PreneurCast is a marketing podcast. Each week, author and marketer Pete Williams and digital media producer Dom Goucher discuss entrepreneurship, business, internet marketing and productivity.
This week, Dom and Pete discuss Lazy Marketing – not making the effort to send targeted, quality messages, or using technology to blast out marketing because it’s “free”, rather than using appropriate technology to enhance the message.
Dom talks about reasons to sticking to your core business and its benefits
Action Step: Take stock of your current marketing, and make sure that you are not being lazy, either with your use of technology or your targeting. If this was 15 years ago, how would you achieve the same thing? Would it make you think more about targeting and content if it cost more to distribute and deliver?
Tech Tip: Take a look at the services mentioned and see if there’s a way you can use them creatively to contact prospects and customers and stand out from your competitors
Transcript:
[peekaboo name=”bar” onshow=”Hide it.” onhide=”Read it now.”]
[peekaboo_content name=”bar”]
Episode 049:
Lazy Marketing
Dom Goucher: Hello everybody, and welcome to this week’s PreneurCast with me, Dom Goucher, and him, Pete Williams.
Pete Williams: Hello, mate!
Dom: Hello! We’re good over this way. How are you?
Pete: Not too bad. Starting to get some hiccups; this could be a very fun episode.
Dom: Well, you’re in luck, because this week—there you go! This week, I’ve got a bit of a rant and I’m really geared up for this one. I’ve got a glass of water and a cup of coffee ready to go. I’m in for the long haul on this one.
Pete: Ooh, very exciting.
Dom: So you may just be interjecting briefly. I have a full rant and soapbox, as you call it.
Pete: I love it, sounds very exciting.
Dom: Cool. Yeah, this week, I want to have a go about lazy marketing.
Pete: I don’t like it, but I like the topic.
Dom: No, no, neither of us like lazy marketing, and I think that’s why it’s something we should talk about. So, yep, before we get into this week’s topic, just want to say thank you again to this week’s sponsors. Our first sponsor is Audible books, who’ve been with us for a while now. We love Audible books; they are a great service who have books in audio format.
You can listen to them on your computer or your portable audio device while you’re doing other things, which is a great way of consuming content. Also, if you’re like me and Pete and you’ve tuned your ear to it, you can increase the playback speed so you can really consume things quite quickly.
Pete: Very cool, actually—oh, sorry to cut you off there, mate…
Dom: No, go ahead. Go on.
Pete: I was going to say, I actually have downloaded a few different books of recent time off Audible. So I thought we might as well touch on some of the stuff that I’ve been listening to from my Audible account.
Dom: Yeah, go ahead. Go on.
Pete: Some interesting stuff. Something I didn’t realize they did is they actually have a lot of seminar recordings in their library as well. So beyond actual books, they’ve got different seminars—or more lectures than a typical seminar. When you think seminar, or if you’re wearing your marketing hat, you think ‘pitch fest’. But these are more lectures and that sort of style.
One of them is something that I’m really enjoying at the moment, which is How to Write Selling Humor. How to Write Selling Humor by the authors, according to Audible, Peter Mehlman and Mel Helitzer (I’m terrible with surnames, but those two are tricky). It’s interesting, it’s a lecture by a comedian about how to write, communicate and sell through humor.
And the interesting thing is, it’s not a very humorous presentation. Kind of ironic, but it’s actually quite good. Another really good audio book that I’ve been listening to, which technically would be better in a format to buy off Amazon.com as opposed to through the Audible free trial we’ve got available thanks to our sponsors, is a book called The Power of Storytelling.
This is something I’m trying to get a lot more educated on, The Power of Storytelling and humor, and that sort of stuff. This book is by another guy with a weird surname, Jim Holtje, is basically a collection of stories from autobiographies of CEOs and marketers. So, it’s this sort of almost swipe file of stories you can use in your presentations, in your marketing material, in your newsletters.
What he’s basically done, he’s gone through all these different autobiographies from some of the great business owners, developers, CEOs; and taken key anecdotes and stories that they’ve told in their books; and then wrapped it with some keyword targeting. It’s sort of like, “These are the topics this particular story could be related to, here’s how you could introduce the story into a presentation with a sample intro,” and then obviously, the story itself.
It’s quite interesting. Storytelling is such a great way to engage people. If you think about different books you can get at Audible.com, story ones are very, very engaging. It’s just a whole big swipe file. So, I’ve been enjoying it in audio format, but it won’t really work in the way it was actually designed to work in audio format because you can’t just flick back through easily, and then just copy and paste out the anecdote.
It’s good to spark the memory, but I’m going to have to buy this in physical format to have on my bookshelf as well. That’s The Power of Storytelling. Those are the two really good books I’ve been listening to in the last week or so that I got from Audible.com with my subscription. And as you said, being sponsors of the show, they give out a free trial to our listeners, which is fantastic.
Dom: Yeah, and that’s a really good example, actually, because I do that as well. I use my Audible subscription to consume, to become aware, to get across the idea, the value. But if I want to go back and reference something, if I really think that book (especially the reference books or the examples like that, that little swipe file that you’re talking about there), then I do tend to buy them either in Kindle format (because there are great bookmarking facilities inside the Kindle software and of course, it’s across all my devices).
Or I’ll buy the physical book from Amazon. But before I go ahead and buy some (as I like to call it, dead tree) I’ve got myself into the habit now of either using Audible or our other sponsor (who we’ll talk about later) to get an overview of the book and get information in my head and just let it kind of work through.
Pete: Yeah, I just find it easier.
Dom: Yeah, it is. It’s easier. I’m one of those people that likes to have stuff in my head so that it works its way through as I’m going throughout my day and working on different projects. It’s a really fast and efficient way to do it. So folks, if you want to try out Audible, we recommend that you do. It’s one of our favorite services and fits in with the way that we like to do things.
Go over to AudibleTrial.com/PreneurCast and sign up. You’ll get a free trial and a free token to download a book. And if you like the service, you can subscribe and get a regular kind of download allowance, and get on there and get consuming. By the way, all these links that we talk about, the links to the sponsors and the different things we talk about, the books we talk about are always in the show notes.
Now, depending on how you’re listening to this, those show notes might actually be on your mobile device with you (if it lets you get access to them, if you’re listening to this as a podcast on your iPhone or iPad); but they’re also all in the blog post that goes along with each episode on PreneurMedia.tv.
Every episode is loaded as a file, you can download it from there. You can also get the transcript to read that and download it. You can listen to the file online as well. All the links and everything that we talk about and any updates that we might have for the episodes, everything is all on PreneurMedia.tv.
Also, you can give us feedback on there and contact us. So, do pop over and have a look at that. Pete’s team has put a fantastic amount of work into that. It’s a great resource and a great place to go. It’s just another way to stay in touch with the PreneurCast. So that’s it, Pete, you’re out of time, now, this rant has been bubbling up inside me for ages and I’ve just got to let it out.
Pete: Alright, let me have it—let listeners have it as well.
Dom: Yeah, I’m fed up with lazy marketing. That’s it, I’ve had it. I’m done with it now.
Pete: Let’s define this. Typical Pete Williams wants to know the frame and the context of where this comes from. Listeners of previous episodes know my love about that. Can you set the context here? How do you define “lazy marketing?”
Dom: There’s a couple of different contexts, there’s a couple of different ways that I see something as being lazy marketing. Let me give you an example. Obviously, this is an example that comes from my perspective; so some of the listeners might not necessarily agree with me on this one, but I’m going to put it out there.
One form of lazy marketing is where you don’t actually bother using the technology that’s available to you to give out a better marketing message, and we talked about some of these technologies. I say ‘technology,’ and a lot of people are switching off and saying, “Hey, it’s okay for you, Dom. You’re all techie and do your video production and your digital media. You know about this stuff.”
But there are services out there now that we couldn’t have dreamed of even 10 years ago. I have a background in some very high-technology stuff and even back then, this was very, very specialist. But now I can basically have anything printed on anything and sent to anywhere. I can have it done almost on a one-to-one basis for a ridiculously low fee.
Best example and an example we’ve used before, SendOutCards. Every now and then, part of your regular routine, one of our early podcasts was about your regular routine. And one of your regular routines, Pete, is to find out whose birthday it is or who’s having an event in their life from your contacts, and to send them a personalized card. Yeah?
Pete: Yep, absolutely.
Dom: Now, there is nothing more complicated than logging on to SendOutCards; there’ll be a link on the blog post, don’t scribble it down. Log onto to SendOutCards into your account. Fill out their address, pick a card, fill out the customization like the name and the message you want inside, press send. You’ve even got an address book in there as far as I remember.
Pete: Yep, absolutely. And you’ve got your divisions. You can have your friends, and your family, and business colleagues, and all that sort of stuff.
Dom: Yeah, and that’s it. Log in, fill out the name, pick an address, press go. It’s actually harder to set your calendar to remind you to do it than it is to do it. And that, if you have a client base, I guess what I’m talking about is differentiation. So, lazy marketing was a little bit of, in a way, it annoys me. It is lazy, not to differentiate yourself.
Let’s be clear, I’m talking about differentiating yourself by using what you know or using what’s available to you now. So, sending out a card. How many cards did you get from suppliers, personal, personalized cards? Not mass-printed, “Hi, thank you, Mr. Client.” How many personalized cards did you get this year, Pete?
Pete: Yeah, you get maybe the one or the two, and personalized might be a bit of a stretch, as well, to define them as personalized.
Dom: Yeah. So, imagine what your normal—and you’re in an industry, really, and you are surrounded by people who are relatively savvy with this stuff.
Pete: Absolutely.
Dom: I would expect you’d get quite a few. But imagine your normal, everyday customer—and I’m expecting that a lot of our listeners run regular businesses, nothing too high tech, possibly bricks and mortar, dealing over the counter. A lot of our mastermind team in our first mastermind group for the 7 Levers Mastermind, they were bricks-and-mortar businesses.
They dealt with physical product, handing it, literally, physically over a counter. We had all range of businesses in there. One of the things that you said before is to take an amount of money for each client, a percentage of what you get from each client or allocated to each client that you’ve got, and put that back into giving them something back. And it can be as simple as—how much is it to send a card on SendOutCards?
Pete: $1.50?
Dom: Okay, right. Yeah, so, Lazy Marketing #1. Shame on you. This is official from Dom. Shame on you if you don’t spend $1.50 back on every client that you’ve got that pays you that money throughout the course of a year. Shame on you.
Pete: We talk about this—as you kind of alluded to, there—as part of the whole 7 Levers process. One of the levers is all about increasing repeat business. If you can increase your repeat business, the amount of times that client comes back to you in that given period of time, annually, monthly, whatever it might be by 10%, there’s one of your lever goals achieved. And something like this is a very simple way to continue to build up that relationship, get that piece of mind, get that front of mind, and get them to open up their wallet again because of that relationship.
Dom: Absolutely, absolutely. And again, not only the 7 Levers, but the Preneur Hierarchy. That base of that pyramid, the biggest return on investment, the highest leverage you can get is to market to or contact existing customers that have already bought from you.
Pete: Absolutely.
Dom: So showing that you actually know something about them, whether it’s that you know their birthday or that you remember something like—I don’t know, a service period on their bike. You used their example of your cycling shop and you regularly service your bike if you use it. People that actually go and buy expensive bikes absolutely should have them serviced regularly.
So, six months, bob a little note, send out a card—picture of a bike on the front, pop it in the post. “Hey, you’ve had your bike six months; bring it in for a service.” Stick a coupon in there. Just tell them to say, pick a number, pick a word. Just tell them to bring that number in and they’ll get a discount on the service. Whatever. But use these facilities. And a lot of people have overlooked them. I mean, in the UK there’s a service called Moonpig.
Pete: Yep, we have that in Australia as well.
Dom: Ah, you have it in Australia as well. It’s the same as SendOutCards. It’s the same as SendOutCards, but they market themselves to people sending greetings cards, to people sending birthday and Christmas bespoke cards. People overlook these services. There’s another service in the US and the UK called MOO cards. Again, link will be in the notes.
And here’s another example of differentiating yourself. Now, this is getting a little bit more high tech, so it’s okay; don’t panic, but I’ll give you an example. This is something I was talking to a consulting client of mine about. MOO are a custom print shop. They started off printing business cards and then they will print postcards and greetings cards.
But the thing about MOO (and try to wrap your brain around this while you’re jogging or doing whatever you do when you listen to PreneurCast) is that they allow you to put different, unique images on every different item in a pack. Let’s say you’ve got a hundred business cards (and this is really going to take you to wrap your brain around).
You write, ‘Pete Williams, Marketer to the Stars, contact details,’ right? That’s the stuff that’s on the back. That’s the common thing on the back as your common message. On the front, every single one of the fronts can be different. You can have a hundred different pictures.
So if you’re a jewelry designer, or a clothing designer, or somebody who has a lot of products, or somebody who takes photographs for a living; if you want to show off your products, what better way than putting some high-quality photographs on the card you’re going to give somebody to differentiate yourself? And the scary thing about this is—I don’t know the exact number, the exact price. But we’re talking less than $20, probably, for 100 unique cards.
Pete: And the cool thing about that is you can make a bit of mystique, and a bit of magic, and a bit of fun out of the actual exchange of business cards. You can flair them out like a deck of playing cards and say, “pick the business card you want.” Get an engaging sort of conversation around your business cards that helps you be memorable. Particularly, if you’re in that networking phase of your business and going out and meeting a lot of people, and trying to get word-of-mouth and relationships that way. It’s a great way to be memorable and stand-out at those functions.
Dom: Absolutely! I’ve used this tip. I use this and I tell people this all the time. You don’t have to do 100; you can break that 100 up into 20 of one picture, 20 of another picture. Whatever you want. It’s completely between 100 common or however you want to break it up; it doesn’t matter. Same interface. It is, ‘Click, go to the web. Click, I want a hundred of those, please. Click, here’s the pictures. Click, send it here.’ Done.
Complete no-brainer. They even have some great libraries of pictures you can use, but the tip I have for people and especially if you’re going to a conference, if you have a service, you can put images representative of the service. If you have a group of products, let’s say you are a provider of phone systems. I said photographs; you can put 100 photographs on there.
You can put any image; it’s not just a photograph. You can put an image of a handset, headset ranges or exchange switches or answering services or whatever it is. If a person comes up to you and you strike up a conversation with them and they are interested in a particular aspect of your business, you can pull out a card with an image of that aspect of your business on it, to remind them it was you.
Pete: Message to market-match.
Dom: Message to market-match, laser-targeted! Obviously, you don’t really want to have that many different things that you do, so you don’t have to go crazy with this. But in a message to market-match, that’s an awesome way to do it. And the other thing is, and I’ll just build on that tip; using this technology, even if you have 100 pictures on the front and they’re all the same and it’s all whatever it is you do, fine, okay.
Because it’s so cheap to have 100 cards done (and they do some really cool ones with beautifully rounded edges and all kinds of things. I have loads of tricks with this stuff). But what I’ve done as well (and I think I’ve mentioned this before) I actually have a bunch of cards made for one particular event.
Pete: Yep.
Dom: Just for the one event. So if I travel to the US, or I travel back into the UK, I’m going to a particular targeted event. There was just in London, a week ago. I saw there was a social media marketing forum, something or other big names like Chris Brogan rolled into town. Great opportunity, literally social media marketing. It’s going to be full of people into social media and marketing.
Great opportunity to get your name known and what you do. So have some cards printed that say, instead of, “Oh, my name’s John, ring me. This is my phone number,” have them put a little bit of humor like you just read about or like you watched in the lecture. “Hey, I met this guy called ‘John’ at the social media marketing forum. I should really give him a call on XYZ.”
Pete: Absolutely.
Dom: So that card itself, because when you go to a conference, you get a lot of cards. You go home, you pull out all the cards out and you say, “What was that guy? What did he do?”
Pete: Yep, absolutely.
Dom: Again, look at the technologies that are out there. And one more from these guys, and this is a little bit tech; but again, no more complicated than making a picture. One of my clients is doing website reviews. This is to market to local businesses; they want to stand out and they were going to mail. You and I talk about going offline, standing out by being the one person that actually still posts things.
Pete: They wanted to do online marketing advice and services for local businesses like coffee shops and clothing stores in a regional area.
Dom: Correct. But they want to get in front of the people by sending something into the physical mail, which is a great way of doing it and standing out. But when you do this, you really do want to standout. The piece of mail that you sent, you want it to stand out. So again, using a service like MOO who would print 10 postcards with a bespoke image on the front, you can literally have a postcards printed in the highest quality print that is absolutely targeted to that person.
You could have a picture of their business, their shop, their website, whatever. You can literally put a message on the front of that postcard that will absolutely make them sit bolt upright. Because it is absolutely targeted them, what you’re trying to tell them or what you are trying to draw their attention to about in their business.
Pete: Brilliant.
Dom: And there’s no reason not to; I’m not talking $100 for 10 postcards here, I am talking like $10 for 10 postcards.
Pete: And this is bringing up an exceptionally good point. It’s that message to market-match that we keep bringing up continually throughout this show. But it is also that thing that I guess grinds my gears a little bit: that just because technology is there in terms of e-mail, for example, and it’s free, people decide to use that and did not think, “What is the best, most targeted, effective way to get the outcome I want?”
A lot of people have to ask themselves this question, “What would happen if I had this business 15 years ago? How would I have best reach that person? What would I have done before e-mail and AdWords and stuff like that?” What have you done? What sort of marketing, direct-response campaign, what have you put in play?
Once you answer that question, then you can go, “Okay, in today’s world, 15 years on from that time, is it technology that can help me do that more efficiently and effectively, and obviously, more cost-effectively?” At that point, that’s when you can start looking at, “I’ll make this an e-mail campaign,” or, “I’ll make this an SMS campaign,” whatever it might be.
You still have to think (and this is my definition almost of lazy marketing which is very much aligned to what you’ve been talking about) that people go technology first, almost, not message to market-match first. It’s about using technology properly, but the underlying tone is getting that message right.
A good friend of mine and a fellow podcaster, Tim Reid, who has the Small Business, Big Marketing Show (a fantastic show where they interview business owners about their marketing regularly), he does a lot of speaking and consulting. His big thing in his big idea is to get your message right first before you worry about where you put it.
Dom: Absolutely. This is really a build on last week’s podcast. Last week’s podcast is about people stopping when they defined the noun; and stopping where you define the noun is being lazy. It’s not getting a close enough, good enough idea about who you’re talking to.
Pete: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It shouldn’t necessarily be about the cost of the marketing; it should be about the ROI of the marketing. Yes, you can go out; and once you’ve got that noun organized and you’re delving into the other side of things and you’re looking at the verb side of stuff and try and market to the verbs like we spoke about in last week’s show, think about the best way to market to those verbs from an ROI perspective.
Yes, e-mail is free and that is great. But is it the best way to get the best result we are trying to get with this particular campaign, this particular message or selling this particular product? Maybe, in a lot of circumstances, e-mail isn’t the best avenue. Yes, it’s free and people go “Okay, it’s free and I’ve got a database of 10,000 people, so we’re going to mail this out.
If I get 15 people respond, hey that’s great. I got 15 responders with no investment at all and I made X amount of sales.” But if you really sit down and do the numbers properly and go, “Hang on. A direct mail campaign might actually cost a little bit more. It might cost me $1000.” But realistically, that might net you 30 sales. At the end of the day, that is a much better ROI for the bottom line of your business.
But so many think about it as, “It is free. That officially means that those 15 sales that I got off that e-mail blast was no cost of sale.” Well, yeah, there is a cost of sale indirectly because you have the time spent on the marketing campaign and drawing up the e-newsletter. Everyone is aware of that. But what about the opportunity cost that you left, the money that you’ve left sitting there because you haven’t done effective marketing because you’ve been lazy?
And that’s a big theme that people need to address and think about. Technology is great, but what would you have done 15 years ago? Don’t be lazy today. What would you have done 15 years ago to communicate that effectively when you didn’t have free marketing? Because 15 years ago, there was no real free lead-generation except for word of mouth or free communication.
E-mail makes it really, obviously free. SMS is close to free. Online SEO, people think that’s free. To do it properly, you want to be generating backlinks and investing in that. Social media is free, and yeah, all that gives you access to a huge audience at a very low cost. But is it the best ROI for the bottom line of your business?
Dom: And this is that second channel, that second frame that I talked about at the beginning. It is exactly that; it is that people see these platforms, these channels, as ostensibly free and therefore what they put in them, they don’t put the effort into thinking about it, and that is a fundamental mistake. It is an absolute and fundamental mistake. As you say, and it’s a great example, if you go back 15 years to when you didn’t have the free platforms except for, say, word-of-mouth.
If you verbally spammed everybody around you because word-of-mouth, talking to people and making contact with people were the only way you could do it; if you verbally spammed everyone, yeah, eventually you might get a hit because somebody might buy just because they needed it. But you wouldn’t build a quality reputation. You wouldn’t be seen as an authority.
This is something that John Davy (who was a guest while you were away, Pete) was talking about from a networking point of view. He says he’s experienced people when he’s been to an event that literally will work the room like a machine, running up to people, pumping their hand, shaking their hand going, “Hi, I’m me. I do this. Who are you? What do you do? Great, thanks, bye!”
It still, today, is the verbal equivalent of spamming. I’m sure he got some return on that. But if you’re willing to put the time and the effort into whatever it is, whether it is spending the time to find out who you’re talking to, listening to what they say back to you when you ask them a question, being able to add value to them. We talked about doing this when you go to a conference, about adding value to the people.
If you want to meet somebody, the best way to meet somebody is to add value to them. If you want a client, the best way to get a client is to genuinely add value. So if you want to build that reputation, you want to build that authority and you want to add that value, then using these supposedly free channels and just filling them full of crap (which, I’m going to say that word) is not a good way to do it.
And ‘crap’ comes in many forms. Crap can be a message that isn’t matching the market. Crap can be just a message that’s irrelevant completely. It can be something not about your business or it can be something not focused; it could actually be a wrong thing to say for that market, not just ‘not matched’ very well, but completely wrong.
The number of e-mails I get a day that are of no particular interest to me, countless. I get far more e-mails of no interest than I do of interest. But the one of interest, I click on it, I open it; and very often, I’ll respond to it because somebody’s taken the time. They’ve taken the time to, first of all, attract me as a quality lead (and again, we talked about this last week, about understanding who it is you’re marketing to).
Again, this all goes back to the 7 Levers, because I can assure the listeners, the 7 Levers is not about being lazy. It is about focused effort. It’s not about doing anything more, working any harder necessarily; but it’s about being focused. And I think that’s really what we’re talking about in this channel, this frame that we’re in now about lazy marketing. That it’s about putting the energy into being focused; it’s not about working any particular harder, is it?
Pete: No, not at all. It’s just working smarter; that’s all it comes down to. Yes, working harder can give you results, we all know that. But it’s about working smarter. Because if you’re going to do something, just take a bit more time and do it properly.
Dom: Yeah. You’re back to the 7 Levers. We mentioned this briefly last week: more targeted traffic going in at the top of your funnel, in and of itself, will increase your opt-ins and will increase your conversions because those people are more suited to the messages you have further down the funnel. Just focusing and thinking about who you’re talking to.
Looking at your nouns and then looking at the verbs, putting your effort in there before you start the activity is a great way to improve, if not increase the traffic. It can also increase the traffic because more people that see your traffic-generating materials will respond to them. And then again, matching the message further down.
You’re going to do the same thing. There has got to be some kind of message. You’ve got to have some kind of landing page. You’ve got to generate some kind of advertising or put some kind of material out there, some kind of content. You’ve got to have some kind of landing page or lead-capture or you’ve got to have the door of your shop open.
You’ve got to get the information off these people. You’ve got to take the lead over the telephone. You’ve got to answer the telephone in the first place. You’ve got to take their money over the counter. You’ve got to do all these things anyway, so why not do it smart?
Pete: Exactly right. And there are so many things that people are already doing in their business right now they’re being lazy with because of a lack of time or maybe a lack of resources (which can be money or time; that’s resources in both senses of the word). It also could be that you’re thinking, “Ah, look, that’s not going to cost much, it won’t hurt to do it.”
There’s a concept that a lot of people talk about, which is this emotional bank account that you have with your prospects and your clients. If you’re just sending out e-mail blasts because they’re free (which is exactly what you’re touching on before) that it doesn’t cost you anything, so it can’t hurt.
But it does start to chip away and degrade and make withdrawals from that bank account that you have; that emotional connection, goodwill, whatever sort of return you want to refer to it as that is giving you a negative return on that ‘free’ e-mail blast you’ve done. So doing good, quality marketing, it makes all the difference because it can actually be enjoyable to receive.
As you said, when you get a good e-mail, you open it because it’s enjoyable. It’s engaging. You know they’re taking the time to craft something that is going to be thought-out and as relevant as they can possibly make it for you. And sometimes the marketer is marketing you something that isn’t relevant and that’s fine.
But as educated consumers, we understand that they’re taking the time to make something that they think is as targeted and close, and as relevant and as effective as possible. You’re going to appreciate that as a consumer, and your consumers are going to appreciate that just like you would. You’re doing a disservice if you’ve been lazy in that because you’re taking withdrawals from the bank account.
You’re just not getting the best ROI for your business, you’re not challenging your staff. You’re not giving them engaging stuff to do. This is a whole range of very high-level strategic-type things that are negative about lazy marketing. We all know it and it’s very obvious when you sit back and look at it. But again, like we often say here, just take a moment at the end of the show, sit down and reflect on what are you doing in your business, and where have you done this.
Everyone has done this. We do this internally as well, and it’s a continual learning thing that no one’s perfect about it or with it, but you’ve got to be conscious of it. And the more conscious you are of it (which is what we try and do here on the show), the less you’re going to do of it in the future.
Dom: That example, I say, the goodwill bank account, is a great way to connect the two things, the two streams, the two channels that I’m talking about, and the two things that are annoying me the most. Because if you put out good materials, if you send thoughtful information or small gifts or reminders to your clients, you’re making a deposit in that bank account.
And if you send crap or just spam them or whatever, you’re taking it away, and so being lazy about how you target people s well. A great quote from John Carlton, a copywriter of note; I saw the guy speak at a conference a while ago and he made one of those forehead slapping moments when he said, “The best things you can do for a prospect is tell them they don’t want what you’ve got.”
The reasoning he gives for that is basically, if you get rid of the people, if you inform the people upfront of what you’ve got and what it does and what it can do for them and they can make an informed decision there and then before they get into your sales funnel whether it’s for them or not, then you will save yourself a lot of disappointment down the line.
Because if you get a client that is confused about what it is you offer in your sales funnel, there’s going to be negativity when they finally find out, somewhere down the line, because your marketing message wasn’t particularly well-targeted, or the details about your product wasn’t particularly good, or all the rest of that.
There’s going to be a degree of disappointment that you’ve wasted their time. Whereas, if you can target your message to the right people and you can inform them of what it is that you’ve got and what it you can do and what it does for them—so benefits, as well as features, which we talked about—then you’re going to get that targeted client.
That person is going to appreciate it, even if they don’t consciously know it. Even in the last week, there were a number of pretty major systems out there (and I’ve been investigating various online tools and technologies and things), and I’ve gone to there and I’ve sat through their sales videos, which are always too long (hint, hint).
I’ve sat through their sales videos. I’ve scrolled, somebody talked about it being like toilet paper. I’ve scrolled down their long-form sales letters, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. I’m looking for things like how much is it? I’m looking for things like what’s it going to do for me? I’m looking for some technical thing like do I install it? Do you hold it? All these things. And it’s wasting my time.
It’s absolutely wasting my time, and very often I just go, “Do you know what? I’ve already got one of these things, I was thinking of upgrading to yours but I can’t find the information I want. So bye.” Click. And on the contrary, on the contrary, I had an experience this week which was awesome.
A service, a very big, very popular service out there—I was looking for it, I was looking for some information to be able to recommend it to a client and I dropped a contact to the company. Instead of getting the standard stock response of, “Here, go to this page or maybe even talk to one of my technical guys,” the guy who designed the system contacted me directly and had a Skype conversation with me.
He took time out of his day to contact me directly and be able to respond intelligently to the questions that I had got directly. Now, that is absolutely, the definition of ‘not lazy marketing.’ That built a great deal of goodwill and put a great deposit in the goodwill bank account with that company.
Pete: Absolutely.
Dom: Like, you don’t always have to go that far, you really don’t. But I guess what we’re talking about here is about being smart. It’s not about making any more effort, it’s just about being smart with the effort that you do. So it’s message to market-match and then it’s appropriate technology or appropriate delivery mechanism for the market as well.
Pete: Absolutely. It’s all about just thinking through the outcome you’re trying to achieve with whatever you’re doing and just make sure you’re doing it as effectively as possible and not just trying to be lazy with it. Because it’s going to come back and bite you on some level in some area, whether it’s going to be missed opportunity, money left on the floor, or withdrawals from the emotional bank account. You just want to make sure that what you’re doing is as effective as possible. It’s all it comes down to.
Dom: And that really brings us full circle to the 7 Levers, because that is what that is about. It’s about looking at all those different aspects of your business and stepping through them one at a time and seeing if you’re targeting the right people, if the message is correct, if there’s friction in any of those processes.
If you’re leaving any money on the table or on the floor, all the way through. If you’re giving money away, putting money in the wrong place or just leaving it lying around. But I think we’ve kind of covered that one, I’m getting a little bit exhausted now. It was a full length rant, that one.
Pete: Well hey, it’s almost getting time too, so it was a perfectly timed rant. Well done.
Dom: I’d just like to say, we don’t plan these, everybody, folks out there listening. We don’t plan these at all. We have a brief chat about what we’re going to talk about and then it’s a genuine, free-form (well, in this case) rant. So, before we wrap up, just to say thank you to our second sponsor, Read It For Me, the book review service, which you can get access to at ReadItFor.Me/PreneurCast. Again, link in the show notes. A great service that produces multimedia overviews, summaries of popular business and personal development books.
Pete: I’m going to cut you off again, mate, sorry. I’m just going to cut you off again mid-sponsorship. And again, I’m saying this, there’s been two really cool classics that they’ve covered inside the membership area recently. One is the must-read for everybody and must re-read for everybody.
Must re-read the re-read is How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which is a fantastic book. Everyone’s probably read it all, hopefully should of read it, maybe grab the audio version on Audible.com or something like that. But if you have read it, it’s one of those things, I think it’s worth reading the summary again, getting the key points, ensure you’re inputting them on a regular basis.
The other one that the guys at ReadItFor.Me have covered recently is Dan Kennedy’s The Ultimate Sales Letter book, which ties everything into what we were talking about today. If you’re going to be doing a sales message on some things like that, have a checklist. Again, we’ve spoken about this previously and Dan’s The Ultimate Sales Letter book has to be one of the best frameworks, guides, reference books, checklist tools that you can have when crafting a sales letter.
And remember, a sales letter isn’t necessarily those long toilet paper-type deals; it’s an e-mail blast. It’s your customer service response e-mail. It’s everything like that—makes up part of your sales marketing. And if you’re going to be doing the marketing we spoke about, not doing it in a lazy fashion and doing it effectively, this book by Dan Kennedy is fantastic and they’ve got a fantastic summary available, which can effectively be your checklist, inside ReadItFor.Me.
Dom: That’s a great point, actually. As I say regularly, we use ReadItFor.Me both to find out about new books or books that we haven’t read, but also as a great, fantastic summary for reference purposes for things we have read as well. And that’s a brilliant example of where that works well. The guys at ReadItFor.Me do a fantastic job with their summaries.
So, pop over to ReadItFor.Me/PreneurCast. If you sign up through that link, you’ll get a discount on your membership, which is the way that those guys are sponsoring us. We’re passing on savings to you. And remember, hopefully you can realize these are services we use. These are not people that have come along and dropped a wad of cash on the table and said, “Here, talk about us.” We’re talking about these services because we use them.
That’s quite an important thing. Something you didn’t say there; I’m just going to tweak back into the show a little bit. There’s a big important point about kind of third frame for being a lazy marketer, and that is not learning, not improving your knowledge. This is probably a topic for another show, but your example there from writing sales copy.
You said, whether you’re writing an e-mail blast or you’re writing a landing page on a website or even writing the script for a video (of which I’ve seen some of the greater crimes against copywriting when people have done that), go out. Spend a bit of energy and learn how to do it properly from people like Dan Kennedy or John Carlton. There are lots of other people out there that have books, courses. But get out there and learn.
If you’re going to write copy, learn how to do it properly. Because the energy you spend now learning how to do whatever it is properly will save you lots of energy in the future, running around for whatever reason. Whether it’s because you attracted the wrong client, you didn’t attract any clients, you upset people because you wrote the wrong thing, whatever it is. So, yeah, that’s another little rant about being lazy. But I think I better get off now, this has been a really long run.
Pete: Sounds good. Well, next week I want to have a topic of my choice; I want to talk about marketing myths. A bit of a marketing MythBusters episode. It’s going to be very controversial and on the face of it, probably be contradictory because I’m going to talk about why you don’t need a website.
Dom: Wow, super-mega-controversial. I’m going to make sure I’ve got my teeth safely strapped down for next week’s. You’ve started me now, I can’t even say it before I’ve said ‘marketing myths.’ I’m already tripping over myself. So the action points for this week, Pete, are?
Pete: Just take stock of what you’re doing. Make sure nothing that’s been implemented on a regular rinse and repeat is lazy and you’ll be doing it because it was free. Just double-check it and think, “Is this adding value to the business and to the experience of my customers into their goodwill bank account?”
And the next time you go to do a campaign or something, promoting your new product, promoting your service, doing an announcement—just think, “How would I have done this 15 years ago? How would I have communicated this 15 years ago? And then just think, “That’s what I’m trying to achieve here. Does any technology allow me to do that quicker, cheaper, faster, more effectively?” And then go about using the technology.
Dom: Great one. And my little tech tip for the week is go and have a look at those services we talked about: MOO cards or Moonpig or SendOutCards. See if there’s a creative way that you can use those to differentiate yourself, make yourself stand out to your customer base. There will be links in the show notes for those.
I think that’ll do us for this week, mate. I was getting close to time. I’d like to thank everybody for listening. I’ll remind you; if you find what we do interesting, useful; we’ve had some great e-mails. Thank you to people who’ve been sending e-mails to us and contacting us through PreneurMedia.tv on the website, the comments below the shows.
And obviously, our favorite is iTunes comments. If we get a lot of iTunes comments, we get promoted in iTunes, which means more people see us and find out about us. As they used to say before all this social media malarkey, if you like what we do, tell your friends.
Pete: That’s exactly what we would’ve said 15 years ago.
Dom: There you go! That’s me doing what we have to do.
Pete: See you guys next week.
[/peekaboo_content]
Links:
Online:
http://www.preneurmedia.tv/moocards – MOO cards – Creative Business Stationery (Custom-printed cards in small numbers)
https://www.sendoutcards.com/7daytrial/ – Send Out Cards – Personalized greetings cards
Books:
The Power of Storytelling – James Holtje
How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
The Ultimate Sales Letter – Dan Kennedy
PreneurCast Episodes:
These previous episodes are talked about in today’s show. Go back and listen, if you missed them.
PreneurCast Episode 45 – Networking for Business
PreneurCast Episode 48 – Marketing Nouns and Marketing Verbs
Special PreneurCast Listener Offers from Our Sponsors:
http://ReadItFor.Me/preneurcast – ReadItForMe creates multi-media summaries of popular business and personal development books. Visit our link for a 14-day trial and a PreneurCast listener 10% discount on their membership fees.
http://audibletrial.com/preneurcast – Audible has a huge library of audio books of all types. Visit our link for a 14-day trial and PreneurCast listener coupon for a free audio book.
| Never Miss an Episode: Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher or RSS. Love the Show? Please take a minute to show some love via a comment or review on either iTunes or Stitcher. |
