The Marketing 24-7 Podcast

The worst number in business is one!

The best number in business is many. It starts with two, but as quickly as possible you should grow the number to many.

This podcast episode outlines why and how many is your friend.

To prevent your successful business from dying, heed this warning now.

In this episode I provide a warning of why you can never stop oxygenating your system. Here is some of the advice in this episode:

• Find out how I learnt to always oxygenate the system.
• See what kinds of things you can be doing to keep yourself relevant in the eyes of your customers.
• And find out why even when you’re successful you need to continually put oxygen into the system.

Podcast Transcript

I have had this recurring theme in my head for the last couple day or so and I need to share this with you.

 So I’m going to talk about my own experience, and then a close friend’s experience,

So the theme, the message today is you have to keep on putting oxygen into the system. Now, I’ve experienced this about three or four times throughout my career, I’ve made this mistake and learned from it. And hopefully I won’t make this mistake again.

But a lot of times what happens is we start having success with something and we think, “This is amazing.” And then you stop doing it, for some reason.

In my business for example, I’ll start growing a list, I’m doing something to get new customers, new people to my door. And I’m having fun with it and it’s working and then I start shifting my focus from that to selling them. And in doing so I forget about the oxygen or the fuel if you wish - that was bringing people into business in the first place.

At first you don’t notice it because you’re having success converting the existing customers you had already brought in, but eventually it starts imploding and your company will struggle.

I’ve seen and discussed this with countless people who have come to me for marketing help and advice. When I ask them about the “good old days” in other words when they were making a dollar and loving their business success – they will all tell me about the things they used to do – the weekly ads, the weekly visits to customers – the weekly radio spot the weekly Facebook post whatever but for some reason it got hard, they got busy, it stopped working they are not really sure…. but they stopped. And surprise, surprise times are now tough.

Look I get it – in fact I’ve done it “I had another podcast called Monday Sales Coach  I podcasted every single week, for well over 18 months  and I started getting busy with sales consulting and strategy work, I mean really busy  and then I stopped. “I was making money, things were great. And then I go and cut off the oxygen that was fuelling my success.”

That’s what happens and I know you are thinking, “I would never do that.” But how many of you guys are still doing weekly client outreach? Alright, that means you cut off the oxygen to your business.

Let me step back and tell you a story. About 5 years ago I decided to reengineer my company and what I intended to specialise in. In doing so I also decided to modernise my branding realign my USP and obviously revamp or should I say rebuild my website. (ok, so I don’t do half measures very well 😊). So all up by the time I had achieved everything it took every bit of six months.

I remember deciding during that process, “I don’t want to email my list at the moment. I don’t want to confuse them; I don’t want to freak them out. I want them to be ready so when I have the new look ready and launched and live, they’ll be ready to hear from me and of course buy stuff.”

So for nearly six months I didn’t email my list, and then the new look came out and I was so excited and I emailed the list.

My list would normally get close to a thousand clicks and was very responsive to my emails. Sadly, I remember this time I had around 300 opens and 12 clicks. “Oh crap, they don’t remember who I am. Not good. Getting some money into the door at that time would have been great as the revamp wasn’t cheap when I added it all up, and this was the expectation of this whole promotion.” They (the database) had forgotten who I was. I hadn’t been putting oxygen into the system.

And it was a very sad, and kind of scary lesson. I had to scramble to rebuild the value in my list, rebuild a connection with them, get new people. I remember saying, “I will never not email my list because people forget so fast.” If I waited a week to email my list, if it takes me three weeks to email my list, 2/3rds of my list will have forgotten who I am by that point.

There’s so much noise, so many things happening, you have to always be out there. That’s the reason why I’m doing Instagram, and Facebook, and podcasting like this, and all these things because it would be rude of me to simply email a list everyday but I know that I should be doing something every single day because I need to keep oxygenating the system. This is what builds the business.

So I had a friend over last night and we were talking and he’s going through a bit of a tough time now, and we start talking and it was funny because he’s got a couple of different businesses and in all of them he had stopped supplying the oxygen.

For his local business he had stopped the fuel. He has just restarted adding it and already he has noticed doing awesome again.  So, I asked, “Yeah, but what’s the lesson?” and he’s like, “I’d forgotten to put oxygen into the system.” I’m like, “yeah, you gotta keep doing that.” Even when things get successful, you gotta keep doing the things that are oxygenating the system.

And then that same person has a webinar, and he was doing a weekly webinar for a long time, making a bunch of money and then he stopped because he started selling other events and things like that to this list, and it worked for a while and then attrition started happening and atrophy, or whatever you want to call it. And then it slowed down. I said, “Start doing the weekly webinar. Get back with it. That’s the oxygen that builds the business, that keeps doing it.”

That same friend has used a lot of video, “I used to publish video a couple of times a week and I haven’t for some time.” You have to keep oxygenating the system, even when you have success, you can’t stop the lifeblood.

So that’s the message for this episode. This is a short podcast, I know. But arguably one of my most important.

I know we all go through cycles, you’re focusing on how do I make it rain, how to oxygenate the system, how do I bring people in here, and you’re doing that well and your list and your customer base will start growing.

And then what’s going to happen?

I’m warning you, for those who haven’t done it yet, and I’m reminding you for those of you who have. You’re going to shift your focus, and so you should, you should be shifting some portion of your focus to that audience and serving them and what’s the next thing I need and how else can I help them or offer them,

What should I do? Is it an event? Or whatever, but the big thing is you can’t stop. You still have to tie it all in, oxygenating the system. You have to keep providing the fuel to your business.

In my company I now have a system that actually measure the amount of oxygen I put into my system every day. I record each item and hours spent every day. I know I have to keep creating content, keep creating podcasts. I have to do at least one podcast a week. I must do at least this many emails a week. I have to present x number of proposals etc etc…I have these metrics I have to keep doing.

I have to get at least 50 new people a week to register for my material, I have to keep doing this to have the system work. I know my numbers and it all starts with newbies – at the moment for me it is 50 a week. So, my oxygen requirements for my business are straight forward because I know that’s the fuel for the business.

I could easily stop right now; I could stop doing all this stuff. Instagram Facebook the lot – I am busy and I’m making money.  

I could stop all these things, but I know what would happen in six months to a year from now, if I stop these things today. I can’t tell you how many clients I have who have been in their industry a long time who were killing it at one time. They had built up this strong business by doing the hustle and grind and then they stopped and so too did their growth. That is the issue with business: you are either growing or shrinking.

So if you stop oxygenating your system, getting new people into the front end, your existing list, while they might be hot and responsive now, it will eventually get worse and worse until eventually you’re out of business.

So this is the warning to you all. Continually put oxygen into your system. Initially when you start your business it’s going to be a hundred percent of your effort, because you have no oxygen, no people, nothing to sell, no one to sell too. So it’s focusing, focusing, focusing a hundred percent of the time. And as customers start coming, you start shrinking the effort and diminishing the focus.

But I would say, if it were me now knowing what I now know, I would spend at least 50% of your time still oxygenating the system and the other 50% on serving the people you have in there. But I wouldn’t drop below that. Because if you do, it will start to shrink and shrink and eventually disappear, which is the worst thing you can do to your business.

Oxygenate your system, keep it going. Do not stop even when it seems like, “I don’t need to do this anymore”, You will become irrelevant if you stop the oxygen.

The difference in results of your marketing is around the willingness to do deep thinking about your customer. To not be lazy, to not be sloppy and above everything else not be guilty of Lazy Marketing.

Podcast Transcript

Here’s an example. You take two people.

They each make $300,000 a year. They each live in $1 million houses.

So demographically they’re affluent.

Now we’re going to market to them.

One of them travels incessantly. Five days a week on the road. Which they now hate. He’s overweight, unhealthy, eating bad food in airports, his relationship is in trouble.

The other one works from home, he loves it.

His desk looks out his window at his park across the road. He takes time off every day to take his dog for a walk. His marriage is in good shape.

Now - Do they feel equally affluent?

Demographically they’re affluent but we don’t want to be marketing to them the same way.

We’re going to fail with one.

Odds are we’re going to fail with both.

Bad advertising, bad marketing is simplistic and it’s lazy.

It always tries to lump too broad of a spectrum of people into one group and then to talk to them in a mass advertising mass marketing kind of way.

So, there’s not that many differences in structure in how you market to the affluent. In a broad sense there’s not much difference in what they want and what they don’t want than anybody else.

But there are nuance differences that really have big impact.

Remember they automatically have more choice.

So the more discretionary money you have to spend, the less price matters to you in a category, the more choices you have in that category and you can be more selective.

So marketing to them now means about being identified as for them and not for everybody else.

The difference in results is around the willingness to do deep thinking about your customer.

To not be lazy, to not be sloppy and so here’s a litmus test and it’s kind of the survey what do you know about your customer.

I can sit here, and with my customer I can talk to you about them for around three hours about who that customer is. I know that person intimately. I - so I can tell you demographics things. I can tell you psychographic things. I can tell you geographic things. I can tell you their pain buttons. I can tell you their desire buttons.

So if you can’t sit and tell me about your customer for three hours without running out of useful and relevant things to talk about, then I would say you’re not prepared to market to them effectively. If you have to put or you are putting a big umbrella over them you don’t have intimate enough information and your marketing could do a lot better.

Here is a handy little LinkedIn tip that if you follow methodically will make you and your business a lot of money!

Spend 30 minutes every day searching and adding your ideal clients to LinkedIn.

Podcast Transcript

Get your LinkedIn profile as up to date as possible and make sure it works as a sales funnel for your business. By that I mean make sure it is easy to get to your business website from your LinkedIn  profile and ideally a lead generation page where you can entice prospects to give you their details.

Spend 30 minutes every day searching and adding your ideal clients to LinkedIn.

As you do this, your profile will get viewed by the exact criteria of people you wish to do business with. This is because LinkedIn tells people who have visited their profile. 

Most people accept connection requests so this is a technique that is reliably successful.

As your target audience adds you, engage with their content by liking and commenting on it. Prospects will learn who you are and what you do and because you’ve built a relationship, you’ll find prospects start messaging you when they need your services.

In addition, you need to start posting your own content to LinkedIn. This too will get seen by your target prospects. Things like your opinions, updates on what you’re up to and amusing, creative and valuable stories relating to your business and or industry.

You can post that you’re looking for clients, essentially this is a free advert for your business and will be seen by your exact target audience as you keep adding your ideal target prospects. 

The detailed search functionality of LinkedIn makes it an incredibly powerful platform for generating B2B leads with your ideal clients.

You can find them, add them, get in front of them, engage with them, and advertise to them. All for free.

This is so incredibly powerful.

Go do it just 30 minutes a day and you will start getting leads.

For even more in depth and simple How to master LinkedIn information – go to my website

Petergianoli.com/Linkedin-mastery

Spend 30 minutes every day searching and adding your ideal clients to LinkedIn.

How was it? 

The common question asked by staff after a flight, at the cashier at a restuarant when you pay your bill wherever.

This question can only be answered in one of three different ways:

1. Something positive and nice about your business
2. Nothing about you and your business
3. Something derogatory about you and your business.

The answer is 100% in your hands. This podcast tells you why and the consequences of the wrong answers.

Responsibility equals control and control equals responsibility.

Or as a formula it is R=C & C=R

Now this might seem very simplistic to some people. But the importance of this formula and how the average entrepreneur, applies it day to day can dramatically improve circumstances.

Podcast Transcript

This formula is like the ultimate governor, here's why...

This simple formula - Responsibility equals control and control equals responsibility - is so true but only to the degree that you are prepared to accept responsibility for any situation.

So, by accepting responsibility means you can exert control over the situations you find yourself in.

I first heard this formula from Mr Dan Kennedy the legendary Us copywriter who I had the pleasure of working with many moons ago on a USA based National Speakers Association tour and he used this example, to illustrate the point.

When he was a pro speaker on the tour – there was another speaker on the program (for the record this wasn’t me – but at times it could have been :)) who was not doing as well with sales at the back of the room as he should have been doing. And when Dan had a conversation with him, he had a litany of reasons, for why he wasn't doing so well.

“The environment's not good”, as they were in a great big sports arena and the audience was sitting on benches and,

“The sound is bad”.

“His time slot is bad.”

“The sales staff were doing a terrible job and they are erratic,” and so on.

In Dan Kennedys example Dan went on to explain that whilst the list was somewhat right it didn't take Dan himself who was also on the tour that long to figure out all of the same things.

By the time Dan had done his third presentation, he could see it was a terrible environment. And, the staff did suck. And especially for Dan because by the end of the day, they were exhausted, and they just wanted out of there and they couldn’t care less if anybody purchased anything.

So, Dan had the same list, but the key difference was Dan began to exert control over element after element, after element on the list.

For example, with the sales staff at the back of the room, Dan was the only speaker who paid them bonuses. Dan would arrive at the venue two hours before he spoke and went around to the manager first of all, and put him on a bonus plan based on how much was sold, this was discussed and based on the size of the audience. And then he went around with the manager to every one of the product sales areas, and set them up on their own little bonus plan.

“So if we sell this much, everybody gets $5 bills. If we sell this much, everybody gets $10 bills. If we sell this much, everybody gets $20 bills. And when all the dust settles before you all leave, I'll be back around, passing out the cash. Now, do you want to hear what you can do to sell more? Fine. Here's the script. Here's what you say when they come out, etc etc”…

And so Dan did something like this for every item One by one down the list, because he understood that ultimately he is responsible for trying to control the environment in which he worked.

Now I have found the same in my circles - just like if you ask a Real Estate sales person how is business, and they answer with how tough the banks are being with lending policies and nobody can get loans – so it is too difficult to sell.

Or if you ask an entertainer how are your bookings going in this strange COVID world and most of them will say – oh its terrible but what would you expect in this market nobody is having events.

I must admit though – just the other day I got back this answer which was “look I have had a few enquiries, but I priced myself too high and I didn’t get the gigs”.

As I am sure you can sense the answers of blaming banks or COVID or the market are not overly useful because you have no opportunity to exercise any control over them. But the answer like “I have had a few enquiries, but I priced myself too high and I didn’t get the gigs” means you at least have an opportunity now to go try and figure out what the hell it is that we can do differently, that will affect the result.

This is a real thought pattern. And you pick it up, you can see who has it or not - by their language. And when you say to somebody, “how did your database mail campaign go?

“You know, it didn't do very well” verses “well, we screwed it up”.

The person who says we screwed it up, guess what? they are the true entrepreneurs the successful entrepreneurs - the winner.

How are things going?

“Oh, business this month. Isn't very good, Now that is a loser talking because they are not taking any responsibility for it. Therefore they have no control over it. So they can't do anything about it. The people that say, well, we haven't done much business this month. Now they’re in the, fix it, improve it, figure it out mode. And so this formula  R=C & C=R is and can be so powerfull.

People just don’t quite understand how important this is because this really does make a difference. Whether people take responsibility  or not depends if they are going to be in control of something and make a difference or just let things happen to them – the choice does exist.

And one of the things that I have observed amongst successful people – is how often they are willing to accept the fact and make the statement that I screwed this up. As opposed to so many other people who go the victim route, you know, this happened and that happened.

Remember there's no power in that. No power in the excuse mode, in the long lists, all the excuses, the blame others…

The only power is in a hundred percent responsibility. So again, burn this into your psyche – your daily life – R=C & C=R

Responsibility equals control and control equals responsibility.

Trust me life and business will just keep getting better.

Let me give you a number...

82!

82, why is this so important?

Its the average life expectancy of the Australian male. Female number I believe is a little larger, but never the less we all have an end number, what you do from now until then is up to you.

Listen to this podcast for some timely advice.

An accomplished jazz musician has 3 key rules:

1. Find your own voice
2. Never play the same way twice
3. Know the basics inside and out

Sound advice I know. In fact these three rules even make more sense in business and marketing. 

This podcast is must listen.

Jerry Macuire is one of the best business movies ever produced.

Jerry's life changing mission statement scene is six minutes of pure entrepreneurial gold in this episode I outline why!

Show Links

Click HERE to watch the scene

Grab some great USP training here petergianoli.com/usp

In this podcast I feature an interview with Barry Walker a Senior Strategist with Wunderman Thompson, Perth. Barry discusses his recent article  "The playbook for creating sport tribes that bind" which appeared in MarketingMag.com.au

During the interview we discuss what sport tribalism can mean for your business if you think about the relationship with your clients and customers in a different way.