The Marketing 24-7 Podcast

Why Doing Less is the Secret for Consultants Looking to Flourish on Social Media!

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.

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 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!

The House of Gucci starring Lady Gaga and Al Pacino is the best luxury marketing tutorial money can buy.

“Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten,” a saying embossed in gold letters on pigskin plaques and displayed strategically around Gucci stores.

Throughout Gucci’s 101-year history, the fashion retailer’s popularity has waxed and waned, its business results have faltered and rebounded. The one thing that has remained constant “everything must be perfect”. “Even the bricks in the walls must know they are Gucci's!'' said descendant Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino).

“In order to sell style, we must have style!”

After opening its New York store, VIP Gucci clients were granted Gucci’s gold-plated key granting them access to the “Galleria”.

Here, VIPs were graciously ushered over to soft taupe couches and easy chairs where white gloved waiters served coffee or champagne on travertine marble tables. Surrounded by originals by Modigliani, van Gogh and Gaugin, VIPs could choose limited edition Gucci designed jewellery or handbags made of precious skins and featuring 18 karat gold hardware priced from $3,000 to $12,000.

In no time at all, the little gold key - fewer than a thousand were issued - became a must have in New York circles.

Over time, Gucci has become the ultimate in class and imprinted as top-of-the-line chic, an interest piqued when Patrizia (Lady Gaga) met Maurizio Gucci for the first time! 

Smile even when times are tough

“You may ask, where are the people to buy these things in a time of recession?” Aldo said to Women’s Wear Daily at the opening of the Galleria.

“ I have a saying about beautiful women,” Aldo continued, “Only 5 percent are truly beautiful. And it’s the same with people with affluence. They are only 5 percent of the population. But 5 percent is enough to make us smile.”

Or in Patrizia's case after a nasty divorce, to "kill for!"

In this episode I am going to give your business a gift – FREE MONEY!

I do a lot of public speaking. At the start of a presentation, I like to get audience involvement, so I love to start with this simple experiment.

I ask an audience to stand up. I then ask people who have over 5 pairs of shoes to remain standing.

Then I ask people who have 10 to continue (to stand). Then 50. Then 100. Then 200. Then 300. And I keep going like this until no one is left standing.

I then do the same thing with web domains.

In any audience, there are always a few people who have more than 250 pairs of shoes!

There will always be a few people who have over 200 web domains! It may be you??

But what does this mean? To you or me and in particular our business?

It means that if you are not adhering the pricing of your products to this principle, you are losing money!

Let’s say you have a coffee shop. Each cup of coffee you sell is $4. If you sell 1,000 cups of coffee, you will make $4,000. But for every 1,000 cups of coffee you sell, the stats say there is one person who will want to buy your coffee and a top of the line espresso machine. It might be the local business, an international visitor,  a client redoing their kitchen or somebody looking for a special gift – it doesn’t matter – the fact is they exist.

Let’s say you sell the machine for $2,700. You’ll now make one $2,700 sale on top of the original $4,000. All of a sudden, you’ve made nearly 500 times the money from your top customer as you made from someone who bought a $4 coffee.

What if you could find a way to leverage this phenomenon,  this knowledge to make yourself more money with less effort?

The question companies need to ask themselves is:

“Do we have a high-end espresso machine we could sell?”

Many companies fail because they don’t offer that higher-end experience.

Think about it:

Hotels have the $2,000 per night suites on the top floor

Airlines have $20,000 first class flights and sleeping pods

Casinos fly whales on private jets so that they can bet a $100,000 per round on blackjack

A charity I have the honour of being the Chairperson of raises $500k per annum but we get $200k of it from one single trust fund

And I have an accounting client earning $200,000 per annum but one customer is $20,000 of that.

My suggestion is that you multiply the most expensive product you have by 5–10X to increase your returns, then to do the same for the next product, then the next, then the next.

Obviously, it’s not just the price – you also have to offer the value or at least the experience.

Think about sporting events, concerts, nightclubs. . .   there are always VIP experiences – remember it doesn’t seem to matter who is paying for it – but put simply there are always customers for it…

Here is an example -

If you have 10,000 customers who are buying a membership for $10 a year, and that is your only product, you will be earning $100,000 a year.

But if you add a $40 membership, the 80/20 principle says 80% (8,000) of your clients would still only spend $10, earning you $80,000. But the other 20% (2,000) are probably willing to buy that $40 package instead of $10. This generates an extra $60,000. By creating this second package, your yearly earnings go up 60% to $160,000.

Now, if you add a third tier at $160, 4% (400) of your clients will buy, picking up an additional $48,000. Your revenues rise again by 30%, to $208,000.

Now, what if you included a fourth package at $640? Just how much more you would be earning each year? Imagine if you have 80 clients paying $640 a year. That’s an additional $38,400 a year, on top of what you were already earning. Your total revenue is now up to $246,400.

Previously you were only bringing in $100,000 with single-tier pricing.

In total, you are probably leaving as much as half your money on the table if you are not obeying this product pricing strategy.

The rule is simple- like the shoe story: 1/5th of the people will spend 4 times the money. This keeps going until you literally run out of people.

So, if you have a product with only one or two price points, now is the time to reconsider your pricing structure. If you don’t, you may run the risk of leaving money on the table, or worse yet, failing, because other businesses who do follow this pricing strategy will be better capitalised than you.

If you aren’t accommodating higher ticket sales and providing commensurate additional value, you will ultimately be doomed.

If you’d like more information on this topic I suggest you google Perry Marshall – he has a great book on it.

Your Opinion does Not Matter

Amazing products go undiscovered and companies go broke every single year because of people’s opinions. Your opinion does not matter.

People are afraid to push the envelope with their marketing because of all the opinions that get in the way.

It’s too pushy...

My audience won’t resonate with that kind of marketing...

It’ll turn them off...

And it’s not just entrepreneur opinions that bankrupt businesses either.

It’s entrepreneurs who listen to their customers’ opinions.

Customer opinions don’t matter either.

Well, not all of the time.

When you survey your audience on Facebook or with an email and they boldly tell you that your new sales letter or video or marketing campaign is not attractive to them, remember this:

"What your audience says and what they do are sometimes entirely different!"

You know this, right? You ask people if they will buy XYZ and they all yell YES!

But then you release it and…

crickets!

Or people will tell you they don’t like your new sales message, but $175 per customer later, you take that opinion all the way to the bank!

When I started the split tests for my 45- day - LinkedIn Program, I had an opinion about which Optin Page would work the best.

Guess what?

I was wrong big time. 

The page with the LinkedIn logo won. 

Go figure…

Now this message should encourage you rather than discourage you, because it means you don’t have to “read the stars” to be successful in business.

It means that if you’re willing to put your opinions aside (or should I say ego aside), and follow the math, the money, and the data to set the direction, you too can leverage the marketing secrets I present in this Podcast.

That’s right “the path is math.” Not opinion.

Watch what people do with their credit cards.

Put your opinions aside, and don’t be afraid to use the methods that have millions of dollars of evidence to back them up.

BTW if you’d like to check out my 45 Day Linked In Program and see a high converting optin page in action, visit petergianoli.com/Linkedin-mastery

In this week’s podcast I go through the 4 key things I do when I take on a new marketing client. I believe you too, should do these 4 things in your business. Especially if you are looking for more clients, quick wins and some instant cash flow.

These are the same 4 things that I implement with my fee-paying clients which is on average $50,000 each and you are getting the advice for nothing thanks to this podcast.

All you have to do is listen and implement – go on I dare you!!

Here is the link to the blog post

https://petergianoli.com/low-cost-ways-to-market-business/

We all know that a key component of any marketing strategy is to get your customers to talk about you and share what they have purchased with their network. But did you know this goes both ways? 

It takes more than just getting people to buy from you, it also means making sure they actually consume or use the products that they purchase from you as well! 

This is important because if a person does not use or consume what they have purchased from you then they will not experience any of the benefits. Hence, there's no reason for them to tell anyone else about it. As we all know referrals are an essential part of any business marketing mix. And by encouraging consumption or utilisation of your product or service, you are making it easier for them to refer others to you.

So, let’s look at a company that does this exceptionally well. Apple!

I love opening my latest Apple purchase, do you?

Why? 

1. Because everything is beautifully packaged.
2. Once you open the box - everything is intuitive as to what to do next
3. Once the product is turned on the instructions are clear, simple and bold.
4. Thanks to their exceptional marketing, I know the pleasure that lies ahead of me when I use it. 

In fact, consumption starts with the marketing. I like how Gene Schwartz said it, where “your ad is simply the functional product - details of what it does for them - sent to them in advance of the product itself”.

And while a lot of businesses are just glad to get a sale, and hope nobody refunds, that is playing not to lose instead of playing to win. 

Fact is that great marketers always think of two "sales" you have to make.

(1) The product sale, and (2) the sale of them consuming the product or service.

So how can you encourage your customers to consume what they have purchased from you? 

There are a few ways: 

• Offering educational materials or tutorials that show them how to use the product in an easy and fun way. 
• Making sure the product is easy to use, and if it's not give them support as well. 
• Make sure there are clear instructions that show how to do what they want or need to do with your product or service.

Once again, Apple does this exceptionally well - they are always innovating and creating new products that not only look great but are easy to use as well. And thanks to their exceptional marketing, customers know the pleasure that awaits them when they open the box. 

You can see this in action with the iPad - what's inside the box is just as important (if not more) than the product itself! 

So, if you want to sell your products or services, make sure that there are no barriers between your customers and their enjoyment of them by encouraging consumption every step of the way. 

One of the things we must keep in mind is that once a person makes a purchase in your environment, like in your store, on your sales page, in your Instagram feed or at a conference or in a sales office. When they return into their world the stresses and strains of their environment return.

Often, they purchased your product to improve their lives, but now their normal environment is what gets in the way of them using your offering. So, you need to have a plan to overcome this.

• A way is to follow up with them and remind them of the benefits of using your product or service. 
• Showcase how others are using your product or service in an inspiring way. 
• Use client testimonials to show how they overcame the same struggles by using your offering. 

The important thing is to never stop encouraging your customers to consume what they have purchased from you. This will create a stronger connection with them and make it more likely that they will refer others to you in the future.

Let me give you another example...

Recently I signed up for an online course called Ship 30. It is about content creation and it doesn’t start until next month. For the record it wasn't cheap and like any buyer it wasn't long before I started feeling buyer’s remorse. 

But thanks to some well-timed, well thought out emails, preparing me for next month I am now fired up and ready to get started.

It didn't take much, some links to helpful videos, some case studies of what others like me have achieved and it’s a wrap.

What about services how can you encourage consumption?

The best way to overcome the resistance that people have to consuming what they purchase, especially services, is by helping them see how easy it is to get started.

• Offer a free consultation or trial period so they can try out the service. 
• here too, provide educational materials. One great example from a local health club is to introduce 30-day or 14-day challenges for members with built in rewards and incentives.

If you are looking for great examples just watch what Netflix and Spotify do to encourage consumption. Being continuity services where you can easily cancel at the end of a month - these services are the master of keeping you engaged and of course subscribing.

So, in a nutshell, encourage customers to consume what they purchase from you, both in the moment and after the fact. 

The key takeaway here is that it's not enough to simply make a sale; instead, you need to think about your customer's consumption habits as well so that they will use what you have sold them and become fully satisfied with their decision. 

As has already been said - the only way you will grow your referral network is by having satisfied and fully engaged customers and clients.

Once upon a time, during the baby boomer era, being different was a badge of honour. Yes, guys wearing scholls, long hair, playing in your own band and we even had surfers at Hamilton Hill High School the home of the bogan.

In my opinion this is one thing the baby boomers definitely got right. But their kids, brought up in an era of where you get a trophy for just participating and play football and netball with no scoring, are afraid to stand out. They are all about their network of friends and do not want to be ostracised.

Everyone’s afraid to lose friends. Everyone’s afraid to stand out. Everyone’s afraid of criticism. Kids don’t raise their hands in class because they don’t want to be seen as different, as know it alls, better off to play dumb.

The conundrum however is to get ahead in business, or marketing or in your art, we are looking for the new and different and if you don’t have people dropping their jaws, chances are you are not going to last, you probably won’t even be noticed.

Furthermore, just because no one likes what you are producing don’t necessarily give up right away. If you are not experiencing at least a little bit of resistance or if you don’t find people trying to reign you in, chances are you are not aiming high enough and will never cause a jaw to drop.

Dare to be unpopular… because that is where the germ of true popularity begins.

This week’s podcast is about a concept that I believe I've invented, and it's called the half-cation. 

Think of vacation, get rid of the vac and add half. And that's what you've got. Half-cation!

Recently. I read a book, Catching the big fish by the film producer, David Lynch, it's a marvelous quick read.

In it, he refers to the value of transcendental meditation and how it helps him find the big fish creatively speaking that have made such a huge difference in his life. So always eager to try things. I thought “that sounds like me”. 

I've dabbled in meditation off and on, but never transcendental meditation (TM), long story, but I got myself signed up and wow the first two days, I have never felt so tired in my life. So tired. In fact, that when I went to the premiere of the James Bond, latest movie, I fell asleep. Dead, out to it and I have been hanging 3 years to see this movie, I love James Bond. 

All I had done was dedicate two sessions of 20 minutes to TM and it knocked me out. 

When I told this to my TM teacher, she told me this was a normal response because of the stress in my body.

Stress? What do you mean stress? 

Sure enough, after a few more days of TM, I’m back to life, I obviously needed that break, that mental break to remove the stress. 

On reflection, because of COVID, it's been two years or so where I've basically been flat out just doing stuff and haven't had a break. I imagine a lot of you are in a similar circumstance, we can’t take a break.

In my life, I'm doing some major clients work now. Plus, I've started two brand new, exciting ventures and they need my attention. And let's be honest, I'm recording this in November, so Christmas is just around the corner. I will shut the office down and I'll get a couple of weeks rest then. 

But you know what, that stress I had built up can't be good.

Maybe I need a bit of a break, now?

Hence the concept of the half-cation where I'm going to have a two week break but staggered over the course of a month. In other words, work half days and have half days off. And in that time, I'm going to get a two-week, half-cation. 

After one week, I’d like to share with you what I've learnt. 

A quick backtrack, I've have plans for a new book that I want to publish. I'm a self-publisher, which means I take a 100% of my profits, that also means I must cover 100% of my expenses. No one sends me to an island and pays my bills and says, “send us the draft manuscript of the book”. No, I've got to squeeze time out of my schedule and use my own resources. Originally before COVID, my plan was to go to the coast of Croatia and write this book, but that isn’t happen anytime soon because of the international border situation. My plan now is to knock out a “chunk” of this book during some of the time I have for myself in this half-cation. 

This is what I've learnt so far:

1. the better you set the half-cation up, the more likely you are to be successful with it. This set up idea came from an article by Jari Roomer. Have some key rules behind setting up your vacation time. 
2. Use the free time to move forward rather than to move backward. In other words use the time to look after things like - your health, your nutrition (slow cooking), spend some time reading, spend some time on self-improvement, watch a few documentaries and work on passion projects, (AKA) my new book. This strategy has the effect of conditioning your mind to see the importance of this free time and prioritizing it happening.
3. Plan the entire week ahead. Not only the half-cation time, but also the half day of work. Plan it ahead because now your work time, which is reduced to a half day is more critical than it perhaps was when you had a full day.
4. work is for producing, half-cation time is for consuming. When you're working, you're there to produce. How do we produce…? 
5. Use the Pomodoro technique, by Francesco Cirrillo. Find your natural sweet spot of productivity. Mine is 33:33 minutes. In that amount of time, I can get an enormous amount done of the highest quality. I don't lose focus and concentration for the entirety of the time. Once 33:33 is done, I must get up. I must refresh. Even if I don't think I need it. If I aim for two or three pomodoro sessions in my half day of work, I will get a full day's work done because I am so focused. 
6. Have fun! Remember half your day is a vacation. 

After one week, my to-do list is all but done. I've achieved just as much in half a week, as I normally would have in a week. Plus, I've done some of the activities, the passion projects, the book in my vacation time. Here to, simply slotting in one, or two pomodoros. 

It's been an amazing week. Only one hiccup. If I continue to achieve what I've achieved in one week and that maintains itself for the month, then, I'm going to explore three months, six months and ultimately a year because it feels like I'm not going to lose anything in productivity. 

Most people have the wrong idea about the very purpose of business.

Unions would have you believe that the purpose of business is to employ people. The government thinks the purpose of business is to pay taxes. Communities think the purpose of business is to provide jobs, and sadly a lot of businesspeople think the purpose of business is to provide them with a job!

So, most business people behave with an employee mentality. They don't even have an owner mentality, let alone an entrepreneur mentality.

Smart entrepreneurs understand that their business is a tool, a device, a means of creating money that you then take for yourself spin off and invest elsewhere. It's a different paradigm and very few people make that paradigm shift.

Business is used to Make money

Once one makes it one should Manage it

To Use it… but the most important aspect that most business owners miss is…

To Liberate it.

The ordinary businessperson typically leaves their wealth in their business, and it gets trapped in there. Often the mindset is in 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 45 years from now, I'm going to sell the thing. And that's when I'm going to get all my money out.

The problem is, first of all, it's very hard to predict what's going to happen in 30- or 40-years’ time (think Block Buster Video Store). And so, what you think you may be able to sell for $x, you may or may not be able to realize.

Beyond that, it simply means that you've left the money idle for all of that period of time before you get at it and start using it better.

So, one of the key responsibilities that everybody misses is extracting cash. Most people think of business as a thing to put money into. A smart entrepreneur’s belief is that business is a thing to get money out of.

It comes all the way back to a very basic personal finance principle, pay yourself first. Whilst most business owners pay themselves last.

You pay everybody else; you pay all the bills. If there's anything left, you take some. Quite often there's nothing left.

Most entrepreneurs think like this.

And it's exactly wrong. It's the polar opposite of how business should be run.

You get paid first, and if you can't get paid, then the whole deal is bad, and get out of it as quickly as you possibly can.

Your job is to extract wealth from your business on a day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year basis, and accumulate your wealth outside of your business.

Your ability to create wealth from a business actually depends on how many times you can turn the same invested dollar over. If you're not good at that, you can't liberate money out of the business because you have to leave a whole lot of dollars in the business because they're not turning, well then your business is sick and some solid medicine is required.

Change your mindset – think cash liberation and you will find that your decisions, your actions, and your results will start to get you on the right path.

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, it's my feeling 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 as a result of 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 at the top
6. Have a way of inspiring others who are down and out
7. Obsess over the details—they matter most when you're on top
8. Put yourself in check for fear of losing sight of what's real or being consumed by self-centeredness
9. Know when you need 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 that will take you from the top to near rock bottom, then back up—if you can handle it. Of course, if you're just looking for fast fame without putting in the work, these won’t mean too much to you. I'm all for instant gratification but remember that it's fickle and fleeting (and not to mention, could land you in jail or rehab).

If you're willing to work for it and show up every day with the same amount of gusto that got your name out there in the first place, then perhaps we can meet up at minute 16.