The Marketing 24-7 Podcast

Have you ever asked yourself how much your marketing content is worth?

The ebooks you create, the infographics you design and the webinars you host.

How much are they worth?

Podcast Transcript

Have you ever asked yourself how much your marketing content is worth?

The ebooks you create, the infographics you design and the webinars you host.

How much are they worth?

You need to know, because contrary to your beliefs, they have value and your ability to apply the appropriate value matters.

The value of your marketing content isn’t measured in terms of money, but rather by how much information your prospects are willing to give up.

The information you request for a download is the price. Understanding how to price your content is the key to maximizing your content strategy.

To simplify this a bit more, if your submission forms are asking for lots of required information, names phone numbers, company size, title, roles, etc. then that’s a high price for the content. It may be worth it, but know that’s expensive.

On the flip side, if you’re only asking for an email, that’s cheap.

YOUR CONTENT IS NOT FREE – let’s be clear, if you’re asking for any information as a condition of access to your content, your content is not free. The price is the information. The only time content is free, is when prospects can quickly click a button and get without inputting any information.

Don’t Price too High

Now that we understand our content is not free, rule #1 is; Don’t price your content too high. Like the pricing of anything else, value is key. Make sure that know what you’re asking for is worth what your offering. If you’re offering an infographic on general trends in the industry, asking for a lot of identifying personal and corporate information, may be too expensive and impede the volume of downloads

Too often companies over charge for their content, requesting lots of information for content that’s not worth it.

Don’t over charge for your content.

Don’t Price too low

Like over charging for content, you can under-charge for content. Undercharging for content happens when you don’t ask for enough information for something that is highly valuable. Maybe you’ve completed robust state of the market assessment that can help your prospects plan for their upcoming year. Only asking for an email is pricing it too low. You don’t want to give away such a valuable piece of content.

Pricing killer content too low can overwhelm your Sales Development Rep’s, marketing and more with unqualified, unidentified submissions that have little to no lead or opportunity value.

The key is to price right.

Understanding the value of your marketing content and pricing accordingly is key. It’s not enough to just create content and just throw it out there for everyone at one price fits all.

Consider offering content with varying price points. Create some truly free content, referring to more expensive content tucked inside. Create inexpensive content that requires little more than a first name and an email address. Create higher value content that requires identifying information like size of an organization, role, budget, etc. Finally, create expensive content. Expensive content is rich in data, insight, and value. Charge a lot for this content, require insights, identifying information, and even agreements to meet or scheduled appointment.

When we evaluate content through the lens of value and price, it changes the game. It requires we include price into the conversation. If we’re not getting the downloads or form submissions we want, is it the content or the price? We can no longer simply assume it was bad content, thus poor submissions or valuable content because of tons of form submissions. Price plays a role in conversions and getting the price right matters.

The Strategy:

1. Create content for all prices points, (free, cheap, moderate, expensive)
2. Be sure the value of the content is consistent with the price
3. Don’t over charge or under charge
4. Use varying priced content to drive interest in more expensive content
5. Continually evaluate your content to make sure the price is still fair

Old out of date content may need to go on sale and only require an email.

Most entrepreneurs like to go go go!!

Ready, fire, aim, right? That’s good. It’s what makes us wake up in the morning, get our products out there, and change the world. So a word like foundations is boring. Definitely not sexy. BUT so essential!!

Podcast Transcript

Most entrepreneurs like to go go go!! Ready, fire, aim, right? That’s good. It’s what makes us wake up in the morning, get our products out there, and change the world. So a word like foundations is boring. Definitely not sexy.

When you stop to learn something like marketing foundations, you may feel like you’re slowing down or taking a step back, but it’s crucial to lay a good foundation so you can build a big house. After all, the foundation you need for a $100 million-dollar business is gonna be a beast compared to a foundation that will support a $1 million-dollar business.

A solid foundation multiplies and maximizes your efforts. It means that when you’re ready to go out there and sell, everything you do will be stronger, faster, and more profitable…even if you don’t exert more effort.

Good foundations build and sustain businesses during all the ups and downs, so don’t skip the chance to learn and shore up your business foundation.

Some simple steps to become very successful in business through great marketing.

Podcast Transcript

IF YOU ARE AT POINT A AND YOU WANT TO GET TO POINT B IN BUSINESS, A BIG PART OF GETTING FROM A TO B IS GOING TO BE VIA YOUR KNOW-HOW AND SKILLS.

A big part of this shift for many of you, is simply to stop thinking like a marketer and to start thinking like a billionaire. I have already covered this, but to be more specific, making this transition involves these steps to become very, very successful.

• How to write better copy or to get better copy written.
• How to build systems that will convert strangers into sales.
• Learn to create campaigns that cause those new customers to continue to buy from you.
• Be able to increase your prices or sell more frequently at a higher price to existing customers.
• Drive traffic from advertising.
• How to generate more leads.
• Discover how to lower your cost per lead while raising your value per lead.

As you go on your marketing journey and you meet the inevitable challenges that you’re going to meet, you have to understand the real reason why you are doing things.

You have to understand what’s really driving you to success.

Podcast Transcript

Decide and Commit

As you go on this journey and you meet the inevitable challenges that you’re going to meet, you have to understand the real reason you’re doing things.

You have to understand what’s really driving you to success.

You’ve got to figure out your “why” and you’ve got to make the conscious decision right now and you have to commit right now.

If you are not getting the results you want in your business, it is because:

1. You don’t know how: If you’ve got that problem, keep listening to this podcast.
2. You don’t accurately know what’s really going on: You haven’t done the math. You don’t know the map.

1. You’re not really committed: You give up too quickly, or you haven’t given it enough thought or effort.

I want you to build a significant business.

I’m not talking about a couple of hundred extra dollars a month or something like that.

What I want is for you to change the financial future of your business.

In order to do that, we have to play for real - we can’t be half-hearted.

Obsess

The final thing is to obsess. You absolutely need to become obsessed with this stuff.

There is no such thing as “set it and forget it” when it comes to massive business success.

I’ve known a lot of people who have made a tremendous amount of money, and everybody that is very, very successful is totally, passionately, almost psychotically obsessed with their mission.

To them it never feels like work - it’s fun, it’s a passion, it’s an obsession. They just love it.

If you’re buying into the “set it and forget it” dream, you might be able to have some of that on a very small scale. But if you really want to achieve success, you’ve got to have an element of obsession.

Remember if you’re enjoying the process, it won’t feel like work. You will enjoy life, because this is something you really enjoy doing.

I know I’ve told you how hard it’s going to be and how hard you have to work, but I also hope I’ve made the point that it’s fun work, and that the bad stuff is not that bad.

A big part of what I do with, or for clients, is help them isolate problems and fix them really quickly.

I promise you, when things go wrong, if you catch them early, it’s never going to be a big deal. It’s not going to be that bad.

Numbers need not be everything and I, like you, often wonder whether a 10% conversion rate is good, bad or otherwise. As a client once told me... “one thing I can tell you for sure is that you can’t go to the bank and deposit a conversion rate - only MONEY.”

So, what do I mean by “Know Your Real Numbers”?

Podcast Transcript

KNOW YOUR REAL NUMBERS

I apologise in advance... a lot of marketers out there feel anxious at the simple mention of numbers.

I agree, numbers need not be everything and I, like you, often wonder whether a 10% conversion rate is good, bad or otherwise. As a client once told me... “one thing I can tell you for sure is that you can’t go to the bank and deposit a conversion rate - only

MONEY.”

So, what do I mean by “Know Your Real Numbers”?

Obviously, I have already quoted quite a few numbers on my way through this paper.

In Steps 1 and 2, numbers figure quite prominently and I am sure they didn’t cause your eyes to glaze over. They simply allow us to make meaningful decisions and assist us to decide where to focus our resources and/or our attention.

To grow your business, you will need to quantify the key metrics of your marketing’s performance. As mentioned in Step 3, there are four key areas in business, so you will need to chart and monitor relevant numbers analysing traffic, opt-ins, engagement and conversions.

So, let’s look at the numbers of a medical client of mine (at the time of writing).

The numbers look like this:

• $800 worth of ads (traffic) gets 100 (opt-ins)
• From every 100 subscribers, 2.25 sales occurs (engagement/conversion number)
• The average client invests $9,500
• Therefore, from every 100 subscribers - 2.25 sales x $9,500 = $21,375 (total revenue) 
• It only cost $800 in advertising to get $21,375

So, my client sticks $800 in and gets $21,375 out. Or, for every $1.00 spent on advertising, he gets back $26.71. That is a deal even the most miserly of bank managers can appreciate.

From these numbers, one can safely deduce that currently things are fine for my medical client. Does that mean we can rest on these numbers?

No. Why?

Because things break, prospects change their behaviour, competitors notice what you are doing and begin to copy your techniques and methodologies – resulting in a watering down of your conversions and opt-ins.

Or maybe my client is still leaving money on the table. Perhaps it’s something as simple as a blue button converting better than a green button.

There are four components to the marketing of a business:

1. You have got customers, or at least prospects that I refer to as traffic.
2. You need to create opt-ins.
3. Then you have engagement - that means “are your customers or prospects responding to what you have to say and taking the call to action”?
4. Then you have conversion – “are they buying your stuff”?

These are really the only four areas where something can go wrong.

TRAFFIC - OPT-IN - ENGAGEMENT - CONVERSION

Podcast Transcript

There are four components to the marketing of a business:

1. You have got customers, or at least prospects that I refer to as traffic.
2. You need to create opt-ins.
3. Then you have engagement - that means “are your customers or prospects responding to what you have to say and taking the call to action”?

1. Then you have conversion – “are they buying your stuff”?

These are really the only four areas where something can go wrong.

TRAFFIC - OPT-IN - ENGAGEMENT - CONVERSION

The worst that can happen to us is “hey, we are not getting any traffic”. Guess what?

If we are running ads and we are not getting any traffic, we are not spending a lot of money anyway, so it is not that bad.

Also, there is a good chance that you know how to fix this - change the ad copy.

Pretty simple, we are just typing – it is not too hard. Typing and talking, a lot easier than sitting there and hoping!

If you are getting traffic but nobody is opting-in, that is also quite simple to fix. Change the copy on the opt-in page or offer a more compelling inducement. Once again, this is just typing and thinking - again not too hard.

Engagement – “are they reading our communication pieces”? If they are not, with good analytics, you will know that immediately and act to fix it with better headlines or stories, case studies and/or examples.

Finally, conversion - your prospects are going to your call-to-action, but they are not proceeding. We change the copy, add an explanatory video, involve our sales staff - whatever - the solutions are plentiful.

So, I hope you can see, the cure of any of the stuff that can and will go wrong is

readily doable, and it is easy to implement. Remember, it is normally just one of these four things.

Half of getting really rich in business through marketing, is knowing which one it is and knowing how to fix it. That is why you need to master this stuff, or perhaps this is something we can do together?

To succeed in marketing you need to be mentally prepared for the inevitable problems that are likely to crop up. None of them should be too bad, but if you’re not prepared for them, they can freak you out and you quit before they work.

Understand reality. Understand you’re going to have challenges. Understand this takes risks. Understand this is not easy. Finally, understand it’s worth it.

Podcast Transcript

1.  It’s a pain. It’s always going to be a pain, even if you have a system that’s creating revenue passively. Eventually something is going to break, or those damn customers begin reacting differently, you must be on top of it and you have to love this marketing approach to have the determination to keep going.

1. It almost never works as planned at first: When you do this stuff, even if you’re a seasoned campaigner like me, something’s always going to go wrong, especially at first. Usually you’ve got to fix something, you’ve got to tinker, test and tweak it. It’s normal. If you’re not prepared for this or have the aptitude, then you’re going to quit at the first sign of trouble. I want you to know there’s going to be trouble, but it’s not going to be that bad and you’re going to be able to overcome it.

1.  This takes risk: I am sure in “marketing”, you have been pitched with “Finally, a risk-free way to get guaranteed revenue with absolutely no work” – Please?! Business entails risk and especially advertising. The art is in the management of it. It’s not unusual to run an ad and no one buys. It happens to me all the time.

But you know what protects you? You don’t have to spend a lot of money. Thanks to online marketing, it’s simple to test and tweak with the tools and platforms that are available for you. I usually start out spending $10 or $20 a day on a campaign and watch it for a couple of days. If it doesn’t work, I’m only out a little bit of money and I haven’t risked too much. But nonetheless, it still takes risk. Embrace the risk, manage it and reap the rewards that I am talking about.

1.  You’ve always got to be messing with it: You’ve always got to be tweaking it. Eventually something’s going to break. You’re going to change some ad copy. Something’s going to happen. As long as you’re selling things, you’re always going to be tweaking things, and that’s okay.

The whole reason I’m telling you this, is to have you mentally prepared for the inevitable problems that are likely to crop up. None of them should be too bad, but if you’re not prepared for them, they can freak you out.

Understand reality. Understand you’re going to have challenges. Understand this takes risks. Understand this is not easy. Finally, understand it’s worth it.

A marketing mindset is one that will ultimately lose. Instead, you need to think like a billionaire.

BILLIONAIRES THINK ABOUT MULTIPLYING MONEY THROUGH LEVERAGING ASSETS.

They don’t think about promotions, they don’t think about a shortcut, they don’t think about the cost of media placement. They think about multiplying money through leveraging assets.

Podcast Transcript

This may be a weird thing to say, because most of you are likely to be marketers.

But - You see, I know normal marketers typically think in terms of promotions and launches.

This marketing mindset is one that will ultimately lose. Instead, you need to think like a billionaire.

BILLIONAIRES THINK ABOUT MULTIPLYING MONEY THROUGH LEVERAGING ASSETS.

They don’t think about promotions, they don’t think about a shortcut, they don’t think about the cost of media placement. They think about multiplying money through leveraging assets.

According to Forbes, Gina Rinehart grew her wealth by 4%

last year, and Warren Buffet grows his stuff by around 20% annually. That means for Warren he puts in $1.00, and by the end of the year he’s getting $1.20 back.

They are multiplying money leveraging assets. In this case, those assets are a mix of private and publicly traded companies.

In terms of our various businesses, I want us to think like them as well

HERE IS ONE OF MY ATTEMPTS IN MY BUSINESS...

For a while now my Facebook campaigns have been lean, mean and scrappy. I don’t care overly about gaining fans nor followers. I don’t focus on anything other than doing right by my customers and turning a profit.

In my latest Facebook investment, I am using a not overly clever campaign to drive people to an opt-in page and then put recipients into an email sequence that offers to conduct a FREE critique of what should be their greatest marketing asset - “their website”.

This is a simple direct response technique... nothing earth-shattering, nothing fancy but I used paid ads to send traffic to my opt-in page.

Overall picture after 3 months:

Revenue: $16,750 Ad spend: $6,583

Net after advertising: $10,167

So, I put $6,583 in, I got $16,750 back and my net was $10,167.

That is a 154.44% return on investment in 90 days.

Gina Rinehart and Warren Buffet would put $1.00 in and get $1.04 and $1.20 out, respectively, and that would take a year.

I managed to get this return on investment in 90 days, which is awesome.

Now I know they’re doing it with billions of dollars and I’m doing it with thousands. The point being, this result is pretty cool.

As a matter of fact, if we were able to consistently get that same return every 90 days, the annual return would be circa 1,000% per year.

I want to tell you, this is attainable. I do it for myself and my clients regularly, month-on-month.

It is attainable, but notice, I’m not telling you it’s easy. It’s actually quite difficult, but it is attainable.

Now let me ask you a question.

Would you buy this tiny house for $8.01?

Maybe yes, maybe no. But would you buy this house for $8.01 if you could rent it out for $13.40 this month?

Probably you’d say “Yep, of course I’d buy the house for $8.01 because I’m getting more than that back this month.”

• That house is an asset
• You bought it for $8.01
• You rented it for a month for $13.40
• Your profit is $5.39

The cool thing is, now you own the house free and clear. Even if you rent it next month for $1.00, you’re still making a profit. In fact, the entire dollar is profit.

So, why am I talking about a $8.01 house?

In the campaign, I just talked about:

• I invested $6,583
• It generated 822 opt-ins to my list
• Each opt-in cost me $8.01 each – just like that little rental property
• Each optin for that 90-day period produced $20.37 in revenue

It’s the exact same principle as this rental property illustration that I’m giving you, and the upside is, every single dollar that comes from communicating with the people on my list, that result in revenue in the future, is going to be profit.

It’s an incredible thing to actually understand what can really be done through advertising. When you stop thinking about promotions and you start thinking about assets and the multiplication of money, your business can really, really grow and take an incredible upward growth curve.

So What we’re really doing in this example is I’m creating and I’m leveraging cash producing assets.

• Cash Producing Asset #1 - Product and Marketing System: This is the thing I’m selling... the product (or service) and the marketing system is the ads, the emails and the automated system that converts the traffic into initial revenue.
• Cash Producing Asset # 2 - The List: I’m using Cash Producing Asset #1 to create a second cash producing asset, and that’s the list. Each email address is just like a little rental property that I’m buying and getting monthly rent on.
• Cash Producing Asset #3 – Automated Systems and Campaigns: These continue to deliver value to the new leads, to strengthen my brand and produce additional revenue by selling more products.

I used Cash Producing Asset #1 to create Cash Producing Asset #2, which is the list.

Then I used Cash Producing Asset #3 to get even more revenue.

THIS IS A SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT WAY OF THINKING ABOUT SELLING THINGS THAN YOUR TYPICAL MARKETING MINDSET.

As a sales and marketing strategist, my job is to help my clients create as many of these cash producing assets as humanly possible for their business, and to do that in a way that’s systematic, formulaic and process driven, so it won’t be overwhelming.

One of the Magic Steps to Grow your Business

STEP 1 - CONSISTENTLY TURN ADVERTISING INTO PROFIT

I really believe that this is the core fundamental key to all success in business:

THE MOST PREDICTABLE AND EFFICIENT WAY TO GENERATE WEALTH IS TO TURN ADVERTISING INTO PROFIT CONSISTENTLY.

Podcast Transcript

One of the Magic Steps to Grow your Business

STEP 1 - CONSISTENTLY TURN ADVERTISING INTO PROFIT

I really believe that this is the core fundamental key to all success in business:

THE MOST PREDICTABLE AND EFFICIENT WAY TO GENERATE WEALTH IS TO TURN ADVERTISING INTO PROFIT CONSISTENTLY.

I know there’s other stuff you could do... invest in real estate, invest in the stock market have agents sell your stuff, but that’s just cash flow.

I am talking about creating assets and not just selling them,

Here’s why I believe understanding advertising and how to tun it into a profit is key:

Reason #1 - Advertising is Never Going to Go Away

Imagine a nuclear apocalypse has occurred. Mankind has been reduced to a thousand people and we’re just starting to get back on our feet. You know there’s going to be somebody wanting to put ads for their purified water in front of the other 999 people.

We will never stop having the ability to advertise. It’s not going to go away - it’s only going to get better - we’re going to have more and more opportunities.

Reason #2 - It’s a Transferable Skill

If you have the ability to turn advertising into profit, you’re set for life.

Here’s why: If a product stops selling, the same principles could be applied to a new offer that can be scaled quickly in an entirely different area. Let me give you an example in reason number three.

Reason #3 - It Can Increase the Value of Existing Assets

Let’s say that you’ve got a retail business and it’s doing great and everything’s cool.

Then you want to take the same advertising skills and use those advertising skills to increase the value of an existing asset.

For example, if you own an apartment you can raise the rent and eliminate vacancy by deploying effective advertising.

You can literally change the value of the asset through advertising.

Reason #4 - It Funds Its Growth Without Debt

Advertising when done properly funds its own growth without debt. That means, if you can put $1 into advertising today and get $1 back out today, then every other $1 you make is pure profit. In some cases, you can put $1 in today and get $1.50 back out today.

So please tackle your marketing – your advertising like an asset – do not ever refer to it nor treat it as an expense – that is the completely wrong mindset.

Stop thinking like a Marketer and start thinking like a Billionaire – more on that in coming podcasts.

Your Pre-Sale Marketing is the content you create and put out to the world on social media.

Think about the platforms your prospect uses. If it’s Instagram, your Pre-Sale Marketing is your stories and posts. If it’s Facebook, it’s your posts and shares and Facebook Live videos. If it’s Pinterest, it’s your pins that lead to your blog posts.

It’s important that you meet people where they already are.

Podcast Transcript

Your Pre-Sale Marketing is the content you create and put out to the world on social media.

Think about the platforms your prospect uses. If it’s Instagram, your Pre-Sale Marketing is your stories and posts. If it’s Facebook, it’s your posts and shares and Facebook Live videos. If it’s Pinterest, it’s your pins that lead to your blog posts.

It’s important that you meet people where they already are.

Think about it this way… Imagine you move to a new town and you decide that the best way to get to know people is by hosting a big party.

You want to network because you’re a local business owner.

You create these cool invitations and put them outside your front door hoping people come by and grab one.

That’s dumb, right?

Even if you go door-to-door and place invites in every mailbox, people most likely won’t attend a party with a host they don’t know.

What if instead you ask your neighbour where all the hotspots are in your town right now and make plans to go there?

You get dressed up (or down) depending on the restaurant or bar.

You go on a Friday or Saturday night when you KNOW lots of people will be there.

You don’t bring your invitations, because that’s weird. You hang out, have some food and drinks, work the room, and casually mention you’re new and looking to network.

Maybe at the end of the night, you share contact info on a napkin or via text message. Then you follow up with them a few days later.

I’m sure you like most people can tell which method will work better in real life but for some weird reason do the exact opposite online.

When your sales funnel is built, you’re going to need to create content NATIVE to your platform to attract new people.

It needs to be consumable right there, it needs to fit the vibe and style of the platform.

It’s your Pre-Sale Marketing and it’s as important as your actual sales funnel because it’s what will draw people in to learn more about you.