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Get Social: Finding Customers Needs

What I want to do is I want to be able to go toe are workbook for a few minutes before we bring in. Our are our guests. So let's go to Part two, which talks about getting found. So the critical part here and let's let's stay on social media. I want you to answer true faults too many of these kinds of things, right? So we're gonna go around our studio audience here, right? So we're on things says, get social, right? Reply. True or false? Right? Um is social media of fad the false Okay, social means they're sell things Europol's true, true and false rights. Not just to sell things right. It's like Think of it as a party, right? When you meet someone at a cocktail party, the first thing you wouldn't go up to them and say, Listen, hi, I'm Barry. I sell life insurance. You wouldn't do that. You created relationship first, right? Is it marketing? True? True. Okay. Are you obsessed with a number of followers? True. True. Come on. The O to kind of get over that right? Right. Remember, if you c...

onvey by followers or friends, what value do they really have so think about that. Because you really can buy them all over the Internet. Right? Um we're gonna do now is we're gonna go to John Janse. Who's going to talk to us about this area. John, are you there? The famous duct tape marketing guy. There he is. A very are you doing now, John? I know that you've been on and creative live before, so welcome back. Thanks. I hope they're treating you well there. The credible, incredible operation they've got there isn't? No, They just dio do an incredible job. John and I was able to an introduction tell us just a little bit about yourself. If there's a couple people out there don't know you are. Well, I have actually had my own marketing consulting firm of one variety of or another for over 25 years. And about 10 or 12 years ago, I took everything I had done to that point. Packaged it in a systematic approach to working with small business. I called it duct tape marketing because I needed a brand name. And that has really grown into, as you mentioned, the books and the publications as well as a network of independent marketing consultants around the world now that license our methodology and use our system working with small businesses you want the confusions that come up we've been talking about this morning is what is really the difference between marketing and sales because you have the book Duck Take Marketing, which is really a legendary book and just came out with duct tape selling what is really the difference. Well, the way I I think it's been classically defined quite often is that marketing is really responsible for creating the message or the positioning or the brand. And sales is really responsible for creating the relationship that that lets somebody understand how to personalize that brander that message in a waiting to to bribe their products or services and what one of my contentions And it's unfortunate you find a lot of organizations that either don't understand. A lot of small businesses don't understand that there actually is a difference in those two functions, and then you have a lot of very large organizations who actually put them on different floors, and they never talk to each other. They actually don't serve the same objectives, which is actually creating a great customer experience. So where do you start these days? Because you know, a lot of people they used to sell on features and things like that. But one thing that you always talk about is that you really going to start with no like and trusting right that we'll let you have. Yeah, In fact, that's my definition, actually of marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you. And then you could take that another step and say that then the definition of sales is turning know like and trust into tribe. I repeat and refer. And those seven words of seven behaviors of seven stages are really the kind of create what I call the perfect and and customer journey. And I think every organization that's really their job is to find ways to to seamlessly blend sales and marketing, so that that the prospect that customer, the buyer, can really go on that journey that they want to go on I love the words you come out is to find a customer, has the need to know, like and trust you. I think that's that's the biggest question had you find the ones that have the need to know, like and trust you well, a great deal of that today particularly. And in fact, you know when people say, well, what's changed in sales and marketing? Well, what's changed is buying the way in which people buy things has changed dramatically, and I think a great deal of the way that you find that now Is that on. I think I heard you on the intro There is is that you allow yourself to be found. You have to get involved in that customer journey because, you know, think about everybody's a buyer, whether they're seller or marketer there, a buyer at some point and think about how we buy things. Now we go out. Look, we find we asked friends and social networks on. In many cases, we are way down the path of making our decision about who we're gonna hire or what product we're gonna buy before Company even knows that we have a need. And so it's essential that whether you are a sales person or you're an entrepreneur, that you are putting yourself, your content, your expertise, your authority out there in places where I go to look for that information so that I can find you, and I can start to say, Hey, maybe this person knows a little something. I really like their approach. I like the content they're giving me. They're telling me ways to to really change my world, you before they're ever asking me for any money, and that's really going to lead me to then hopefully thinking of them when I do have that need at some point. So I always say This is a way, John for people to become more comfortable. It's selling to think of it as educating rather than selling. Do you think that's a good way for people to wrap their heads around that? My latest book, Askew mentioned duct tape selling. There's an entire chapter that that is teaching cells, and I think that what's great about it and it's actually the program I did for Creativelive. They titled It Stress Free selling and I think that that's a great Hopefully that's a really great message for a lot of people because a lot of people have a fear or disdain or really the wrong impression about what selling is and that it's somehow going out there and convincing people to buy stuff they don't need. And I think that when when you take this education approach in this value approach, really what what you're doing is allowing the customer to actually sell themselves. In fact, in most cases, the companies that we've worked with over the years, that really get this idea of the customer journey, that customer, that right customer, comes to the point where they make a decision that they want, that they want and need what you have to sell on. There's really been no selling that's going on it all. And we talked a lot this morning about content market and social media. What do you think? The most effective way for small business to use, though, to those two tools? Well, I think that I think the 1st 1 That's a really big question, very. But your big answer got John. Trust came to you credited to a really small time frame here, but the content one. I mean, the big mistake I see is you can't wake up on Monday and say, Well, you know, what am I gonna blawg about? That's you know that's not a content strategy. I think what you have to do is you have to think about what? What is the intention of my content? What types of content, though I need so that I can move people along this journey that we've been describing. I need content that creates awareness, any content that builds trust. I need content that educates, that engages my users that creates referrals. And when you start thinking about those intentional needs for different types of content, I think then you could put together even an entire annual editorial calendar, if you will, that that really meet your needs rather than just simply saying Well, Barry says, I need more content, so I'm going to write more stuff. So where do you find your content? Cause you're fantastic at this. Well, I you know, I just don't sleep helps a lot. Now. I you know, I think what happens is when, when you when you understand the importance of this to your business and I fully admit, I mean producing content is is my business in some in some ways. But I'd say that's true for a lot of businesses, quite frankly, but you start thinking about when you create this editorial calendar, you start thinking ahead, and I think that that's the main point. I mean, I can tell you what our topics are gonna be 12 months out when we start looking for and then they might just be broad. He works keyword phrases, themes that we know that if we produce content about referrals and about public relations about S e O, that that's always going to be wanted invaluable for our particular industry and every industry can develop those themes. And then if we Matt those out on a calendar, then we can start saying, Well, gosh, who should we have on our podcast? What guest post should we start looking for? What content should we start trying to aggregate around a certain topic? And again, I think a lot of the challenges when people just think OK, today I have to produce content. If if it's going to be a zit, important as we have all been stressing for the last few years, you've you've really got to treat it like a fundamental foundational element of marketing and what advice to give the small businesses on setting up their social media strategy because they think that a lot of small business owners treat social me the same way. Okay, here's my 15 minutes to go on Facebook. I'm just gonna react. Yeah, and I say the exact same advice, quite frankly. What's your intention? So I I believe that there are instead of saying, what network should I be in? It? It should be. How am I going to use this to serve my customers? And so for me, you know, there are very set no strategies in the very 1st 1 ought to be collecting or listening, setting up, using all these tools and participating in social media. In fact, you know, I let a lot of people off the hook that they're still saying, Well, you know, I don't know if I want to be on that Twitter thing. I mean, I don't know. Is that gonna be be any value? And I just show them how to actually create a list of their customers and list of journalists in their industry and maybe list of industry influencers And and then I say, Guess what? You don't have to say anything if you actually just pay attention to what they're saying. You're going to be mawr able to provide value for your customers and prospects. So, so, so think. In terms of that, you know that first order of business is listening. Then I believe curating is another great way and sharing other people's content eyes another great practice, obviously creating some of your own content or repurpose ing some of your own content. And then, finally, what are the ways that you can use social media to engage the people that are important? Teoh your industry? You know, one of the challenges, I think, is that Ah, lot of marketers have actually ruined social media for a lot of people because they've turned it into another broadcast channel. And I think that small businesses, salespeople in particular, maybe you don't need 10, followers, but you need the right 20 people to be talking with and influencing and connecting Onda actually be. And here's the punchline. Actually be social in social media and that you'll get a lot of value out. There's no question about that. How did you think the best way? I think that most people don't have a problem that's really dealing with customers if someone raised their hands this way. I'm interested in buying your product. That's pretty good. But what they have a problem with is really finding the prospects to raise their hand. Are there other methods that you have find social that small businesses use, but sides content marketing and social media to really get those prospects to raise their hand so they can be there when people are ready to buy? Well, I'm just gonna go with easy answer. No, there are no other strategies. Not just easy, but but But actually, here's the part that I think a lot of people miss, is that you could be very proactive in using social media. So instead of waiting for somebody to raise their hand or actually thinking, I think completely differently about what a raised hand actually is, right? So somebody asked a question in linked in or in a LinkedIn group that has nothing to do with your product or service. But you actually know how to answer that business owner. You've had that same challenge. You can start answering that to me, using social media in that way to actually provide value, demonstrate value, maybe using it because you can actually not only see who I'm connected to, you can see who it is and I report to You can see you know what? What other challenges I have. I see people using social media all the time to just reach out and say, Hey, John, you should meet this person because they're in my network and they do X y Z, and I think they'd be a great person for you to meet. So a lot of what you do in some of those networks, So I think you have the ability to do now in some of those networks is actually get involved in a prospects journey before they raise their hand on make yourself valuable to them. In that way and and again, I realized that you could spend all day doing that. So you have to get systematic about. You have to use the right tools. You have to have kind of a process on. Maybe it's a set amount of time that you dedicate to it every day, but it's ah, it's kind of a mo mentum building thing that will really pay dividends long term. You know, we have some questions in general. We do. Hi, John. This is Sally. One of the hosts. Have a guy like you work way have an interesting one in it. And it speaks to that. That quick concept that we whipped past talking about is, you know, too much marketing. And has it become another broadcast channel because source pruner has a question based around there a finalist in the whole foods competition for grants. You know how small businesses can go for grads, right? And they want their audience to vote for them. So So it's preneurs says thank you for your clear message, Barry also. But how do I hold back when asking for support for my grant voting? How much is too much? And I guess that question is, you know, can you over tap your existing audience before you grow them? Knew How much can you ask for from the people you have? Yeah. I think you can always over tap your audience, and I look at it like a bank account, right? If you put money in, you can take money out on di Think that that's how you have to really look at it. I mean, this particular person is looking at this thing opportunity that's in front of them today. Well, what we have to do is we have to be continually contributing to that. And the way you do that is continually adding value. Building those relationships, engaging people, connecting people, doing all the things that really allow you to make deposits, if you will, in that bank account is certainly an essential part of that. But I will give you one tip for those of you because there are those times when you just want to go out and say, Hey, I need help, you know, go to my community. I Would you vote for this? The mistake I see a lot of people make is they don't give me either a compelling reason or a compelling ah way in which to do it. So if you want me to help you out, right, the tweets for me give me an incredible, incredibly engaging graphic or video that that I can share very easily. Or maybe give me five of them and just say, Hey, take your pick. And I think that's a way that you can get over a little bit of that just Hey, I'm asking, asking, asking Make it fund. Make it compelling. And so really, really good thing, cause I find John, if you're like me, everyone keeps asking me to vote for them on something every single day. Right? And I think you have to make sure that you give more than you get. Because so many times, people just saying, Hey, can you do this? Can't do this. And what really drives me nuts, John, I'm sure you get this. A lot is I have never heard from this person for years. And all of a sudden I have a new book. Could have something coming on to say it. Will you promote this for me? And of course, the answer is No, I'm not really interested. Right? That stuff meaningless as a kitten on it? I mean, cause exactly exactly. Then you have to that Then you have to. So you're talking about You've got to make sure that you do put those deposits in, right? That's right, Andi, that you know, again, ever. I'm immediately when I say that's people like, Oh, I know I have time for that. I mean, a deposit could be that you're following go out tomorrow, subscribe to 100 blog's that are of interest that air in your industry that will make you smarter. First off, so you get that benefit if you if you read those and use of a reader like feed lee or something. So this release. You go to one place and you scan through and read, um, and then share 10 or 12 of those of great pieces of content that you're obviously going to come across on a daily basis. That could take you five minutes. You can use a tool like buffer so that it goes out in your stream and Twitter over the course of the day rather than right away. That's a great way to start getting in the habit of making deposits, because anybody who does follow you will probably appreciate that you're sharing a good stuff. But so will those people that wrote that content the and and that to me is is one of that to me, is is you know that's how you get back clinks in today's S CEO environment, but it's a great way to just systematically make those deposits, and you can do it in five minutes a day, one of things that I've done very effectively. If I've built lists in Facebook and Twitter of companies that I want to do business with, I start watching their stream. I start commenting and interacting with them. And then pretty soon they refer to me as someone inside the company and over a period of time, I started doing business with them because it is impossible. John, I think you'd agree with me to follow your entire stream, whether it be Facebook Twitter linked in whatever it is, you gotta build sub list of people that you really want. Teoh Target. Correct. Yeah, there's no there's no question and the tool like Hoot suite, which again, I don't know what you've been talking about it for in terms of tools, but a tool like Hoot suite is a great way for you to just have all these columns of all these lists. So you pull that tool up. There you go, man. Nothing today. Oh, wait, There's something I should react to. Oh, nothing beyond then you're out because it's easy to make those kind deposit the biggest concern we've had about what we're talking about this morning is many small businesses are too busy too busy to do sales and marketing. Where do you tell people to start? In the ways? The first step? Because I think a lot of people get stuck. They get frozen. They can't jump start their business because I don't know where to start. What is your advice to small business owners say Alright. Guess what you know, start anywhere. It's right here. Well, hi. Started allude to that idea of listening. I mean, if if anybody who came to me and said I especially I mean, I've got a product, I'm putting it out there. Maybe I've got some customers. I mean, so they've got the business started, but they really don't understand their customers. Well, they don't understand the market. Well, they don't understand how some of these tools work to me, you know, using some of these tools, creating alerts, creating lists to me is a really simple way to not only get more out of those, but to semi automate the process. So you're using an alert service like talk walker, for example, you great service. You create alerts for it's a free tool. You create alerts for the five journalists that could write about your company or about your industry or in your town. And every time they write a new article, you're going to get an alert that says, You know Bill Smith wrote This article reaches, spend five minutes. Go comment on that article. Maybe you've got expert information from your industry that you can share with that, that writer and you can actually start building a relationship to me. You know, just pick out an area you know, build relationships and build connections. Pick out an area. Maybe it's journalist, maybe its strategic partners. Maybe it's other people that want to share your content on. Just start using these tools to find out how to serve their needs and a good place. Also defined content if you don't know where to get content. That you want to share with others is to use tools like Google Alerts or talk Walker. You put in project management or musical instruments or yoga. I mean, if you put in yoga, you're gonna get way too many. But these ways you can look at articles that you might want to pass along. So you know John is one of the biggest sales and marketing experts in the say the world. Is that too big John in the world? It's already spread for questions that you have about your business, that you would like to ask John about to help him try to try to solve what problems have you come across in your business from a sales and marketing standpoint? Go ahead. We're getting standpoint because I am working with two different audiences. I have the audience who are on television who are looking at me through, you know, local channels, um, and then you two followers and people who are following ICO conscious businesses and things like that. And then I have the other market of the people that I want, a feature who are health and wellness nonprofit organizations, ICO conscious businesses. So there's two different. I have two different messages, and so it gets a little confusing, and so I've kind of centered in on myself as a brand. But that doesn't you know, when people look up reading Nicole, it doesn't go. It goes to a bunch of different things, but that people aren't clear. One customer. You have to make sure your time if you have to. Customers you talking in different ways. Yeah, I think she used she. She solved her own problem. I'll just choose her words. She You just have to be very clear. There's nothing wrong with saying I mean, you do have an overarching theme, right? You have an overarching theme of ICO conscious businesses. Eso There's nothing wrong with that being your brand. But then being very clear about saying, Hey, if you are X, you know, here's how you can plug into my community if you are X, Here's how you could plug into a community and and be very clear that you have two completely different. You know, it's basically the buyer and the seller almost, but that you have a completely different supply and demand and those air completely different people. And there's no no, you just need to be very clear about, you know, even I could even see a home page where you just have those, you know, almost like two columns down the side where somebody could self select and then they could actually go deeper in your website based on how they've identified themselves. If you are an organization that would like to get featured. Click here on Ben. You could have stories of organizations and ways that you can help them in ways that they could make themselves more attractive to be featured. And then you could have on the other side. If you are a journalist or reporter covering a story about and one, you know, really great resource on Iko conscious businesses, click here and then you could give them the information that they were looking for. And I think that that's just be really clear about it. There's nothing wrong with saying, Hey, we have two distinct people. Tell me which one you are and that's what I do when people follow me. And if you want to, it's barry molds dot com slash creativelive is that I asked him, Where are you stuck rights and then depending where they're stuck in their of money or people or sales and marketing. That's how I I target the information, the value I'm going to give to them. So, Shannon, what about in your area? We have just a two person team that that runs the business essentially, and I'm pretty much 100% of the social media because my partner is older. He doesn't really believe in it. He doesn't Facebook. He doesn't blogged. He doesn't really care about it. He knows it's important, but he just says, Will you take care of it? Because he really doesn't want to be involved. So given that I have to do 100% of the social marketing, as well as running the business, dealing with the students and the parents and the clients and the customers and the you know, the in store merchandising in all of those things, how can I segregate that time to make sure that I am effectively using the social marketing without overwhelming myself? Good question, John. As a great answer. I think the first thing I would do is I would fire him my first because I'm old. So that's not an excuse, right? Exactly, But But it actually you know. So back to your original question. Um, I think you can slowly drag him in. He doesn't understand. It doesn't care about it, you know, thinks it's thinks it's acts right. So part of your job is actually to teach him what it is and what the value is and how it can actually be a win for your customers. Andi, I'll tell you. The easiest way I've done that before is interviewing. Put him on video, put him put over recorder in front of him and let him just start talking about sharing his again. I don't know anything about the business, but I'm assuming there's that. He has some passion for this business, that perhaps he was a founder or co founder and actually just start bringing his story in and his personality in Andi. I think what you'll find is is Hill Hill automatically. I believe this has been my experience. Become a little more engaged, but back to your real question about how do I segment segment the time. I think that you have Teoh. You have to simply do that. You have to, you know, whether it's do you ever make appointments, Anybody ever meet with you? Right? Well, so what I've schooled people for years is to say, Okay, I'm gonna make a marketing appointment at two o'clock every day and from two o'clock 23 that's booked off in my calendar. Nobody can schedule over that. I you know, I comes around. I make that appointment. It might be that I'm going to spend that time writing or doing social media. Or might be I'm gonna be talking Teoh, a service provider who's gonna help me on something. But I think that that's, you know, that's how you have to kind of make it a habit. Now. Another thing that practice that I've done for years is actually try to segment my week that way. So then because sometimes there are there are those kind of daily things right that you can click off in 10 or 15 minutes. But some of my highest pay off work is writing and producing courses and doing things where I need a lot of focus. And so I do happen to have, ah, staff that helps in various areas of business. But we try to carve out two days a week where I'm working on the highest payoff activity. I don't do a lot of the day today effect. I'm not allowed to do a lot of the day today in those two days, Um, and it really allows us Teoh to stay focused on the things that you keep using that highest payoff activities. But, you know, it's really easy. One of the challenges with social media is you can spend all day on Twitter. It doesn't care, right? And so So you have to sometimes get that discipline to say, you know, here's what Here's where I'm getting my greatest return on. And so I need to carve out those time frames and, you know, whatever they're going to be, whatever the amounts are gonna make sense for you. You have to carve those out. So, John, you know we have Karen here in our studio audience. She's just starting a business called Yoga stream dot TV. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs? They're just starting out. That really would like to get the word out. They want to get found. What's the easiest way to do that? Because that's really the lifeblood of her business. Yeah, well, the first thing I told all all startups is Don't fall in love with your product or your service or what Or your idea go out and start finding some people to fall in love with it. And so God, and start talking to people immediately, is there. Ah, and again I'm carrying Hopefully you've done this if you're getting ready to launch. But do people really want this? Do people really need this? How do they need it? How will they consume it? You know, Go out and start proposing. Here's our outline for you know, here's what the videos they're going to look like on DSA start really showing that two people and really getting that's gonna be your customer Discovery. Who is it that's going to be? That's going to be most charged up about consuming yoga training in that format. Um, and then soon as you get that down, cotton start talking to some of the other peripheral people that are serving that industry as well. So it could be other holistic providers that could be nutritionists that could be people that are maybe doing some of what you're doing already. Andi, start talking about how starts start immediately looking for partnership opportunities where you could get access to their community that they've already built. I mean, obviously, you've got to give a really compelling reason and to give you access, you've gotta have a great product. You've gotta have a great reputation. They have to trust that you can deliver, but start building those bridges immediately because you can really jump start a business very quickly if somebody with that already has 50, subscribers says, Hey, you guys have to watch Karen's stuff and she's given us a great deal today if you dio and so those air Those are my two bits of advice. John last question really had for you is meal goes in a show. She's, ah, financial sole financial planner. So she's in a highly regulated industry, which so they have some more limitations. What advice you have if you can't use some of the things like social media that many of us do use, I think milk was limited in some of the stuff. Sheikhoun dio. Yeah, I think the 1st 1 is, you know, pushed compliance to the you know, as far as you can't. I mean, you know, obviously there are a couple things that are always going to be off limits, you know, talking about returns, talking about actual customers, getting results, your limited those you always will be limited. And those but actually sharing advice on you know how to get through. I mean, some of the some of the trigger. Things that really make people invest, make people change advice. You know, when I'm selling home, how do I get through sending my kids to college? You know how? Okay, my daughter's getting married now. What? Right. I mean, all the kind of things that that really triggered a lot of of need for what you do or need for counsel or need for change are the things that you will always be able to write about. Andi, I think that in a lot of ways, that actually makes you more human, which, by the way, happens, research turns out, happens to be a good thing. And so, you know, don't don't just think. Oh, you know I can't write about my product, so I can't. You know, I can't participate in social media. You can always write about the things that that circle and stimulate. You know what your product does and so keep that in mind. I love that idea. John. Thank you so much for being with us. It creativelive and give us the name again. If people want to re watch your creative live, Of course. So it is, I believe, under the title of stress free selling on about a year or a little more baby right out of a year ago, I did a program duct tape marketing. So it's really those two courses together kind of make the end and customer journey their duct tape marketing and stress free selling. And, of course, if you've read duct tape marketing, you've got to read the companion guide, which is duct tape selling. There it is there, you know, I would think that's the Michael Port addition. It ISS and Michael. Port, of course, has also been on Creativelive Aziz. Well, so, John, thanks much your time today. We really appreciate it.