where customer opinion is not a good guide to what to do.

Even direct feedback to you isn't a good guide either.

People's tolerance for email frequency is very variable. Some are at the very limit already and even a few more emails will push them over the edge. But most won't even notice.

So if you increase the frequency of your emails what happens is the people for whom it's now too much will complain.

But the people for whom it's now the right frequency and will get you better results than a lower frequency aren't going to email you and say “hey, I'm glad you're emailing more”. You'll only notice the difference in terms of actual results. 

(And in fact, you may well get better results even from the people who say they want fewer emails).

And truth be told, our emails are only one tiny part of our subscribers inboxes – so an increase from us rarely makes much of a difference overall.

That said, you don't want to be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I wouldn't recommend immediately jumping from a monthly newsletter to a daily email. The difference will freak out your subscribers and there's a good chance you won't be able to keep it up anyway.

So what do I actually recommend?

Firstly, it's worth remembering that frequency is a function of value. If your subscribers find your emails really useful, you can send more.

Secondly, the people most likely to buy from you are likely to want to hear more from you rather than less.

Of course, we've all got stories of clients who barely opened an email for years, then popped up and bought a huge project. But those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

By and large, people who find your content useful and relevant and like your style are the most likely to buy from you, and they're the most likely to want to get more of your content.

Thirdly, your subscribers are likely to be at their most enthusiastic and open to receiving more emails just after they've signed up.

Most normal people don't sign up for “get my free report on the solution to problem X and my regular emails on how to implement it” and then think “well, I hope he doesn't send me too many emails about that thing I wanted I just signed up for”.

That means you can send emails more frequently in your “welcome sequence” of initial emails than you might later.

Fourthly, the biggest issue isn't really frequency, it's time.

I find it easy to squeeze in 5 or 10 or 30 minutes here and there to browse the web, read the sports pages and watch a couple of TV shows every week. I find it really hard to imagine finding 2 hours and 43 minutes all in one go to watch the latest Bond film.

So it's better to send short emails more frequently than a really long email once in a blue moon. (And yeah, I know this email breaks that rule – sorry!)

And finally, the best email frequency is…well, it's a process not a destination.

Bearing in mind the previous points hint that you can probably get better results by emailing more frequently, I would start by trying to email just a bit more often.

If you currently email monthly, try every two weeks.

If you email every two weeks, go for weekly (generally speaking I find weekly is a good default for most people). 

If you're emailing weekly, throw in the occasional additional email midweek.

Track your results.

Are you getting more clicks to your website and (eventually) more sales? Or more enquiries or more email replies.

If it works, increase a bit more.

Then a bit more.

In theory, stop when your results stop improving.

In practice though, nine times out of ten, you'll run out of the capacity to write more frequently well before your results stop improving.

Personally I've settled on twice a week.

I did monthly a long, long time ago.

I got better results from weekly (and was able to keep up the habit easier).

I tried emailing 3-4 times a week. It got better results than weekly (not 3-4 times as good, but definitely better). But I struggled to keep it up – I was spending too much time writing emails and not enough time on my other marketing.

So I've settled on twice a week.

It's a habit I can keep up. And it gets good results for me.

You have different clients to me with different expectations and different inboxes. Your answer will be different to mine.

But gently tweaking over time works for everyone.

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Weird coincidence

Posted byIan Brodie on October 3rd, 2021.

So here's a weird coincidence.

Last email I promised I'd send you an advanced tip on how to focus your offers on the people who are actually interested in what you're promoting and avoid pushing stuff at people who aren't.

And then a couple of days later I got asked to contribute to an article on email segmentation on the exact same topic.

I guess there's just something in the air :) 

The issue the tip relates to is when we have a product or topic that might be of interest only to part of our list. Or for times when our product has a long sales cycle so at any given time most people aren't ready to buy.

If we try to message our whole list with our offer we have this dilemma of knowing that more emails will result in more sales. But more emails will also annoy potential customers who just aren't interested in this particular offer or just aren't ready quite yet.

In other words we end up in this trade-off between emailing more to get immediate sales, but risking losing high value potential customers for the future. So usually we end up going for what we think is a safe “middle ground” of a few emails but not too many.

The problem with that is that the middle ground actually means you're sending too many emails for the people who aren't interested but too few for the ones who are.

It's the worst of both worlds.

A better method is to use an initial email to try to identify who's interested in the topic and then mail more to them and less to the people who aren't.

A simple way of doing this is to send a useful email on the topic to your entire list, and in the call to action ask them to click if they'd like more on this topic.

Then you can follow up with the people who clicked with more useful information knowing they're interested so you're not mailing too often. And you don't send the follow-ups to the people who didn't click.

And what that means if you have a relevant product or service is that including calls to action to offer that product or service in the follow up emails won't be seen as too much full-on selling.

Now of course, it's not 100% accurate. There might still be some people who are interested in the topic right now but not in a product or service that could help them with it.

But the vast majority of people interested enough to click a link to hear more about a topic aren't going to get upset if your follow up emails mention a product or service which helps with that topic.

So instead of trying to find a middle ground frequency and tone for everyone, you send more to those who are interested and make more offers; and send less (or nothing) to those who aren't.

And it really does work.

Whenever I launch a new product I try to use this strategy to focus on the people who right now are interested in the areas the product helps with.

I still do one general email to offer the product. But the people who are interested will get at least 3 or more emails on the topic with useful information and the offer.

And I find that almost all my sales come from those who clicked that initial link and got the additional emails.

Net net, I get more sales, but fewer unsubscribes from “not ready now but could be in future” potential customers.

And honestly, it's not that complicated to implement. Just send the initial email, tag anyone who clicks, and then send the next emails to the tagged people.

So while it's an advanced tip conceptually. In practice it becomes quite easy to do.