The Marketing 24-7 Podcast

I’ve noticed something about consultants.

Most of them have the same frustrations when it comes to social media. I work with a lot of consultants and hear the same issues over and over again.

Do any of these sound familiar?

• “I’m putting a lot of time and effort into social media, but not getting any meaningful results.”

• “I feel stuck, my business is stuck, and I don’t know what to do to get unstuck.”

• “I don’t really have any plan for how to use social media so I’m just randomly posting stuff.”

If any of these resonate with you (and I bet several do), then you’ve come to the right place.

There are 13 social media strategies I can share - here are just 3!

I know these work because I’ve seen them work over and over again for all different types of consultant clients.

1. Use fewer social media platforms.

You don’t need to use every social media platform. In fact, you shouldn’t.

Just because Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, podcasts, and a thousand other platforms exist doesn’t mean you have to use them.

Any one of those platforms has more than enough people on it for you to achieve success beyond your wildest dreams, so break from the feeling that you need to be everywhere.

1. Follow fewer people.

Don’t follow everybody who follows you.

Don’t follow random people in the hope they’ll follow you back.

Don’t follow anybody you’re not genuinely interested in.

And don’t be afraid to unfollow people – often.

The fewer people you follow on any social platform, the better your feed will become as the algorithm will learn to better serve you.

1. You don't need more followers, simply the RIGHT followers.

The first question I ask a consultant-client is always, “What are your social media goals?”

Their answer always includes some version of “I want to get more followers.”

That’s an understandable answer, but it reveals a crucial strategic flaw.

Because you don’t need more followers, you need the right followers to help you accomplish your goals.

If these 3 strategies made sense - read on!

If you’d like more hands-on help with these strategies, plus another ten more, visit my website petergianoli.com/social-strategy-for-consultants and download my latest resource. It's FREE!

People who grew up with Andy Warhol's art, music, and films will remember him for his famous line: In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Those who knew him personally recall a different message from the artist. "In order to survive," he reportedly said, "everybody will have their 15 minutes of fame." Nevertheless, I feel that those who are still well-known at the 16-minute mark are most worth paying attention to. The people who fit this bill best are those who have had their moment in the sun, their lucky break or a taste of success and have been able to return from the brink of rejection or disgrace with a fresh new take. These folks, those who can bounce back from adversity, are my kind of heroes. There's also another group of 16-minute notables whose fame comes from something no less heroic—surviving an extraordinarily difficult challenge. As somebody who has been working shoulder to shoulder with entrepreneurs in business, I'm always inspired by people who turn what is considered misfortune into an opportunity. And they seem to do it time after time with grit and tenacity (and the help of their peers).

I've compiled a list of 16-minute character traits that if acquired, will help you make an indelible mark on your marketplace: 1.Do what others won't do 2.Tackle your fears head-on 3.Bounce back from rejection or disgrace with a fresh new take on life 4.Find value in the values of others 5.Make it count when you're not in the top 6.Have a way of inspiring others who are down and out 7.Obsess the details—they matter most when you're in the top 8.Put yourself in check for fear of losing sight of what's real or being consumed by self-centeredness 9.Know when to tap out of the game to preserve your true values 10.Remain humble through your climb—you can be down without being defeated 11.Give back in large doses because there's always someone in need 12.Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you—they will push your limits 13.Create opportunities for others to make a name for themselves (and their company) 14.Unleash the gifts and talents of those around you 15.Don't cheat or cut corners in the pursuit of your goals 16.Never stop growing—it's what makes you better today than yesterday

So, there you have it; my list of 16-minute character traits will take you from the top to near rock bottom, then back up—if you can handle it. 

When your marketing arrives in front of a prospect – email into an inbox, direct mail in the post, at somebody’s door or waiting room, a pattern interrupt on social media or as an advertisement; it can be perceived as either being an annoying pest or a welcome guest. 

You are working from home

Imagine you are sitting, working from home. It’s around midday – and you hear knocking on your front door. 

Chances are it’s someone like an Avon lady or the Jehovah Witness.

Because you have not invited anybody to come over, you think this is an annoying pest, and you are busy, so you ignore it, confident that if you ignore a pest, it will go away.

It will tire of trying to get your attention and move on to the next house. 

The knocking goes on for a while, but you are stubborn and are good at this “ignore” game.

Next thing you know, this person has climbed over the back wall of your property, and they are now banging on the sliding glass door, which they can see you through…

So now you're kind of under an obligation to answer the door.

The message is, that all your shrubs in your front yard are on fire, and the flames are starting to lick at the front of your home.

His message was he’s called the fire brigade, but can you come out and help him fight the fire until they arrive? 

A new impression

Now, at that second in time, he (the intruder) went from being a most annoying pest to a most welcome guest. 

And the only thing that changed was… 

Right message, right time!

In our world, the world of marketing, for a decade or so, our marketing has been losing its impact. 

In our strategies to overcome this impact loss, have been clunky, ineffective, and annoying.

When stats like email open rates are down. 

The marketer who was sending one email a day will now start sending two a day. 

As open rates go down further. Send four. Open rates go down even further. Send eight until opens rates are zero. 

The bottom line is, you can't really amp up being an annoying pest and get results. 

It's hard work.

Therefore, we must work in strategising with our marketing to do everything in our power to show up as a welcome guest! 

This is why I like to use mail and in particular FedEx a lot, instead of simply email, because interest level automatically goes up because it's an interesting piece of mail or a FedEx package.

But if you do have to use email, at least make sure it is easy to read, skimmable, and of course, fit for purpose to help the recipient rather than pester and annoy.

Pause, strategise and spend as much time as you like ensuring that you appear as a welcome guest and your marketing will cut through be welcomed and succeed.

Most business owners and marketers do NOT know their enemy.

Recently I have been looking to do some work for a financial advisor and I came across a comprehensive survey of 600 financial advisors, where they ranked their biggest obstacles to acquiring clients:

(1) Competition from other advisors 64%

(2) Financial misinformation, free advice, competing services, reviews, etc. online 16%

(3) Interference by family and friends 13%

(4) Client’s own fears, past disappointments with advisors, and distrust of them 7%

In another comprehensive survey of over 3,000 unconverted client prospects who responded to advertising, attended workshops or otherwise interacted with advisors and did not do business with them, here’s how those consumers ranked the same four obstacles:

(2) Competition from other advisors 32%

(4) Financial misinformation, free advice, competing services, reviews, etc. online 9%

(3) Interference by family and friends 15%

(1) Client’s own fears, past disappointments with advisors, and distrust of them 44%

Look at the advisors misperceptions:

(1) Competition from other advisors – OVER-ESTIMATED BY DOUBLE (32 POINTS)

(2) Financial misinformation, free advice, competing services, reviews, etc. online – OVER-ESTIMATED BY NEARLY DOUBLE (7 POINTS)

(3) Interference by family and friends – UNDER-ESTIMATED BY 2 POINTS

(4) Client’s own fears, past disappointments with advisors, and distrust of them – UNDER-ESTIMATED BY MORE THAN DOUBLE (37 POINTS)

Simply put, the advisors are WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING.

This is a caution for Marketers: NEVER believe your clients’ opinions about their own customers. Consider them, but do NOT accept them without question and, if possible, verification. Do all you can to distinguish between Fact v. Opinion or Belief. Beware the most zealous beliefs. Recognize that most “kings” create circles of belief reinforcement around them, and have little tolerance for “heretics” who dare challenge their orthodoxy. In fact a client of mine said he was paying a lot of money to be asked annoying questions. Over time, he stopped paying for this service.

The Three Most Common Mistakes of Opinion

#1: MOST now believe that what’s going on, on the internet, with “ratings” on Google or Amazon, etc., in social media is far more important and influential (with their customers and potential customers) than it actually is.

#2: MOST obsess over their believed, external Competition.

#3: MOST grossly underestimate their own “ugliness” and “scariness” and/or how dull and uninteresting they are.

In most cases, your most formidable competition is yourself and the negative emotional state of your prospect towards you and what you do. Not the business across the street with the bigger sign and cheaper prices or more 5 -star reviews.

It might seem strange, but you're better off appealing to a small group of loyal customers than trying to attract everyone.

There's a fundamental rule in marketing that takes some discipline and some getting used to, but it's undeniably true: 

You can't be everything for everybody.

It is a mistake to try and be all things to all people. 

In fact, it is a mistake to simply swell the numbers (for number's sake) – in many cases, growth is not automatically profitable, and in most cases, growth is achieved with new customers who will require cultural, product, service, and often price shifts – can serve to drive away your existence, your best, your longest serving and most certain customers can actually be a deal with the devil. 

It is a mistake to favour short-term expediency over strategy. 

I found this out the hard way during COVID.

In response to one of my clients putting their program with me on hold until they saw how COVID panned out – I reacted and started touting for business.

Because I am pretty skilled at Client Acquisition, and I had a functioning CGS – I opened the channels full throttle…

It didn’t take long to realise I had taken on too much, and a lot of it not really what and whom I like to work with. 

It is a grievous mistake for a business to act or present itself absent a philosophy, a set of fundamental beliefs. 

We become so vague that no one knows what we are offering, and our potential customers turn to other, more specific options.

Worse still, we end up accomplishing far less than we had hoped, which is exhausting.

As entrepreneurs, we end up running ragged trying to get it all done with limited resources. It makes us feel busy and productive, but again it's actually quite the opposite. 

We are doing busy work that isn't generating the kind of results we were ultimately aiming for.

In business, temptations abound. 

There is, for example, fear of losing even one customer, this creates pressure to be vanilla, to take no risks and play it safe, to avoid all criticism, and to be for all. 

This fails in two ways. 

First, the only way to be free of criticism and disapproval is to climb into a pine box and have it buried 6’ deep. 

The idea of managing a pristine reputation with all is hopelessly naïve. Futile in fact. 

Two, it castrates (I love that word for impact ���) a business’ ability to resonate with any core constituency of rabid fans. 

In business, there is enormous temptation to choose tactical expediency rather than strategic effectiveness. 

To see the dollar to be had today, but not the high cost of taking it over time. Resisting, even recognising these temptations, is not easy. 

They sneak up on you. They mask themselves. 

When we fail to recognize a temptation immediately, we often find it too late to resist it. 

It takes a lot, to remain ever vigilant of and hyper-sensitive to temptations. 

This is one of many prices that success demands, that many do not understand. 

As an example, take fast food giant McDonald's. In response to diners who are increasingly seeking food that is fresh and healthy, and the explosion of fast-casual restaurants catering to this desire and giving them alternatives that are nearly as speedy as a Macas but are perceived as much healthier.

The company tried to take on these new competitors while also hanging onto its traditional business, and in doing so its menu grew bloated, and its pricing strategy became confusing.

Sadly, for McDonald’s, they found that wait times were getting longer at its drive-through windows as its menu grew increasingly long and complicated. Worse still, some restaurants didn’t have enough space in the kitchen to prepare such a wide array of dishes.

Consequently, the company had no alternative than to unveil a sweeping turnaround strategy promising to streamline its menu to fix the bottleneck. 

The new revised strategy was that despite trying to respond to the desire for fresh food with items such as salads and wraps, these items didn’t sell particularly well. It found its real Macas consumers wanted to come to McDonald’s for burgers and chicken nuggets just as they always have, but instead Macas are now preparing those dishes more healthily.

Most of my business and financial mistakes, past, recent, and I am sure next, are not actually or simply misjudgements or errors; they are likely to be victories by temptations. 

It may even be that the percentage of temptations succumbed to vs. those recognised and resisted is the secret math to that of success and failure. 

If only somebody will invent an app for this, with an alarm bell or, better still, an electric shock triggered by every temptation, and a tracking of one’s percentages of surrender and resistance. 

It is a fact - It's impossible to build a business and market a brand in a way that serves everyone. First of all, you can't possibly please everyone all the time and, secondly, you can't possibly offer everything that everyone would want all the time either. 

It's simply impossible.

If you Google the term marketing consultant, you will get 748,000 results pop up.

Each describing themselves as a marketing consultant and each attempting to describe themselves slightly better in one way or another than the other 747,999 of them.

What a tough gig – what a failing proposition.

So if you are a marketing consultant you have no choice but to put some energy into differentiation.

You do not want to be what all the others are.

So my first problem if I was touting for business through Google is I would have to confront how I describe myself.

Same goes for a client of mine who is an accountant (385,000 search results in Perth WA alone), sure his practice is Xero certified but so are 70% of the other 385k.

Here too a point of difference is desperately required.

In fact, describing yourself as Xero certified is the wrong way to present yourself for two reasons.

One, nobody really wants that. They want outcomes. They want benefits, they want assets. They want things that work. They want information. They want the ability to manage their business effectively. Those are the things they want.

In my world, everybody says, I can do your marketing, I can do your this, I can do your that as well. But that, simply tells us what not to say.

What I do for clients is i make a list of the 10 things everybody in the category is saying, and then I know what to rule out in the messaging.

You have to position yourself as something other than what everybody else is saying.

Being just a marketing consultant or being a Xero certified accountant, or whatever it is, is simply a tool in the toolbox rather than what you are.

In my case, I am there to help my clients exploit an opportunity or to drive growth, expansion, revenue improvements, or profit improvements.

Nobody really wants just marketing.

And if they do, they're buying it as a commodity from the cheapest provider that they can get it from.

So I'm never starting from the position of, well – “I do marketing for food”.

One of my biggest clients – started as wanting a brochure.

5 solid years later and they have expanded into international markets and diversified from B2B and now into wholesale direct, I have become an integral part of their business. And guess what – that didn’t happen with just a brochure.

Back to my Accounting client.

The second thing is it only matters that there's 385,000 other accountants of which 70% are Xero certified in Perth WA, if you are being seen, if you are showing yourself to, or presenting yourself to the same people as they are, at the same time as they are.

If you play that game, it is somewhat like a Tinder profile.

That puts all the power on the other side. 50 guys all in a line. Where there's eight women looking, is not a good scenario, unless of course, you are Brad Pitt.

So it's not the situation you want to put yourself in, and that's why you need what I call a client generation system, a means of extracting a prospect out of the market so that they aren't paying any attention to the other 385,000 and are only paying attention to you.

In this fashion, it doesn't matter if there are 385 or 3,850, and it doesn't matter if they're all saying the same things. It doesn't even matter if you are saying the same things, as long as you're the only one saying it to them at the particular moment.

So, this is about, picking target markets, getting people in them to raise their hands, step forward and, step into your web.

Typically, I like to do this by having them request information to solve a vexing problem or to exploit an opportunity, and then I will slam the door behind their back, and I am the only one communicating with them, again and again and again over some period of time until they take action.

When you have that type of system in place, it greatly diminishes the importance of needing a differentiated message.

So in my feeder system that brings me a client, there's actually what I like to call nine points of entry or doors into it.

Prospects come into my world knowing about me, or at the very least heard of me and how I do things.

Preferably it is via a referral, or maybe it was through my newsletter, maybe through one of my books, maybe by hearing me at a seminar, or perhaps even by listening to this podcast.

Generally, they have met me, encountered me, or at least read my stuff or heard my stuff or better yet heard from people who are my clients,

Thus!

I don't really need a big, differentiated message about me.

I really don’t need to spend too much energy in explaining my background, my education, my credentials, or why I'm better than any other marketer. The importance of all that diminishes enormously because by the time they are talking to me about marketing for them.

I'm the only one they are talking to, and they are not even thinking about shopping me and my price around.

So there's two pieces to this puzzle. There's the message piece of what you say about yourself. How you position yourself in terms of beneficial outcomes, not tools in your toolkit.

The second piece of this puzzle is how you feed potential clients into a closed room where you are the only one talking to them in your category.

And when you combine those two things, you really have a lot of power in the marketplace.

Why is scarcity powerful?

The girls all get prettier at closing time. At least according to American country music artist Mickey Gilley in his 1976 hit. As opportunities, and the items they present, become scarcer, they are perceived as more valuable.  This principle accounts for studies showing that:  Tasters rated cookies as more desirable when they were scarce rather than abundant;  Consumers rated phosphate detergents as better once their use was prohibited by government decree;  College students rated their cafeteria food higher when they learned that it would not be available to them for two weeks;  And young lovers rated themselves as more in love with their sweethearts as long as their parents tried to keep them apart.

Scarcity marketing is the idea of limiting the supply of a product, whether it be through restricting availability to a certain timeframe or decreasing production—oftentimes both. The principle is sound—we all want what we can’t have and love to flaunt when we have something others don’t. Scarcity marketing takes advantage of this desire, creating demand through mystique and enticement. It’s an excellent way to ensure that a product is swept off the shelves with the hype that every brand wants to create.

We tend to associate limited availability with exclusivity.  If things are difficult to get, we know it’s because they’re better than the things we already have. As such, consumers use an item’s availability to decide on the quality of the product. People don’t think about the fact that it’s a psychological reaction that’s causing us to want something. We know we want it. And because we need to make sense of this feeling, we assign the item positive qualities to justify our desire. In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini argues that the idea of potential loss plays a role in how we make decisions. How often have you been more motivated by the prospect of losing something than gaining something of equal value? More than a few times, right?

Take Black Friday as an example. People wake up at inhuman hours. They get in line for hours in the freezing cold. Why? So they can get their hands on the new LEGO Star Wars set that’s on sale for $49.99 before it’s sold out. (I actually have no idea what Star Wars LEGOs cost so don’t take me up on this). We know this phenomenon as the fear of missing out (FOMO). 68% of millennial consumers say they would buy something after experiencing FOMO, most often within 24 hours. No one wants to feel left out, especially if a good deal is up for grabs. But there’s more to scarcity and FOMO than great deals. Now that you know why you should use scarcity, let’s take a look at... 6 Scarcity Marketing to Try Today 1.The Few-Items-Left Tactic 2.The Limited-Introductory-Price Tactic 3.The Limited-Bonuses Tactic 4.The Order-Before-XX-Today Tactic 5.The Limited-Products Tactic 6.The Device-Limited-Sale Tactic Use some of these strategies and focus on the exclusivity of your product. Get people to buy now instead of later (read: never) and watch your sales soar.

Sales are like legs day. Hard and brutal.

Punishment! Yet, when you work out legs, you're also activating muscle fibres in the rest of your body, arms, shoulders and even back. Just the same fashion, when you work in sales, you're activating muscle fibres in your marketing skillset as well.

So, the best advice you could ever give a business owner is to start doing some sales.

The tension between marketing and sales

In most struggling organisations, there is tension between the sales team and the marketers.

Sales team complain that leads are lousy and insufficient. Marketing complain that sales want everything handed on a plate.

Enter the entrepreneur to adjudicate.

Time to get back into the gym.

Before making a call, to side with marketing and or sales, at least "sharpen your saw".

Do a small amount of selling, take a half day "ride along" with one of your sales team. It will fire up your other skills, like marketing. Learning to better understand your customers and knowing how to cut through with messaging will be forever helpful.

With time, this will make you a better business person.

The bizarre habit

Why is it that so many people brag about legs day on social media? 

Very amusing! 

Yet, there is a million-dollar sales and marketing lesson embedded in the legs versus arms debate.

A lot of people build their upper body and neglect their legs. Fact. Unfortunately, doing this sets them up to fail. Same for entrepreneurs who focus only on marketing and place no effort in sales!

Look at business like a play or a music concert.  You create the show, hire the actors and the producer and the director, build the set, and perform three or four times in your hometown city. You’ve spent all this time and energy putting on an awesome performance.  What happens next? You take the show on the road.

Podcast TranscriptLook at business like a play or a music concert. You create the show, hire the actors and the producer and the director, build the set, and perform three or four times in your hometown city. You’ve spent all this time and energy putting on an awesome performance. What happens next? You take the show on the road.

Taking the show to different locations, you make more money because you keep tapping into new audiences. Online we call that “changing the channel.”

The problem is that a lot of business owners get bored selling the same thing over and over. We want to create something new and sell that instead. It’s our entrepreneurial desire for creativity and variety. And we lose out on all this extra revenue because instead of spending energy on more selling, we turn our attention to new inventions.

How can you change the channel and take your show on the road? If you’re heavily on Facebook and killing it, don’t start a new product. Move onto Instagram or Twitter or Pinterest or YouTube, or try direct mail or podcasts. Go to each new channel, bring your offer there, and continue to make money.

If you wonder why everything made is defective, why everybody makes so many mistakes, why nobody can concentrate, why people seem stupid, and why productivity sucks, here is the very simple answer: according to recent research reported in Business Insider, the typical person checks their smart-phone at least 2,617 times a day. Also, 72% of people grab their phones immediately after waking up. 

In a 16-hour day; hours awake, there are 960 minutes. That’s all. If the stop, check something on smart-phone, re-start other activity requires an average of only 10 seconds (which I doubt), then 436 of the 960 minutes are now consumed by the smart-phone. 46% of a person’s day. Nearly half. 

The attention span of ferrets is falsely maligned. To ferret (verb) means to tenaciously search something out, named after the ferret, used in Europe to hunt rabbits, because of their ability to concentrate and pursue. The single-mindedness of the Willy Wagtails in my front yard is equally as fascinating. The ones readying for spring work diligently, systematically covering the entire area, unearthing nuts or twigs, etc., taking them to their under-construction nests. If there is a strange noise, they can freeze in place for many minutes, listening. If Willy Wagtails checked their smart-phones 2,617 times a day, they’d never breed, be extinct or be eaten. 

American entrepreneur and author Jim Rohn said you can erase the mystery of the highly successful person by following them around all day, every day for a week. 

You’ll say: wow, look at EVERYTHING they do. 

My bet is you won’t catch many disrupting their days checking their smart-phones 2,617 times. Not part of everything they do. You really have to decide whose behaviour to adopt. If the goal is exceptional success, adopting behaviours of the typical person or typical company, is likely a bad idea. Let’s be blunt: the typical person in general, in your industry, in your circle of family, friends, neighbours is likely not a super achiever or winner. 

On the flip side of Rohn’s observation is discernment. There’s a difference between “everything they do” and trying to do everything there is to do. 

Let this message be a call to more discernment. 

Who you listen to, read, associate with. What you try to do. Where and how you invest your resources all need to be carefully guarded. 

One of my best clients came to a meeting with four pages on which to take notes, each with a heading denoting the nature of information he was looking for, relevant to the projects he was working on. He told me when he heard something that fit one of those four, he captured the ideas, contacts, etc. – anything he heard that didn’t fit one of the four, he ignored. 

This is the same kind of discipline (few have ) that is required to actually make money.