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One of the only ways to differentiate today

Posted byIan Brodie on January 1st, 2017.

You know, there used to be a time when you could differentiate yourself by doing something different. Offering a different result or a different service to your competitors.

Those were the days when finding good people was difficult for clients. When your competitors were all local.

Those days are over.

These days smart people who can do (or claim to do) the same stuff as you are just a google search away. So what's your differentiator if it's not what you do?

It's who you are.

Faced with a choice between multiple competitors who all claim to be able to do the same thing, clients usually pick the people they feel the most comfortable with.

And to do that, they need to know you as a person.

That's not easy in today's online world where most communication is virtual. But it's not impossible either.

What it requires is that first, you communicate regularly. They can't get to know and like you if they rarely hear from you. 

And secondly, you've got to infuse your communications with your personality. Far too many communications from small businesses and solo professionals feel like they've been written in the PR departments of mega corporations.

If your clients wanted to hire a mega corporation they would. They don't need you to pretend to be a mega corp too. 

When I started email marketing 7 years ago I immediately got decent results by sending out high value content.

But my results really took off when I started telling stories – usually about my own struggles and challenges.

Of course, I still got across valuable content in those stories. But using a story format also allowed people to connect more with me. To empathise and to know I'd had similar experiences to them.

It made all the difference.

So, how are you infusing your personality into your marketing? 

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These 3 things are all you need

Posted byIan Brodie on December 30th, 2016.

As the father of a 20-year-old and a 17-year-old, I get exposed to some interesting aspects of modern culture through their viewing habits.

I'm not sure we can learn much from the constant stream of “epic fail” videos that our youngest streams onto our TV via Youtube, or from some guy called Memeulous making fun of “Blackpool Grime” (don't ask).

But if we look at the rising stars who've made it big on Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat and other new media, there are definitely some patterns.

Of course, none of us is likely (or would want) to become the next Youtube sensation. But if we have an open mind we can absolutely take the lessons from what these folks have done and apply them to our own businesses. 

So what do these new media superstars do that makes them so successful (and that we can apply ourselves)?

Well, firstly, they have something different to say.

If you're not in their target demographic then their video game reviews, makeup tutorials or humour might not seem interesting or different to you. But to the people they aim at, they hit the spot. And they're different to all the other people doing similar things.

Is your content clearly different to your audience, or do you essentially say the same things as others in your field?

Secondly, they reach directly to their audience.

They don't rely on publishers or magazine editors or other people's websites or shows to get their material in front of their audience. They've established their own presence and their fans come directly to them.

Do you have a direct channel to your ideal clients, or are you reliant on other people for them to hear your message?

Thirdly, they communicate frequently and regularly.

No one became a Youtube sensation or Instagram superstar by publishing once and waiting for things to happen. They publish weekly or more often. They keep their fans coming back for more time and time again.

How frequently do you communicate with your ideal clients?

Nail these 3 things: a distinctive point of view, reaching your ideal clients directly and communicating regularly and you can establish yourself as a trusted and respected authority for your clients.

Miss any of the 3 and it'll be an uphill battle.

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The “secret” of being believable

Posted byIan Brodie on December 11th, 2016.

Last week I shared with you 5 ways of making your USP (or any of your marketing) believable and of being trusted.

They were very rational approaches. The use of guarantees, testimonials, demonstration.

But there's also a more emotional way to be trusted, if you're brave enough.

It's to be open.

Back in 1997, Professor Art Aron of Stony Brook University started a study which has been repeated in various forms many times.

He paired up students who didn't know each other and got them to ask questions to each other. One group asked relatively factual questions. The other started out factually but progressed to more personal, revealing questions, like “what are your most treasured memories?” and “how close and warm are your family?”.

At the end of the exercise, Aron got the pairs to report back on how close they felt to their partner.

Not surprisingly, the partnerships that asked each other the most revealing questions reported feeling much closer to each other.

And those feeling persisted. Weeks later, Aron's team observed that the partnerships who'd revealed more personal information in the study tended to sit next to each other in classes and actually “hang out” outside of classes.

In fact, when they were asked to rate how close they were to various people in their lives, they reported higher scores for the previous strangers they'd revealed personal information to than many people they'd known their whole lives.

Being open, sharing your feelings and personal information tends to make people feel closer to you and trust you more.

They've even observed similar things on dating websites. The people who share more personal details in their profiles tend to get more dates and to report those dates as being successful.

Now I'm not saying you should now fill all your blog posts and emails with personal stories about how sad you felt when you lost your cat when you were a child.

But I do think we could all be a bit braver when it comes to sharing how we really feel, how vulnerable we are.

There's such a huge temptation when we're trying to come across as experts, professionals and authorities that we pretend we have all the answers and we always know what to do.

That's certainly not the case for me. I'm often racked with indecision and worried that I might make a wrong move with my marketing that would make me look amateurish when I'm supposed to be an expert at this.

But I don't think that makes me less of an authority. I think it makes me human.

And humans connect with humans. We trust humans.

Could you be more open and vulnerable in your communication?

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No personality?

Posted byIan Brodie on December 8th, 2016.

Yesterday I said that personality was one way to differentiate your services from your competitors.

Sometimes, it's the only way.

But what if you don't have a “big” personality?

That's OK. Big personalities are great on stage, but I wouldn't want to work with one day-in, day-out.

What I mean by personality is more about being more open. Letting people see “the real you”. Admitting your flaws. Admitting your strange likes and dislikes. 

We're all wonderfully different. We click with some people and not with others. 

The problem is that most of us bury who we are beneath an air of professionalism. And that makes it difficult for potential clients to see enough of us to click. 

I mentioned James Altucher yesterday. He goes much further than most. He winds his advice in his emails into stories of his insecurities, failures, hang-ups, but ultimately successes.  

I care about James. I want him to succeed just as much as I want him to send me good advice. So much so that I actually got upset when I heard he'd split with his wife.

Most of us probably don't need to go as far as he does in sharing his personal experiences. But that personal angle is important. Think about the “water cooler” conversations you had at work or the chats about random nonsense in the office canteen. It was that chit-chat that helped you build relationships with colleagues.

Transfer that to your marketing.

No one wants to hear about your trivia every day, of course. But wrapping your valuable information in your personal experiences makes you more relatable. And it also makes your advice feel more concrete and “real world”.

A challenge for you: next time you write a blog post, article or email, or do a podcast or video: embed the tips you give in a personal story. See how it works out.

Better yet, tell me how it works out :)

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Differentiating is HARD. Here are 3 proven methods that work

Posted byIan Brodie on December 6th, 2016.

Standing out from the crowd is vital. But in the mature markets most of us operate in, it can be really, really difficult.

The challenge is that in our mature service markets, there are always others promising the same results as us.

I'm certainly not the only person promising to help you get more clients. And I'm sure you're not the only person in your market promising to improve their leadership, cut their costs, get them more website visitors or whatever it is you do.

Promising a core benefit is the price of entry in a mature market. You need to do more to stand out. 

One method is to focus on a sub-segment of your market.

That could be a particular niche you specialise in. Career coaching for returning-to-work moms. Sales training for enterprise software tools. 

Your specialisation gives potential clients confidence that what you offer will be tailored to their specific needs and so help them get better results. 

Or you could focus on a sub-segment that values a secondary benefit of your product or service. That's the classic Dominos Pizza “fast delivery” USP. Or for you, it could be sales training delivered multilingually, leadership coaching delivered discreetly without involving the rest of the organisation.

The second method is to highlight a unique method or system or “new ingredient” you use to deliver your service that others don't have. This is especially powerful in a sceptical market where clients may have used other suppliers and failed to get the results they were looking for. Your different approach gives them hope that they'll be able to get results with you.

Consultants have been offering cost reduction and productivity improving services since time immemorial. But when Michael Hammer & James Champy branded their approach to transformation as “Re-Engineering” and showed how it was different to previous improvement methodologies, it gave clients across the globe a reason to believe that this time, it just might work.

The final method might surprise you. It's personality.

But if you think about it (and if you're anything like me) you regularly buy from people who aren't really offering anything much different to their competitors. It's just that we like them. We click with them. We appreciate their style. We perhaps aspire to be a bit like them.

Face to face, “know, like and trust” has always been important. And it's usually built up over time and many personal interactions.

Online, there's less opportunity for those personal interactions and instead we often “fall in love” with those we follow who have big personalities.

I'm a subscriber to James Altucher's paid newsletter for example. I can't say I've ever done much with it, but I love the way he writes, his honesty and his creativity.

Ideally, you want to combine all 3. Have a unique approach for a specialised niche, delivered with your unique, attractive personality.

But even one is better than none!

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How to get a bumper harvest of clients

Posted byIan Brodie on November 29th, 2016.

We've just had the first big frosts of the season here in the UK, which prompted me to head out to the greenhouse to harvest this year's crop of chillies.

Bear with me by the way, there's a client-winning tip buried in here eventually :)

Last year was pretty hopeless for me chilli-wise. I grew a bunch of ultra-hot varieties but got hardly any chillies fruiting. So I overwintered most of the plants in our conservatory.

When it came to putting them back out in spring disaster struck – all the leaves fell off the plants and I assumed I'd put them out too early and killed them.

But no. Within a few weeks, plenty of new growth had sprouted. The plants came back bigger and stronger and put on tons of fruit this year for our best harvest ever. Here's a picture of the first batch:

Yum!

You've probably guessed the point of the story already, but it bears repeating.

When it comes to winning clients, you can't expect all of your prospects to convert into paying clients quickly just because you want them to. There's a natural cycle for most people that involves just as much nurture and just as much time as growing plants.

If I'd treated my chilli plants like most people treat their prospects then when they didn't have a prolific harvest that first year I'd have given up on them and not bothered watering or feeding them. I'd probably have literally left them out in the cold.

But often your very best and most loyal clients are the ones who take their time. Someone who makes a snap decision to work with you may well make a snap decision to do something else. Someone who builds a strong relationship with you first and then commits is usually in it for the long haul.

How do you handle long-term nurturing of potential clients? It's easy when we've just met someone to send some follow-up emails, make a call, maybe post them something.

But what are you doing 3 months, 6 months, 9 months or a year later to keep that relationship growing?

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The missing link in most USPs

Posted byIan Brodie on November 27th, 2016.

Having a clear, simple statement of what your clients get from working with you and how you're different to your competitors is vital for any business.

But a statement isn't enough.

You might claim you're the best at something, but why on earth should people believe you?

Creating a USP is a starting point. But what really gets you clients is when people start to believe it.

And in my experience, the very best way to get people to believe your USP is to demonstrate it week-in, week-out.

My USP is that I give my clients simple, practical advice on marketing that really gets results.

How do I get people to believe this is what I can do?

I give them simple, practical advice on marketing that really gets results every week in my emails, blog posts and videos. For free.

By the time someone is thinking about hiring me, they know exactly what I do because they've seen me do it dozens upon dozens of times. 

Do you clients really believe your USP? Do you demonstrate it week-in, week-out?

If not, you should.