Lessons

Lesson Info

Overview of the Top 5 Marketing Tools

We are going to talk about marketing tools right now it may seem odd that in a course that is all about commanding the fees you deserve, we're actually spending the first day and the first session on marketing because and I'll explain a little bit about this as we go along but essentially pricing problems have marketing solutions, right? They're not completely separate and really what I've seen, what I've experienced myself on what I've seen with all of my clients is that the better marketing you do, the more you can charge and the better more regular your clients are, so we're really going to focus today on the marketing tools that you need which will allow you to command the fees you deserve because one thing also to keep in mind is that if you don't do any marketing if you get all your work by word of mouth, which actually sometimes when people say that they are doing marketing, they just don't count it as marketing, right? But if you're not doing much marketing than you're not putt...

ing out there, the message that you want people to hear and therefore that they can't justify higher fees if there's nothing to help them justify it so there is a very clear connection between the marketing that you do and what it means in the minds of the people who were going to hire you and how much they can justify paying all right, so we'll make that connection as we go along, so in this segment we have three lessons. The first one is an overview of the top five marketing tools and then I'll go into detail about the first two, which is your elevator pitch and networking. All right, so those are the three lessons will have exercises for each so first lesson for the overview of the top five tools and we have another one of these awesome illustrations by in case murray so thank you, ian, if you're out there all right, so the top five marketing tools so the first one, as I mentioned, is your elevator pitch and guess what, it's, not about you. Your elevator pitch is not about you. I know it sounds weird, but we'll show you some examples. In fact, this idea of it's not about you comes up with every single marketing tool, so my intention is just to kind of get it out of your mind that marketing is about you. All right? So instead of being about you, it reflects the need your prospects perceive. Now that may be different from the need your prospects actually have. They may not know what they need because they don't know much about what you do and what you can do for them that's where your marketing comes in also, but your elevator pitch the thing that you say in answer to the question, what do you do essentially in a networking environment or in any environment, is the thing your prospects perceive as their need? It's what's in their mind that you have to hook into so that's what we're going for here and the purpose of your elevator pitch is to get you into a conversation with people. The purpose is not to tell them everything there is to say about you in fifteen words, because, of course, that's not possible, right? So the whole point of your elevator pitch is to get someone into a conversation so that you can talk with them and tell them more, tell them exactly what they need to hear. And as we said in the previous segment, talk about ask the right questions to get them talking because your elevator pitch is essentially should be focused on what they need to hear, but I'll explain exactly how to do that when we get there. All right, second top marketing tool, your network, right? So your network, who you know is actually very, very important. You aren't starting from scratch with your network, all of us, no people, right, we know people on linked in we know people in the real world, we know people in the online chat. Right, in fact, yesterday I was observing one of the creative live courses, and the instructor had a guest, and they had met on the block on one of their blocks, right? So there are all these people that we know they are part of your network, so you're not starting from scratch, you're starting to build your network, thinking about everyone, you know, everywhere everyone you've ever known, and then you figure out who is missing from your network, and I'll talk in the third lesson about who should be in your network so you can figure out who is missing. All right, the third marketing tool is your linked in profile. Does everybody in the room have a linked in profile? Yes, they're nodding their heads. Yes, excellent. You should if you don't. You should if you don't. Maybe you're not all in in your business, right? So this is definitely one of the online presence is that people need. Now. Think about this. Your linkedin is essentially a database of professionals. It's like google for professionals, ghoul for the work world and people use it as a search engine. So your profile needs to be created in a way that people who are searching for people like you and services like yours will be able to find you. And again, we'll go into some more detail when we get there later about what exactly that means, and I'll show you some examples of what I consider to be good linked in profiles and finally keep in mind that lincoln was not designed for creatives you'll notice that it looks really not bad but clean let's just say it's clean, right? And there isn't a lot of visual uh, interest to it, and it kind of looks like a resume and creative professionals if you're looking for clients and not a job, you really don't need a resume, but that's the structure of lengthen so you have to find some work arounds from a creative you have to be creative to find workarounds for your linked in profile, and we can talk a little bit about how you could do that, too. All right, that's the third marketing tool, the fourth marketing tool again, which we'll talk about in the next segment, is your marketing smart website. I talked about this earlier did I mention that it's, not about you? Your marketing smart website is not about you it's about the needs that your prospects perceive that they have in the same way that your elevator pitch is about the needs that they perceived that they have because it's the first thing that they see when they're looking for someone like you, it speaks directly to their needs and I'll show you some examples of ones that I think do that right and it makes them say when they land there this is exactly who I need that message needs to be clear in their mind when they land on your home page the fifth one you may be surprised to hear that the fifth top marketing tool is an email newsletter I think the email newsletter is one of the most important and frankly the most effective marketing tools we have and very few people are using them and again, it's not about you, right? Your email newsletter is not about you it's it's about the information that would be relevant and useful to your prospects and clients. The purpose of it is to keep you top of mind if you send it out it's not going to be weekly it's not going to be daily, I would say at the most monthly, but it tells them I'm here, I'm here, I'm here sometimes I've heard from clients that when they stop sending out their email newsletter or they forget or they put it on the back burner, some of their clients and prospects think they might not be in business anymore right? That's an assumption people make assumptions based on absence based on missing information it's yourjob with your marketing to make sure they don't make that assumption about you all right and finally the whole purpose of your email newsletter is too little by little drip by drip help people understand what exactly you could do for them otherwise they're going to make it up and that's not usually right alright so j k o resonating they really do recognize how important it is tea linked in and people saying they research people who contact them all the time and the best way to find about other people as well as actually using it is your own connections yes to the newsletter says lady on artie sandra says I need to learn much more about the email newsletter all right, well we will be doing that later on in this session okay so now we get to the exercise excuse me for this lesson so in the workbook what you have is um an overview of what I just presented plus the questions so let's go over these and have our studio audience as well as our online audience give us some of these answers so the first one is of the five marketing tools which of these are you using effectively or maybe which of these are you using justin for me my network like staying connected with my network and a lot of my business was word of mouth and just kind of staying on top of mind with the network sending hand written letters and just staying connected with those people and linked in profile it's funny because I had a real strong perception about what lincoln was and that it wasn't for creatives and I took a program and that that was kind of ah just program around how to increase business and they required you tow to sign up for linked in and when I made that decision to sign up but I had to if I was going to take this program everything changed and you can create a pro like a portfolio on there it's really power I found my perception around what lincoln was and how powerful it could be for creatives I think that I don't know I've been able to create a really strong portfolio on there and it's got me the job of creative life wow, so interesting we have a success story right here on I think it's very interesting what you said about your assumption that lincoln wasn't four creatives right? I think you probably it might not be alone in that and you can see then also how you have to do a work around there are tools you can use I'm not sure if the portfolio piece is available anymore, but there are things that that they've done to enhance it and make it much more usable for creatives excellent all right uh raina which one are you using effectively? Definitely also using my network and I would say I'm one of those people who gets ninety six percent of the business world of mouth and it's worked pretty well for me I have a profile on lincoln but to tell you the truth I've never known what to do with it I've never gotten any business through it I'm absolutely not using it it's there it lists all the pertinent information but I'd love to find out how I can use it more effectively um have a website but I'm in the middle of completely we thinking that no good all right we're gonna focus on all of those things in this session zane yeah myself included my network has been pretty effective I've been using linked in but a tool that I've kind of been a game changer for me for the past month is angel ist angel list what is that so it's it's ah it's mainly focused on start ups within like technology space and that's been that's allowed me to get a lot of contract projects swell is so it's a website yeah it's a website for mainly for startups to raise angel angel investing okay vc money um as well as find uh find prospects for projects and uh jobs excellent. All right r k o j kale I'll take okay that's that's robert that strong kennedy's brother well people saying yes lincoln has become very important machine curious about linked in there because I see it's slightly competitive and that people are really just trying to gatherers in many connections they possibly can as a status symbol and therefore it's sort of invalidates what people's real connections are you sort of encounter that give an opinion on that I disagree with you and we're going to talk a lot about linked in in the next segment and so I will address those issues and if I forget please remind me I will absolutely all right anything else from the chat room about this question people say they do use thie email list and they had to have found that very useful for others the same well they have found that they find it very very hard to get their email newsletter red in a sea of emails for prospect people just treated a spam because you said it's been very effective yes and I will also do a whole segment a whole lesson on emails but the short answer is who cares if they delete it because all that matters is that they get it and that they know that it's coming again and again because timing is everything when it comes to marketing and I don't care if people delete my message as long as they know that I will be sending it every two weeks or every month and they will keep hearing from me and I will be there when they need me perfect all right let's go to the next question which ones have you tried unsuccessfully studio audience justin um I have a portfolio website I don't think that it's necessarily michel martin smart. I'll bet it's not okay, good. We'll focus on that. What about you, ray now? Well, the lengthen, I think it's unsuccessful? Yes. Okay, good. We'll focus on that for me. It's the email newsletter so I created a marketing website and I had the created the e book for people to sign up, but I haven't gotten that many leads through that. So I put in all the effort of creating any book and also like sending out campaigns, but they never really converted for me into actual paying clients, yet they have not yet converted into actual paying clients. And really, this is what I mean meant before when I talked about patients, right? And all of these tools have to work together so it's good to have them in place, but then you also have to integrate them in a way that builds over time, so we will talk about that. All right. And in the chat room are people talking about which ones they've tried unsuccessfully urban deejay open cowboys saying linked in an email have just done nothing for either of them on dh christians? Obviously well, they tried the email newsletter, but it just scares me because they don't know what sort of content filled to use and that's a very common problem which I will address also in session too because if you don't know who you're talking to it's impossible to know what to say to them right? If you can do anything for anyone and you try to create a newsletter for everyone it's going to be impossible so we will get specific about that and you'll see examples of email newsletters and in the workbook actually I also have links to the examples that I will be showing so we'll have access to that all right and then finally the third question uh first for the studio audience of the five top marketing tools and maybe even any other marketing tools and I haven't mentioned which ones do you hate? I'm not a fan of the email newsletter like I don't like receiving emails are real empty and so long email newsletters you hate yeah long email newsletters and I find it just way too much work I'm going to make you love email newsletters yeah so I guess right now the one I hate is just email newsletter okay, good I have to everybody hates semen lose it and I I actually write a newsletter slow food san francisco because I'm part of that organization I see how much work it is and I think writing that coming up with the content for my own business would be ever so much harder so I'm more dreading it than hating it there is a difference between dreading and hating I agree and what I would say to you is number one, you don't have to do it yourself you can get help in fact, I'll show you an example of jill anderson's email newsletter which is written by someone else whose newsletter I will also show you d jury enzo of connect with copy dot com okay, so people freelancers creative professionals can work together to support each other and get this stuff done, but you'll see that once you and we'll talk about content marketing as part of the marketing plan later on in this session but the point is that it is complicated it is complex but if you put the pieces in place and you get in a groove it's it's easy actually so I'm gonna make you love even losers to justin. Which ones do you hate or dread? I'd be in the same boat emailing newsletter and I guess just sitting here but I think about like how to actually make it a newsletter creative because to me I get so many email newsletters that are very just promotion promotion don't even look at him and he more so how do I actually like bring my curiosity and what I'm researching and finding so that you're kind of changing my already good my short answer again to that is how do you make people want it essentially and it's not that hard. You have to bring your personality into your newsletter and you need to know who you're talking to. Those were really the two keys, and most people do something very generic and they don't know who they're talking to, and therefore they come up with these really boring long email newsletters, but we're going to change all that here really energize when he wants what they hated stuff they started actually shouting they're in block capitals right now, and it seems to be the winner is facebook everybody seems to hate face but which I hate, so I'm glad I did teo low this. I'm glad to some people and people shouting twitter's all but lee hawkins admitted, or he hates twitter says he has actually gotten a gig from it, but other people, some other ones, some people have had definitely successes with the email you several s say they found it very challenging, and they didn't enjoy the process of it. They did actually have success with it. It's. Interesting? Yeah, and, um not to brag, but, uh my email newsletter it's called quick tips from marketing mentor and I know a couple of you in the room are on my list, and I'm not gonna ask you if you love it or hate it but a lot of people tell me that mine is one of the few that they like and keep receiving and read, and I always ask them why, and they say because it's short number one and because it has useful information, I know exactly who I'm talking to, and I'm always thinking about what they need, and I'm always tryingto be a resource, essentially, I mean, that's what marketing is is be a resource to your prospects and clients, and you could do that with your email newsletter. All right, now, marjorie, is just one thing that we haven't talked about it all yet. She's the only one so far and she says she hates cold calling. Now, how many people hate that way? There is a reaction from, I think most people just just the word of it turns them cold. It's, too it's, too. And, um, when we get to the marketing plan, we will, uh, actually, I talk about it as direct outreach and prospecting because you do have to reach out to the people that you've decided are going to be able to give you what you need. But cold calling is very old school number one, and I think it doesn't work by itself. Again it works in integration in tandem with some of the other marketing tools and ed gandhi, a from the international freelancers academy is going to be joining me in session to to talk about what I consider to be the effective way to do what is essentially cold calling which is warm email prospecting right that's why it's called that it's not cold calling it's warm email prospecting I will be talking about how you make it warm because that's the thing that gets people to respond and just to give you really the answer to the question so you don't have to wait you make it personal the more personal your outreach is, the more likely people are to respond okay? So um I just want to say one other thing before we move on to the next lesson, you'll notice that I'm not going to talk about social media much at all I don't have it as one of my top tools it I put it in the category of content marketing, which is part of the marketing plan which I'll talk about later but I wouldn't say I hate facebook it has its place in my marketing arsenal if you will in my marketing tool box but I think that social media and that includes twitter and instagram and pinterest and all of these tools which are for free and therefore people think are good because their free but unless they're used to a tee jik lee, they're not going to help you, and they're just going to be a time suck. So just because you can go on facebook doesn't mean you should. Just just because you can tweet doesn't mean you should. And I'll talk a little bit about how to use those tools in a proportional way, right? Because that's, what they need to do, that should not be a waste of time.