So let me introduce you to Ian Brodie:

Transcription

1 Interview Persuasion Ian Brodie Dec 2013

2 Petra Mayer: Hello and welcome to this Special Interview. My name is Petra Mayer, Lead Strategist at Petra Mayer Consulting Online Strategy Made Easy. As part of my Strategy News I offer interviews with specialists in their field of online marketing. In today s interview I want to introduce to you Marketing Specialist Ian Brodie from the UK. I have been following Ian for a while as a specialist particularly in Marketing. marketing has a great importance in your online strategy, as those of you taking my program Winning Website Strategy are well aware of. So let me introduce you to Ian Brodie: Ian specializes in helping consultants, coaches and other professionals to attract and win more clients. And one of the areas he particularly focuses on is showing them how to win new clients through marketing. He was recently named as one of the "Top 50 Global Thought Leaders in Marketing and Sales" by Top Sales World magazine, and one of the "Top 25 Global Influencers in Sales and Sales Management" by OpenView Labs. Salesforce.com named him as one of their "Social Business Dream Team" and his book Persuasion hit number one status in direct marketing on Amazon within 12 hours of being launched. So Ian, firstly my congratulations to your book launch. That must have been quite a thrill! Ian Brodie: Petra Mayer: Most importantly, today you are going to share with us some of the secrets of how small businesses can use marketing to win more customers. Ian, we are both in our work very focused on the Target Audience. So let me ask you this: Who is your book for? Ian Brodie: Well, one of the things that s different between a book and the normal work I do like consulting, coaching and providing online training is that a book is usually aimed at a rather wider audience it s just the way the economics work. But having said that, I really wanted the book to be of most value to people like my clients who tend to be in the consulting and coaching fields. And what I think the book provides that no other book on marketing has covered is how to market high value products and services via rather than the usual focus on books, consumer goods or internet marketing stuff. Petra Mayer: What new concepts will they learn in your book? 2

3 Ian Brodie: Well, there are two things really, depending on what you re doing with marketing currently. If you re fairly new to marketing then the book will give you a comprehensive step- by- step guide to getting going quickly and succeeding with . If you re more experienced and you re looking for new material on how to do marketing better then you ll find a lot of practical details on the techniques that are working right now with todays customers and clients. And I think the area that s particularly new is the focus on marketing for high value products and services and the approach of building credibility and trust in your s rather than them being either boring newsletters or over- aggressive sales pitches. Petra Mayer: What would you say are the biggest challenges businesses have with their campaign? Ian Brodie: Well, again it's dependent on where you are. So some businesses struggle to get going at all because they kind of get overwhelmed with the technology and they don t know where to start. Others struggle because they just can t get enough subscribers to make an impact: they don t know what will motivate people to sign up for their s and stay subscribed. Others struggle because not enough people are opening and reading their s. And a lot of businesses find their biggest problem is getting their subscribers to take action and ultimately to buy from them. Petra Mayer: With all these challenges is it even worth it? How does marketing stack up to other Marketing channels? Ian Brodie: Well, there are a lot of studies I quote in the book. The direct marketing association for example studies the return on investment on marketing channels each year and on their latest data marketing has an ROI of about 43 to 1 that s nearly twice that of any of the other channels they looked at. And when analytics firm Custora looked at online sales from over 72 million customers across 14 different industries, they showed that over 40 times as many purchases came from links in s than from Facebook or Twitter. But the thing that I take the most notice of is that if you go to the website of any social media expert, whether they teach you about Linkedin or Facebook or Twitter or any social media, you ll find that on pretty much all their homepages, they prioritise getting you to subscribe to their s way more than they try to get you to hook up on social media. So for me if the social media gurus are focusing on marketing instead of social media, that s a big clue that it works. Petra Mayer: What marketing priorities do you suggest to an entrepreneur who is starting out with his or her business? Ian Brodie: I d start out simple. So create something useful you can give away for free in return for people to subscribing to your s. Then get into the habit of 3

4 writing regular, helpful s and at the end have a call to action which takes them one step closer to working with you. That might be to highlight one of your product or offer a telephone discussion with you or inviting them to a webinar, whatever takes your relationship further. There s obviously a lot more you can do strategically and that s what I focus on in the book, but part of the battle is just to get going and to get used to ing and not worrying about it being perfect. Petra Mayer: I personally find writing campaigns and content in a consistent yet engaging way always a challenge. What do you suggest to our listeners on how they can avoid writers block? Ian Brodie: Well, part of the answer is to not get uptight about it and to realize that every doesn't have to be perfect. Mine certainly aren t. s work best when they re a regular drip of good stuff, rather than an infrequent blast of genius. The second thing is to make sure you understand very deeply what the big goals, aspirations, problems and issues your ideal clients have. The more you know those, the more you have a source for interesting topics. One of the things I do is I always have a notebook with me in my case it s electronic, I use evernote on my phone and mac. But it doesn t really matter what you use, just write down anything that takes your interest during the day. Stuff you find funny or weird or annoying or inspiring. If it stirs emotions in you then the chances are it ll stir emotions in your subscribers. Once you get into the habit of looking for interesting things in the world around you, in your experiences, in the media and the news, it ll become more automatic over time it s just like a muscle. The more you exercise it the stronger it gets. Petra Mayer: There are so many technology options out there. How do you characterize the options and which ones should a new entrepreneur consider? Ian Brodie: Well there are really three levels. There are basic systems like aweber, getresponse and mailchimp that let you create optin forms to get subscribers, they let you do broadcasts and create sequences of automated s. They give you data on who s opening and clicking and they let you mange unsubscribes and all the admin. They typically cost $20-40 per month for a few thousand subscribers. The next level up are integrated systems like Infusionsoft or Ontraport. These have all the basic features plus more advanced features like the ability to trigger actions based on whether people click links, visit web pages or buy products. They also have built in features like shopping carts and membership sites. They re typically $200- $400 per month for 10,000 or so subscribers. 4

5 Then at the top level you have big systems like Hubspot, Silverpop and Eloqua. These are geared more at large organizations so they have even more automation, they have different views for sales and marketing and other parts of a large organization. And they integrate with other corporate systems like salesforce.com. They cost upwards of $1,000 per month. Most entrepreneurs are going to start out with a basic system, and that s often all you need even if you grow pretty big. If you find you then need a shopping cart and to control membership sites you might find it s easier to get an integrated system rather than trying to glue together lots of standalone systems with marketing. And most entrepreneurs won t really need the higher end systems. Petra Mayer: If you had one piece of advice to give our listeners today, what would it be? Ian Brodie: I would say just get started. Try it. I get about 70% of my coaching clients and about 90% of my product sales from my subscribers. And yet I didn t start marketing until about 2 years after I started blogging. Those are probably the most wasted 2 years of my life. Petra Mayer: How can the interested listener learn more about this topic? Ian Brodie: Yeah just head over to and you ll be able to get access to my free videos on marketing and a short course on marketing for high value services that not surprisingly is delivered by . Petra Mayer: And of course you can purchase Ian s book either as paperback or as Kindle book. You will find a link on my website petramayerconsulting.com under Recommended Resources I hope we have kindled your appetite to learn more about this interesting and important topic. Thank you very much, Ian, for joining me for today s Special Interview and for sharing your insights into marketing with my subscribers. Good luck with your book and I am looking forward to your next interesting series. 5