Business For Superheroes Podcast Transcription: Episode Ten - Quick Strategies to Increase Your Sales with Oli Luke

What does Oli have to eat when he gets a potential customer to come along as a copywriter?
What did Oli say would be the easiest way to increase sales?
What type of customers do you have that you need to have?

Transcription

1 Business For Superheroes Podcast Transcription: Episode Ten - Quick Strategies to Increase Your Sales with Oli Luke *In an industry stuffed with marketing bullshit, empty promises and shiny-suited liars, one woman s had enough. She knows what it s like to have the wrong clients, no money and no time for fun, but she also knows how to fix it, and, on the Business For Superheroes show, she promises to tell the down and dirty truth about business, sales and running away with the circus! Here s your host: Vicky Fraser * Vicky : Right then, welcome to the Business For Superheroes Show. I m Vicky Fraser and this week I m not here with Joe, who is my husband if you have been listening. I am here with Oli Luke who is a superstar copywriter and he is going to do an interview with me. So, Hi Oli, welcome! Oli : Hi! Thanks very much for having me. It s a shame Joe s not around, I ve been quite enjoying Joe on your podcasts! Vicky : He s funny isn t he. Oli : He s quite an entertainer, yeah. He s got a bit of a hidden talent there. Vicky : He has. People have told us that we should do a radio show together. Oli : I d listen. Vicky : Would you? Excellent, let s do it! No, we ve been really enjoying them, they re really good fun. Okay, cool, so introduce yourself Oli, tell my listeners all about yourself. Oli : The easiest way, probably, of putting it is I help businesses put the right marketing strategy in place to move them forward, which sounds really woo-woo but it s the opposite. Basically we look at a business, put a plan in place with the aim of making the biggest difference in their bottom line in the shortest amount of time. Then we put whatever needs to be done in place to

2 make that happen. That s the simplest way of explaining what I do at the moment. Vicky : I discovered Oli probably a year or so ago now when I noticed his copywriting - you used to do Scribble Mail didn t you? Which was for Direct Mail. Oli : Yeah, that s still going. It was the first, handwritten mailing house in the UK. There s quite a few now, I need to pick my game up in that area. But yeah, I think that s how we first came across each other. Vicky : I wanted someone to do some direct mail for me for a client and I thought, Handwritten direct mail, that sounds great. I d been looking for that kind of thing because it increases conversion rate - as you know Oli - but there really wasn t anything over here, it was all over in the States and that was just a faff and a hassle. All that aside, I have invited Oli on to talk about how businesses can increase their bottom line, which is really handy because, as he s just told you, that is what he does. Okay, we ll start simple. Oli, what would you say is the easiest way for a business to increase its sales? Oli : *Laughs* Start simple! It sort of depends on the business. When I start working with most businesses, we break it down into three sections. Firstly we look at the enquiry conversion rate i.e. how many people enquire and then go on to become customers. We then look at how they get traffic to their site and finally we look at how they re reselling to their current customers. The easiest way to increase a business sales often lurks in one of those three categories. For example, if you re converting enquiries into customers really well and you have plenty of repeat buyers, then the quickest way to increase your sales is to increase the number of people that come to your website. Alternatively, if you have a big pool of customers that very rarely re-buy from you, then running promotions for these people will quickly upsurge your sales. There s different variations but we ve found that the biggest area to increase sales for business is if they have a low enquiry to customer rate. If you re getting around 20-30% of your enquiries then going on to become customers, then a really quick way to increase your sales is to increase that percentage. If you can double that percentage then it should, in theory, double your front-end sales.

3 Vicky : That s really cool. We re going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment and I m glad that you re talking about that actually because one of the things, I find, that really grates my carrot is when you get a potential customer come along as a copywriter and say, We need more leads and my answer is always, Do you though? What are you doing in your business at the moment and how many leads are you getting? How many of those are you getting converting? Because people think it s just bums through the door, but actually they don t think about the entire marketing funnel. That s where you come in, to sort that sausaging out. Oli : That s exactly it. Most businesses issues isn t the number of people through the door at all, it s maximising what they ve currently got and that s much easier to do than dragging people through the door as well. So you can put some really simple marketing strategies in place which you can just copy and paste them, they can be swiped and deployed. A small series can make a world of difference rather than having to focus on a big Facebook ad strategy and a funnel and all that chuff. The simple marketing strategies often ending up making the big difference. Vicky : Absolutely because to drag people through the door cold is really hard work, and to focus on those people who ve already stuck their hands up and said, I am interested is an order of magnitude easier. Oli : Exactly. The number of businesses that don t work with current customers to re-sell to them and they re the biggest win, without doubt. They already trust you, they already know who you are, they re really cheap to reach because you ve got all their contact details. They re the easy pool of customers to make easy sales but most people go to the opposite and start again, drive expensive traffic. It s interesting to look into the nooks and crannies of a business and see where the biggest wins are. Vicky : Definitely. So what have you done recently with your clients to help them convert more enquiries into sales? Oli : So we ve got one client in particular, he s a client down in London who I work quite hands-on with, so I won t give you too much detail, but they re operating in quite a cluttered market which is highly price sensitive. They were getting around 30 enquiries a week and between about 6-9 of them

4 were becoming customers, so about 20-30% of them were becoming customers. Like most businesses, he had no follow-up in place whatsoever, so as soon as he d give that quote out, that was it there was nothing happening, which would explain the low conversion rate. What we did, quite simply, was put a follow-up series in place that kicks in as soon as somebody enquires, which looks as personal as possible. Then as soon as somebody becomes a customer it then cuts off. Then we needed to tackle the price sensitive issue. Basically if someone has nothing other than price to go off, they re always going to buy on price. So we needed, in the eyes of the customer, to make them feel much better than everyone else. What we did for that was as soon as someone enquires, we sent them a direct mail package in the post that includes a brochure about the business and a booklet that s absolutely rammed full of testimonials, and then a confirmation of their quote. Then finally we put in a quick banner, target campaign in place. So throughout Google they ve got banners on every website, throughout Facebook there s marketing banners and then on YouTube, that five second advert that s always really annoying when you want to watch something, we take over that space. That s made a huge difference because nobody else in that market is going to this effort. We re now converting between 13-18% of enquiries into customers, which is huge. In the five months we ve worked with them we ve essentially doubled the sales. So they were on target to turn over 200k when I first started working with them, but by adding that - and it s just a few days of work really - by putting that into place they re now on schedule for about $420k this year. Vicky : That sounds amazing and it is amazing, but it s such a simple thing to do. Oli : It s such a simple thing, exactly. Like in most businesses it was often a bit lost in the marketing plan, so they d take out adverts as soon as they were offered them, if a magazine called and said they had space available, Yeah we ll have that. They were just all over the show with no real idea of where to be putting their focus. It s quite interesting, I think a lot of businesses can relate to that. Just look into the nooks and crannies, that s where the wins are. Vicky : Absolutely. I was talking about this last week actually in the podcast, about where to put your focus and how people who run their own businesses

5 are often just running around fighting fires, and they don t have time to think about their strategies. They re often so very simple that it s worth spending - not even that much time - just a bit of time thinking about where you can get these quick wins. It s the simple stuff like following up with the personal s and direct mail - which, by the way, is really good fun to do guys, if you re not sending direct mail, it s really good fun to do. It s one of my funnest things of all. Oli : No one uses direct mail, which is the beauty of it. An inbox where you get s a day, how many good pieces of direct mail do you receive? I probably receive one or two a month, if that. It s an area that s so easy to reach people and people (09:01). Vicky : Yeah they do and it doesn t have to be massively expensive either. i m putting together something at the moment with a new client of mine who has been wanting to put a direct mail thing together for ages and it s going to be really good fun because we ve got a bit of money to spend, he s happy to let me run with it, and it s going to be really good fun. That s the thing, it doesn t have to cost a fortune - it can do, I know somebody who once sent a canoe paddle to the CEO of a company with a note that said, Are you up shit creek?, which made me laugh. But he got the work. Hard to ignore. Oli : We ve got a client and we re working on a campaign at the moment, so essentially he needs three or four of the right customers and it ll make a huge difference to his business - customers are worth a lot of money to him. So what we re doing is we re sending a mobile phone in a box with a letter saying, Next time you need (09:57) I think you press the green button twice on this phone. Very simply, they receive a phone and his number is the only number saved in the phone. So we ve heard about these, we ve never actually run one ourselves but we ve heard the conversion rates are massive on it. So that should be quite interesting. Vicky : I m dying to get my hands on a client who could be up for something like that. That s the other thing, people tend to be quite scared of doing stuff like that because it makes them stand out which, ironically, is what they bloody need to do. *Laughter*

6 Oli : Very true. Vicky : So, we have doubled our listeners conversions. How about we move on to step two, how do we get more enquiries in the first place? Oli : It s a good question. It s a difficult one because it depends on the business. I d say Google AdWords is generally the best if you offer a product or service that s actively searched for. Don t do Google AdWords yourself if you don t know what you re doing, that s the first rule, because you ll waste a lot of money, very quickly. Vicky : Reiterate that because I ve spent a little bit of time trying to do it and I just wanted to pull all of my hair out. Absolutely outsource if you re not an AdWords expert because it s a minefield of nonsense. *Laughs* It works brilliantly when it works. Oli : And be very carefully of who you outsource it to. I never thought this was an issue until I started getting involved in businesses that I work with. You realise they re paying some fancy agency with a name like Pineapple Juice or something stupid like that, paying them a huge amount of money a month and they re not tracking conversions and it s been set up terribly. It s a difficult one, where to advise finding good AdWords people, but there s a few working. Vicky : Word of mouth is the best to go with AdWords I think. Oli : I d say AdWords is the majority but it depends. For me and you, Vicky, we offer quite unique services and a relationship needs to be established before selling - or in my business it does. Then I would go along Facebook or Twitter ads into a sales funnel, possibly even Linkedin ads. I d build a relationship before trying to sell. I d give value, I d prove my worth and then I d look to make a very small sale to win trust and make that first purchase. Then go through that process, basically. Vicky : I ve found Linkedin ads to be better actually than Facebook ads for me. Like you said Oli, it very much depends on what business you re in. Just as a quick aside, be very wary of anybody who ever says this is the answer because in marketing there is no right answer often. There s really crap ways to do things but the point is you need to test and try stuff. I ve tried Facebook ads

7 and I ve had some success, they ve been okay and they ve built my list, but I ve found that by far my best conversions have come from Linkedin. They re more highly-qualified and they are more likely to stick with my relationship building and then buy something from me. It costs more to buy an ad from Linkedin but it s worth it, the ROI on it is better. Oli : That s interesting. Vicky : Yeah. I haven t got enough metrics from AdWords yet because I ve only just started messing around with that again. Facebook I ve got a lot of leads but they ve not been as high quality. But for somebody else that might be entirely the other way around. Oli : Yeah, there s no right answer for every business, sadly. When it comes to driving traffic you re playing a bit of a risky game, you ve just got to try. Start small, don t spend a lot of money, see what works and then scale from there. Vicky : As soon as your advertising starts making you a bit of money, that s when you start ramping it up a bit. Whatever you do don t throw 10,000 at advertising and then think, Ahh that was a quick way to set fire to money. Because it basically is a quick way to set fire to money. Oli : Exactly. Do what you can to liquidate the expense, i.e. if you can spend 10 in Facebook ads and then someone can buy an upsell from you for 12 in the first, few days. It basically means you re not spending all the cash and going cashflow negative. I just realise I ve gone a bit complicated there. Vicky : Well, to simplify it -- this is what I do with my book, so I m changing my entire funnel at the moment, I m creating a mega funnel - you can t see me but I m doing a Dr. Evil *Laughs* What I ve been doing with my book is offering a free chapter and then the upsell is obviously to buy the book. So everybody that buys my book, that offsets 20 worth of my marketing spend so that, in very simple terms, is how you make your marketing worth its space. Always a delightful position to be in, if you can make it break even at least or make a little bit of money then that s like Nirvana.

8 Oli : You can spend 1000s a day on Facebook ads and get 1000s of leads. If you re breaking even straight away that s the Holy Grail of marketing. If you can get to that, you re in a good place. Vicky : I m still testing and tweaking to reach Nirvana but I know people who are doing that, they are spending 1000s on Facebook ads, Google ads every day and they must be making their money back because otherwise they re going to run out of money at some point. Oli : Exactly. No, I ve been there a few times but it s just not consistent so I m still playing around. We ll get there. Vicky : We will. So, we ve sorted out how to convert more people, and we ve sorted out how to bring more people in, so what s the quickest and easiest way to make sales, would you say, Oli? Oli : It s quite simple actually. We do this with our current clients, when we first start working with them we put a 90 day plan in place, so that s the long-term, the bigger strategy, and then we focus on a quick, short-term cash-flow boosting plan while the campaign is put in place. So this is what we advise - very simple - all you do is create a time-limited promotion and it to your list - ex-customers, ex-prospects, current prospects, people that know and trust like we covered before that are the easiest people to sell to. Put something in place that would be attractive to them and it is quite simple to generate quick cash - a sales page, a sales letter, direct mail. It s giving people who already know and trust you something to buy. Vicky : Following up basically.the money is in your list, it s in your current customers and the money is in the follow-up, it s relationship building essentially. So I picked up on your 90-day promotion, any reason way it s 90 days specifically? Oli : I find that 90 days is enough time to get a lot done without losing momentum. If it s year plan it drags out and you lose that excitement for it.90 days is short, snappy and it s enough time to get quite a lot done. That s pretty much simply it, the 90 day thing.

9 Vicky: That ties in very well, with my Inner Circle I get everybody to do what s called the 12-week year, and if you ve read the book then you ll know what I'm on about, but it s essentially condensing a year into three months because you can get shitloads done and it s quite telling how much more you can get done in 90 days than some people can get done in a year, just because -- because a year s a really long way, like you said it s too long to think of stuff and remember stuff and by the time you get to the end of it you think, Oh, I ve forgotten where I started. But 90 days is quite a nice, short period of time. I think you re right, it s enough time to build a bit of a relationship as well. Oli : I can't remember where I read this but Google, Intel, Amazon, all their campaigns and everything are the result of 90 day jumps, if that makes sense? I can't remember where I read that. That seems to make sense though. Vicky : That does make sense. If you didn t dream it and you can find out where it is, I can link to it because that sounds about right. Oli : I ll have a look. I m sure it s a book called The Magic Number. That sounds like a children s book. This might be a crazy dream that s got out of hand! Something like that. Vicky : Guys if you go and search for The Magic Number, let us know what you find! Oli : Good luck! *Laughter* Vicky : Cool, so where can my podcast listeners go to find out more about you Oli? And what will they get when they get there? Oli : The best place is probably just my website which is There ll be a report that you can download there, which basically covers the three steps that we ve discussed on this in a bit more detail, with templates of campaigns that you can put into place. You ll also see details of how you can apply for a call so we can have a look at your business to make you see if this system could work for you and look where the biggest winds lie there. That s probably the best way to get in touch.

10 Vicky : Brilliant and if you have got some investment cash to spend I would recommend that you take Oli up on his offer because he really does know his stuff. I ve been whinging a little bit about the internet marketers who are shiny-suited liars and they present this face, Oli is not one of those people, I wouldn t have him on the podcast if he was. He s a proper good egg who works really hards and he s ridiculously younger than me and I wish I d started when I was his age. So have a look, get on a call with him if you can because -- I don t take on private clients at the moment because my books are full and also I m about to start renovating a house, which is exciting and horrifying, but Oli is taking on people for calls and he s ace so go look at his website: and have a look at his free report, download it, have a look and then give him a shout. Oli : That s very kind. Vicky : Well, you know, it s true. It s truthful truth. *Laughs* That s alright. Thank you so much Oli, that s been great I really enjoyed chatting to you, as always. Oli : You re more than welcome, I enjoyed it. That s the quickest 20 minutes of my life, that s crazy. I just looked at the time, I thought that was about 5 minutes. Vicky : No we always find - I m going to ramble on for a second now - this Joe and I because when I first started doing the podcast I was really nervous and wasn t sure if I was going to carry on doing it, but they are so much fun to do that before you know it you ve gone half an hour. Partly that s because we spill gin all over the place but also because it s good fun. It s been brilliant, thanks Oli, really appreciate it. Oli : Thank you, more than welcome. Vicky : I ll have you on again at some point later in the year I think, when you can tell us all about the changes in your life because you ve got stuff going on, haven t you? Oli : I have, a baby on the way! Beginning of June, so that s quickly making me grow up. Definitely [indistinct] So that s exciting.

11 Vicky : Yeah, you can keep us updated and I look forward to seeing the baby pictures. All the best to you and Sophie and I ll be in touch again in a few months and we ll do this again, talk about something else. In the meantime guys, go have a look at what he s got on offer and thanks very mcuh Oli, I ll see you soon. Oli : Excellent, thanks very much! Vicky : Cheers, bye! *Like what you ve just heard? Tell your colleagues, tell your friends. Send them to