Your Dream Business

This week we’re talking about all of the ways you can save time whilst managing your social media channels. In a busy industry it’s important you’re doing all that you can to grow your social media, without having to spend hours and hours on your phone. There are so many vital parts to running successful accounts and you need to be sure you’re able to them, without forgetting to engage with your followers too. Luckily, I have lots of tips and tricks to help you!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter are really good for interacting with personal and business accounts, especially if you own the account.
• The first thing you should do is think about the aims for your social media platforms. Are you trying to grow your following? Are you trying to connect with your audience? From there, you should think about your target audience. Chances are, this will be the same target audience that you have for your business.
• You should write down a list of keywords and hashtags that your customers are using. People often think that they should be using hashtags that show what you do, however, your customers won’t be looking at that. This will help you find your audience.
• It’s important to think about your competitors and places where you customers might be.
• When it comes to staying on top of your social media, you need to ensure you have content scheduled. Depending on how often you schedule your content, you need to ensure you’re checking within enough time.
• Liking and sharing other people’s content every single day is incredibly important. Using the hashtags you’ve collected, you’ll be able to find plenty of content to share. Have a number of posts in mind that you want to engage with and ensure you do it every day. This will help you reach out to your audience and people that may want to follow you.
• When engaging with other accounts, make sure your comments are meaningful.
• Occasionally, you might want to carry out an account clean up. This means getting rid of accounts that are no longer active or accounts that no longer align with your values.
• Every now and again, you may want to review your ‘About Me’ section and links.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…You need to check notifications at least three times a day, minimum. Make it part of your routine and you’ll soon get used to it.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Which Platforms Are We Covering? – 05:15
• Where Should You Start? – 06:00
• Moving Forward with Your Accounts and Being Proactive – 09:00

Transcript below

 

Speaker 1: (00:33)

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I am so very grateful to have you here. How was your New Year and your Christmas break? Did you have a wonderful time and managed to get some rest? I did actually, which is fairly unusual if I'm honest. I don't often take a lot of time off but I'm not sure if it entirely helped this time because I felt like I took quite a bit of time off, tried to relax and then I really struggled getting back into it. So it's really interesting cause I thought it would make me really motivated to get going again but it didn't quite have that effect. So I am working super hard at the moment in terms of trying to get my motivation up and trying to get going. And it's hard sometimes when you work on your own and you work from home and that sort of thing.

Speaker 1: (01:15)

So I'm sure if you do those things then you can appreciate what I'm saying. Although I do actually love getting back into a routine. So I think once my daughter's back at school, which she's not yet, she will be soon because I'm recording this fairly early on in the year. I think I'll feel better then. So yeah, fingers crossed to that. Okay. Before we get on with today's episode, which I think you're going to really enjoy, cause we're talking about how to save time while managing social media, because honestly I know what it's like. It's such hard work. But before we get into that, I want to tell you something exciting because over on Instagram I am running a competition. So I want you to head up to Instagram and take a look at it. But basically what I'm doing is I'm giving away things that helped me in my business and help me be productive.

Speaker 1: (02:03)

So I'm giving away a wall planner that I designed. I'm giving away some notebooks that are really only for Academy members and pens that are only normally for Academy members. And then I'm also giving you some of my top business books that I've read that have made a big difference in my business. So I've got in there couple of Michael Hyatts books. So Here's Your Best Year Ever and Free to Focus. I'm also including Building A Story Around by Donald Miller and a couple of other books that should be cool and there's going to be other few little stationary bits and bobs in there which will just sort of fill it out and a few nice to have bits. But I wanted to start the year off with a bit of a giveaway just because like I said, I've used some of these things in order to help me in my business and I thought that it would be a great start for you guys.

Speaker 1: (02:52)

So it's all around the podcast. Basically what you have to do is head over to Instagram, check the posts that I've put up and on that post you have to tag in some friends who are going to maybe enjoy the podcast, might be interested in it, say some of your business friends maybe, and then you can share a post on stories or on your feed. And if you tag me in. Every time you do any one of these things you get ended to the competition so you have a chance to enter more than once. And like I said, I will pick one lucky winner out of a hat and they will get that bundle of marketing and business goodies in order to help their business drive forward this year and have an amazing 2020 because I think I've talked to a fair bit about the fact that this year I have really sort of, I don't want to say knuckle down cause I do every year, but I've really kind of focused this year on my goals and I've written them all out and I've made them S.M.A.R.T. So that they're specific and measurable and those sorts of things that go into the smart sort of acronym.

Speaker 1: (03:50)

And also I have made a real point of including some personal goals which I've never really done before. I've always done the kind of business only goals, but I'm really trying to focus on that as well this year. And I feel so positive about it. My word for the year, cause I also have a word for the year and I'd recommend that you guys do is action. So you want to be taking action as, or I want to be taking action as much as possible. So everything that I do, is it driving me forward? Is it helping me with those goals? Am I taking action daily in order to achieve those goals that I set out? So yeah, that's kind of where it's all going. So like I said, competition, go and enter it and then I will send this bundle of business goodies out to someone. So go and find all the details over on my Instagram.

Speaker 1: (04:37)

Just head over to Instagram and search Teresa Heath Wareing and you will find me. Okay. Let's get on with today's episode.

 

Which Platforms Are We Covering?

 

(04:45)

So this is something that I talk about a fair bit and I've realised I don't think I've really done an episode on it, but it's so important. I'm surprised I haven't as to date. This is all about how you manage your time using social media, how you make the most of all these platforms, however you don't spend hours on end on them and how you manage your time. So you can be really strategic without being kind of not doing the engagement bit. This is actually talking about how to do all the proactive stuff and it's something we do in the business all the time. So I want to talk to you about that and I want to talk you through our process that we use.

Speaker 1: (05:20)

So when I'm talking about this, I am mainly talking about LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter only because they are really good for interacting and they're interacting off personal and or business accounts. Although LinkedIn you can't do this from a page. So these are really good when you are the person that is having that account and it's not necessarily the business account, although it's fine on Instagram and it's fine on Twitter. So before I get into the process, there's a couple of things that we do from a groundwork point of view that I would highly recommend you do because it's going to make a big difference when I'm talking to you about the proactive activity that you can do daily.

 

Where Should You Start?

 

So the very first thing I do is have a quick think about what are the aims for that platform? What am I trying to do on Twitter or what am I trying to do on Instagram?

Speaker 1: (06:07)

Am I trying to grow my following? Am I trying to connect with my audience? What am I trying to do in order to actually be running those in the first place? Then the next thing, and I just write a few words down, I don't write too much. And then the next thing I think about is who's the target audience of that platform? And basically this is your target audience for your business. So presumably the people you're trying to talk to on a social media platform are the same as the people you're trying to sell to and your business. So again, you should have this, if not, I will link in the show notes to the episode I did all about creating your avatar, your perfect customer avatar. So then what I do is I write down a list of keywords or hashtags. Now this is particularly appropriate for Instagram and Twitter and actually is becoming more appropriate for LinkedIn as they are using hashtags more recently.

Speaker 1: (06:56)

But what you're trying to do is you're trying to get a list of hashtags or keywords that your customers would use and this is often where people go wrong. They think to themselves that it's their hashtags. So for instance, if you are a carpenter you might hashtag carpenter, will be only people hashtagging there are carpenters. Whereas if your customer was a business owner that was a mum, then you might want to look at a hashtag like Mompreneur although saying that that's a very big hashtag and although we're not going to go into hashtag strategy today, maybe that's one for an episode. You don't want hashtags that are too big. You want to keep them as kind of medium range as possible. Cause if they're too big like Mompreneur, then you're never going to get found and you're going to struggle. But it might still work for the examples I'm going to give you today.

Speaker 1: (07:48)

But just bear that in mind if you're using it on your posts. So, like I said, write down a load of hashtags and a load of keywords that you can use to find your audience or your audience might use. And then the last bit of sort of grind work I do is I write down some competitors and I put them down not to necessarily go and steal their ideas or anything. I put them down because you'll see how we use competitors going forward. Not just necessarily competitors but places where your customers might be. So I always use the wedding example because it's an easy one to use. If you're a wedding photographer, then if you look at a wedding florist, then your customers are going to be there even though they're not a competitor to you. That's where your customers are also going to be.

Speaker 1: (08:33)

So try and think of the services and products that compliment you and what you do and then put them down in the competitor area as well. So like I said, so far you've written down some aims, you've written down the target audience, you've written down a list of keywords and hashtags and you've written down some competitors.

 

Moving Forward with Your Accounts and Being Proactive

 

So the next thing to do is to look at the proactive activities that you're going to want to do going forward for the your accounts. So what we do is we have a checklist and I'm going to give you the opportunity to get this checklist if you haven't already. Got it. If you head to the show notes for this episode. So teresaheathwareing.com/99 as in the numbers, not the words you're going to get the opportunity to download this checklist with all these details on.

Speaker 1: (09:18)

So you don't need to panic to write all these things down. But what we've done in the checklist is we have a list of activities and then we have daily every other day, weekly, monthly, and other. And then we have a section for notes. So we decide as we're going through these activities, how often we want to do them. And I'll explain to you what can impact on that really. So one of the first things we do is we check that we have content schedules. So if you're scheduling content, then obviously you're going to just want to give it a quick look to make sure you're scheduled ahead. So you've definitely got something coming out and depending on how often you schedule your content will depend on how often you want to pencil that in for. So for instance, if we do our content weekly, then every week we need to check we've got enough for the next week.

Speaker 1: (10:06)

Does that make sense? Hopefully it does. The next thing we have on our list is changing scheduling times. So that's to do with the content as well. So basically the scheduling times we will update every so often if we're using a scheduler, just because again, I try and keep it looking as natural as possible. I try and mix it up a little bit so that you know you haven't had your content going out on the same schedule for the past 12 months for instance. So again, that might be a quarterly thing or a monthly thing or an every other month thing. And like I said, you just go through and you tick which of these things, which box represents which ones? So I do, I check my content daily or weekly or monthly. Do I change the schedule weekly, monthly, quarterly. Then the next thing we've got on there, which actually we do three times a day as a minimum, is we check notifications.

Speaker 1: (10:57)

So we will literally schedule in our diaries because once we've done this, this all then gets translated to an online to do list. So literally first thing in the morning, middle of the day, last thing in the afternoon, we will go through and check the notifications. Now we have to do this because we have to be really strict with ourselves because you know what it's like when you're managing your own stuff. You literally sit there, you're working away, your phone pings, someone's done something on Instagram, you go to it, you start looking at it, and then you get tied into it and then you start looking through Instagram posts and stories and then you comment on someone's something and then basically you just spent the last 20 minutes messing around on Instagram just because you saw a notification. So what we try and do, and sometimes it's easier than others, I'm not going to pretend that we get it perfect every time, but we do schedule it in our calendars to check it.

Speaker 1: (11:47)

First thing, it's actually now part of my morning, my work morning routine, and then I check it middle of the day and then I check it later on. And for me, I'm happy to check my own stuff in the evening obviously. So, but we schedule those times in and those things you literally go in, look at, there's a notification if there is, you respond to that notification. So if someone's commented, you comment back. If they liked it, then we don't tend to do a whole lots of that. If they've shared them, we'll thank them, but we'll do the appropriate response immediately. And then the minute we've done the notifications would come out. We do nothing else because the other activities we're going to schedule in as well, but we don't need to be doing them every morning, every lunch time, every sort of afternoon and evening. So then the next type of things that we do is we like and share other people's content and this is where your hashtag keywords and competitors is going to come in really handy.

Speaker 1:

Today I am excited to welcome the lovely Victoria Fleming to the podcast. We all know that no one likes to talk about sales and when it comes to money, it’s often considered a taboo subject. Unfortunately, everyone needs to be able to sell their product and service so despite it being a topic that entrepreneurs don’t like to discuss, sometimes you need that all-important advice that will help you improve your sales strategy. As a sales expert, Victoria is just the person to show you how.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• When it comes to marketing yourself and not your business, it can feel a lot more personal when someone says no.
• If you don’t feel 100% confident with what you’re selling, start collecting the good feedback you have. Include testimonials, projects that have gone well and compliments you receive online. Ultimately, that is what you’re selling – a bag full of amazingness.
• Entrepreneurs set up their business because they’re brilliant something, forgetting that there are lots of other things you need to consider too. Sales, of course, is one of those things.
• Not focussing on sales is like sitting there and waiting for the phone to ring.
• Being personal is important as often, when it comes to the internet, things can feel like a bit of a mass approach. If you’re more personal, your approach is always going to feel less like you’re trying to sell.
• It’s important to have conversations with your target audience.
• Think about your customer avatar in detail, including what their main struggles are in relation to your products and services. How can you solve their problems?
• One of the hardest things about sales is closing, however, there are steps you need to take in between that are just as important.
• The first thing you need to do is identify who the person in front of you is, then you need to ask them questions to find out more. Once you’ve repeated what their problem is, you can then introduce your solution.
• Don’t run away from objections, instead use it as an opportunity to ask questions. For example, if someone says they can’t afford you, you could say ‘okay, do you mind telling me a bit about the budget you do have in mind?’.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Sales is about problem solving. Your products and services help people and solve their problems, so telling people to ‘buy you stuff’ is helping them. If you have a solution to someone’s problem, you should tell them.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Introducing Victoria – 03:00
• Marketing Businesses vs Marketing You – 04:15
• Why Do People Hate Selling? - 14:40
• Sales Is Like Problem Solving – 20:00
• Closing a Sale & The Sales Process- 28:35
• Dealing with Objections - 41:01

Transcript below

 

Hello, and welcome to 2020. This is my first official podcast of the new year and the new decade, and I am super excited about it. I have to say I always love a new year. I love that thought of a fresh start, tidying my desk, starting things afresh, writing a new notebook. It's so sad, starting my new planner, making goals, and as you know if you've been listening to the podcast I did some work a few weeks ago about setting new goals for this coming year. I've spent quite a bit of time doing that, and I've now done it. I am all up and ready for the new years, so I'm super, super excited about it.

What about you? Have you done your plans? Are you ready? Do you feel positive? I hope so. If not, come and find me. Come and give me a DM. Let me know what's up. Let me know what I can help you with because as you know I always want to make sure that I produce content, and create podcast episodes that really help you with your business, and today's is no exception.

Today I am really, really excited to welcome the lovely Victoria Flemming to the podcast. She is a sales expert. Now, we all hate that word. None of us like to sell really, I think if we're honest. We also don't like necessarily talking about money, and also if you sell a service that is your head effectively that can be really tricky but because sometimes it just doesn't feel like that is as easy to understand your pricing as maybe a product because you can easily work out a product pricing based on what does it cost to get in, what does it cost to deliver, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I've actually been at a few events with Victoria. We've spoken on the same stage, and she's a very engaging, great sales coach, and I just wanted to bring her on, and talk a bit about how we can get over this horrible feeling of selling. How can we actually do it in a way that isn't yucky, and doesn't feel gross, and that we're not comfortable with? That's exactly what we talk about today.

I really hope this is going to be a really good one to start with because ultimately this is what everybody needs. Everyone needs to sell their product and service, so unfortunately whether we like it or not we are going to have to do a bit of that. I'm really hoping that Victoria can show you the way in this episode, so I'm not going to go on any longer. I'm going to hand you straight over to Victoria.

 

Introducing Victoria

 

Okay, I am very excited for today's podcast episode with the super lovely Victoria Fleming. Victoria, how are you doing?

I'm doing great. I'm so excited, and I'm even more excited to see you on screen because what the listeners don't know is we can see each other.

Yes, always, and do you know I always do my interviews so I can see them. Sometimes because of quality and things you have to turn the cameras off, but I much prefer it because it's easier because you know what's someone's going to say. You know when they're about to speak. You can read their face and stuff, so yeah. I love it. All the interviews I've ever done pretty much most of them have been on camera, so I've got all these videos. I don't put them out because they're not part of the podcast, but yeah. I love being on screen, and I love seeing people, and I just have to say the day we're recording this obviously this is going to come out in quite a few weeks time, it's Halloween, and Victoria sat wearing these amazing flashing light cat ears. She's got a spider broach on, and she's held up some... What are they, Victoria? They're like-

They're skeleton gloves. They're amazing.

You've set the bar now. I feel like every time someone comes on, and I am going to have to screen shot this, which I will do, and I will put it in the show notes so that people can see how you're dressed. It's so funny. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Every day should be Halloween, shouldn't it? Dressing [inaudible 00:04:19] like this. Why not?

 

Marketing Businesses vs Marketing You

 

Do you know what? Having just come back from the States because they love Halloween, and boy do they do it well. Our friends live over there. I've got to quickly tell you this as we digress. Our friends live over there, and we stay with them in LA. They have no children. They're very grown up. They have a very nice life, and they would find anything like that, they're British, so the fact they live in the States I think they probably find that a little bit tacky. That's what they would think.

Anyway, my husband and I have often joked. If we had the money because we stay at that house, and they go off to work. We're like, "Wouldn't it be amazing if we had the money we could buy all these decorations, and they come back, and we have covered their house in Halloween everything." When I've got loads of money, and time that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go over there-

[crosstalk 00:05:07] do that.

We're going to do that, and they're just going to be like, "What the hell have you don't to my house?" It's going to be hilarious.

Anyway, Victoria, in case my audience don't know who you are let's kick off, as always, with you telling us how you got to be doing what you're doing now.

I'm super lucky. I get to work with businesses now on how to sell more, which makes a dirty word for some people, but I love helping people sell more because I think if you sell more you can have a more fulfilled life. What's got me there is that I have 15 years in corporate. I think like so many of us you start in corporate, and actually I think we learn heaps like that because you get to move around. You get to work for other people. You get to meet different people, and I was really lucky because I had 10 years with a technology company, and in that company the last three years was actually working with individual businesses who were selling the software, so with resellers. What was brilliant was actually even at a corporate point in my career I was working with businesses on how to be more effective with their sales, and how to have more fun with them, because selling should be fun. Then I went to construction, did the same thing. Construction software, right through the recession. I was a bright spark. I thought, "This is a great move to make." I literally I went into that business, and construction fell off a cliff, so that was really tough because you were going out talking to businesses going through really, really tough times.

They didn't have business themselves, and again, that was a fabulous industry to work in, and come through the recession with that. Then I've been out on my own for nearly six years now because essentially I just go to the point where I thought, "You know what? All I want to do is help people sell." I want to help people address that challenge, and to be able to do that with loads of different businesses now it's pretty much a dream job actually. I know some people are just like, "Really? Why would you want to do that", but I really love it, and I get really excited when people I've worked with are excited about selling. I like it when I get the messages going, "Had a conversation. It went great." Or, a business comes back to me, and they say, "The team was so excited. Went back. We changed what we're doing, and this has been the result." I just love that. I love that instant success. It's like tick, success junkie.

Do you know what is so funny because you and I are both in jobs where we have to practise what we preach because if I'm no good at marketing, and you're no good at selling then we've got to make our own businesses successful because if we can't do it for ourselves we sure as hell won't be able to do it for anybody else, will we? Sometimes it's actually really hard, like I find you give me someone else's business, and my brain goes, "Oh yeah, I know how to do this." I literally go, "Here's an idea. Here's an idea. Here's an idea." I sit there on my own and I'm like, "What do I do?"

Do you find that the same with you? Are you much easier telling someone else how to sell than necessarily do it yourself?

It's really interesting. When I first set up, when I very, very first went, and went, "Yeah, I'm going to have this business", I did that thing I think we all do, which is you go, and you find some friends, don't you?

Yeah.

You go and find some networking groups. It was a disaster. It was just a disaster. I was just like, "What? Why am I having such a challenge with this." In the first couple of months I really, really struggled because it's that little old me factors. I think we all have little old me syndrome, and I think that we go, "Oh yeah, but nobody's going to actually want me because [crosstalk 00:08:54] rubbish really, aren't I, because it's me." I think we all have that little thing inside us, and it took me a little while to actually think, "What are you talking about? You're not about little old you. You are about your 15 years experience where you've delivered [inaudible 00:09:11] million pound results, where you've built and established teams, where you've made people so excited to sell that they've gone on to do amazing things in their lives, and their careers." You're not selling little old me. You're selling that. That is your package, all that experience, all those results. That's what you're selling.

It was almost, it was quite interesting, it was almost like a switch flicked for me because up until that point I'd always sold other people, other things, other products, other services. All of a sudden I think you're right. It then becomes you, and it's personal because you think, "Well, what if someone says no?" Actually you can feel like I think somebody's saying no to you, but to you personally, and it's like if you go and ask a boy out on a date, and he says, "No." It's like-

Yeah, it's a wounder, like literally. It's like straight in the pit of my stomach, oh my God. What's wrong with me? You're entirely right. I think that's the interesting thing because again, I had always marketed businesses, other businesses, I wasn't the business, and it was easy to do because I could see what they were brilliant at, and I could get excited about that, and I could be like, "You're amazing at this. Tell everybody." I could come from a point of view of it's not me. It's someone else, and if it's easy for you to really see, and praise that other person. Trying to do that for yourself is inherently not what we do. We don't sit and go, "Man, I'm awesome. Geez I'm good at this." Then feel like you can say, get an instastory, "Do you know how good I am?" We don't do that because, one, we're not very good at it, and I think maybe there's a British element in that as well. Obviously as we were just talking about [inaudible 00:10:56], and I do a lot of stuff in the States. Do you think they're better than we are at that?

But, like you said, with our worlds, because we come from corporate and other businesses, we've done it for everybody else, and doing it for yourself suddenly is then very like, "Oh, this is not feeling great", like how do I do this where I don't feel like I'm literally saying, "Man, I'm amazing, buy my stuff."

I think one of the things I quite often do with people now is I'm really keen. I think it's really helpful in service business is to prioritise, to actually put together, and your services into almost a product, like into a box, and say that, "This is what I do. This is how I do it. Would you like to buy it?" I think that it makes it easier for us to talk about. It think it also gives us a little bit of a degree of separation as well. I do my workshops actually. We make gift bags, so do you all know how to make gift bags, Teresa, because this is like you've got to.

What you have to do, you have to go to the shop, and the gift bag shop. You have to buy the best gift bag in the world. For me, mine's sparkly. It's got holographic things on it. Buy a really good one though that you're really excited about. Then what you need to do is you need to start and think, "This is what I'm selling. I'm selling this bag", so every time you get a nice tweet print it out, cut it out, put it in the bag. Every time you get a thank you card put it in the bag. Every time you're thinking, "I did a great job with that client" write it down. Put it in the bag. Every testimonial, put it in the bag because actually that's what you're selling. I've even got my professional institute certificate in the bag because that's part of... That's what I'm selling. I'm selling this bag full of amazing-ness. I think that that's really helpful

It's really interesting. I was at an event, and somebody who'd been at my workshop and went, "I've got to show you." They went in their handbag, and they pulled out this really battered bag, like all split down, all overflowing with... "I take it everywhere."

That's amazing.

I was like, "Why shouldn't you? This is what you're selling. This is how amazing you are", but I think that by default we just dismiss that and move on.

Yeah, and we do. We're not very good at that because when I think about when someone has said something to you not nice, or someone has commented, or said no to your service, or whatever, we hang onto that for ages, or we can do. It's something that I think the more you do it the more you work on letting go of it, and going, "That's not about me", or "I shouldn't need to hold onto that." But, like you said, people say lovely things, and even in our responses we dismiss it straight away. We're like, "Oh, thanks so much", move on. You don't even want to have a conversation about it because you don't know how to respond. Funny enough, I do have a folder on my computer. I now am going to buy a really beautiful bag to put it in. It's called Teresa Love, which sounds a little bit egotistical, but it's like every time someone does an amazing tweet, or says thank you, or sends me a DM, or anything it all goes in there because like you said, sometimes on those days where you're like, "Man, I'm rubbish. Man, what am I doing? Who do I think I am? I can't help people. This is going wrong. This is doing this."

You need to go back and remind yourself as well as which I think's a great idea, the fact that you're looking, and going, "Look, this is what I'm selling. I'm not selling me. I'm selling all these amazing things I've done." But, also to go back and go, "I am all right. I am pretty good at this stuff, so maybe."

 

Why Do People Hate Selling?

 

Let's start off by talking about we need to address why do people hate selling. I remember seeing you at Andrew and Pete's ATOMICON. I think that's where we... No, I think we'd met previously, just briefly, at an event of theirs. Then we both spoke at ATOMICON this year. You sort of said, "Who here loves selling?" You must do it on every tour call. That's definitely a line that you're coming in with because everybody's, "No."

That resounding silence.

Yeah, they're all looking at` you like, "Are you crazy?" Why don't people like it?

I think there's a couple different things about it. I think especially for entrepreneurs, I think it's a particular challenge because quite often the reason why entrepreneurs have set up a business is because they're brilliant at something. You're brilliant at marketing. Some people are brilliant at building websites. They're brilliant at doing copyright, and they're brilliant at something. Sooner or later there's been a light bulb that's gone, "Wouldn't it be amazing if I could just do that for the rest of my life?" We all go, "Yeah, that'll be amazing. Let's set up a business." Then we set up that business, and realise it's all this other stuff we've got to do. I think some of that is a bit self-explanatory. You have to do accounts. You have to do admin, but I think the thing that people don't consider is they suddenly go, "How am I going to get people to buy my stuff?"

It's that moment, and I think quite often then people fall into this thing if they do loads of marketing. Marketing, it's a little bit more removed. You can send emails, or you can put things on the internet. It's not very personal.

Absolutely, and it can be very passive. It's like you're not really... It depends what kind of marketing you do, but if you don't want to you don't really have to put your neck out on the line, do you? You just kind of go, "I'll just send this, and if nothing happens nothing happens. That's fine."

Yeah, it's a bit like that. You're just sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. Sooner or later I think that most people have a moment where they're like, "I've got to do more than this. I'm going to have to start to sell." A lot of people have never had any experience of selling. Did you ever get taught how to...

This weeks’ episode is another solo episode, covering some of the basics that you need to know when it comes to branding. Although I am not a designer and I have little experience when it comes to creating assets, branding and design is incredibly important from a marketing point of view. Having had lots of conversations about branding recently, I thought now would be a great opportunity to cover some of the basics you need to know when it comes to building a brand that is recognisable.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Your logo is your identifier but your brand is absolutely everything that goes with it. When you see a logo, it’s very rare you’d see it alone. It could be on a website, a business card, on social media or on an email signature.
• Your brand also includes fonts, colours, styles and photos.
• Your branding is effectively your shop front. It’s how people are going to judge you.
• Think about the brands you interact with and how you perceive their brands.
• If you’re struggling when it comes to inspiration, Pinterest is a great place to start. Try searching for your industry and then using the word ‘logo’ or ‘branding’ afterwards. Save a board of everything you like, making a note of the aspects you like as you do it.
• Pinterest is also great when it comes to searching for colour palettes.
• If you’re in a sensitive industry, you need to think about the imagery you’re going to use. Stock sites are a great place to get inspiration for these photos.
• When you’re looking at your new designs, you need to think about whether or not they’re going to look good on social media. The easier to read, the better.
• If you’re your business, it’s okay to use your face.
• You need to ensure your branding truly represents you and your brand.
• Think about where you’re going to use your branding, as often this will often determine how many elements you need to make up your branding.
• Your designer will need to send all of your files over to you when they’re done. They don’t need to design every social media graphic for you, as they can send you over a file that you can easily edit yourself.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Coming up with a logo and accompanying branding is incredibly difficult and if you don’t have any design skills, hiring a designer is the best way to ensure you’re doing everything right.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• What Is the Difference Between A Logo and A Brand? – 03:21
• Your First Steps – 05:40
• Finding Inspiration – 11:25
• Thinking Ahead – 13:10
• Considering Social Media – 15:00
• Creating Your Branding - 17:00

Transcript below

 

Speaker 1: (00:33)

Hello and happy new year. So you might be listening to this just before the new year. You might be listening just after, you might be listening in the middle of the year and therefore that makes no sense whatsoever. But this episode came out just before the new year for the new year, which will be 2020 so if you are listening at the time then yeah, happy new year. Hope you have a good one.

(00:55)

Okay, so I'm just going to jump in today's episode because I've been batching contents. If you don't batch, definitely recommend it. Definitely have a think about it going forward. So I'm actually recording this at the end of November and obviously it's not going out until the end of December. But it's so nice to think that I've got all the episodes done between now and then. It's lovely. And also because I have a team that do stuff with the podcast. So I have someone that edits someone who writes the show notes, someone that then manages the whole process.

Speaker 1: (01:27)

It just gives them and me time to get it all done. So yeah, I'm a little bit tired cause I've done a lot of talking and although I can talk for Britain, I've kind of talked about loads of different stuff. So I'm just going to jump straight in with this episode. I've decided that this episode is a going to be a solo because as I talked about in the last episode, because it's a busy time of year for you guys, I didn't want to put an episode out, which was an interview and then have them maybe not get as many listens as they might do normally. And secondly, I want to talk about kind of going back to basics on some stuff. So what I'm going to talk about today is branding. Now, I don't often talk about design-y stuff and branding stuff because I am not a designer.

Speaker 1: (02:10)

Let's just get that straight right away. I don't want any designers listening to this thinking, what are you talking about? You're not a designer. I'm talking about branding and design. Coming from a marketer's point of view. However, I've obviously worked with a designer. I have a designer in the team who constantly takes the Mickey out of me because I think I've got an okay at things and he just like, Oh, when did you get your design degree? And I'm like, yeah, okay, fair enough. So we've got a designer in the team. I've worked with loads and loads of designers. I used to work in a marketing agency other than my own that had a fleet of designers. And yeah, so I've had lots of experience, but I'm not a designer, so I'm not necessarily coming at this from this point. But there's some things, and the reason I'm going to have is because I've had two people that I've been consulting for recently and they have been setting them in new and it's not often that I speak to people.

Speaker 1: (03:02)

Um, they're part of my 90 day programme that are starting a business from scratch. So I've ended up having conversations with them about their brands because they haven't actually yet come up with a logo or a brand. So let's just talk about those two things.

 

What Is the Difference Between A Logo and A Brand?

 

Well, first off, what's the difference between a logo and a brand? I'm not going to give you the theory. What does a brand mean? I'm going to give you like the straight up what I think is the difference. So a logo is the thing that is your main thing. It's your logo, it's your identify. And that's just standalone. That's one thing. Whereas your brand is everything that goes with it. So your logo might be your initials or it might be the name of your business. Maybe it's got an icon with it that permanently sits with the logo. But that's not your brand, that's just your logo.

Speaker 1: (03:48)

And what you have to remember firstly is that when you see a logo it's very rarely on its own. So your logo is very rarely stuck on something that isn't part of your brand. So for instance, I'm just trying to think of all the places you would find my logo. So we've got a my website, but obviously it's a whole website full of stuff. So the brand is very evident there. You might see my logo on social media, but again it's amongst all the other stuff that's on there and my brand is very relevant and stands out on there. Where else might you see? Mine's on my email signature? But it's probably got some other things where they even like... cause the brand includes things like the fonts and the colours and any images and the style of images. And are you going to use photos, are you going to use illustrations?

Speaker 1: (04:32)

So it's all those considerations. And what was really interesting, I was having a conversation the other day and someone was saying to me how they can spot my stuff without even knowing it's from me because it's so stylized in a certain way. And what's interesting is this person said that that is not their style at all. However, they totally get that is my style and therefore it makes perfect sense for me. And what's interesting when I talk about brands and things, if you've ever seen me on screen, which if you've ever seen a live or see me do anything in my office, you'll see that even the colours of the walls or the accessories, they still sit with my brand colours. And I wouldn't say that necessarily, that was done totally on purpose, but what I'm saying is that that's the stuff I like, so therefore it's no wonder that it reflects my brand because obviously I'm going to have a brand that I like.

 

Your First Steps

 

Speaker 1: (05:25)

So yeah, I've got a couple of things then just to kind of give you some heads up. This isn't going to be a super long episode, but I thought it was important because I don't think I've ever done an episode on this. So if you are coming up with a brand, the very first thing I want you to do is obviously someone is going to create this logo, artwork branding for you and I want you to think about who that might be because there are lots of people who say to me, Teresa, my husband, my sister, my dad, my brother and my mum, my whoever they like to draw or they are a clothes designer or they are creative or they are this or that, I'm going to get them to do my logo. And although in essence that's absolutely fine and I understand that budgets are tight when you're first starting.

Speaker 1: (06:14)

And I was very lucky that one of my friends at the time just happened to be a designer and therefore my very first logo, which I still use actually for the agency, it was designed by them and they knew me very well. So it again, it represents me well. However, my only concern would be as I said and I joked with my designer that I've got a good eye for things and I think I have lots of the stuff you see on social media is designed by me. I'm not a designer and therefore I wouldn't do my own logo because that is so different. Coming up with a brand and a concept and a logo is given to designers for a good reason because they're good at doing that stuff. So even if someone's creative, even if someone can draw well even if someone has painted something brilliant and beautiful and they're very talented when it comes to that, even if they're a designer, but in another aspect i.e. a furniture designer or a product designer, it's completely different skill sets so I would urge you pretty much 99% of the time if you are going to get someone to do a logo that you get someone who is a graphic designer and that you can see their work and they've been recommended to you. I don't really work. I only hit really worked with Matt. My designer who works has worked with me the whole time I've had the business, so five plus years and I'd worked with him previously before then at another place and I trust him implicitly. He knows me, he knows how I briefed him, we know how we work together. He's great. I would struggle to find another designer I have tried to in the past only because we've got really busy. However, with a good recommendation it was really difficult. So that's the first thing I would say is try and find a graphic designer, try and get a recommendation and also just kind of keep in mind sort of pricing and things.

Speaker 1: (08:01)

Don't actually don't throw loads and loads and loads of money at this. Obviously I want you to throw a bit of money at it, but don't like, I used to wait for an agency when we did a brand for someone, it was like two, three grand. As business owners, small business owners do not pay that for that. Cause I promise you it does not take that amount of money or that amount of time necessarily. But again, different horses, different courses. So you know, that's cool. Anyway, so you're going to get a brand, you're gonna get someone to design this for you and hopefully they're going to be graphic designer. But again, I totally get if money's a problem, but remember this is your shopfront, this is how people are going to judge you and view you and look at you. And if it's something that you've put together and it looks a little bit amateurish and I'm really careful to it cause I don't want to offend anybody, but if it does look a bit amateurish, then that's exactly what they're gonna think of you and your brands.

Speaker 1: (08:50)

So I just want you to bear that in mind and I want you to think about some of the brands that you interact with and what you read into them. So one example I gave about branding and customers is supermarkets. So obviously I know I have lots of you listening in the States and I'm here in the UK, but we have Asda, which is owned by Walmart. Now I don't know where Walmart is in the kind of level of stuff, but I know if you take like a lower supermarket and I can't think of which one it is. But anyway, take a light lower end supermarket and then take like your whole foods or we have Waitrose. And what you'll see is the branding on their stuff is so very different. So if you walked into an as the supermarket, which is your lower end or you know, deemed as the lower end supermarket, you'll see that they use really primary colours because they're the most attractive and most outstanding.

Speaker 1: (09:41)

They will use really bold positioning on price. So it's all about how much it costs. It's all about buy two get one free. It's all about something's half price. They use big bold fonts. They have their logo on everything. It's really distinctive, but it's really barely aggressive looking. And like I said, their branding is all around price and bulk for families. But then you look at Waitrose and when they put an advert in a magazine, and again, whole foods might be the same. I'm not entirely sure, but that's the kind of level I'm talking is that they might put something out in a magazine and you barely notice the logo on it, but it's much more muted colours. It's much more complex fonts if you like. And that complex maybe isn't the right word, but it's not, you know, big bold in your face fonts.

Speaker 1: (10:30)

It's the messaging is less about them and less about price and less about families. And it's more about quality and treatment of animals and that sort of thing. So I want you to imagine that. So for instance, if you have got a high end product or you are selling something for quite a lot of money, then for sure invest in someone to do that logo for you. Because if you're going to whip together a clip art logo or something that you can do yourself in Canva, and don't get me wrong, I adore Canva and I use it myself, but I wouldn't create a logo in it, so it is totally worth investing that money. Again, saying that they are, even if you sell a low end product, I still wouldn't just like whip up a logo yourself, but I think you could get away with it a little bit better if you were selling something that was cheaper.

 

Finding Inspiration

 

Speaker 1: (11:14)

Okay, so you're going to get someone to this logo. What I want you to do is if you haven't gone on to Pinterest, go onto Pinterest and literally type in the word logos brands. Try putting the word of your industry first, so consultant logos or photographer logos or whatever you do, and just see what comes up. And what I want you to do is create a board. You can create a private board so it doesn't have to be available for the world to see. And I want you to literally just save images of things that you like and you might need to make a note for yourself or just kind of reminds us of which bit it was that you liked about it. But was it the colour, was it the font? Was it the styling, was it the type of images? Was it the icons, was it the design overall?

Speaker 1: (12:00)

What was it that you liked about that? The other thing that you can search in Pinterest is colour palettes. And what's really nice about that is because you don't just have one colour in a logo, you have a pallet of suite of colours. I do, I, you'll know if you've followed the podcast and you see my stuff on social media, I either use this particular dusky pink or I use a really nice blue, and that's part of my palette that I have. So I want you to go on and have a look at that. And I want you to save all these things because honestly, design is one of the most trickiest things in the world when it comes to personal opinion. Because your designer, whoever you're getting to do it could create something perfect and bang on for your customer, but if you don't like it, then you're not going to want it.

 

Thinking Ahead

 

Speaker 1: (

In today’s episode I am going to be sharing a couple of home truths when it comes to marketing. Whilst I love marketing, I feel that often we are sold a story that doesn’t often match up when you find yourself in the industry every single day and because of this, people feel as though they’re failing. Thankfully, that’s not the case and nobody is actually an ‘overnight success’. I want to talk about what it’s really like and how we can release the pressure we put on ourselves, so join me as I share some incredibly honest opinions.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• When I look back at all the money I have spent, the one thing that has been valuable for me is having a one-to-one coach. Although I have benefited from the other courses I have paid for, having that one-on-one interaction is incredibly important to me.
• Being an overnight success is actually incredibly rare. Instead, you’re coming across people that appear to be popular and what you’re not seeing is the journey they have taken to get there.
• Although you should set goals, you need to focus on the people that are already on your list.
• No one woke up with a massive email list or a massive Instagram following.
• Try not to let the fear of failure stop you from doing what you want to do.
• Although people don’t want to hear it, social media takes time.
• People are selling the idea that you don’t need a list and you don’t need a social media following but I don’t agree. If you want people to stick with you, you need to be known for what you do.
• You need to prove why you’re the person people should be listening to.
• The people that are successful are the ones that are posting when no one is listening and they’re doing lives when no one is listening. Consistency is key.
• Be grateful for everything you have done this year and work hard to smash it next year. It will come, it just might take time.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…If you have small numbers it’s important to remember the victories you’re achieving. If people are trusting you with their money, you should be so proud of yourself.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• What Started This Important Conversation? - 04:10
• #1 Why Am I Not an Overnight Success? – 09:59
• #2 I Only Have A Small Following, Is That Okay? - 12:40
• #3 I’ve Been on A Platform For 3 Months and It’s Not Working for Me – 18:39

Transcript below

 

Speaker 1: (00:33)

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast and Merry Christmas. If you're not listening to this, the week it came out, you might be wondering why I'm saying that, but this came out just before Christmas, so I wish you a Merry Christmas. If you're listening to this, I should imagine you're probably doing one of the many crazy activities we find ourselves doing at this time of year, whether it's wrapping what feels like a gazillion presence, decorating stuff, going to the supermarket, some godly hour in the morning so that you can fight for some brussels sprouts, all that sort of good stuff for Christmas. So maybe you aren't doing that or maybe you're not, you're thinking, I know I'm going to listen to Teresa's podcast or maybe you're listening to my podcast while in a supermarket, shopping for Christmas stuff. So either way, thank you for listening. I'm obviously not doing this at Christmas. It's actually end of November and a quick throwback to last week's episode.

Speaker 1: (01:31)

I talked about the episode being a Christmas Eve episode and it isn't Christmas Eve. I obviously got it into my head that the Monday was Christmas Eve and it's not. It's the Tuesday. That's how bad at planning I can be without looking at my calendar. I don't even know what day Christmas is. So yes, the Monday isn't Christmas Eve. It's the Tuesday. So I was wrong last week. Little disclaimer notice there. Okay. This week gets a solo episode because as I did say last week, I don't like putting on someone who's an interview over the Christmas period and the New Year period just because I can see sometimes a bit of a drop in downloads because people are busy, they've got stuff to do and yeah, that pretty much picks back up in the, in the January. But obviously I like to make a big faster than when it's, there I go. So it's going to be just me and I decided to talk about a few home truths on this one.

Speaker 1: (02:20)

A little bit nervous. Maybe that's why I've chose a Christmas Eve episode cause I think many of you won't listen to it and therefore, you know, I won't sign all negative, but it's not going to be negative. It's just going to be really flipping honest, right? Because I work in a world of marketing and a lot of it is really good marketing because it's really clever and really smart and manages to convince you to buy things that maybe you didn't think about buying. And I'm not saying it's all bad, you know, marketing's great. Obviously I love it, I made a career out of it. But sometimes, especially in the entrepreneurial space and in the business space, we are

Speaker 3: (03:00)

sold a story that doesn't necessarily actually match up to what it is like when you're in it every day. And that can have a massive, massive effect on us as business people, us as human beings that we start to feel like we're failing. And do you know what the truth of the matter is? We're totally not failing. We are probably with the 99% of people out there and it's actually only the few percent who appear as if they're overnight successes and therefore they just show up later and we think we should be like that too. So a few weeks back, quite a few weeks back now, I sent an email out to my list as I'm sure you are aware, cause I talked about it last week when I email my list, I emailed them different to what I talk about in the podcast. But having sent my email, it kind of inspired me to elaborate more on it and talk about it on this one.

 

What Started This Important Conversation?

 

Speaker 3: (03:52)

So I started off by wanting to address some of the questions at home truths that come out of sort of talking to other entrepreneurs and what entrepreneurs think of their business and where they are. And you know what started it all. As you will know, I have been in a coaching programme with James Wedmore for the past 12 months. I have done lots of courses online. I can name lots of people. Amy Porterfield, Jasmine Star, Kim Garst, Mari Smith, uh, who else have I done stuff with? Like, Oh, Sue B Zimmerman. Honestly, I can't remember off the top of my head no, but I've done loads, Brendon Burchard, and I wouldn't even like to guess how much money I've spent on all of that. And I have to say, I think I've got to a point where I have got absolutely everything I need and I don't need that anymore. And I had lots of people asked me about, you know, should I do the James Wedmore thing, should I pay?

Speaker 3: (04:48)

And I'm happy to be totally honest about what I paid. So I paid $15,000 to be part of his coaching programme. And if people want my honest opinion, depending on who that person is, I might not always say yes. And in fact, lots of entrepreneurial friends have done lots of courses going, done lots of things. And really when I look back at all the money I've spent, the one thing that really moved the needle for me was having a one-to-one coach. And although I'm absolutely happy and glad I did the James Wedmore coaching programme and there are lots of others out there, exactly the same studious tribe, Caitlin Batches Group, Tyler J McCall's doing something like there's loads of them, although I'm happy that I did it actually and I had reasons for doing it. I want to get in front of James and wants to get in a room with those same people.

Speaker 3: (05:40)

I wanted to mix with some entrepreneurs who are at the top of their game and although I did that and I'm really pleased I did that, actually I don't need to do that anymore and I feel fine not to do that. And in all honesty, it's a lot of money. Like it's a stupid amount of money. And the one thing that I've been in and consistently pay for, and I'm more than happy to continue, is The Membership Guys Membership because it's not a huge amount of money. It's, I think it's like $49 a month I think I pay and they are always in the group, which is really helpful because sometimes when you join these bigger kind of mastermind or you buy a course and there's two, 3000 people in that, you're obviously not going to get that one to one time. But what's super interesting is The Membership Guys have well over 3000 members, considerably over 3000 members.

Speaker 3: (06:30)

And yet if I put a question into that forum, Callie or Mike will respond. Other people might respond as well, but they will inevitably go, Oh yeah, so and so what they said it was great. Or they'll have their bit, they are in their membership all the time. So what I'm wanting to focus on, I'm going to go down a bit of a rabbit hole here, so I apologise. I'm coming back to it quick. But what I want to focus on in my membership is me being present, me helping you, me being that, because I know when it's not one to one, when you're in a group, your actual hands on touch of that person that you're paying to group to be in is really, really slim. So if you're doing it to have time with the experts, some of the biggest things, you just won't get it. And that's the experience I've had. And

Speaker 1: (07:18)

I hope I'm not opening a can of worms. I'm just being completely open and honest with you because I know the people who have reached out to me and I know, listen to this podcast, I would be really, I know you would be devastated if you wasted your money as I would be. And also, I know if you said to me, okay, I've got 15 grand to spend, do I do this or do I, you know, do I join this mastermind cause they're all about that amount for that level and, or do I do a, you know, focus on this thing or get a coach or do I do some Facebook ads? You know, and I, and that's what I had to do when I debated about joining anything. I was like, okay, what if I spend that in Facebook ads? What would that do to my business?

Speaker 1: (08:00)

So I just think all I'm saying is take it from someone who's done a lot of stuff. And I have had lots of these conversations recently, which is why I feel like I want to say something very gently because I'm not saying any one of these are awful and bad. Don't do them. I'm just saying that and maybe you have to go through it. Maybe you have to have done all those things to then go, actually I don't need the big stuff or I don't need, um, the big massive course because that's the other thing. I've bought courses that have cost thousands and have I done them all? No, I have not. Have I done 90% of it? No. I have done and yeah. Okay. That's my fault. That's completely my fault. But the thing that really helps me is having someone like the membership guys that will answer my question being in their Academy so that if I do have a question about something, they can inevitably go, Hey, go check out that thing. Here it is. And that's what I need. So for me, memberships work really well and I can stop it at any point. Whereas signing up for a big old year programme for over 10,000 is for me, not where I want to be any more. And I would just say think twice. That's all. So like, so I'm not, I'm trying not to be negative. It likes that they've done some amazing things for me and I have paid to play. I've been paid to be put in that room to meet those people and to build a relationship with them. And that's what I paid for. And that's what I got. But if I was thinking about did it move the needle for the business? It did in some places, absolutely. But in others, not so much. So like I said, I'm just, you know, playing devil's advocate on that.

Speaker 1: (09:30)

But that's what kind of started this. And also the other thing here is that when lots of people in our industry go into launch mode, they start talking about these kind of successes and testimonials and case studies. And sometimes they for me, are not a true real example of what's going on. Like, because like I said, what happens is we'll look at them and go, Oh man, we should be there. Or they tell us what their launch was and you think, Oh, we should be there. And actually 99% of people aren't. So I'm just going to go over a few points and just give you my opinion on it. Like I said, I'm not normally this opinionated, which is why I've maybe hid it on a Christmas episode. He watch like everyday I listened to it.

 

#1 Why Am I Not an Overnight Success?

 

Okay, so why am I not an overnight success?

This is what people are kind of coming to me. If I had some guy talk to me the other day, go in, you know, this is possible. Why am I not, you know, why am I not making it already? And when you get down into the crux of it and look at it, he's been going for like three months and you're like, okay. So the fact of someone being an overnight success is like really, really rare. Like it doesn't hardly ever happen. And what happens is you spot someone, you see someone and you suddenly discover them and you look at them and they're really popular and they're really, you know, they've got loads of people in their course and loads of people buying their stuff and loads of people going to their events and you think, Oh my goodness, Hey, did they get it? But the truth is you don't ever see the journey.

Speaker 1: (11:00)

You don't see the journey that they've taken to get there. And there's always been a journey and inevitably it's been hard or tough or difficult. So the first thing I want to say is like, don't beat yourself up. I'm five years into my business and although I hate this word for some reason, but I did kind of pivot last year because of the fact that I say last year, it's actually this year, but in the last sort of six months, because the fact I started doing the online stuff, so I had had an agency and had been had, you know, really lucky it had a good agency, lots of clients. And I decided to start taking a step back from promoting that as hard so I could focus on the online stuff and therefore it feels like I started my business again, which is a little bit scary.

Speaker 1: (11:47)

But like I said, you know, these people are normally in it for years and years and years. You just don't notice them until they start getting big. And then they seem to appear everywhere and then you think, how did they do it? So honestly that where I am right now, five years in, I am more than absolutely fine. Don't get me wrong. If I could take a shortcut tomorrow and be the size of Rachel Hollis and have an event the size of she's just put on, which was massive, I would have it in a heartbeat but I'm not angry or disappointed or you know, frustrated. I know it takes time and it's going to take time so I don't want you sat there looking at someone else thinking why aren't I at that point? Because like I said, it doesn't happen overnight. Okay. The next thing I put in the email that wants to talk about was I only have a small following, small email list or a few customers and this is something again that loads of people are striving for.

 

#2 I Only Have A Small Following, Is That Okay?

 

Speaker 1: (12:40)

I was talking to someone on a podcast episode, I was being interviewed and I said that my biggest lead magnet, the most downloads I get on all the lead magnets I have I there is how to build your Facebook following. And isn't it funny that people still want that because they waste that part of us and don't get me wrong. One of my goals on my goal list that I write every morning is I have a hundred thousand Instagram followers. Don't get me wrong. It's not like that's my only goal cause I can promise you followers don't pay the mortgage. But that kind of, that would go hand in hand with all the other stuff I've gotten there about how big I want the business and the income I want and all that sort of thing. And it would be lovely to think when I look at Jasmine Star's sort of Instagram, it'd be lovely to think that I was followed and as a mind as she is.

Speaker 1: (13:26)

So I guess that where that's where that's coming from. But people, not only do they not want their followers and their...

This week is another interview episode ahead of the Christmas period. In this episode, the very lovely Jill Fanslau has joined us to talk about email marketing. As the owner of a Weber, Jill has lots of experience when it comes to email, putting her in the perfect place to give you all of tips you need to succeed. We talk about how you should collect emails, how you should collect them and what you should be sending your list once you’ve started building it. If you want to start building or growing on your email list, this is definitely the episode for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• You don’t own your social media accounts but you do own your email lists. If Instagram or Twitter were to go down in the next week, where would that leave your business? You need to be smart about how your channels work alongside one another and drive your social media followers to your email list.
• If you’re struggling to see results with your email list, you need to ensure you’re cleansing and segmenting it. If you need to, let people CHOOSE what list they’re on. Ask them what they want to see.
• Although building your list is important, you need to be sure you’re actually emailing them. If you haven’t emailed them in a long time, be honest.
• Don’t be afraid to talk to your email list. You don’t have to only email when you’re selling. You have to be able to provide and bring something to the table without asking something in return.
• Humans crave stories so if you can weave those into your email, people will connect with you on a personal level.
• When you’re onboarding new emails, you should use a seven-email strategy. The first email should be a welcome email that should arrive instantly. Introduce yourself and let them know what they can expect from you. Afterwards, you should follow up with a story email as it starts off the likability process. If you don’t want to write a story, shoot a video.
• Your third email should provide more value. Next, you should send and agitation email that hits their pain point. Although it will make them squirm, you want to remind them of the reason they signed up to your email list. This should go out right before you pitch someone a product or solution.
• Some people may need a little bit of help making a decision, so this is where you will need to send a proof email. Whether it’s a testimonial, a case study or a review – people will experience intense FOMO if they’re missing out. Once you have sent a proof email, you need to send an ask email.
• The seven-email strategy can take one month, two months or six months.
• The best way to determine how long your emails should be is to test. It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing, it matters what your audience want.
• Think about whether or not people will be opening your emails on their mobile, rather than their desktop.
• Link shorterners can cause your emails to end up in spam.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…No matter how big your list is, write to one person.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Introducing Jill – 07:40
• Why Should You Use Email? – 16:00
• Is Honesty the Best Policy? – 22:30
• Emails Are Not Just for Sales – 30:10
• What Do You Say to Your Email List? - 34:50
• What Is A Seven Email Strategy? – 47:59
• How Long Should an Email Be and Should It Be Text Only? - 59:00

Transcript below

 

Hello and a really warm welcome this episode of the podcast. How are you doing? We are really close to Christmas so I should imagine if you are listening to this before Christmas, you are amidst of cards and present wrapping and decorations and all that sort of thing. As I record this, it's actually still the end of November so I actually don't know whether I'll be doing that myself.

I have to say that my husband and I joke that if we didn't have children we would quite happily not have Christmas which sounds really mean. Actually one thing that is really interesting, prior to me having my own business, I loved things like Christmases and birthdays and having dinner parties and doing all these lovely things but you know what happens? It is little bit sad and I do feel a little bit sad about it, but what happens is you have your own business and honestly my brain never stops thinking about business, working on the business, doing things, thinking I need to check this, do that. Sometimes it just doesn't feel like it has any more space for anything else so in all honesty, I find it much harder now to do things like Christmas and birthdays and plan them as well as I would want to. I'm one of those people who loves that sort of stuff and I much prefer I deal with other people's birthdays and giving to other people at Christmas much better than myself.

It's just really weird. Are you like that? I don't like my birthday so much. I much prefer to plan someone else's. I used to be really good at it. I used to make cards and I used to throw parties and I used to do really cool, thoughtful stuff and I would love to do that more. Maybe one day when the business is lots bigger and I can afford a bigger team that can do things more for me, my team is amazing as they are by the way, but obviously I would have them do way more if there was no budget constraints. Yeah, maybe one day that will come back and I can start throwing dinner parties again but at the moment, like I said, apart from having the children we would quite happily have no Christmas this year.

The other thing I should say is obviously as you all know if you've been listening to the podcast, I have a stepson and then obviously I have my daughter and she spends one week with me, one week with her dad. We have to take it in turns so Christmas is, one year she stays with me and she's here Christmas Day and wakes up on Christmas Day here and then in the other year she obviously does that at her dad's. It's actually that this year, she's at her dad's on Christmas Day herself, so she doesn't get here until Boxing Day so we will actually have a very quiet and non-eventful Christmas Day but then Boxing Day will be our Christmas Day. There we go, just giving you a back story on my Christmas because I'm sure you absolutely needed to know that.

This week, I'm doing another interview because I have been really good. I've batched so many interviews recently that actually I thought I would do two in a row and I wanted to do the solo ones over the Christmas period just in case you don't get a chance to hear them. Mainly because I feel bad like if you've come up to my podcast, and I'm not even sure this actually happens all the time but, of course Christmas and New Year I have seen a dip in the past in terms of downloads because people are busy, they're out of their routine, I guess if you listen to this one you're on the way to the office or if you do a morning routine or go for a walk or whatever. Obviously if you're not doing that on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve which are the two days the podcast comes out this year then that person is going to miss out if I've done an interview. That's why I've chosen to do solo episodes for those two because you can listen to me every single week so I'm not offended if you miss that week maybe. Obviously you might listen later so that's fine.

Anyway, I'm going to do an interview this week. This week we have got the very lovely Jill Fanslau and I'm hoping I said that right again. It is Fanslau? Yeah. She has been in marketing for twelve years and she works for AWeber. She is head of content marketing but she has done lots of other things and she's been published by some of the world-renowned brands like Men's Health Magazine, Women's Health Magazine, and National Geographic Society.

If you don't know, AWeber is a online platform that you can use to send emails. As you know, I have talked lots of times about systems that I use. I don't use AWeber and I have to say, because I get approached for people to come on the podcast which is super cool actually because it opens up people to me that I've never seen before, I might not know, I might not of thought they would want to come on, and it just kind of gives me a bit of variety and I'm really strict. I've had lots of requests for people to come on that don't fit with my audience, don't fit with you guys listening, and I really hope that people I do bring on do fit with you and therefore it's interesting and it helps you.

When I was approached by Jill and she wanted to talk about email marketing and what she can do on them and advice around coming up with ideas for sending out emails and that sort of thing, I was like, "Perfect, perfect, perfect," however, I don't use AWeber so I was really keen to make sure that when we do this episode it was really focused on the content not necessarily platform and she was great. She was absolutely brilliant, perfect. Obviously AWeber is used by lots and lots of people. It's a very, very good platform. It just is one that I haven't used so I will link up and only Jill in the show notes as always. I put all their links in there. I will also link up to AWeber so that you can have a look at that if that's something that you think you might be interested in.

Like I said, this episode is all about email. It's about how you should collect email, why you should collect email, why you should send emails, and then what should you be sending them? That, for me, is the question I get asked a lot because it's [inaudible 00:06:17] saving emails and collecting emails but if you don't actually email them, they're not going to be very warm when you do get around to emailing them. Normally, people only then email when they're trying to sell something or they need something. It all about how can you email them ongoing and going forward and what should you put in those emails?

We'll talk about that, we'll talk about onboarding as well in terms of when you do get someone onto your email list, how do you onboard them? What do you do? What kind of emails do you send them so that they get a feel of who you are and then you get to kind of have a conversation with them. Then, some tips around writing your email, how you write it when you're writing it for one person, so I really enjoy talking about this. Really enjoyed sharing my experiences with email as well. Hopefully this should be a really, really useful one for you and if you are looking to build your email list and you haven't yet started, please do so. Real exciting point there. You can get a free download that is five ways to build your email list that lots of people forget about, some simple, easy things that you can do. You can head over to Teresaheathwaring.Com/list building and you'll be able to get that here and there's a download like I said of five ideas there.

Anyway, I will shut up talking and I will let you carry on listen to today's interview with the lovely Jill. Here we go.

 

Introducing Jill

 

Okay, it gives me so much pleasure today to welcome the very lovely Jill Fanslau to the podcast. Jill, welcome.

Thanks so much, Teresa. I'm super excited to be here.

You know what, I'm really excited to be here because, I'm really excited to be here? I'm always here. I mean, I'm really excited for you to be here. It's been a long week and it's only Wednesday so we're in trouble.

This is a great way to kick this off. I love it.

Always, always. It's like and you know what happens, this is now going off [inaudible 00:08:09], I hardly ever edit these things out so my audience is more than accustomed to hearing me get it wrong and fixing it all live in the podcast. I'm sure they won't mind.

Yeah.

Very off [inaudible 00:08:21]. [crosstalk 00:08:21]

We did not practise.

Yeah, if anything I am authentic. I am super excited to have you here because we're talking about something that I really love to talk about and it's a little bit old school in marketing sense, but we're talking about emails. It's actually a question that I get all the time in my academy about, how do we get better open rates? How do we structure an email? What do I say to them every week? How often should I email them? How often should I do all these things? There's so many great questions that we're going to address and you are really the expert on this so I'm really, really excited.

Jill, just so my audience can have an understanding, can you just briefly tell them who you are and how you got to do what you're doing today?

Yeah, no problem. I'm super excited to talk about email. As you said, it's such an old school marketing tactic but yet people are still learning new things every day about it and it's changing at a faster pace than I think it's ever changed before so I'm really excited to dive into that. Yeah, just some background on me. I got started in print journalism and I got started right around the time that newspapers were declared dead.

Perfect timing.

It was great, yeah. I was like, "Great. I'm glad I spent all this money on my education and coming out to a horrible job field," I think there was a 20+% drop in newspaper ad revenue the year that I graduated. [crosstalk 00:09:50] Nothing to do with me. I was really lucky and actually got a job at the National Geographic Society, was still able to go into journalism, which I think has given me a really great background in how to create content for people and do so in a really service-filled way. Giving people actionable tips, expert advice, statistics, research, data, and implementing that into marketing materials.

I started out at National Geographic, quickly saw the writing on the wall that magazines and newspapers weren't going anywhere anytime soon, and I pivoted and went to digital marketing, digital journalism. I got my degree at night for that in grad school and then hopped over to Men's Health Magazine, started out as a senior editor, and one day my boss said to me, he's my mentor as well, he goes, "What is it that you want to do at Men's Health? What's your dream job?"

I was like, "Fitness editor," and he looks at me he says, "Okay."

I'm like, "I know, it's impossible, I'm a female, this is Men's Health, I can't be the fitness editor," and he goes, "I don't care if you're purple, green, male or female, if you are the best person for the job, you get the job."

I got the job. The next thing I know, I'm fitness editor and then I moved up to director of the website, which was really cool because at that point I was doing journalism but you're doing marketing hand-in-hand. You can't run a digital website and not be doing both. We were slicing and dicing content and putting it up on social media, putting it on the website, YouTube, we were everywhere. At the same time, we were also selling products and services. Every piece of content that we created was high-quality, education-based, service-filled, but also was pushing a product or a service to someone that we thought they could get value out of. It was a really cool mix at that point of digital marketing, journalism.

Then I was up for a new challenge and hopped over to the Sass tech industry and here I am at AWeber which is a Sass email marketing platform and it's been around for 20 years. Our founder Tom Kulzer actually created the email auto-responder in 1998 so we're like the [crosstalk 00:12:11] we're like the OG godfather of the email marketing business.

Here I am, I am head of content marketing but I do a tonne of demand-gen strategy as well so driving acquisition, paid advertising, SCL, webinars, all of that fun stuff.

Amazing.

Yeah.

I love hearing the stories of how people got to where they were and the skill sets that people gain in order to direct them into certain ways. Actually it must have been really nice to come from a journalism background because I've always said for a really long time, I've worked in marketing for 15 years and people got marketing and PR confused and I always used to say to people that sort of came to me and said, "Can you do PR," like it's a really specific thing and you write in a very specific way and I can't write like that. That's not a way I've been taught to write or a way that I do write.

For you to come from that direction where actually the story-telling, the getting to the punchline, the key messages, the current thing that's going to draw someone in is such a good skill in order to then go forward and use that from a marketing point of view. It's kind of fascinating really. Also the content creation and then luckily doing the sales bit because as I sat there and listened to what you were saying I was thinking, "I wonder what it's like to create content and not have or want to just get a sale at the end of it," and obviously you have that element which was great because then it gave you all of those skills really, didn't it? That's awesome.

Obviously what we want to talk about today is how we go about these emails. We joke that it's old school and lots of people think that because social media is here that we no longer have to do that sort of thing. However, one thing that I teach and one thing that I talk about all the time is that we don't own our social media. We're marketing on borrowed ground. Therefore, if something was to happen to our platform, if Twitter decided tomorrow they were done or in fact I have a horrible but very powerful story of someone that I know personally so I know it's very true who had a huge Instagram following, hundreds of thousands, and she built her whole business using Instagram and she'd done a bit of an email list but it wasn't her priority because she was getting so much traffic and so much stuff direct from Instagram. Built an online business, selling an online course, and basically someone hacked into her Instagram, wiped it, and it went.

No.

Literally overnight. All those files.

Oh, that's horrifying.

Isn't it? She said that the followers were bad enough, that was awful enough, however for her the thing that really upset her because she was doing a business where she taught people how to be creative with kids and their children and it was all about doing these amazing creative activities. For her, the content that she produced and had only on Instagram, and it went literally she lost everything. Of course, she got in touch with Instagram and not that they don't care or not to say that publicly, but they're a big company, they deal with big accounts, and obviously hers even though it's big maybe to the rest of us listening, to them she's not Kylie Jenner. I think if Kylie Jenner had something happen they might help her out but unfortunately they didn't help her out and that was it, start from scratch again.

 

Why Should You Use Email?

 

For me, email is so important but of course one of the reasons I wanted you on and one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, how we should look at writing our emails, is the fact that the open rates are still pretty low and how do we really make the most of that? I feel like I'm just throwing every question at you all in one go. I'm just like, right, you go and I'll tell you when to stop. Where do you want to start with this? What's your thoughts in terms of rate? Where do we start with this beast of email marketing?

Yeah, so it's interesting that you brought up social media because people say that to me all the time, "Well, I need to focus on social media," and I will be the first person to say this, yes, you have to be on social media as a brand. There's no doubt about that but to your point, if...

This week’s episode is an incredible interview with Mike Stelzner, the creator of Social Media Examiner and Social Media Marketing World. As an expert in the social media marketing world, I wanted to speak to Mike to find out how he uses his platform to stand out in a busy industry. We look at what makes people successful, giving his formula for creating content that people will want to engage with.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• The speed in which social media moves is one of the biggest challenges for those working in a social industry, as well as those using social media to grow their business. Luckily, it’s starting to slow down.
• You don’t have to be on every single social media platform. Instead, you need to ensure you’re putting your energy into the spaces where your customers are.
• Social media is great when it comes to tracking your results. If you’re struggling to track your results, however, you need to ensure you’re making goals to ‘stop’ things as well.
• If you want to stand out in a noisy industry is to understand exactly who you are trying to reach. Who is that somebody? What struggles do they have? What do they do? When you create something, remind yourself of the person you’re creating it for.
• Once you know who you’re trying to reach, you need to ensure you’re creating content for that person. This could be a podcast, written word, video or live and in person. Think about what you’re best at.
• If you don’t know what your customers want, ASK THEM. Once you have asked your audience, you need to see if their actions are matching their statements. Clear signs are the messages you receive from your followers.
• Not everyone is supposed to be in your tribe.
• If you’re not putting information out there, someone else is. You want to be the resource that people come to every single time they need information.
• We should all be doing stuff that makes it easier for people to remember who we are.
• The formula for success is ‘great content + other people – marketing messages = growth’. When it comes to your business you need to ensure you have amazing content, strong connections and less of a pitch. This is the Elevation Principle.
• The best way to make an impact on someone in person is to meet them in person.
• Social media is called social media for a reason. If you’re not a nice person, you won’t survive.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…One of the most important things you can do when it comes to social media is be yourself. Successful people are authentic.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Introducing Mike – 06:00
• Social Media is Ever Changing – 12:10
• Tracking Your Results – 17:15
• How to Stand Out in a Noisy Industry - 21:10
• Creating Connections Through Details - 33:15
• The Importance of Relationships - 37:38
• The Future for Social Media Marketing World – 49:30

Transcript below

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful week. I actually cannot believe we are cracking on so far into the year and we are nearly done. It feels like not many weeks left now. Also, I'm on episode 94. I've nearly hit 100 episodes and I've got some exciting stuff coming. I'm going to be recording a very special episode 100, which I'm super excited about. Obviously I want to see what you guys think, but it's going to give you a different view into my world and just into maybe a side you have not seen before or conversations that I haven't had before. But I am really excited about it. It's going to be extra special. So, that's something to look forward to.

Also, just while I was on this week, I just wanted to remind you that last week's episode we talked about the 2020 goal planner that I've got that it's a free download, it's a great workbook, 10 pages packed full of questions, suggestions of how you can review last year, things that you should note down, things that you should think about, and then those all important goals for 2020, and the actions you're going to need to take in the first 30 days, because obviously what are you going to do the minute it hits, and how are you going to get your year next year off to an absolute flying start.

So the workbook is there to download. Head over to TeresaHeathWareing.com/2020 as in the numbers 2020. You can get your free download there. Then, on the thank you page, look out for the video I've got on there and the opportunity I've given you to join me for a live workshop and coaching call. So I want you to do this workbook with me. I want to sit with you live on a call on the 12th of December, and I want us to work through it together. Not only that, you're going to get access to a Facebook group that's going to stay open from the minute you join until the beginning of February. So first of Feb, it will close, but the idea of that Facebook group is that I can support you going into that first year, and I've got a few little surprises and little exciting things along the way for you if you are in that group.

So I really, really hope to see you there. I want an amazing 2020, and I want all of you to have an amazing 2020 as well. Okay, on with today's episode. It's an interview, and it's a really good one. I know I say that every week and you must think, oh come on Teresa, constantly. You must have done some bad interviews. No, maybe there are some I wasn't too keen on, but this isn't one of them. This week, I am talking to the amazing Mike Stelzner. Now you may not know his name. I'm sure lots of you will, but if you don't, you are likely to know Social Media Examiner, and/or Social Media Marketing World.

Social Media Examiner is an amazing website that basically puts out content every single day written by world experts. I've been very lucky that I've written for them as well a little while back. As you know, I'm not a big fan of writing, so that was quite a job. But I have written for them. Also, they have Social Media Marketing World, which is the world's biggest social media conference that goes on in San Diego every single year and I have been flourish years, maybe five years in a row now, and I have made loads of connections. I've met loads of people. I've learned lots of stuff in the past from that event, and it's a great, great event. It was the first international event I went to, or no was it? Actually, it might have been converted. I think maybe it was converted from lead pages as my first event. Okay, I can't remember.

Anyway, it was definitely near one of the first. I'm sure it might have been the first. Anyway Teresa, get on with it. So yeah, it's an amazing event. It's a great, great event. Basically, Mike Stelzner heads up this whole thing. He's almost a bit like, I don't know how to describe him. I'm sure someone could tell me, but you know when ... he's in charge of social media in the world. I know it sounds ridiculous, but if you want to get on in the social media space, you need to know Mike Stelzner, because Mike Stelzner is very influential because, like I said, he runs the largest social media website and the largest social media ... Well, I just said the largest social media website. I don't know that that's for fact, but it's very, very big.

One of the largest events in the world for social media. So yeah, he was amazing, but we had a really good chat about how could you stand out, how can you become the expert in your industry, because that's what he does on a day to day basis. He is classed as an expert, and he's right at the top of his industry. But also, he works with people who are doing the same. So what he talked about was great. We looked at ways that, what makes those people successful, how do we get to be where they are, what do we do in our businesses to get to that level? He gives some really good practical advice and also talks about how you can stand out. He has this formula that he talks about in terms of creating contact plus other people, minus marketing messages, equals growth.

You'll understand what he means by all that as we go through the podcast. Like I said, he was a great episode. I really, really enjoyed chatting with him and was very lucky the following day to have another hour call with him to talk to him about something he's planning to help him, which was wonderful. But he's a really great guy. He gave some great advice, so I really hope you're going to enjoy this one.

 

Introducing Mike

 

It gives me so much pleasure to welcome today the very formidable and wonderful Mike Stelzner. Mike, welcome to the podcast.

Teresa, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be joining you today.

I am super excited. So Mike, I've already done an intro about you, but let me just reiterate and explain. Social Media Marketing World was the one thing I had on my kind of vision board when I started the business. So I have started my own marketing consultancy. I've worked in marketing for like 15 years and the start of my own consultancy was doing social media. I saw this event and I watched the video, and I was like, I've got to go there. But it was in San Diego. It's like five and a half thousand miles away from where I am. I remember thinking one day, one day I'm going to go there, one day I'm going to be sat in that room with all those amazing people and all those amazing speakers.

I remember seeing it for the first year, and the next year it came out and I just booked my ticket. I had no idea, in the early days of running my business, how I was going to afford the flight, how I was actually going to manage to go to San Diego, because I hadn't done anything like that on my own before, and how it was all going to work out, but I just knew I had to be there. I just knew I had to be in that room with everybody else. For me, especially in the UK, I had to raise myself above everybody else and go, look, this is how seriously I'm taking it. I'm going all the way to San Diego to sit in a room with these amazing experts. It blew me away. It was honestly, and still to this day, one of the best events I've ever been to, and to be in that room and meet those people was just phenomenal. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for making the investment. That is so cool.

Honestly, for me it was like how do I stand out? That's how I stand out. I go and sit in a room with those people. You were live there, which was great. But anyway, I've jumped straight into that. So if my audience haven't heard from you, which I'm absolutely adamant they have because I share a lot of Social Media Examiner stuff. I talk about Social Marketing World. But just let my audience know who you are and how you got to do what you're doing today.

Well, first of all, I'm a marketer. Secondly, we just turned 10 years old literally about two weeks ago. Actually, about a month ago as of this recording. I started Social Media Examiner back in October of 2009, and it was an experiment as all great things often start as. I didn't know what it would become. It was a blog, and I figured this social media thing maybe has a shelf life for three years, so let's just get on that train and start to get out of the station. Man, was I wrong. That thing just exploded.

As we started, in the early days, it was just writing articles. It turns out that that was the kind of stuff that went viral on social. So little did I know, back then you could write something about how to do social media on social media and it would get shared thousands of times on Twitter, it would go crazy viral on Facebook, and these were the easy days for things to spread. This is when Facebook only had maybe 300 million people, which still sounds like a lot, but it was really small back then. Things grew. I eventually started a podcast and eventually started getting into video, and now we have two podcasts, we have a live show, we publish articles almost every day. We have our videos on our YouTube channel that we're publishing multiple times a weekend. Millions of people are consuming our stuff every year, it's pretty crazy.

That is crazy. For me, you are the pinnacle of it. You are the ... if I ever speak to anybody or train anybody about social media and I say, this is the direction you need to go, or this is the site you need to look at, it's your site. It is amazing, and how you maintain that in this crazy busy huge world that we're in now, how you still maintain that today is amazing.

Thank you. Is that a question or a statement.

Both really. You can answer it. That's fine.

Yeah, how do I maintain is it the question. So first of all, it's being aware of the challenges that are faced by our core audience which is marketers. So the main audience that we're attracting is a marketer, typically whose job is marketing in a small business typically, less than 100 employees. Some of them are solopreneurs or own agencies, but the vast majority of them struggle with the java marketing, and social is a key part of what they do. It's not all that they do. The reality for us is we're keeping up on the news, so we have to kind of watch what Zuckerberg changes with Facebook, what's happening with up and coming platforms like TikTok, and then of course we also have to really be aware of our core audience to what their challenges are, which means we have to survey them every year. We have to really understand the customers that belong to the various ... we have a professional organisation called the Social Media Marketing Society, which thousands of marketers belong to, and there's a Facebook group.

We kind of study what are they complaining about, what are their struggles, what are their challenges? We kind of look at all of that, and then of course I interview people on my podcast every week who I think are doing it right. They tell me things, so all that data comes in, and then we kind of make projection and hypothesis about what we think our audience is going to need for the next couple of months. Then we go ahead and develop the content, recruit the people to be on the show and, dot, dot, dot. We just kind of are always ... if you will, we're like a ship out to sea looking at the weather patterns. When the weather pattern changes, then we need to change the direction we're going.

 

Social Media is Ever Changing

 

Yeah. I think you hit on a couple of things there that, one, the speed in which it moves is just ... in fact, and I'd sent you a DM and you replied to my DM once when I did a Ted Ex talk. I quoted you in my Ted Ex talk because you said, at one of the events I'd been to that we're in one of the fastest moving industries in the world. We are. It doesn't stop. I think that is a challenge itself. Secondly, for all these marketers that you're dealing with, the overwhelm in this industry is just immense. Do you ever see it ever changing or ever slowing down, or ever feeling a little bit calmer?

I will say that, over the last two years, it's slowed down a little bit, only because Facebook has been so distracted with lawsuits, all the world and government inquiries, that they have not innovated as much. As a result of the largest social media platform not innovating as much, the competitors slowed down their innovation. It's only now that we're starting to see a lot of new stuff coming from Facebook's fastest growing platform, which is Instagram, and that's going to begin the competitive wars, if you will, across the social platforms as other platforms are beginning to say, all right, I'm going to add this or I'm going to do this just how Facebook does it.

But yeah, I always say internally that, as long as social is changing, we have a very solid business model. Because the moment it stops changing is the moment when pretty much we're not in a good spot.

We've got nothing to say.

Yeah. But it's slowing down for sure. I think that, as a result of it slowing down, there's a little bit going back to basics with a lot of marketing right now. Rather than just going here because it's new, now the deeper questions are being asked, well what is this doing for the business, what's the actual trackable ROI for something like this. I think a lot of marketers right now are using this slightly slowing season to kind of make smart decisions about what to stop so that they can start something new.

I totally agree. I think sometimes what happens with the social space is that everybody thinks I've got to be on everything, I've got to do everything. You mentioned TikTok. That comes out, everyone's like, oh God should I be doing that, should I be on it. Actually, sometimes for me, and when I speak to my audience, it's more about doing what you do with consideration and being consistent at it, and being where your audience are, and focusing on that platform, and doing what you can manage, because otherwise you will completely overwhelm yourself with all these platforms and try and do all these things, and keep up with all these changes. I think all the platforms have got so many amazing things that they can do, and probably you might agree, disagree. Lots of businesses are just scratching the surface of it.

I would agree. Most marketers are doing social wrong or bad, and that might mean they're doing just Facebook ads for example, and it's kind of working, or it might mean that they're going live on LinkedIn or using LinkedIn video, but they don't really know if anyone's watching. But yes, I don't even remember what the original question was. What was the question?

Just the fact ... I've forgotten as well.

Yeah.

[inaudible 00:15:24].

The reality is we are in a changing world, but I think what a lot of us need to do is step back and answer the question why first. Why go do this? Why continue to do this? One of the things we've done at Social Media Examiner over the last year is we've stopped some things. We've decided we're no longer on Pinterest because, in our particular demographic, it wasn't spurring our Christmas objectives. We've also scaled back some of our use of live video, and instead we're producing podcasts and we're doing live taping, if you will. It just really comes down to cost benefit analysis. We have a team of X number of people in the company, and I think there's five people in our marketing department, which is a decent sized marketing department, but they're all overworked and overwhelmed. It's like there are a lot of things that we'd love to do more of, YouTube being one of them, and we just haven't been able to do it because we've been distracted doing what we've always done.

So one of the things that I keep preaching to people is, if when I ask you why, you say it's because that's the way we've always done it, that's a legitimate reason to stop, because that means you don't really know why.

Right.

The hardest thing in the world for a lot of people to do is to stop something just because they've always done it. You almost feel like you're compelled you must do it. I say you actually must consider whether or not that's a complete utter waste of your time, because you will never be free for the next big thing when it does approach.

The other thing ... sorry.

Yeah, go ahead.

 

Tracking Your Results

 

So the other thing I was going to say that's really interesting. When you have been in marketing a long time ... when I did my degree 15 years ago, well one, marketing then and marketing today looks nothing the same. But we couldn't prove this stuff. We couldn't prove whether ... I used to head up...

Today’s episode isn’t going to have one specific theme as there are a couple of different things I want to talk to you about. I love creating episodes that give you actionable steps to take and that’s exactly what this week’s podcast will do.

First of all, I talk about something planning for the year ahead. As business owners it can be hard to look at our businesses with and outside perspective and in order to look ahead, that’s what you need to do. Secondly, I look at how you can market your business a little better when it comes to encouraging people to invest in you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Planning for the year ahead is incredibly important as a business owner and in order to create an effective plan, you need to take yourself out of the business to ‘see’ what you’re doing and where you want to go.
• In order to plan your 2020, you also need to review 2019. This means looking at the aspects of what went well and what didn’t, looking at your growth, focusing on what you have achieved and looking at your finances.
• Once you have reviewed your year, you can start to think about what you want to achieve in 2020 and how you’re going to reach your goals. You need to think about what you need in order to succeed.
• Think about when you last mapped out all of your marketing channels, which ones are the most successful? What do you need to do more of in 2020?

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…If you want to plan for the year ahead, you need to think how your customers see your business. Although it’s important to be ‘in’ your business, it’s also important to take a step back and think of things from a customer point of view.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Planning for the year ahead - 07:11
• Marketing your business in 2020 - 17:53

Transcript below

 

Speaker 1: (00:32)

Hello, hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. Happy Monday! If you are listening on a Monday. Otherwise, I hope you're having a lovely day, whatever day it is. So today I want to talk about a few different things. I'm trying to like work out in my head what the theme of this podcast episode is or what the main focus is. But there were so many little different things I want to talk about that I kind of think that it probably hasn't got one main theme today. Obviously it's a solo episode, so normally I like to do some teaching or I like to talk about business or that sort of thing. And it's just a really, I like the solo ones because it's a really nice way of just kind of like giving you some real actionable stuff to do. Whereas although the interviews are amazing and honestly I love them so much, it's just sometimes you don't get those actionable steps or you don't get those things that you can do in your business.

Speaker 1: (01:27)

So for me, I think today is going to be a little bit about that. It's going to be a few different things that I want you to think about and it might just be a little bit all over the place. So I apologise. But one thing is I'm glad my voice has come back because I've had a lot of trouble over the last few weeks because we're nearing the end of the year. And to be honest, I've had a really busy few weeks in terms of speaking, in terms of interviews, in terms of just trying to cram in a lot of stuff before the end of the year and it took its toll. It had its effect on me and obviously I got unwell, I got a cough and a cold and not being able to take some time out has really, really affected me. And the other thing is that I'm not very good at is when I travel.

Speaker 1: (02:12)

I'm really not very good at looking after myself. So I do tend to burn the candle at both ends. I do tend to spend too much time on the social side as well as the business side. I don't get early nights. I don't do my morning routine and although I do very little exercise, I have been much better. I have been doing, I think, I don't think I've mentioned this on the podcast, I might mention that on an interview I can't remember. And then I interview at all different, I'm so batched up in terms of interviews. I can't remember whether you've heard that one or not. But anyway, let's go with it and pretend I haven't talked about it. I started working with a personal trainer because I knew that the one thing that I was really bad at was looking after myself and moving. So as you well know, I work from home.

Speaker 1: (02:55)

I love working from home. Obviously we do a lot of travelling as well, so it's actually really nice to be in home when I'm not in travelling mode and I don't move a lot. I literally walk from my bedroom. I might occasionally go downstairs, make a drink, but I sit up in my office and just literally sit at a computer all day. I don't do very many meetings in person. I do have some clients from the agency that we still have that I very occasionally meet, but to be totally honest, pretty much everything I do is on a screen. So in terms of moving and looking after myself, I don't do a lot of it. You know, the other thing that's really interesting is I have an app on my phone called Live 360 and it tracks us all. It sounds really kind of stalker-y, I promise it's not. Obviously, my husband did a lot of travelling and was away and it was useful for me to know when he landed in a country or whatever and when he was back online, we have a teenage stepson, right? Is my stepson, is my husband's son. My daughter's just turned 10 and no doubt at some point in the next few years she'll be getting a phone and it's just good to know that we know where each other are and you know when they're heading home and that sort of thing. But what's really interesting with me is it obviously shows the last time I left the house and some days I don't even, or some weeks, I don't even realise that actually I was in the house for four solid days and I didn't physically leave it. The other thing this means is that don't even get any sunshine or outside space.

Speaker 1: (04:28)

I'm a nightmare. So anyway, I decided that I needed to move more and I got a personal trainer so I have been doing once a week in the gym. I initially started off doing it at home because in total honesty, the resistance to having this at all or doing anything at all was a massive, like I didn't want to do it. I still don't want to do it. If I'm honest, I do feel better about it. But initially that's why I did it at home. I had the personal trainer at home because I didn't want to walk into a gym. I didn't want to be in front of these other people. I didn't want to see other people doing exercise. Honestly, so much resistance. So anyway as it is, like I said, we're doing it once a week. I am now in the gym, which is nice and obviously when I'm away I haven't done any of that.

Speaker 1: (05:13)

I haven't actually been for quite a few weeks now, which is probably the most since I started, which is frustrating because time and busy-ness and like I said, it took its toll so I'm feeling much better, which is great. Although I still am trying to be very gentle on myself, very considerate to myself and this week I'm really trying to make a concerted effort of going to bed early, not drinking wine in the evening, trying to eat some vegetables and at some point, hopefully this week I might actually go to the gym again, which would be lovely. I say lovely. I don't mean that at all. I mean it'd be horrible, but I mean it will be lovely for my body to go to the gym. But the other thing is I never get out. Do you? If you work from home, do you find that like you literally have days and days in the house and you don't even realise you actually haven't stepped outside the front door?

Speaker 1: (06:03)

Because honestly it doesn't feel like that sometimes. Maybe I'm just so focused on what I'm doing, but it genuinely doesn't feel like, gosh, I haven't been out for days and days. So anyway, glad to say I am feeling better. So this week I want to talk, one of the things I want to talk about is something I've got coming up, which I'm really excited about and I always get a bit funny when people get online and go, I'm so excited. I've got this thing to share with you because it's their thing and therefore I am excited if you want to come and join in and what I think it can do for you. But I do find it a little bit irritating if I'm totally honest, this sounds like a bit, a bit of a grump today. I'm not, I promise it's just, I guess I see a lot of it.

 

Planning for the year ahead

 

Speaker 1: (06:43)

I see a lot of people promoting and selling online and when they're like, I've got this big announcement, I'm super excited. Sometimes it just gets a little bit samey. So anyway, I've put together, I did it last year and I'm doing it again this year, but even better. Last year I did an episode episode 42 where I talked about how I review my year and how I plan for the following year. And I decided to put together a workbook which went down really well. Lots of you downloaded it and really liked it. So this year I wanted to up my game because honestly, let me just talk on a little bit about why this review and planning is so good. We in our businesses often are just in it all the time. We're fighting through our to do list, we're getting everything done and I've done exactly the same today.

Speaker 1: (07:32)

You know, make sure you email that person back, but make sure you order those things, make sure you organise that thing and you're just literally fire-fighting some of those things. And it's very rare that we step fully out of our business. And I think in the early days, I didn't do this at all. And now almost six years into my business on, I realised the importance of this. And now I make a really concerted effort to make sure I'm doing this kind of thing more often, but we don't often step out of our business to look at it as a whole because we're fighting in it every day. And I've just got a couple of new people on my 90 day programme and one of the very first things we do is our first one to one call is two hours. And we literally, while I make them feel like this humongous questionnaire and then we go through the questionnaire and we'd talk about their business as a whole.

Speaker 1: (08:25)

And what's great for me is I get to understand their business, but what's great for them is that they actually get to talk about it in a much bigger, wider way. And suddenly you can see kind of like little sparks of like, Oh my goodness, I never thought of it that way. Or I've never actually stopped and thought how that looks altogether or how that looks to my customers because we are in it so, so much. And I find it really hard to do my own business. I need someone to help me do this. So I am going to a 2020 planning day in Nashville, which I'm really excited about. Obviously I don't expect you all to just jump on a plane and go somewhere. Amazing. Great if you can, but I'm doing this because my very good friend Mary Hyatt is doing a very small personal planning day and her dad, Michael Hyatt, it was on the podcast a few weeks back, is going to be there and doing some sessions and so is his daughter who actually his other daughter who runs Michael Hyatt and company.

Speaker 1: (09:22)

So this is like an amazing opportunity to sit in a room with some super smart people and think about the business. But I want to to kind of get as many of you doing this as possible, which is why we're going to be focusing on this thing again, where we're going to be doing, reviewing this year and looking at next year. So I've put together a new and improved workbook. It looks more beautiful and it's got all the bits on there that I go through and that I address in my business. So we start off with reviewing 2018 no, not 2018 2019 I don't even know what year it is. So we reviewed 2019 and we look at all the aspects of what went well, what didn't go well. I've got some other kind of tricky interesting questions in there too. We also look at like what are our numbers at.

Speaker 1: (10:11)

So I love looking at like my email list and my podcast downloads because obviously I did this last year. So what's lovely this year is I've got all those stats from last year so I can see the growth. The other thing we do in this section is we review things like what have we achieved? Cause you know what? A year is, although it goes incredibly credibly, quickly, it actually is a really long time. And it's not until you kind of go back and go, Oh hang on a minute, I did this and this and this and this. And then you can give yourself a massive Pat on the back because of that. So that's what we do. We start by reviewing it and the workbook. We'll show you how to do that or it'll give you some of those steps through that. And then the next bit we do is in the workbook is we look at how do we then plan what's coming up, what are our goals, what do you want to achieve?

Speaker 1: (11:05)

What actions and steps do we need to take in order to achieve them? And what do we need in place? Because you know, it's no good saying, I want to take on 20 more clients or 50 new customers if you don't have the resources in place. So what might you need in place? And it just enables you to take that time out and think about it. So, like I said, last year we did a workbook and it was great and I got great feedback and lots of people downloaded it. But you know what, I thought I am one of those people that will download something and think, Oh yeah, I'm definitely gonna do that. And then I don't, or then I think to myself, Oh yeah, yeah, I'll get right into it and the time never comes or I never make the time. So I wanted to work out a way on how I can make you guys actually step out of your business for an hour or two hours tops to go through this and do this exercise.

Speaker 1: (11:56)

Cause I promise you it will make so much difference. So what I've done, when you download the workbook on the thank you page, you're going to be invited to join me for a really special one-off workshop and coaching call. Now let me just explain what I mean by that. So when I do a coaching call in the Academy, everybody gets on screen. They don't have to be on screen, if you don't want to. But they're bought into a zoom room that isn't like a webinar. It's not like the masterclasses I've done before. So it's not like you are kind of just watching and observing. This is actually a group conversation, so you'll come into the room. I will be sat there live saying hello to you. You can be onscreen, you can have your mic on, we'll have a bit of a chat and an introduction and then what we'll do is we're going to take that time out together and we're going to work through the workbook and obviously I've got lots of other added extras that I'm going to chip in and talk about that.

Speaker 1: (12:54)

It's going to help you do that really successfully. And then we're going to review a year before and we're going to plan the year coming. And then what's going to happen is not only is this a workshop, but actually we're going to have a coaching call. So what you're going to be able to do is when you sit there and you're trying to plan your year and you sit and think, actually I'm struggling about what is it I'm trying to achieve or how do I achieve that thing, that goal that I've just set myself or what first steps I need to take. And that's when you're going to be able to come on camera or just come on with your voice and ask me those questions and we're going to be able to have a group discussion. And honestly, the kind of breakthroughs we've had in the coaching calls in the Academy have been phenomenal because you can hear what other people have to say.

Speaker 1: (13:39)

You can hear what they're doing, what their challenges were, what they should be paid off. And it really helps you remember and think and get clarity on your business and you and what you can do going forward. So I am really, really, again, when you use the word excited, but I am excited about it because I know what it can do and I can't wait to get you guys in there and give you guys the opportunity to do that with me because at the moment the...

This week’s episode is with the amazing Matt Barnett, the founder of Bonjoro. As a frequent user of Bonjoro, I wanted to take the chance to showcase how you can use them within your business. With a focus on loving your existing customers, this is a great episode for those that are looking to make the most of the clients and customers they already have. This is often something we ALL forget to do so I know this episode is going to be valuable to absolutely everyone.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Technology can allow us to do some incredible things, creating an endless list of opportunities for those that have online businesses.
• Your business shouldn’t be faceless, even if you’re a team of 100 people you need to ensure there is a ‘friendly’ face to your business - even if it’s just a meet the team page.
• If you’re using Bonjoro, it should be a second touchpoint with your potential customers as you want it to encourage them to take the NEXT step in your funnel. You want to use it to surprise people and show them that you care.
• To get your customers to superfan status you need to nurture your relationships with each and everyone of them.
• If you’re going to give ‘swag’ away to your customers, you need to ensure you’re staying away from the traditional. It needs to come from the heart and make someone open it and say wow.
• If you’re looking to make strong connections with people you need to make gestures that impress them, however you need to consider the ROI.
• Don’t get blind sighted by growth hacks and shortcuts, you need to find stuff that works for you. Yes, there will be stuff that is mundane and repetitive but if you do it every day, it works! There is no quick win.
• Don’t outsource the stuff that matters. You need to automate processes but never your relationships.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Having a personal connection with your customers is the key to building a personal brand.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Introducing Matt – 04:00
• What is Bonjoro? – 11:15
• Turning people into customers – 17:09
• Creating ‘superfans’ for your business - 27:30
• Real life Bonjoro examples - 33:40
• Are bold gestures key? - 44:10

Transcript below

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. So couple of things to kick straight off with. Firstly I'm not doing this in my office, so I apologise if the sound quality is a little bit differently. And secondly I'm sure you can hear from my voice that I have got a bit of a cough and a cold. And obviously when you do those stuff that I do, i.e., pretty much everything I do is speaking, that is a bit of a problem. And it particularly is a problem because tomorrow I am ... Well I'm currently sat in Harrogate which is why I'm in a hotel room, in the UK. And I'm at a conference tomorrow with Professor Philip Kotler, who basically, if you did a degree in marketing, you'll know exactly who he is, because that's the book we learn from.

That's the kind of ... Oh I don't know how to describe it but basically he's like the main person that you learn marketing from. So to be on the same stage as him is phenomenal. And obviously, it's a little bit frustrating that I've been run down with a cough and a cold and it hasn't quite gone. So this is probably going to be the shortest intro that you've ever had. Now, this week's episode, thank god, is an interview or otherwise I would be in trouble. So this week I am interviewing Matt Barnett who is the founder of Bonjoro. Now this interview was fab for two- three good reasons actually. There's many more, but three main ones.

Firstly, I love Bonjoro and I use it in my business, and obviously we're going to explain to you what Bonjoro is. And personally I think I could find a way for it to work for pretty much every business out there and a way for you to stand out from your competitors and help not only convert more customers, but then love the customers you've got. So I'm going to be talking about how I use it, he talks about how other people use it. And I am going to put a link in the show notes, which as you'll know is teresaheathwareing.com/92 as in the nine and two. And I'm going to put my affiliate link, it is an affiliate link in there. So by all means if you don't want to click on that, no worries. Just Google Bonjoro, you'll find them.

But it's a great, great platform. I do love it. And you know full well that I don't often have affiliate stuff. I don't promote loads of different systems. I only promote stuff that I absolutely love working with. So that was the first reason that he was great. The second reason he was great is because he loves talking about how to love your customers and how you can go that extra mile for them and some of the cool stuff you can do to really build that relationship with them. Which, if you follow me you'll know that that is a fairly big part of what I like to talk about. Because that's the thing that people forget. They're so desperate to suddenly bring on a customer that once they've got then they don't really love them. So as you know and I'll talk about it in this interview, anybody's who's in the academy gets the world from me because I think they're wonderful.

And then the third reason was because on our brief discussion before we then started the interview, I found out that even though he's in New Zealand currently, lives there. He actually went to school, seriously about 10 minutes from where I grew up and lived my entire life. So how funny is that? But he's such a nice guy. I think you're going to really enjoy this interview. Lots of good tips and things for loving those customers. And yeah, I'm just going to leave you to it because I've got to rest my voice. So I hope you enjoy it.

 

Introducing Matt

 

Here it is. Okay. I am really excited to introduce the very lovely Matt Barnett to the podcast. Matt, how are you doing?

Great. Thanks, Teresa. Wonderful to be here.

Oh, I am really excited to have you here. In fact, we've just been chatting before we went live, talking about the fact that even though Matt is now in ... Are you in Sydney or you've moved out of Sydney did you say?

Sydney, but kind of on the outskirts. So yeah...

Okay. So even though it's early morning for him, evening for me, he actually went to school in the town that I grew up in, which is crazy, crazy small world. So we've just been having a really good chat about that. Kind of got a bit distracted about the podcast, but anyway let's crack on and do the podcast. So Matt in case my audience don't know who you are, they might not know who you are because I think the product is the name that they will know, do you want to explain to my audience who you are and how you got to do what you're doing right now?

Yeah, sure. So my name's Matt. I moved to Australia from the UK maybe kind of 10 years ago chasing surf as you do when you kind of in your 20s. Found tech, started building tech products. So we run a company called Bonjoro, which you may or may not have heard of. I'm actually an artist and a product designer by trade. So how on earth I ended up building a tech company, I'm not sure. I can't remember why but here we are.

Crazy.

The whole reason it started is because we used to run an agency. And moving to Australia we still had clients in the UK and the US. And we used to get these clients coming in. And we were quite frightened if they ever met us. We've got a lot of kind of charisma. We were a little bit brat-ish I would say. So as these leads were coming in, we used to send them videos. We used to send them comedy videos. So we'd get these leads coming from Ogilvy and these giant agencies. We used to get the ferry to work, so I'd be on the ferry, go past the opera house having a chat on a video. Like wind on my hair probably couldn't understand me.[Jamie 00:05:54] having a bit of a good time with the coffee peep. And we send these videos to these pretty serious leads.

Brilliant.

And they loved it. And it was a creative industry. And what we were after was going into your own pitch, this agency that we had.

Yeah.

And then we know what you guys do still, but come in and see us when you're next in London, when you're next in the States. And it was kind of a bit of an eye opener and we were like, "Well this is interesting." You have the videos where you get a personality across which is a big part of our brand, which is how we get it and then it kind of sale. And then one of his clients one day was like, "Hey, there's this video email thing, can I they use this?" And I was like, "Yeah, sure. It looks like a dog's dinner, doesn't really work that well but go for it."

And then a few of their customers came through them to us and they were like, "Oh, could we also use this?" And we're like, "Hang on, hang on. This isn't really a product." And then you know against all kinds of, I guess advice in the world, me and my CTO were having a beer and I was like, "You know we have to build this?" And he goes, "I knew you were going to say that." I'm already building one company. He's like we really shouldn't start another one. I was like, "I know we shouldn't, but we also should."

Yeah. So Bonjoro was born and was there a transition period? Where you went, actually this is... Is there still the agency or did the agency just get shelved? And how did that work?

Yeah so we run both of them. Bonjoro starts to grow faster. I actually did the agency, we kind of looked at him, I said, look, well, well Joe has got much, much higher growth rates. It's now over. Can't taken it. Maybe like a year ago. I mean Bonjoro is only like two and a half years old. So it over took it pretty quickly.

Yeah.

Grew pretty, pretty rapidly. And you see that and you go, well you have to kind of follow the kind of business is going faster. But then the agency, which we had to go buy off then had it's best than a year in doubled. I'm like, "what the hell?" And so we're in this weird place where we have these two businesses and we're like, "right, I guess we need to run both." And, and there's challenges there because they both have different funnels that they both live in culturally and they have different business models. So really, really need to get to a stage where we can split them out and so like, well the one we're moving to London like full time and we're looking for someone to kind of help come aboard and lead that because I think as a leader you really need to kind of put all your focus on one business at a time.

Yeah. It's hard to try and especially when there are two very different businesses, and two very different audiences. Granted they're not a million miles away from each other. It's not like you're selling, you know, I don't know dogs and shoes or something, but they are- they're two very different structurally like you said, how you manage them, who are in that business, how you market them. So yeah, I totally get that. So, so it was his Bonjoro your thing that you, you want to focus on or as you know, is that kind of where your baby is that you want to grow and get bigger and bigger?

Yeah. So again Bonjoro is exciting because, so here's the crops. It's not a video business. It's basically a relationship business. So really what we discovered was by chance but I guess we were kind of already doing it and that many businesses I'm sure do every day. So it's, if you invest time in customers at some points on the journey, that's usually appreciated. And I think in a world where we have so many online businesses and online interactions, that's been diminished. It used to be a lot. We used to, we used to have the grocer and, he's known you all day to get the butcher kind of stuff and then you've kind of dropped off over time in pursuit of scale and bringing that humanity back to that, so it's the customer journey. Turns out people like that because we're social animals, we enjoy interactions.

I think, you know most of my interactions get more lonely. So what Bonjoro is doing is just say, "hey look, yeah, at some points in the customer journey, you need to get personal. Here's some tools that help you do it, you know, go and be you." And that works really well. But if you take that ethos and you run with it, then you go, well it's much more than just like what the company is now is much more than just videos. The question is where else on a customer journey does it make sense for you to invest time, and where it makes sense to go and use the automation, which you know, is still very, very useful. That's a pretty big goal, and a big shift in how people do business. And that's I think, pretty exciting.

Yeah, and I think you're right. I think there's a few things you've, you've talked about there that I want to touch on were first off, we're in a world where Tech is sometimes seen as pulling us further away from each other because of the fact that you're not walking into your local shop who knows your name and you're buying something and he goes, "oh I got this thing cause I know you like this," and that sort of thing. However, in some ways the fact that you're in Sydney and I'm in Shropshire and we're having a conversation face to face, it's crazy. It's, you know, it's a world that you look at and think, "oh my actual goodness, that is phenomenal isn't it?" So that I love and like I said, I think the more the online stuff happens, the more opportunities there are, but also the more people want it. They want that personal touch, they want that kind of way in which you can break through that online stuff and actually see a human at the end of it and to actually see the person who you're interacting with.

 

What is Bonjoro?

 

Do you see that- I want to talk about obviously the point is are building those relationships online, but yeah. Do you see especially in the agency sector still lots of agencies who are so faceless? Like even to the point I was looking at an agency not that long ago- even to the point where they don't have some pictures of who they are or a list of staff and it's like, why would anybody, in my mind, why would anybody want to deal with you if I literally have no idea who you are?

That's faceless. Yeah. So the other day, we're talking about they're building more lead magnets and stuff for us. And I was like, "why don't we just do a plug and play about us page?" Because so many people don't have a good 'about us' page. I'm like, "it's very simple. You just put some images up. It puts a video of your teams be like, you look at that and go, oh that's Brian. That's Jim."

Yeah.

Like re-humanise it. It's almost like the piece of the website that gets left to the end, but I'm like, it's probably the first thing you should do because your people are going to be the majority of your brand. Especially, when you're starting up, like a brand isn't a logo, a brand is an ethos. It's values, you know those imagery and stuff that comes on. But that's, you know, like I had to design it, like that's actually only the 10% of the brand.

Yeah.

And the brand is everything below the surface. They need to get that up. And that's how you differentiate yourself, you know, because anyone could have a nice logo. Now a dribble exists like I'm working-

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And you're right. And the other thing is with this online world we're in now, to make yourself look a certain way is so easy. So again, and I'm sure you've seen it, but I've seen agency websites where there's literally only one person. And it's like "we, we, we, we, we," but there's no substance behind it, you know? And it's like, I think because it's so easy for people to put this front on, having the honesty and the reality and the actual physical 'look, no, this is me.' It's just brilliant. I think that's such a great way of doing it. So just in case people don't really know what we're talking about, let's just quickly tell people what Bonjoro is and what it physically does. So can you explain what the app is?

Okay. Yeah, sure. So, essentially it's a piece- generally we, we plug on to lead software tools, CRMs, customer sources. So things like MailChimp, Patreon, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, you name it, it's basically a layer that's assessed on top of that. And what happens is when customers perform a certain action, so at the very simplest, this could be you get a new lead that comes into your form, or a new customer turns into a paying customer, we actually find that customer with a bunch of information into this platform called Bonjoro.

And we send you a notification. We say, look, Jenny just signed up from San Diego. She works at, you know, Dog Socks "R" Us. Yeah. You know, why don't you send her a video right now and just say welcome on board. By the way, she also hasn't done this step in your funnel. She hasn't filled out this form. So why don't you ask her to go fill out the form as well. And then what happens is that notification, you open it on desktop, or on your phone, you record a message for journey at Dog Socks "R" Us. You talk about a bit about San Diego, and then you send that message off, and you get back to work. It takes about 30 seconds to a minute.

It does all the move for you. We package it up, it's all branded. It has what we call to actions. It has a link for her to go in and do that one thing you want her to do. That's get off, gets delivered to her inbox. She gets a little moving image in there. She clicks, opens it up, see's this video of you. She can respond and talk to you and start a conversation there. So that's it in a nutshell, it's a little bit more complex behind the scenes.

I could imagine.

But yeah, essentially that's it.

Yeah.

And it works.

And that's the thing, right? That is the best thing of all. It's almost so simple from our points of view anyway, which is what you want from a user experience point of view. You don't want us to be sat there thinking, "God, this is long and enduring and difficult." So I was using it with Infusionsoft, and I was using it every time someone bought something. Which is interesting 'cause there are different ways aren't there? So obviously you gave an example of a funnel when the leads came on, and I used it on a sales, and it can be used for both, which is brilliant, but I used it when someone boards, and I just sent them a really quick video. And like you said, it was easy, pinged on my phone. And actually it was quite exciting because every time that went off it's like, 'hey, someones just bought something."

And then you're like, genuinely, I'm very excitable anyway, but you know, record yourself at this really short, really easy, really quick video. But like you said, you know something about them and then you could say, Oh, this is great, this is going to be really good. Make sure you go check out this thing or make sure you do this thing or you know, please come back and tell me if you need anything. And the responses. And that- I remember when my very good friend, BizPaul from Market Live and you guys, yeah, and you guys sponsor Market Live, and I remember the first time he introduced me to Bonjoro and he sent me one and I was like, this is phenomenal. And he said to me that his open rate and his click rates, were massive compared to at standard email. And it's like, why wouldn't it be because of the fact that I've sent you a video, I've said your name. And it couldn't be more authentic if it tried could it.

So for me, I think, like I said, there's a couple of ways of using it.

Today’s episode is another solo episode where I’m going to teach all about writing a blog for your business. Whether you already have a business blog or you haven’t yet set yours up, blogging is a great way to publish informative and relatable content for your audience. Today, I am going to take you through a blogging checklist, which consists of all of the things you need to think about when creating your own blog posts for your business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Blogs are incredibly to set up and if you want to post regular content, it’s a great place to start. Both the cost and barrier to entry are really low.
• If you’re posting a blog post, the first thing you need to think about is what you’re going to be writing about.
• When it comes to thinking of ideas, batching is a great approach to take. Although you may not write them in batches, writing down lots of ideas at once can be really effective.
• If you’re looking for ideas, try taking a look at what other people are posting or Google things in your area. Answerthepublic.com is a great place to do this.
• Once you know what you’re going to be writing about, you need to think about the keywords you’re going to be using in your post. As you write your post, you can drop these keywords in.
• When it comes to writing your blog post you need to find a method that suits you. Whether that means writing it yourself or outsourcing to a content writer, you need to ensure it is something you’re comfortable with.
• Come up with your blog post title last as this will ensure it is as relevant as it can be to the content you’re sharing.
• When creating content, you need to try and link to as much of your own content as you can.
• To make creating images easier, having a drag and drop framework you can use is a great way to speed things up. Canva is a great resource for this.
• Once you have created your image, you need to start scheduling it on each social media platform you use. Think about whether or not you can repurpose it and post several times.
• Create a short link that will make it easier to access your content.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…A call to action doesn’t always have to be about sales. A call to action could be say hi on social media, comment down below or sign up to my newsletter.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Why Should You Be Creating Blog Posts? – 07:01
• Starting Your Blog Post - 08:25
• Choosing Your Keywords - 11:20
• Writing Your Blog Post – 13:00
• Proofreading Your Blog Post and Coming Up with A Title - 14:20
• Make Sure You Have A Call to Action - 17:45
• Linking to Related Content – 19:00
• Do You Have an Image for Your Post? – 20:47
• Social Media Scheduling and Email Marketing - 22:30

Transcript below

 

Speaker 1: (00:32)

Hello and super welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So I've seen recently that I've had some lovely new listeners reach out to me and say that they've just found the podcast. So if you are new to the podcast, welcome and I am your host Teresa Heath-Wareing. And if you are struggling with social media and digital marketing trying to work out how to manage all of this mindfill your business, then you are absolutely in the right place. Every week I deliver a podcast episode to you. I normally do one that is solo followed by one that's an interview and the solo ones tend to be kind of a bit teaching. And then I interview some amazing people and have been very lucky to interview some phenomenal people in not only just in this industry, but also general other industries.

Speaker 1: (01:22)

So if you haven't seen, do go back and have a look at the likes of when I interviewed Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn, Rick Mulready, Jasmine Star, I loved that episode. She was so, so good. Michael Hyatt, that was a phenomenal episode. And honestly, James Wedmore, too many. I can't even name them all. But basically I've been very, very lucky to have some phenomenal people on the podcast. So do go check it out if you're new. So this week you might hear that my voice is a little bit of funny because I think I'm coming down with something and I am praying that's not the case because actually I'm recording this only a week before it's coming out. And November for me is absolutely crazy. So August I had at home, September I had a few a speaking events and then was I away in September? No. Speaking events in September. October, I had speaking events and I was away in California doing some other events and then November is just back to back speaking every single week and I've just found out that I'm, well I've been asked to speak in Istanbul, which is super cool because I, I've never been to Istanbul but it's in a few weeks time and I'll have to move a few things around and yeah, I like to be organised.

Speaker 1: (02:40)

I like to know where I am and right now because I feel super tired and my voice is going about, I am panicking a little bit. That may be overdoing it but I'm sure I'll be absolutely fine. I will make the most of trying to look after myself and the only problem with today is that I have a podcast interview this afternoon. I say this afternoon, it's actually 10:00 PM UK time because obviously I do interview quite a few people who aren't based in the UK and therefore I have to interview them with all sorts of different times. So tonight I am interviewing, I'm recording this, it's about a, it's really four o'clock in the afternoon and I'm interviewing them at 10:00 PM tonight and I have a coffee sat next to me, which I wouldn't normally have at this time in the afternoon. I don't drink coffee past about two because I don't sleep brilliantly and obviously that can help not help as it were.

Speaker 1: (03:29)

So, but I've got a coffee cause I'm hoping that that'll help me stay up and keep me lively until 10 o'clock this evening. But we, we'll see. Anyway, today I want to give you a teaching episode again and I want to talk about blogs, which is kind of funny because whenever I speak and I've been doing a lot of, like I said, speaking recently and a lot of the speaking I've been doing is talking about how you choose to do the content that you do. So obviously you should all be doing regular content. This is where you nod your head and say, yes, Teresa, I am doing regular content. And if you're not doing really content, you kind of think, well, okay, I promise I will anyway. And blogs is one of those things that you could use as your regular content. And I often stand on stages and say, the reason I do a podcast is because I speak way better than I blog because I don't write well still, I don't write brilliantly.

Speaker 1: (04:20)

If you're on my email list, you might, well, you might agree or disagree. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't find writing as easy as I find speaking. So for instance, I have put together, I always put together different ideas of things I'm going to speak about on the podcast. And then I literally have a rough list of things that I'm going to talk about. And that's it. I don't write it down. I don't prep it any more than that. But I know as long as I know the subject, which luckily most things I talk about it do. I know I can literally just hit record and start talking, which is what I'm doing right now. Whereas if I was going to write a blog, Oh man, it would take me forever and I'd really struggle with it. However, saying that I have done blogs in the past and in the Academy, I create content every single month where I give a full lesson.

Speaker 1: (05:10)

So when I say less than it's like several videos long. There's downloads and there's various lessons, sheets and things to help about how to do all the different things I talk about on my podcast. All the different things we need to think about when running our business in terms of marketing my Academy members so that let's say one of them wants to do a blog, they can go and watch the full course and do the all the lessons in that blog course and therefore they can then be completely well versed with how to create a blog. So it's kind of odd that obviously I can happily do a course on how to do a blog, but I may not necessarily like writing blogs. So this seems a little bit funny for me, but anyway, we're going to go with them. So today I'm going to take you through the blogging checklist.

Speaker 1: (05:54)

Now, like I said, I've taken this out of the Academy. This is part of the PDFs at the end of the PDF, which kind of helps break it down and everything I've talked about in the lessons cause my lessons are videos that they can watch when there's a slideshow and I'm talking. So it's almost like I'm presenting these things to you and then I always do some kind of action type workbook or step workbook that they can then follow as they go along or they can use as a reminder later. And at the end of this workbook, I've put them my blog checklist of things that you might want to do or that you need to think about when you're creating a blog. And I thought, why not share that with you guys today? It's a super easy one, super simple, but hopefully it might help you if you've got a blog already, then it might just kind of help you find the gaps in maybe where you're doing your blog or if you're struggling with things.

 

Why Should You Be Creating Blog Posts?

 

Speaker 1: (06:42)

And then if you haven't got a blog, then pretty much this is going to help you start to finish how to do your blog and kind of all the steps you need to consider when you're doing it. Now, like I said, I'm not a massive fan of writing, but blogs are brilliant. They're really, really great. They're really easy in order to set up content as you go forward. So if you are sat there on with one of those people that hung your head in shame and said, I haven't got any regular content. Oh Teresa uh, I know what it's like. It's hard work doing this. I promise you. Hence why I'm recording this on a week before it's due to go out. And if you're sat there thinking, I need to produce some content, what shall I do? Blogs are one of the easiest things that you can do.

Speaker 1: (07:23)

So in terms of setup and barrier to entry, it's really low in terms of costs, it's really low. So really in terms of creating content, this is one of the easiest and simplest things that you can do. Now the other bits of content like podcasts and blogs and going live, are they saying that live is is again low barrier to entry and super kind of easy, no cost. However, most people don't actually like to go live and I know it's something that people do struggle with. However, if you are sat there thinking, I need to go live or I want to do, go back and listen to episode 84 Overcoming the Fear of Going Live with Tiffany Lee Bymaster. It was really, really good, really helpful. But anyway, today we're talking about blogs. So if you're sat there thinking, I want to create some content or I am doing a blog, but I'm not entirely sure I'm making the most of that blog, then this episode is going to be perfect.

 

Starting Your Blog Post

 

Speaker 1: (08:18)

So let's start right at the very beginning. Now the very first idea you're going to need when you're doing a blog. So if you're setting up a blog, and I'm not talking about the logistical or the technical how to get it on your site, if you are using a WordPress site though that is virtually built for blogs, if you haven't got a website, then at the very least you can put those on LinkedIn and you don't even have to have a website. You can just use LinkedIn to do it if you wanted. So, but I'm not really going to go into that. I'm going to go into actually once you say yes, I've got a blog and you know roughly what your blog is going to be about and that sort of thing. Obviously if you are this a business that is going to be about the thing you are selling or your product or service or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1: (09:01)

So the first thing you're going to think about is what are you going to write about in this blog? So I E you've come to sit and write a blog for today or that's going to go out this week. What is it you're going to put on that piece of paper? So the first thing I do is come up with your blog ideas. Now I would try and do these in kind of in a batch way so that even if you don't batch your blog as in you don't sit down and write three or four at a time, even if you're only writing one or two at a time. I would definitely think about trying to come up with lots of ideas at once and then just keep going back to those ideas and finding one. So I'm sure I've talked about this before, but some of the places I look for ideas are go and see what other people are writing about.

Speaker 1: (09:46)

Go and see. And by the way, just on that, it's not that you're going to go and copy their idea. It's not that you're going to go and copy their blog, but it's just the fact of your take on something. So let's say there's been a really good blog in your industry or done by your professional body or whatever it is, then it can be your take on that. It's just a case of actually that's really interesting at the moment and lots of people are talking about that or a lot of people are speaking about that thing that changed that idea, whatever it might be. So go and have a look what other people are writing. Google things in your area. So have a look at what people are Googling for and I've talked about this site, it's so many times, but answerthepublic.com is a really good place to do that.

Speaker 1: (10:30)

You'd go in, you type in a couple of the words that relate to your industry and it comes up with lots of questions that people are asking. The other thing to do is what do people ask all the time. So one thing I do is if I speak, if I, especially in the Academy and lots of the questions I answer in the Academy, I might then turn into a podcast episode. The same with the fact that this is a course in the Academy and I'm using one elements of this course to do a podcast episode. So the really has lots of options for you to come up with ideas. And what I tend to do is I use Evernote and on Evernote I just keep jotting down ideas as they come to me and I'll do a brainstorm in there as well so that when I come to do an episode of the podcast, and obviously let's pretend that's a blog, I will then look to and go, Oh yeah, I'll talk about this today.

 

Choosing Your Keywords

 

Speaker 1: (11:18)

So then I want you to think about, so let's see. You've picked your blog idea. I want you to think about what are the key words you want covered in that blog post. Now when I tell talk about keywords, all I'm talking about is if someone was to search for that thing, that blog post, what is it they're going to be typing into Google? And I don't necessarily mean a really long title. I mean what kind of keyword would they put in? So, for instance, I don't know what the title of this episode's going to be yet because my lovely team member, Kirsty decides what they're going to be called. But I might use the keywords for this episode talking about blog checklist or something like that. So think about what those keywords are, and I want you to bear that in mind right at the beginning because the idea with the keywords is you're going to keep dropping them in through the whole post.

Speaker 1: (12:10)

And I don't mean subliminally or, or just keep throwing the word and I mean you're going to try really hard to add in those keywords as you go along, but obviously it still needs to read. Okay. It still needs to make sense. So the reason you're going to be putting those keywords in is because you're going to be using, and one of the reasons people use blogs is because of the fact that it helps with your SEO, helps with your search engine optimization. And actually in a few weeks I'm recording an episode about search engine optimization, about really the basics and getting started because hand on heart, I know very little about it, so I'm actually really excited about that one. But I do know that having regular content go on your site and regular keywords go into your site through things like blog posts will be a really big benefit.

 

Writing Your Blog Post

 

Speaker 1:...

This week we have the amazing Chris Marr on the podcast. As an expert when it comes to becoming a ‘Wikipedia’ in your industry, Chris and I look at how to create content that leads people to buy. Although you may create content that is well-written or nice to look at, you need to think about how you’re going to use content to get people to buy into your product or service. Whilst we’ve spoken about this before, this episode goes much more into depth when it comes to creating valuable content. Grab a pen and a notepad, the episode is going to be filled with great snippets of information!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Your customers and prospective buyers should determine the content that you create. Often, people create content for their peers instead, whereas, if you want to be an authority in your market is to create content that shows that you understand your customers.
• If you can serve your customers better, you will be seen as an expert in your industry.
• When creating your content, you need to think about how people go through the buying process. What problems do they have? What objections do they have? The content that answers this is the content that will perform well in terms of conversions.
• Buyers are doing research online before they make a buying decision so you need to step away and see the world as a consumer. On average, 77% of a buying decision is made online before a buyer contacts a company for the first time.
• The people that are vulnerable and honest in their industry effect their consumers in a positive way. If you’re not confident about your product and service, you’re going to hold back when it comes to creating content.
• If you’re worried about creating content in a different way to everyone in the industry then try to overthink it. You need to create content exactly how you want to. It will help you stand out!
• Although you should be keeping an eye on what your competition are doing, you need to have a unique approach to your content.
• Content is not about virality in your industry it is about your buyers making a buying decision. If one person has the ability to buy something and your content helps them make this decision, it is a success. Being famous to buyers is powerful.
• If your buyers have a question, it is your responsibility to answer it.
• There are 5 main topics that buyers want to have answers to when it comes to content. Those are price, cost, problems, reviews and comparisons and best of.
• You need to become the ‘Wikipedia’ of your industry. This means people use your website as an information resource to figure out what they want – whether they buy from you or not.
• By typing the questions you get from your buyers into Google and looking at the suggested searches, you will be able to get a snapshot of what your customers want to know. Once you’ve done this, you need to work out which questions have already been answered.
• You need to let go of the need to look smart.
• There are no secrets in any industry, so don’t worry about sharing them online. Let go of the need to control.
• It is not about being the first, it’s about who can do it better.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Traffic to your website doesn’t necessarily mean leads. You need to differentiate between the two and ensure you’re writing content that leads to sales.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Introducing Chris Marr – 03:12
• What Should We Think About When Creating Content for Our Audience? – 06:06
• What Content Should I Be Producing? - 11:30
• Should You Post Controversial Content? – 16:00
• How to Stand Out and Be an Expert in Your Industry – 26:28
• How Do You Know How to Help Your Customers? – 34:46
• Should You Share Your Secrets? - 40:00
• Chris’ Top Tips – 47:50

Transcript below

 

Hello, and a super warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How has your week been? So this week, I am recording this episode from California. We're still here. We would have been well back but by the time this comes out but Phil, my lovely editor who's listening to this as I speak, he's going on holiday so we're just getting a little bit ahead and making sure that we batch this content so that it can be done before he goes. So it's a little early in the morning, and I have to say I had maybe one or two gin and tonics last night, so a little bit tired, but we're going to see how this goes. And thank goodness for you guys it's an interview, so you haven't got to listen to me go on the whole time.

So this week, I'm really excited to have Chris Marr on the podcast. Now I've seen Chris talk a number of times, but last year he keynoted MarketEd.Live, I was very lucky that I was able to keynote that event this year. But I saw him keynote MarketEd.Live last year and he said something that I have talked about over and over and over. And basically, he talked about being the Wikipedia of your industry. So whatever industry you're in, whatever your business is, that really people need to come to you because you're the expert. He gave a great example about how his wife actually runs another business and she did it with hers and it helped massively. So even though we've talked about content before and how important it is, he comes at it from two different angles; one talking about becoming the Wikipedia of your industry. But secondly, how do you create content that leads people to buy.

So you might create content that's nice for people to watch, or look at, or use, you might create content that is educational, or fun. But what are you actually doing to get them to physically buy your product or your service? So I really liked the conversation that we've had today, I really like what he talks about because this isn't something we've necessarily talked about. Well, we have talked about it before, but we haven't necessarily talked about it in this way before. So even if you've listened to lots of content episodes, I know we've talked about content before, he definitely puts a different spin on it and actually a really, really important spin. So I definitely want you to take a listen to this because it's going to be good.

So if you don't know Chris, he is a multi-award winning entrepreneur, and believes content marketing is the only way to set a business leaders free from a world of mediocre interruption marketing. He's also the founder and driving force behind CMA, the UK's largest membership organisation of its time. So I really think you're going to enjoy this one. So without further ado, here he is.

 

Introducing Chris Marr

 

I am super excited today to welcome the very smart and very lovely Chris Marr to the podcast. How are you doing, Chris?

I'm good. Thanks very much for having me along. I'm excited about this.

My pleasure. My pleasure. Now I've already said in the intro, that last year you were keynoting MarketEd.Live. And I've seen you speak before then. I'm sure I have. But last year really stood out, because you talked about content, and it literally blew my mind what you were saying and you came up with some great concepts. So to get you on to talk about this, I think it's going to be so much value to our audience. So just in case they haven't heard from you or they don't know who you are, can you just tell them who you are and how you got to do what you're doing now?

Well, my name's Chris Marr. I am based in Scotland in Dundee which is north of Edinburgh for those have never been before. And I work permanently from home full time. I run a small company called the Content Marketing Academy or CMA for short. And I've been running this company for about six or seven years now in various forms. We used to be an agency. We merged into a membership like that was 100% our focus and also consulting as well and obviously some speaking happens as well. So I spend most of my time working with our members, working with our clients. And I do most of that online. I've got a family just like you have, and some kids at home. Good to have the flexibility of the working lifestyle. So I pick up those kids from school and do all that kind of stuff. So I've got a fairly flexible working life and I enjoy what I do. It's great.

And content marketing is that the core of very much everything I do, whether we're talking about blogs, or videos, or websites, or anything type of content, there's a philosophy that we believe in. And that gets applied to everything that we do.

Yeah, no, I love it. And I love the fact as well that we are in a world now that we can work from home, we can balance that life a little bit better, and have those opportunities to do things like the school run and go to... not that I necessarily love going to the nativities, and the plays, and the things. But I can do if I want to and still do something we absolutely love and still help and teach and work with loads and loads of businesses. So I love the fact that we're in that position. And we were talking just before we got on this call about the fact of content marketing still seems to be an area where people really struggle. They really struggle to come up with that consistent content through maybe blogs and podcasts and vlogs, but then also they struggle to put content on social media. So in terms of content what do you think determines what we should create when we're thinking about content for our marketing in general?

 

What Should We Think About When Creating Content for Our Audience?

 

People do struggle with it. And I think, we'll cover off some of that, I think as we get into this conversation. But the reason we asked this question of what determines the content we create? The reason I asked the question is because I think, we need to be clear about this. And I think, it's obvious probably for a lot of people listening, they're probably thinking, "Well, it's our customers that determine the content that we create, or our prospective buyers that determine the content that we should create." And we see it, but then when we look at your content, are we truly showing it? And oftentimes... and this is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes and errors that I see that really it does irritate me a little bit is when I see people creating content for their peers. I think, we slip into this way of thinking when we're trying to look like experts actually.

Everyone wants to be the authority in their marketplace or be seen as the expert in their marketplace. And the way they think they should do that is they create this content that shows them to be experts. But what they're doing is they're trying to look good or look like experts in terms of their peer network. Which is nothing wrong with that, except it doesn't help your customers to make a buying decision. And if we're not helping our prospective buyers to make buying decisions, then what are we doing? We're going to be famous in our industry, but we don't have any customers. So it's kind of we're trying to get that balance. And the reason that we want to have conversations about this subject in general, is to help people understand that if you can serve your customers better, then you will be seen as an expert in your industry, you will get that recognition you're looking for. But that foundation work has to happen first, that we have to serve our customers first and that's what we get recognised for.

And you know what? That's so interesting, because one thing I always think about is... don't get me wrong, it's so lovely to be recognised in your industry. And I think, we're in an industry where it's very visual, there's lots of events out there and it's nice to be picked to be told that yes, you are an expert in the industry. However, when I've not been picked for something, or when I've gone for something, and I've not been chosen, and I'm thinking, "I'm not being seen. I'm not this," they're not the ones buying my stuff. They're not my customers. They're not the people who are going to join the membership. They're not the people who are going to want consultancy. So actually, am I doing it for me, or am I doing it for my ego? I'm certainly not doing it for the customers. So I find that fascinating.

So it's a balance, like everything. And I think we're all battling with our egos. Everyone has this battle. Some are better at winning over the ego than others. And I think, it's just important that you have that conversation with yourself and just make sure that you know why you're doing everything. So it's okay to do it I think, as long as you're honest with yourself about why you're doing it.

Absolutely. And be realistic about what that's going to get you. It is going to get you seen, it is going to get you put in front of other audiences, which is fine. But what's your ultimate goal at the end of the day? And especially when you're putting content out there it's lovely for other people to go, "Gosh, how smart is that? And how brilliant is that person?" But actually I've got people in the membership and I'm sure you have too that literally, we're starting right at the ground building up. And they don't want to hear what carpet bombing is, or some kind of crazy lead magnet funnel or whatever. They literally want me to go, "Okay, should you do it Pinterest? Or should you do Instagram?" Or, "How do you set up an account?" And that's the thing. So if they're the people who're going to be paying you, and you want to do that work then you've got to put content out for those people, haven't you?

I think that when we talk about our buyers, it doesn't matter what type of company you are, whether you're a B2C company or a B2B company or if you're a startup, a small company, a big company this goes across the board, is that when we're thinking from a marketing perspective, the biggest advantage you're going to give yourself is by seeing the world from the buyer's perspective. It sounds simple again, but it's a real challenge for a lot of marketers to move themselves into seeing the world from the buyer's perspective. And try to think to themselves, "How does someone actually move through the buying process here? How does someone make a buying decision? What frustrations do they have? What are stories that they are telling themselves about our industry? What bad experiences have they had? What bad experiences have their friends had? What objections do they have?"

And the content that we at CMA that we teach is that type of content, is helping people to create content that helps their prospective buyers to make an educated, and confident buying decision. And that content is oftentimes is not the content that we see companies creating. They might be getting click throughs, they might be getting traffic, they might be getting likes and comments and all that kind of stuff, but what they're not seeing is that conversion. They might say something like, "We're getting lots of traffic to our website. But for some reason we're not getting any leads." And it's like, it's because your content is interesting. It's perhaps valuable to a certain degree. It could be educational, but it's not really dealing with the buying process. It's not helping someone make an educated buying decision. And that's what content marketing is truly all about from my perspective is helping your buyers to spend money with you. But how do you get them to make that decision?

 

What Content Should I Be Producing?

 

Absolutely. So have you got some examples where... because someone might be sat listening to this thinking, "That's cool. I need to do that type of content. But what is that type of content? What am I putting out there? What sort of things do I need to be saying?" So have you got an example or couple of examples of what that might be?

Well, the first thing is, is that we have to... the [inaudible 00:11:47] anybody can make is by accepting that we're all consumers. So the first thing is, is to be much more self-aware of your own buying behaviour. So when was the last time you bought something? You maybe bought something online, maybe it was a holiday, a sofa, a new home, I don't know, whatever it, it could have been a tripod for a camera, it could have been salt or a moisturising cream. Just think back to that whole process that you went through. All the research you did, the reviews you looked at, the blogs you were reading, the comparisons you were making. Every single consumer, every type of buyer is doing all this research online before they make a buying decision.

So in some ways when you step away from the business perspective, or you step away from the marketing perspective and start to see the world as a consumer, you start to realise that there's this process that every single buyer goes through. It might not be linear, and it might not be straightforward, and it may even be quite complex, but there is this research is happening in every single industry. People call it the zero moment of truth. And what they found was in their report is that on average, 70% of the buying decision is made online before a buyer contacts a company for the first time. So on average, 70% of the buying decision is made online before a buyer contacts a company for the first time. And the people that are listening to this their industry it may be higher or lower, but it's the principle that matters here. It's the fact that people are able to now before they contact the company, do all the research online, before they contact you.

You have to ask yourself, "Why do we do that?" We don't want to have that negotiation. And we can, we don't have to do that anymore. We feel like we're in control, as consumers we have the control to decide what we want, when we want it. And we don't have to make bad buying decisions anymore. We've got all the information right there at our fingertips to make that decision. So that's the first thing I think, is to be just more self-aware of your own buying journey that you take for everything that you buy. And then think to yourself, if you bring the business perspective back and think about it from your company perspective, "Are we creating the type of content that's truly going to help one of our buyers that's never heard of us before, to not only find us, but to then use our content on our website, whether it be blogs or videos or whatever it may be, to actually help them move through the process so they feel confident, so they feel educated, so that they feel like they trust us and want to contact us for the first time. Because if we're not doing that, if we're not creating that content, then we don't exist to them. Because the information that they find won't be from us, it will be from someone else, probably your competition."

So this exists in every industry, the zero moment of truth. And it's really up to us as marketers and as business owners to understand how to win that zero moment of truth to create the content that helps our buyers to move through that process.

And that's so fascinating, because when I think back to the content that you're producing often I think people try and avoid some of the more not direct selling because it's not direct selling. It is having confidence. It is things like the reviews, and testimonials, and case studies, and all that kind of content that's helping you make that buying decision. Like you said, if I'm going to buy something online, that is some stuff I barely even pay attention to because the cost is so low that I don't mind taking the risk. But other things like you said, you will go and...