047: The Mom Test: Is It the Reason Your Internet Marketing is Suffering?

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show, Episode 47 the Mom Test. Is it? The reason your internet marketing is suffering?

Robert Plank 0:12 Welcome back to the Robert Plank show. We're talking about internet marketing and this thing called the Mom Test. So I'm really reluctant to get too deep into all these marketing terms, right? People talk about KPIs and your target market and the niche in your customer avatar and your product or service, and they get so far down the rabbit hole that you don't even know what the heck they're talking about. And this confusing area marketing is kind of a dangerous place to be because, I mean, a lot of marketers, whether they realize it or not, just load up all the terms and invent all these new fangled things, even though there was really a term for it before, but they had to make a brand new shiny label on it. And unfortunately, a lot of people won't speak up, and a lot of people don't want to look stupid and won't admit that they know something as simple as an email autoresponder. When I first realized this, in fact, when I was on a webinar a few years ago and someone was talking about internet marketing, and they just jump into a thing called an Aweber. And if you don't know what Aweber is, that is an email autoresponder system where you can have a lead capture page and have a website where you ask someone for a name and email address, and you can say, well, I want to give you my free report on how to trade in the stock market. So you enter your name and email address, and I will give you that free report, and then now you will become an email subscriber of mine, and that means that you have now given me permission to shoot, you know, emails, and I can always unsubscribe at any time. But now that's the thing called building a list, and even us an idea as simple as that, if you haven't heard of it, I mean, it needs to be explained. On the other hand, if you have heard of it, someone skips over the explaining. It's like, well, then they're already teaching and showing you something you've already seen. So we want to talk about today is this thing called the Mom Test, okay? And what this means is that, can you explain what it is that you're doing online in such a way that your mom can understand it, or, if you're you know, if you're in such advanced years that maybe a friend's mom can understand her, maybe when your mom was younger, or when or a mom that you know. But can you explain your online business to someone who is a mom, who is not stupid or anything like that, but just has very little interest in this computer tech stuff. And so we see a lot of marketers just get too dang crazy and get too much into the echo chamber, and too much of listening to all their friends, and they say, Well, you know what I do with my online businesses. I'm a traffic broker. I move traffic around. I take all these clicks over there, and I retarget them over there, and I put them over there, and I take 10% off the top. Well, that sounds like a scam, right? That sounds kind of like something iffy there. And so on the other hand, if you say something like, Well, what I do is I teach people how to make money online by selling a $7 report. Well, hey, here you go. Here's a $7 report. And if you open up that $7 report, it'll tell you the way to make money online is to sell the exact same $7 report, telling people how do they can make money online selling a $7 report. So you see how that gets even sketchier. That gets into multi level marketing territory. And in fact, this is the number one reason, at least that I see, why internet marketers get banned from different areas. Like what's really scary is if someone takes away your ability to take online payments, if they lose their merchant account, if lose their paypal account, where they can take credit card orders, most people that I see, not all, but most people who internet marketers, they lose access to this because they're in sketchy territory. They they go for what they think is the most exciting thing, what they think is the low hanging fruit, and they get themselves in serious trouble. So we need to dumb it down and talk to someone about retargeting, or about recurring income, or about one click up sales, or about a whatever that might not be what the mass market is asking for. And this is one of those things where you have to have this thing called a lead capture page. You have to build a list, you have to figure out and fuel them out and ask them questions and figure out what it is that they want to know. Where are they personally stuck, and where can you help them? So I imagine if your niche was trading stock market. Most of them just want to know how to get started or how to trade some simple stocks. And by doing these things like building up even a couple of 100 of email subscribers and having an automatic follow up sequence, where on day one they get a special email from you, on day three, they get a special email from you. On day five, they get a special email from you, you can feel them out and figure out, well, are they the kind of people who want to get rich quick and make a million dollars, or are they the kind of people who have built up some kind of a retirement nest egg and they want to keep that? Are they the kind of people who maybe they're in between and they want to build up their retirement fund before it's too late, or they offer home sooner or travel, but you don't. Know until you ask them. So this thing called the Mom Test, think about this. Can you explain what it is you're doing online in simple enough terms that your mom or someone's mom out there that you know can understand? And so that might mean that you really, really have to dumb it down. And in my case, I say, Well, I sell software because I used to come across the same exact issue when I first my business started picking up, and I was following bigger and bigger taxes, and I had to figure out how to, you know, do these different tax deductions and things with my online business. I was explaining to my accountant what it is that I do, and I was said, Well, you know what I do is I sell these things called short reports, and I sell these things called Software plugins, and people buy them. And my accountant said, Okay, great. Well, do you have any employees? Well, I said, No. Well, do you have any inventory? I said, No, I don't. It's all online. It's all digital. And so we had a heck of a time, early on figuring out the different expenses I actually had it in my online business. And before I had I actually had a real business set up, I just got hit really hard, tax wise. And so now that I've think, thought about and discovered and used the Mom Test, well now I say that what I do is I sell DVDs and I help people set up their websites and their membership sites to take payments online. Pretty simple, right? So first of all, right, off the bat, can you, or is there something out there, and let's just say that everything you have is 100% online, right? Like in our income machine.com, course, we show you how to set up always different web pages, right? A place to capture email leads, a place to take payments, deliver a digital product, which is usually videos, things like that, but even set up a blog, but that's all ones and zeros, right? That's all online stuff. So could you take that course you're selling and and do what we call burning it to a DVD? And then I use a tool called Sony DVD architect, and then I put it onto a service called kunaki.com that's k, u n, a, k, i.com and then now I have a physical DVD set that I can I mean, maybe I can mail it to people who bought my course, maybe just have a couple copies around just to Say, Okay, I own, I sell DVDs. I There's actually something that I have created that you can hold in your hand. Now, on the same line of thinking, if you have this thing called a free blog, right, what I like to do is, I like to take all the things that don't really fit into a paid product, like, for example, this podcast, and put them onto a blog. And some of them are spoken like this. Some of them are written down, and that blog is at Roberts plank.com and what you can actually do is copy and paste some of the entries in your blog and go to a site called Amazon Kindle, which is@kdp.amazon.com and we show you actually how to get a book published in our course called make a product.com

Robert Plank 8:05 and so you can literally copy and paste a handful of your blog posts, put them in a Word document, and push a button on Amazon's website, and now you're selling a physical book. Actually, I'm sorry. So the site I told you about Katie Peter Amazon calm is called Kindle, and then the site where you can publish a physical book is called createspace.com that's C, R, E, A T, E, S, P, A, C, e.com, but the good news is you can submit your your special new book from a blog to both of these sites, submit the digital version to Kindle, and Then submit the physical version to create space. And then Amazon takes a small percentage of what it costs them to print the book. But then now you can order a box full, or even 10, just 10 or 20 copies of your book. And now you have something that you can hold your hand, in your hand, and I'm telling you the average person, whether they're a mom or not, they don't understand all this technical computer stuff, and I know everyone thinks that they're a crazy, new fangled startup, but even look at ones like say, Uber, right? Uber is a really cool startup, which is like a peer to peer taxi service. Anyone can become a taxi driver. You can explain that in one sentence. You don't have to take 20 minutes to do it. So let's think about this for a second. This thing called the Mom Test. So can, number one, can you explain this to your mom or someone's mom? Number two, are you solving a real problem? So what I mean when I say you're solving a real problem? Well, the problem that Uber is solving is expensive taxis, or that people can't get a taxi. So now that everyone's a taxi driver, it's easier to get a tax if you are teaching a course on how to trade the stock market. The problem you're solving is people are frustrated by all these terms, or all these different softwares, or they don't know how to actually trade stocks properly, or they're too risky, or not risky enough, or things like that. So you solve that problem. So number two. What real problem are you solving now? Number three, can you explain it to me in under a minute? So you already said, can you make it simple enough for a mom to understand, a mom who doesn't care about computers? Number two, do you solve a real problem otherwise? Why the heck do you are you even trying to sell this thing? And number three, can you explain it to me in under a minute, or in one sentence? So what I do is I get your membership site set up, a website that takes payments. Boom. Figure it out. All done. I get your book published in under 24 hours. There you go. Done. So that leads us to the next thing, where the final one, so I guess that's number four, where I'm asking you, is this something that can change your life in one to 30 days. Now, I say one to 30 days because if you have something, you can change your life overnight. Well, great, but if it takes longer than 30 days, it's a tougher sell. It's not exciting, and you're not doing a very good job marketing. So I was at a conference one time. I talked to some guy, and he said that his his idea, or his website, was how to teach people computer stuff, right? How to, you know, use a Word document, and how to use an Excel spreadsheet, and how to use PowerPoint, how to check your email, how to publish a blog post. So I was like, Okay, there's something there. But after 30 days, what will I have? Will I have those things set up? Or, like, you know what? What sets you apart from me, going to the library and taking a class, they are going to the bookstore and buying a book there, or even checking some YouTube videos. What is it that you have that's special? So you don't have to answer those things right away, but I want you to think about this thing called the Mom Test. Can you explain it to your mom? Or a mom? Is it solve a real problem? Can you explain it in under a minute? And can it change your life in one to 30 days? Now we're not talking about this thing called the elevator pitch, right? Or people try to cram all the stuff into two minutes. That's kind of cheesy and salesy, right? And we're not talking about a thing called a customer avatar, where they say, Well, you know, my ideal buyer is a guy named Bob, and he's 50 years old, and he loves computer stuff. We're not talking about any silly stuff like that. We're talking about explaining things in real simple language. And just because something might excite you, or something might even seem simple to you, you could easily be going over all your customers heads and all your buyers heads, even that you're trying to sell on some other product, just because you're not dialing it back and thinking about this thing called the Mom Test. I mean, you'd be surprised. I was speaking in Thailand a few years ago, and me and my business partner Lance Thomas sure were talking about all these things, like publishing a Kindle book, making a membership site, running webinars, all these things. And some people were kind of excited about it, but for some reason something was kind of off. And looking back on it now, I think that even though it was simple to us, a lot of people were just going along with it because it didn't want to seem stupid. And then the guy who came on after us, this guy, he was wearing, like, torn jeans and flip flops, and he was like, I'm sorry, guys, I'm really hung over. And he was, like, really terrible speaker, but he showed this piece of software. Like, I couldn't even figure out what it was, but I guess it was like, you'd make your online funnel, and it would do you draw like different like bubbles, and they had arrows connecting them. And I don't even think I knew what I was looking at, but the whole audience loved it, because it was a simple thing that they could get their head around. And it was something where he was, in fact, simpler and easier and a lower barrier, eventually, compared to us. So he sold a lot more apt out of it in Thailand than we did. So the Mom Test, is it the reason your internet marketing is suffering? Well, play it safe and dumb it down anyway. And if you don't believe me, ask your list. Ask your list a few questions and ask them different things, like, well, where's your website? If you're teaching them how to build a website, what stocks have you changed? If you're asking that, and it's one of those things where you're gonna have to take some of the responses with a grain of salt, because some people try to act like they they know what they're talking about what they don't, so you're gonna have to fuel it out. But I guarantee you that probably 80% of your list is losing you probably 80% of your list think that you're too advanced, so you have to dumb it down and go back to the basics. What works, what sold the most, because the newbies are far going to outnumber the people who are the experts in your field. And now can you have these high ticket things, these live classes, these coaching programs, if you know what those are for your advanced people will sure. But the things that you're going to sustain your business, the things that are going to keep bringing in the leads are going to be the really simple things how to do just that very first step. I mean, if you do a YouTube search for how to buy a stock online, I'm sure you'd get a bunch more views for videos like that. Then, for example, how to do a straddle or something crazy like that, or put in call options. Most people want to know the basics. So the Mom Test, people want to know the basics. Thanks for tuning in to today's Robert Plank show, where we talked about the Mom Test. Be sure to check us out on iTunes at Robert Plank show.com, forward slash I T. U, N, E, S, and give us a five star rating our plank show.com forward slash iTunes, and thanks for listening.

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