Archive | July, 2023

Have you ever suspected that marketers make secret deals with each other behind the scenes? And that perhaps they will call each other on Skype or Zoom and coordinate activities and launch dates? And maybe they work together on marketing deals, promote each other’s products and work together to maximize their profits? Well, it’s 100% true…

Marketers network and mastermind with marketers on their own level.

Now, if you’re new to the game, how do you break into one of these million dollar mastermind groups?

Unless you have something incredibly spectacular to offer – like some marketing holy grail or something – you don’t. But you don’t need to.

Think about college – you go to school with a group of people. You meet as Freshmen or Sophomores, hang out together, do stupid stuff together, take classes or study together, etc.

After graduation, who can you call to get an “in” at a company, get a lead on an account, get an introduction to somebody and so forth?

Your pals from college, that’s who. You came up together. You’re friends. And of course you’ll help each other out whenever you can.

Marketing works the same way.

Find people on your level – marketers who are on their way up. Make friends. Hang out. Have drinks. Talk on Skype. Work together. Bond.

You and your friends will progress up the marketing food chain together.

And there’s your ground floor opportunity into your own million dollar mastermind group – the guys and gals who came up with you through the ranks.

So start networking. Get a team of friends. Work together. Help each other out. Have each other’s backs. Care as much about them and their success as you do about your own.

And in no time, people will be looking at your group and wishing they were you.

There is a kind of cruel, ancient story that goes like this… A group of people are standing at a river bank and suddenly they hear the pained cries of a baby. Shocked by what they are hearing, they then see an infant floating in discomfort in the water.

One person immediately dives in to rescue the child. But as the rescue is commencing, yet another baby comes floating down the river in the same way, and then another and another! People continue jumping in to save the babies and then see that one person has started to walk away from the group towards the bridge.

Angrily they shout at the person, “Where do you think you are going? Come here and help!”

The response was this: “I am. I’m going upstream to stop whoever’s throwing babies into the river!

The story is a mad one, but if we remove the content of the story and just focus on the metaphor, there is a massive lesson for us to learn both in business and in life.

When your online business is not working as well as you might hope and customers are not buying or your sales material isn’t converting – do not a/ blame them or b/ dive straight in and see the problem from the end.

You must go back to your strategy and check what is going on behind the scenes – what are you missing in the back-end that the front-end users are experiencing? It’s about focusing on the source of the problem and healing it, rather than trying to bail yourself out by adding more money or focus into something that is already flawed and not working. You need better foundations.

Imagine that the babies are your customers and each one is unhappy, there is no point in wasting your energy dealing with customers by trying to convince them that everything is fine and that they are wrong because your site/strategy (whatever) is perfect and other people have ‘said so’, instead go to the source – listen to them – why are people leaving? Why are the numbers decreasing? Why are people complaining? What can you do as a whole rather than trying to deal with the consequences?

Below are 3 overlooked things that I want you to focus on and see if there are any corrections to be made within your business that may be stopping your business from growing:

1. Are you using old strategies? Long form articles, chasing influencers and buying links are all old-school strategies that won’t grow your online business or presence as much as you think they might. It might have worked then, but you must move with whatever is working now.

2. Are you copying others or being authentic? We are told to model the already successful and yes, this is good. But not at the cost of who you are. People want an original, not a clone. If they want the person you are copying, they’ll go with them. You need to be you and don’t copy everything that the successful leaders are doing. What you want is to take what you need from others and design your own brand around it in a personal ‘you’ way.

3. Are you focused on building traffic? It doesn’t matter how good your website looks or how your funnels are set up… If you don’t have website traffic, you don’t have a business.

Current strategies that build traffic include interviews, podcasts and writing guest posts for large authority publications. You can always jazz up your systems if you have an audience, but it’s ineffective the other way around.

Ultimately, the problem unfortunately lies with you and how you are marketing, not the customers. If something isn’t going the way you want, don’t dive into the river to try and fix it, go to the bridge and see the root of the problem before moving on or throwing more money into an existing and floundering strategy.

During school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a pretty smart student and had gotten through the other questions quite easily, until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” I imagined this to be some kind of joke.

But when I thought about it, I realized I had seen the cleaning woman many times. She was short, dark haired and in her 60’s, but how would I know her name? I didn’t.

I handed in my paper, and just left the last question blank. Just before I left I asked the teacher if the last question would count towards our grade. “Absolutely,” said the professor.

“No matter what career you choose in life, you will meet many people. All are important. They deserve your attention and care, even if just by a smile and greeting.”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Clara.

Online, it is not as easy to obtain first names as it is in person but at least we have a better way to store them when our memories fail.

The professor was right, in fact, as it turns out, our names are so important to us that hearing them lights up entirely different part of our brain than any other words, scientists tell us.

Using your customer’s name makes them like you more, also using your own name makes the interaction feel more personal, too.

For example, who would you rather get an email from, “John” or “The Support Team”?

Personal names make a shopping experience much more enjoyable as does hanging out with people who know your name in real life, it just feels more respectful, more engaging and friendly.

Firstly, when sending emails, avoid the lazy trap of ‘Dear Customer’. Use their first name every time.

If customers call you, try and use their name in the first sentence as an instant rapport builder. This is especially helpful in calming an irate customer down quite quickly by seeming more authentic and familiar.

For some of you, when booking a callback, arranging a meeting or getting people to leave their names and numbers, ensure you have their names written in your diary on that date and any other bits of information you can get in that first interaction.

Then when you recall accurately the words of the last conversation you had with them or ask them a more familiar question using their name, you’ll instantly make the customer feel like you know them and so they relax with you.

Another trick of the name remembering trade is to create stories or rhymes in your head associated with the person’s name you want to remember and genuinely try to use it when you bump into them. It’s a great way to build connections and friends in person that may one day be useful to your company or idea, on or offline.

People like their name being used, and it will be a boost to your business and relationships in general if you make the effort to use them every chance you get.