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Why you don’t need to be brilliant at marketing

Posted byIan Brodie on November 2nd, 2014.

Does it sometimes feel like not only do you have to be brilliant at what you do, but you also have to be brilliant at marketing (and selling and managing and technology and…) to succeed?

You really don't. Despite what it feels like sometimes, and despite what people selling you marketing training would like you to believe.

Millions of people find their life partners and fall in love every year without ever being brilliant at chat-up lines or romance.

What shines through is their good intentions and their love. That's what gets them their partner; not clever words or “pick up” techniques.

It's the same with your marketing. You could invest decades of study into getting brilliant with words, or hire a highly paid copywriter to write you the best ever sales page, elevator pitch or descriptions of your services.

You can have the most seductive, most perfectly written stuff on your website. And still it wouldn't hold a candle to the impact you can get from regularly adding value to your potential clients.

A “lead magnet” that people sign up for and that gives them incredibly practical tips on their key challenges. Regular emails or personal contacts that are interesting and useful.

They're much, much easier for us regular folks to produce than world-class copywriting.

But done repeatedly over time, “actions speak louder than words”.

They prove to your potential clients that your ideas or services work because they see the results in action. They build your credibility and create the desire to work with you far more than any brilliant advertising could do.

So next time you're feeling a bit overwhelmed by the thought that you have to learn even more clever new marketing techniques, just remember that the best form of marketing is to do useful stuff for people.

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‘Fess up

Posted byIan Brodie on October 26th, 2014.

Do you do everything perfectly?

Of course not. Me neither.

No one succeeds at everything. No one gets everything right first time. No one glides through life in a series of stunning victories.

In fact pretty much every successful person has failed multiple times in their life.

Yet for some reason when we speak to clients we feel the need to keep
up this façade of perfection.

When you get regular emails from many people, it's all about their brilliant successes and how you can be just like them if you only follow their simple success formula.

I don't know about you, but I kind of get bored with that. It feels like they're not being honest with me.

I've found that if I'm honest and open in my emails and blog posts about what hasn't worked for me as well as what has, then it forms a better bond with the people reading them.

Whether that's my failure to take action when I should in “So are you going to do this?” or my struggles with 1-1 selling in “My worst sales meeting ever”.

When you share the truth about your own story people empathise more. They understand you moved beyond the struggles and you now know what you're doing and have something to teach – that's why they signed up or tuned in.

But honesty about the hurdles you had to overcome helps them connect better.

And it's more interesting too. Think of any great book, film or story. The hero always has to overcome adversity to succeed. Without danger there's no tension and no elation when victory comes.

And your audience pays more attention because you've had realistic success too. They're much more likely to feel they can do what you're recommending if you didn't get things perfect the first time yourself.

And sharing your failures and struggles also makes a more human connection. These days we like our celebrities to be more like us. We've realised that everyone has feet of clay and the “perfect in every way” icon just makes us suspicious they're hiding something.

So when you're communicating with potential clients – especially in emails and blog posts or articles where you're giving advice – don't be frightened to ‘fess up and admit to some of your failures.

It will lead to success.

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Magic feedback (literally)

Posted byIan Brodie on October 12th, 2014.

I was at a magic convention a while back.

As I think you might know, I haven't performed magic seriously for years but I like to go to the odd convention to keep up with old friends as see “what's new” in the magic world.

One of the acts performing in the gala shows were the “Victorian Time Travelling Magicians”, Morgan and West.

Very good act. Well structured. Funny. Magical. Do go and see them if you get the chance.

Their act oozes class. But it doesn't just happen by accident.

I had a chat in the bar with Morgan after the show. But it was only a quick chat because as soon as their show director arrived they disappeared off to do a breakdown of the act: what had worked well and what they could do to improve it.

While the rest of us chatted, laughed, drank and shared tricks, Morgan and West were working on improving their act with direct feedback from an experienced show producer.

Feedback like this is vital if you want to improve anything you're doing.

For performers, audience reaction, applause, laughter, gasps of astonishment tell them whether they're doing a good job. In marketing it's sales, website visits, click-through rates, optin rates, etc.

But just knowing whether something is good or bad isn't enough. You need to know how to improve it.

That's why professional performers have paid directors, producers and advisers who give them feedback not only on whether something is good, but also on how to make it better.

That's why I introduced marketing critiques into Momentum Club. When we do our regular webinars, as well as me presenting content or answering questions, I also give feedback on marketing that members have submitted. 

You can get feedback from a mentor or coach, from colleagues in a mastermind or even a group on Facebook or Linkedin you're a member of (but make sure the people you get feedback from really do know what they're talking about).

And then you need to test.

No mentor or coach can be right all the time. They can point you in the right direction based on having seen many similar situations. They can help you avoid a whole bunch of pitfalls. But you'll need to test your improvements and see whether they result in more “applause” as you'd hoped.

Of course, most people don't get feedback. They don't test and improve. They just wonder why they're not getting the results they want.

Don't be one of them.

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You are not your client

Posted byIan Brodie on October 5th, 2014.

I was reminded of an important marketing truth this week: you are NOT your client.

It came up when a friend asked me to look at some headlines on opt-in forms on some big websites.

To be honest, I found them quite transparent and manipulative. They were the sort of straw man alternatives you sometimes see. A “Yes, I want more sales” button vs a one saying “No, I don't want to find out how to get more sales” if you didn't want to sign up.

I really don't like them and they cause me to deliberately click the “no” option just to be contrary.

However, the data showed that they work.

And that's the point with marketing. We're not marketing to ourselves. We're marketing to our clients. And they sometimes behave differently to the way we'd behave.

Now many of us built our businesses based on being like our clients. A lot of what I teach about marketing and sales is based on what I (painfully) learnt myself.

I was far from a natural at marketing and sales, but managed to get good at it. So I generally have a good instinct for what most of my clients want and need.

But over the years I've grown to quite enjoy marketing. And I'm pretty good with the technical side. That's not true for many of my clients. So my instincts won't always be spot on.

That's why with marketing it's vital to test everything. You might think you know what will work with your clients, but you never really know until you test.

I was wrong about those buttons. I've been wrong about which landing page will have the better opt-in rate and which email subject line will have the better open rate.

But I've tested and learned. You should too.

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Sherlock vs Sherlock

Posted byIan Brodie on September 28th, 2014.

My wife Kathy is a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.

She's got all the books, we've been to 221b Baker Street (more than once) and we watch any TV show or film with a vague reference to the great detective.

So a few years ago when both CBS and the BBC launched new series featuring Holmes we started watching both eagerly.

Initially, we thought the BBC's Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman was much the better show. Better, more satisfying, more intricate plots. Elementary with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Lui was good, but just not at the same level.

A few years later, after three series of Sherlock and a series and a half of Elementary, we sat down again to watch Jonny and Lucy do their stuff.

And at that moment I realised that while I still thought that Sherlock was a better show, I had warmer feelings for Elementary. It felt like inviting old friends back into my house.

It's not that the characters are more appealing. Lee Miller's Sherlock is just as abrasive as Cumberbatch's.

It's just familiarity.

There had been only 9 episodes of Sherlock in nearly 4 years. We'd watched 34 episodes of Elementary in just 18 months.

The regular, consistent good of Elementary had overtaken the infrequent brilliance of Sherlock.

I think marketing works like that too. If you look at email marketing, for example, too many people try to get by with a monthly newsletter. Meaning that if they want to be remembered, they have to make a huge impact each time.

Meanwhile, people like me are mailing much more regularly. Just drip, drip, dripping into our subscribers' consciousness.

Regular consistent good beats infrequent brilliance.

Bear that in mind next time you're working on your marketing.

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Knowing is not the same as doing

Posted byIan Brodie on September 21st, 2014.

A few years ago I spoke to someone about an Email Marketing course I had available at the time.

“It's not for me”, she said. “I know all that stuff”.

I checked out her website shortly afterwards and she'd implemented pretty much none of the strategies she'd told me she knew.

By contrast, I got a message yesterday from someone who'd bought Email Persuasion recently.

He'd put what he learned in the first couple of chapters straight into action and had gone from averaging 100-120 optins a month to 225 the first month after making the changes. And that was in what had historically been his worst month.

The lesson's fairly simple. But it's one many of us ignore – me included.

Knowing is not doing.

Often we ignore information because we already know it. Or because it doesn't seem like something new.

But the key question to ask isn't “do I know this?”. It's “am I doing this?”.

Knowing is not doing. And it's doing that brings results.

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Have you been interviewed yet?

Posted byIan Brodie on September 7th, 2014.

I spent some time on the phone recently being interviewed for an upcoming podcast.

Took about an hour including the chit-chat before and afterwards. took me about 20 minutes to prep my answers to the questions beforehand.

The podcast will probably reach a few thousand people. Maybe more, maybe less.

More importantly, I get a copy of the audio and can use it however I want. I can pop it on my website and send a link to it to selected contacts. It'll give them some useful information and will raise my credibility with them.

If you get the chance, I thoroughly recommend being interviewed like this. It only takes a little time and you can use the material as a great credibility booster.

But what if you don't get the chance? What if no one asks you to be interviewed for their podcast or radio show?

Do it anyway. Don't wait to be asked.

Write down 6 questions that you can answer in your field of expertise that will be valuable for your potential clients to know (valuable to them I mean, of course – not just you).

Then get a friend to ask you the questions as an interview and record the conversation. Either on Skype, a teleconference service or with an audio recorder.

Post the interview on your website. Send it to potential clients with a “thought you might find this useful” cover note.

Value + Credibility.

Whatever you do, don't think “sounds like a good idea but…I bet it won't sound professional enough”.

Wait for “professional” and it'll never get done.

Wait for “professional” and your potential clients will already be working with your competitors who sent them useful information with “amateur” production values.

If you think your clients value professional production values more than the quality of the content you're either underestimating them, or you're working with the wrong clients.

Don't wait to be asked. Don't wait for professional.

Make something good quick and get it into the hands of people who will value it.

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Fast = done

Posted byIan Brodie on August 31st, 2014.

Something interesting happened when I first developed a training module on Facebook Advertising for Momentum Club.

This was quite a few years ago, so at the time I was pretty sceptical. Do the kind of business clients that you and I target really hang out on Facebook? And do they click on adverts?

I'd done a couple of minor experiments a little earlier. Enough to know that there was potential. But I wasn't sure.

I'd been holding back doing a full test because I wanted to create something just right for Facebook. A new lead magnet. A new opt-in page. A new follow-up sequence.

Then it dawned on me: trying to get everything perfect was stopping me doing anything.

So I quickly changed tack and created a simple newsfeed ad that fed into my existing landing page for one of my free reports.

I switched on the ads, targeting people who liked pages similar to mine and boom – the traffic started hitting my landing page. I started getting optin after optin, with the ads costing me less than a pound for each new subscriber.

That's actually cheaper than I'd managed to get to with a ton of optimisation on Google Adwords.

Within days I'd even had a few new Momentum Club subscribers already, so the ads paid for themselves.

So my experiment showed that Facebook has plenty of the sort of business clients that I (and perhaps you) target. That's pretty old news these days.

But more importantly, it showed the power of speed.

I could have spent ages trying to get a perfect ad, a perfect landing page, perfect new lead magnet and a perfect follow-up sequence. All to find out it didn't work.

Instead, I went fast with something I already had. And once I knew it worked I could start improving it.

Going fast with something less than perfect can often get you to your desired outcome much quicker than trying to get it right first time.

Are you holding back from implementing something because you want to get it perfect? Maybe you can go faster with something good, then make it perfect later once you know you're on the right track.

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What your prospects already know is the key to how they buy

Posted byIan Brodie on August 24th, 2014.

K – bit of a tongue-twister of a title. But it's pretty darned important, so here's what it means…

Basically at any given point in time your potential clients have a certain amount of awareness of your products and services and what they do.

Initially, they may not even be aware of the problem that your product or service addresses. Before Sony created the Walkman how many of us were aware we needed a portable music player?

At some point in time, they get aware of the problem, but don't know about any solutions. Then they become aware that solutions exist, but don't know the specifics of different products.

Then as the market matures, people become aware of specific products and the differences between them.

Why is this important?

Because you need to market to potential clients by talking about things they care about.

Trying to sell someone on the benefits of coaching vs training to address leadership issues is pretty pointless if they don't realise they have any leadership problems at all.

Conversely, if an HR director has hired dozens of coaches before for her organisation she doesn't need to hear the talk about what a coach is and why coaching works.

You need to match the messages in your marketing to the level of awareness of your potential clients. Both in general, and then tailored to the specific people you're talking to.

If they're not aware they have any problems you can help with, talk to them about their business in general and ask questions that allow them to discover the issues.

If they know they have problems, begin your sales letter, web page or introduction talking about those problems and then lead on to how you help with them.

If they're already experienced buyers of your type of service, focus on what differentiates you from your competitors and how that will deliver them the most benefit.

Talking the basics to an experienced buyer can feel condescending, or they can assume you just deal with “beginners”. Talking about the subtle differences when someone doesn't even know what the real issue is or how it could be solved just confuses them.

So it's a vital step in preparing any marketing to focus on the people you most want to reach and to think through what their current understanding, awareness and beliefs about their problems and your services are. It'll help you get the right message for them.

For more details on “Prospect Awareness” you can watch this short video I did recently which lays out the model in a bit more details:

Prospect Awareness Model >>

But most importantly, set a little time aside whenever you're about to communicate with potential clients to think about what their level of Prospect Awareness is. It'll pay dividends, I promise.