Archive for September, 2016
129: Book Launch Strategies and Self-Publishing with Angela Ford
Angela Ford tells us about online marketing and social media, and how she was able to use those skills to self-publishing market her fiction novels using Instagram, Facebook groups, contests, book tours, and more.
What really makes me unique here is that even though I do a lot of the digital marketing, I actually write fantasy novels. That's my huge passion project. That's a little strange, a little different there. It's a lot of fun for me. Then, what I get to do is not only promote those, but also promote my business. I do a lot with digital marketing. I work with a lot of creative entrepreneurs who have their own websites, their own blogs. Some of them actually sell products. Some of them do more of the courses and services. It really depends there. It's a fun way to work together to really strategize, be creative, and figure out, "Okay. What can I do today to get visible online, to get more clients, send people back to my website, and build that traffic, and build up a reputation on social media?"
Robert Plank: That's cool. I especially like that you have your fantasy novel as your hobby, but isn't it cool if the hobby we have makes us some money, too, right?
Angela Ford: Oh. Absolutely. I firmly believe that with what the entrepreneurial lifestyle, we all want to do a lot of different things. We're not just in it for one thing, like you just don't do a podcast, and that's it. I don't just do digital marketing for other people, and that's it. We all have different passions and different things that we're doing in our lives. Regardless of whether or not it's making money, but it's a huge plus and a huge bonus if it is.
Robert Plank: Right. All right. As far as that goes, like as far as the social media especially Twitter and stuff like that, do you think that there is a dark side to some of the social media? Especially with the, you know, a lot of people putting in a lot of time, not getting a lot of traction, or some of the bots and the spam stuff and going down a rabbit hole. Do you see people using social media in the wrong way?
Angela Ford: Oh, for sure. It's so funny that you say that, because every now and then I will get on Instagram or I'll get on Twitter, and I'll see a bunch of posts. I'm like, "Oh no. The marketers have come to down. They're ruining this social media platform, because they're really gungho promoting their next webinar, their next course, or they just have a ton of quotes there." It can be kind of frustrating. It takes away some of that real human connection when you get all of the spams and the bots coming in. Then, all of the posts that are really hardcore promotional. There definitely is that side, and it really isn't about promoting, promoting, promoting. The whole point of social media is to be social and to share authentically who you are, yourself, even if you're focused on one topic. That's one thing that I find frustrating is a lot of the promotion, and the fact that it's all based on services and products, and not necessarily on, like "I am an individual. Today, I'm at the beach." End of story.
Robert Plank: With all that, with all the marketers coming in an ruining everything, is there an answer? Is there a way to defeat all that?
Angela Ford: Oh, absolutely. There's a fine line between just pushing products and services, and then between pushing your lifestyle as an entrepreneur and what you do as an entrepreneur. I think Instagram is actually a fun way to show, because it's very focused on visuals, so there's really not a good way for a lot of marketers to come in and really promote their products and services. They can do it, but there's not a great way to do it. What I love about Instagram, particularly, is it's all focused on lifestyle and beautiful photos. You can really just take a picture of what you're doing today, and say "Hey. Today, I'm working from this coffee shop. I'm doing this, and I'm being productive. These are the three things that really help me. Share what you're doing today and tag me in the photo."
It starts a conversation going back and forth between people, and that's really what social media is about with getting that conversation started. Not just making it a one way conversation, but going back and forth sharing what you're doing, maybe some of the tips and tactics that you have. Then, asking people and inviting them to the conversation. Asking a question at the end. That's huge.
Robert Plank: As opposed to just being the spam route and being the machine gun, right?
Angela Ford: Exactly. As opposed to just saying, "Hey. My webinar is on tomorrow at eleven. Come join. Sign up. Here's the link."
Robert Plank: I mean, if we do have that webinar, if we do have something to sell, what's the attack plan, I guess? Is it kind of like more of a long game, where you kind of put little tidbits in, or ... I guess I'm trying to figure out is there a way to actually sell something on social media and not be a jerk about it, but also get some traffic using one of those platforms?
Angela Ford: Yeah. For sure. For sure. If there's a good way to do it on all social media platforms as a matter of fact, but first of all, you have to build a reputation and make sure what you're offering is of value to others, that you're being authentic, that you're establishing that two way conversation by asking questions, getting involved with others, and then when you do have something, when you do have that webinar, that new book that's out, when you do make that announcement people are going to be much more excited about it, because you've taken an interest in their lives. Now, they're your fans. They're interested in what you're doing. When you have something come out, they're all excited, and they're ready to sign up, join, and help promote it. It really is a long game. It's value first, then sells later. You can even put that down as the 80/20 rule. 80% just being helpful, valuable, and authentic, and 20% actually selling and promoting.
Robert Plank: Interesting. Once you have them hooked, then it's time to actually send them to a link or something like that.
Angela Ford: Absolutely. It's the same thing with new friendships. When you dive into a new friendship or making friends with people, you don't necessarily ask them for a favor first. You get to know them. You figure out what makes them tick. Then, later on when you do have a favor to ask, they're more than happy. They're like, "Oh. Of course. We've been friends forever. Let's do this."
Robert Plank: Cool. Yeah. You've been friends for like six months or three months or something, it's like, "Okay. Now that I've given you just overwhelming value. I've given you so much more than I'm asking, even though it's delivered over this huge period of time. Now, it's like I've given you a hundred times, and I'm only asking for ten back." Right?
Angela Ford: Yes. Yup. Yeah.
Robert Plank: Cool. You mentioned a few minutes ago about your fantasy novels, and I don't know lately I've just been looking for some interesting stories and stuff that's not the usual norm. Can you tell us about your ... I mean, feel free. Go in to whatever kind of detail, but I mean could you tell us about your fantasy novels? How that came to be? How you used your marketing skill in this new frontier, I guess, for you?
Angela Ford: Yeah. Absolutely. I first started writing when I was like ten, eleven, or twelve. I used to journal every single day. I have four sisters, and they're all very imaginative and creative. We made up all sorts of stories and games when we were younger and playing together. After awhile, I started writing those down and turning them to stories. My thinking was that I wanted to create this world was similar to earth and similar to the humans in earth, but was completely different. It's not even in the same galaxy. It's this whole other world that I created.
There's four different worlds, which is why it's called The Four Worlds series. They're all on the same planet. There are different adventures that take place throughout each of the worlds. Each of the books focuses on one of those worlds. The first book that's out, The Five Warriors, is about the western world. One of the things that I really wanted to do was be different than other fantasy authors. A lot of fantasy authors, they incorporate different mythical beasts inside their stories. They have the dragons, the wizards, the elves, and the goblins. Very distinct good and bad creatures. One of the things I didn't want was I didn't want to have any of those creatures. I also didn't want to have any humans in the story.
Robert Plank: Interesting.
Angela Ford: It's all very brand new. There are no human. There are no dragons. There are no wizards. There are things that are very similar to it. I just call them by different names. Now, I first wrote the stories when I was a teenager, and now I'm rewriting all of them to make them actually be good. The plot was ... It wasn't that great to be honest. I started rewriting those. One of the big things I wanted to focus on was diversity. Each of my books, I have four core people groups. They are all very distinct and very different. There's the group of people that are very curious. They just like to go on adventures. They often get into trouble, because they are way to curious for their own good. Then, there are people that just like to live in forests and that's it. They have their own secrets. They are very in tune with nature and the forests. There's also the people group that they just want to farm and stay at home. Eat, drink, and be married, and have lots of children. Have their rich lives just staying at home. The last people group, they really love high elevations, mountains, and that's where they'll be found. Up above everyone else.
In the first book, these four people groups they actually come together, and it's just a very interesting blend seeing how diverse they are and how distinct they are, their cultures, and their backgrounds. Then, how that blends together when they come together. It actually has the message that, "We're stronger together when we do come together to do these different things, whether it's saving the world or going off on another adventure. That's really one of the things I wanted to focus and highlight in my books that being different is a good thing, but we can all work together.
Robert Plank: The whole thing is cool. I especially like that you kind of took the, I don't know, the raw creativity, the spark, or whatever you want to called it, the stuff from childhood, then come up with all these new ideas. Then, you kind of put it into a box, refined it, and made it something that actually makes sense, a good plot, and good characters, and stuff like that. I think that's really cool, especially because like we've been talking for the last few minutes about how it's uncool to sell a product. It's uncool to sell coaching, but then on the internet there's so many ways to make money. I really like the idea of just publishing whatever, and then selling so many copies of that, that becomes a full time income. This series of books and things like that, is this on Kindle, CreateSpace, and all that?
Angela Ford: Absolutely. It's on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Books-A-Million. The Five Warriors is the name of the book. Yeah. It's available. It's also in the Kindle unlimited program, which is fantastic both for authors and for readers. Readers, if they're a part of the program, they can read the book for free. Then, on the author's side, I actually get paid for every page that people are reading. That's exciting. It's pure entertainment. It's relatable in a way. It is another great way to talk about something fun that's different than saying, "Okay. This book is going to help you with your business. It's going to show you how to get more traffic." It's none of those things. It's just going to be something entertaining that you could read. That's also fun to promote.
Robert Plank: Well, yeah. If people like, you have your fans, and it's fun promoting it, I mean, what's the harm in that? Could you walk us through the process of ... Okay. Once the books are done, and they're published, what are the steps you personally take to then sell a bunch of copies?
Angela Ford: Yeah, that's actually a lot of fun. I'm really big into doing a whole book launch strategy. What I like to do after the book is done, and it's gone off to the editor, and I'm done with my part of writing it out and I really just need to do some final edits, at that point, that's when I like to sit down and strategize my book launch strategy and decide what I'm going to do. When's the book going to come out? I'm going to do an actual book launch party in my city. I'm going to do a virtual book launch, which for the first book I am going to do both of those. I also did several different contests and giveaways. Just to get people involved. I gave away an Amazon gift card, a Starbucks gift card, and then a couple months after the book came out I started giving away copies of the book just to stir up some action and getting you audience to pay attention to it. I also did a lot of promoting online.
Initially, with Facebook and in different Facebook groups just talking to people about books and self publishing. Anytime someone would say, "Oh. You know, I'm looking for a new book to read. I'm looking for something fiction related." I could just drop in a link, and say "Oh. Well, I just finished writing this book. It's fantasy. It's entertainment. It will be something relaxing to read, just to calm your brain after you've been doing all this work." Just tell them about it. I actually had a lot of people that I had conversations with online, go and purchase the book immediately, just because we had a conversation about books. That happened on both Facebook and Twitter.
Then, on Instagram that just kind of fell into my lap. Once I got actual copies of the book, because I worked with a professional designer the book cover is absolutely gorgeous. I was really excited, so I posted a picture online, and said something like, "just got in my copies of my book. Here's what it looks like. I'm really excited." Just to talk about it and get some momentum going. People started commenting, liking it, talking about the book cover and how beautiful it was. They just got really excited about it. I remember thinking, "Every time I post on Instagram about the book, I got the biggest engagement that I ever had." I was like, "Oh. People really like this." Then, all of a sudden book bloggers started reaching out. They started asking me to have a copy to read and review or promote on Twitter to all of their followers. I started doing that as well. That just took care of itself. That was a huge way to start bringing in new eyes to the book.
Then, one of the other things that I also did was a couple of the free e-book giveaways. Amazon allows you to give away your book every three months for free. You can make it free for five days. I did a couple of those and promoted them on different sites, like Freebooksy. They have daily emails that go out announcing the books that are discounted are free. They have an enormous email list. Some of them have over a hundred thousands, two hundred thousand people in those email lists. When they send it out and say, "Hey. This book is free for five days." There were tons of people that download it. That also helps with the sales ranking and the visibility for it as well.
Then, one of the things that really helped reach a new audience and also the visibility of the book was going on book tours. I actually did a book tour for an entire month. That was fantastic, because different publishers and book bloggers did a blog post on the book. There was one that went live every week. Sometimes there were three that went live during a week. That was another way to tap into their audience and get other people excited about it, talking about it. There was also a giveaway that went along with that. That helped also. Giveaways are just huge for bringing in more people. That was fantastic.
I would have to say, probably, the number one thing that really helped the book sales was the reviews. I had a couple of copies that I sent out to people before the book was officially published. When it went like on Amazon, I sent an email to everyone that read it before it went like, and asked them to just leave a review. It could be a sentence, just a couple words, nothing huge or super long. Just some short sentences about what they thought about the book. That really did it. People go online, and they read the reviews. They see all of these positive reviews, that sells itself. Those are definitely a few steps I would highly recommend for anyone who has a book coming out to take advantage of in order to get the word out, reach a new market, and start those book sales.
Robert Plank: Awesome. It just sounds like what's cool about these marketing strategies that you have, especially the social media stuff, is that it sounds like it applies to anything. The low hanging fruit are the obvious choices. You say, "I'm going to sell my membership course or I'm going to sell whatever." I really like that even when you choose to do something totally out of left field, you choose to take these childhood stories and put them on Amazon.
You still use the same strategies that you learned about using Instagram for this. I also like that ... It sounds like, am I right in this? That a lot of the social media stuff, it seems like a lot of it's about the consistent daily actions, like you post every day, you log in everyday, you respond every day to build up the stuff that pays off six months or a year later. Then, another thing about that other than the daily action and stuff like that, another thing is you build up this whole following, and it's just about being real and trying crazy stuff. Is that about right? It's about really stuff and doing something every day or maybe a lot of things every day?
Angela Ford: Yes. That's so true, because I've seen when I'm consistent when I post with social media, then my followers know that I'm there. They know that I'm interested in them, and they just keep coming back. They keep commenting, because they know I'm going to reply to every single comment at some point. It really is all about that. The strategies for launching, it's the same strategy. It's just different tactics. Just different little things you do, just depending on what kind of product you have. Then, how you're targeting your audience. It's fantastic. Once you have the strategy down, it's very easy to plan different tactics. Some things can be executed within a day. I've had different ideas come up, like one I was like, "Oh. I should create a quiz for my readers, so they can figure out which one of the warriors they're most like. When they're reading the book, they can say 'oh. I'm most like this person, because I got that on the quiz.'" That took me a few hours to execute and put up. Then, tell people about it. There are just fun little things that would come to mind throughout the whole process.
Robert Plank: I love it. I think what's cool about you and I both as marketers is, we have an idea and we can put it in action the same date. Whereas, someone else who's just kind of figuring it out on their own, they might take months just to make one little quiz in there. I think it's really cool. It's almost like you're Superman on the home planet of Superman. You're kind of like everyone else, but you go to Earth and suddenly you can do all kinds of crazy things, right?
Angela Ford: Yes. That's one of the best parts about being a marketer is all the different creative ideals you can come up with, the things you can do, and the risk you can take as well. A lot of times I've found that those risks really do pay off. It's like, "Oh. I'm going to do something crazy, but hey it worked out."
Robert Plank: I mean, I'm looking at your, The Five Warriors book, and a couple of your books on Amazon, so did you ever think to do a pen name to market as some other identity as opposed to your marketing brand?
Angela Ford: I did. I really thought about that, because I wasn't sure if I should say that I was A.J. Ford or just Angela Ford. I ended up going with Angela J. Ford, because I did a search online for people that have the same name that I did. Whew. Their names were coming up first, and I was like, "Well, okay." There's another Angela Ford that writes romance novels, so her name comes up a lot during searches. I'm like, "Well, I really have to make sure I'm distinct, and I stand out." Also, one of my big things is I wanted my name on the book to be the same as my marketing name as well. It's more of a lifestyle. More of a lifestyle entrepreneur, so whenever I do decide to change my focus or pivot I just want to be able to keep that same name even if I do end up changing my focus.
Robert Plank: Because you spent however many decades already just creating all of this content under this one name, why start from scratch, right?
Angela Ford: Yes. Yes.
Robert Plank: Well, cool. Can you show us how this all ties together? I know that we talked a lot about your fiction books and things like that, what do you do as a marketer? What kind of services do you provide? What kind of products do you have for someone who's looking to grow their business?
Angela Ford: Yeah. One of the big things I do is strategy. It's the online marketing strategy. Again, it's very similar whether you have just a blog, you do services, or you have products like books and courses. The strategy is all the same. I really focus on that and narrowing it down to the targets and the goals and what actually is the desired outcome. I love the strategy. I love focusing in on that. Sometimes with the strategy I love getting down to the nitty gritty. Even telling people, "Okay. These are the hashtags you should use, because they will get you the most visibility." Fun things like that. I also do some one off coaching. Some people just want to spend an hour talking through and brainstorming ideas, so I do that as well.
Then, more of the hands on work that I do really is the website set-up. I do build websites. I built mine, and then I built the one for my book as well and all of my book's sale pages which are a lot of fun. Sometimes getting in to the back end and the layouts that changes be so much. I've done it so often that it's easy to do. I can just fly through that. Most of the time, I can get a website up in a couple of weeks. It's not a huge deal. I do that for other people as well just so they can get it up. They can take it from there, they just need some help with the foundation and laying that out.
Then, finally, I do some social media marketing as needed for people. Just help them really take off and figure out what they're doing with social media, and how to make it more about building a relationship and focusing on that long term versus selling, promoting, and just doing that.
Those are really the core services. They all tie in, because I'm not only doing the marketing part, I'm also executing it on my end with my novels. That's really fun, so I have both the strategy part, the execution, and drilling down to the actual tactics that work.
Robert Plank: I love it. I like that, it's cool, most of what you and I were able to talk about was about something that was non-marketing related in that the niche was not about how to make more money, how to improve conversion rates on your website. You still used all those same tried and true marketing tactics in an area where you kind of have fun, and you can kind of be unique and have your personality. I love all of that kind of stuff.
Angela Ford: Yes.
Robert Plank: I don't know. It's one of those things where it's like all right, you have your marketing, you have your websites, and that's okay, but what about your hobbies, right? What about something new, interesting, exciting, and unique and stuff like that. I just love that you're able to take all of the usual marketing tactics and use it for something that what started as a hobby as a kid, but has turned into a new income stream for you. That's pretty cool, I think.
Angela Ford: Yeah. Thanks so much. I mean, that really is my mission. I want to do more work that I love doing. I want to write more novels. My mission is, well, with the marketing that actually pays the bills, so I want to help people figure out how they can spend more time doing work that they love. That really is my mission.
Robert Plank: Awesome. If someone is looking for that kind of thing, if they have an existing business or an up and coming business, and they want to find you, hire you, or somehow learn from you to make things better, where can they find out about you, your books, and all the cool things that you do?
Angela Ford: Yeah. Come across to AngelaJFord.com. That is my website. Then, you can also find me on Instagram and Twitter. My handle is AFord21. I'm on there all the time. I respond a little fast, but yeah. I love to chat.
Robert Plank: Cool. All right. Angela J. Ford. Thanks, Angela, for coming on the show, and talking about all this whole slew of these cool avenues to take. Either, if you have something that can help businesses, that's cool. Even something as crazy as you have these ideas for these fantasy novels. The internet is so amazing these days that any idea you have, anything that you want to do, there's some way to get it out there. I love that. Not just with social media and the self publishing, but there's so many ways to have all these irons in the fire. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing about all that. AngelaJFord.com is the place to go. Thanks for sharing all your knowledge and everything you have to share with us about Instagram, social media, book launching, all that stuff.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:12 — 26.7MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS
128: Differentiate, Entertain and Educate with Authority Marketer Jeff Beale
Mr. Marketology Jeff Beale can teach you to become an authority using the four C's: Content, Contacts, Communication, and Consistency. He tells us how to identify and understand our audience, optimize for social media, sell based on emotional triggers, and differentiate yourself from the crowd.
Jeff Beale: Things are going well. Thanks for having me on the show, Robert.
Robert Plank: I'm really glad that you're on. The stuff that you do, you help people gain authority status and do authority marketing, so what does that entail exactly?
Jeff Beale: Marketing basically in a layman's term is to become the go-to person in any product or service. Authority marketing is when somebody's hungry right on the street, they think of McDonald's, because, hey, McDonald's is an authority. When you're thirsty, you think of Coca-Cola, because Coca-Cola is an authority. Things of that nature. Becoming that authority no matter which industry it's in helps you leverage your credibility. It also helps you generate business based off the fact that whenever people think of what you offer or that industry, they think of you.
It's just the process of building that credibility, building that brand awareness so whenever they think of that, you're the first person that comes to mind, and usually the first person that comes to mind will be the one that gets the business unless you do something to mess it up.
Robert Plank: How does someone become an authority? Is it a matter of having a book or a blog, traffic, or social media or some combination? What does someone have to do exactly?
Jeff Beale: It's a combination. Actually, the first thing you would need to do is to first identify your audience. Know exactly who your audience is and then their needs, and then the last piece would be to find out where do they go to get information. Identify, let's say your audience. A lot of people like to identify their audience such as, well, they are this age, this gender, this ethnic group. I'm talking more of the psychological. For instance, let's go back to McDonald's. McDonald's serve people that are hungry. Coca-Cola serve people that are thirsty. It can get as basic as that, but you need to really know your audience, then understand their needs.
What is it that pains them, keeps them up at night, makes them pull the action trigger to do business with somebody? Once you understand that, then you can find out where do they go most often to find out who they want to do business with? What's the authority? Is it a magazine? A lot of people used to do the old traditional marketing, push marketing, on television and radio or a magazine. Nowadays, like you said, there's social media, there's bloggers, there's sites like Yo. There's tons of places that they go to to find out who is the best choice for what they are looking for.
Once you find that out, then it's all about quality content. It's all about putting out the best quality information for them to make an informed decision. That can be several ways. That can be social media posts. That can be blog posts. That can be what we're doing right now, podcasting is a great way of doing that. It can be videos. It can be many different things that you could put out as far as content, the type of content, but you find out what resonates the most around your audience and you deliver your actual content in a way that they easily digest it, they can get the information, they can make an informed decision, and they feel comfortable doing so.
Robert Plank: That all sounds like a pretty good plan, and that makes a lot of sense to me. How does this relate to what it is that you do? Is this a service you provide to others?
Jeff Beale: I do. Actually, I provide marketing strategies. With marketing strategies, my goal is to make you the authority in the industry, to make the brand awareness resonate amongst your audience. What I do is I look at putting together a strategy that makes sense for your company and finding out your audience, the need, your benefits, what's a good message for the audience and how to deliver it, what mediums and channels and platforms make the most sense, and then of course piecing it all together, putting it into a strategy that gets you in front of them in a way that they desire to see you, and help you deliver a message that they actually want to hear.
A lot of times, that's something that the business or business owners have difficulty doing because they're so close to the business that they assume a lot. First thing I tell companies, I tell the executives, "You are not your customer," because in most cases, you're not. In most cases, you don't buy what you're selling, and you're so informed because you started the company or you've been working in the business for so long, you have little things that you assume that you don't even think is a challenge or think is a point of decision that really is.
You might, for instance, for you doing podcasts, one thing that you may think of is, well, "Everybody uses Skype to record," but that's not true. To someone else, that might be something very, very difficult to understand. "How do I record? I understand how to sign up for Skype, but how do I actually record?" To you, it's easy. If you were selling, let's say, a course on how to podcast, you would just assume they knew, and you wouldn't even put that in your message, which that might be one of the biggest selling points of, "Let me show you a way that you can record with Skype in 5 minutes." That might be something that will make somebody pull the trigger, because they're like, "Oh wow. I can just 1, 2, 3, and do it. Great. I'm on," versus, "Let me show you the best way and I've been doing this for a hundred years."
"Yeah, okay, but I haven't, and I don't know what I'm doing. I just want it easy," and easy is the selling point, not the technology. It's just the ease of use.
Robert Plank: Right, and it seems like if you position it as ease of use, that's more relatable as opposed to if you just show, "Well, look how cool I am," then you're just showing off. You mention that little example about the podcasting and Skype. Even with that kind of thinking, some people don't even know how to install Skype or where to install Skype, even how to install the iTunes program to check on their podcast. They don't know what hardware they use to record. Yeah, that's huge and I totally agree with all that.
Kind of along those lines, I know you mentioned a lot of the things that you do when you're looking to improve someone else's business, do you have like a story or an example of a case study where you had a client and there were some things in their business that could use improving, and you kind of put them through your process, you went through and you found the best market, you figured out their customer, and you figured out what kind of things they should be doing?
Jeff Beale: Sure. One example that I found was a client that sold jewelry. They thought their audience was one thing, and come to find out, the audience was totally different based off of buyers, based off of research on who interacted with them. The interesting thing is, offline their audience was one thing, on-line their audience was totally different. They were taking the offline approach to an on-line audience, and that doesn't work.
Offline, you don't have things such as comments, likes, shares. Offline, you see it on TV, radio, and you are at the mercy of the television or radio. On-line, you can make choices and you can change and you can share your opinion, and that makes a big difference. After looking at it and finding out that you might even want to look at a different way of approaching it, more of an interactive approach was developed to help them.
Same thing with a client that I worked with that did media. One of the things that they did were, they were looking for how can they have more people engage with their shows? The key factor was they were looking at the old way to where ... Remember when you used to come in in prime time and you had to wait for prime time to watch a show?
Robert Plank: Oh yeah.
Jeff Beale: You would actually schedule your day around it. Well, that's not the audience of today. Today everybody's on demand, and most people aren't watching it on television, they're watching it on a mobile device, and they may cast it to a larger monitor, which is the television, but they're looking on the go when they want to watch the shows. Nowadays, shows are even coming out before they're supposed to air. Like a show may be airing tonight, but if you subscribe to a cable provider, you can watch it midnight the night of, or you can watch it even a day before, and Hulu and Netflix have shown you how people love the fact that they can watch any show whenever they feel like watching it.
Looking at that and changing the approach on how to deliver these shows helped them change from a linear to a digital age, and it really helped improve them all the way across the board: viewership, search engine optimization, to search engine ranking, lowered their spend, and it helped because now that you know your audience, you're not fighting to find as many new audience as you are retaining old audience and having them evangelize the experience. Then that gets you new audience.
That's one of the challenges I found with many companies. They're so focused on finding new audience that they neglect the current audience, and then they spend additional money in reputation management, damage control. You have a cellphone, I'm assuming.
Robert Plank: Yes.
Jeff Beale: Like everyone. I use it as a cellphone theory. How many times have you seen commercials or heard of people that have plans that aren't available to you as a loyal customer? Then you call them and they say, "Well, that doesn't apply to you because you're already in a contract," or "You're already a customer." You're like, "Well, I'm a loyal customer. Why can't I get the discount that the new people get?" Well, that's the challenge is, they're always fighting to find new, new, new, and not trying to retain who they have. The interesting part about retaining current customers, first of all, they're easier, because they're already experiencing your brand and your product or service.
Second of all, they are, if happy, ready to tell somebody, if they're happy. They're ready to tell somebody if they're not, but you can leverage that to not only have them share the message but also get feedback from them to help improve what you have already. Improve either the marketing message, either the product or service, the customer service.
You can improve things because they're already dealing with you, and if you just look at your last, let's say, 5, 6 customers if you're smaller, or if you look at your last 2, 3 months of customers and you look at what their actions are, what their engagements are, what are their questions? What are the things they complain about? What are the things that they share? What are the things that they like? Then compile that information and make some marketing decisions based off of that, it's easier to find like-minded people than to just spend a lot of money on campaigns, and you're spending all this money on campaigns, throwing it out, seeing what sticks.
Once it sticks, if you're still not doing this type of backend research, you still don't know what to do next because you're still just throwing out stuff because you're not figuring out what worked, how can we now duplicate what worked and keep that going on and on?
That's one of the things that I always say. When you're doing authority marketing, it's all about being the 4 C's. It's all about having good content, making good contacts, have good communication, and then be consistent. That's the 4 C's. If you do those 4 C's, you will win when it comes to authority marketing.
Robert Plank: That's really cool. I think that's one of those things where it took me a while to kind of get it, especially seeing what a lot of these companies were doing, especially like the ones on social media where ... At first I thought, "Okay, well it's like this company, and they're just posting stuff on social media every now and then," but then when I've seen ... There's like a cupcake ... I don't know what you'd call it, the kind of person that bakes and sells cupcakes, there's this cupcake lady in our town, and she'll post pictures, and she'll do contests, and even the local news, they'll put full-on clips of their show just right there on Facebook, and I'm thinking, kind of like a little bit as you were describing what you were describing, I'm thinking, "Man, why would they put like a clip of their show right there on Facebook when ... ?"
I'm thinking, "Well, wouldn't them posting a clip take away from me watching their show?" And kind of the way you were explaining it, it's like, "Well, hardly anyone's watching on the TV live anyway, so it's kind of like a trade-off. They're giving away some of their best stuff in exchange, not only are they hoping it'll go viral or get some shares but, as you said, now they can look at the most popular content, or they can look at all of their audience, their likes, their fan page insights, all that stuff and figure out exactly who they're talking to, when it sounds like this out-of-date model that a lot of these companies are still hanging onto was just guessing. It was just let's just put out some stuff. Maybe the ad money worked, maybe not. Now you can go back and after running your experiments, go back and see how they did. Is that right?
Jeff Beale: That's correct. Also, with them putting the show on-line, it helps them separate themselves from their competitors because, think about this. If you had 2 cupcake bakers, I guess you would call it, or 2 cupcake stores in the same area, 1 has a show and 1 doesn't, how much advantage do you have when you say, "Well, you know, they may bake cupcakes and they may be good, I don't know, but we have a show, and you can see us bake our cupcakes, and people like our show."
Now you seem as if you are really an expert. Even if you're not, even if you have quick mix or something, you just seem, because people are like, "Well, they have to be good. They have a show." That gives you an advantage. Also, within the show, you can let them get to know you a little bit, and that's the beauty nowadays with social media, with Facebook Live and You Tube Live and all these other streaming, they can get to know you now.
You know the old saying in sales: People buy from who they know, like, and trust. They get to now know you. They get to see you enough to like you, and because you're up there in a credible source, they get to trust you versus an advertisement, which is cold. I don't know the last time you fell in love with a banner ad where you're like, "That banner ad made me feel all warm inside."
Robert Plank: Never.
Jeff Beale: Exactly. Now with the personality being displayed, you can have that feeling. So you say, "I really like that person." That's how it works.
Robert Plank: What you're saying is there's hope for the rest of us. We don't have to be super polished and rehearsed. We can just be ourselves and they'll fall in love with us as us.
Jeff Beale: That's the key, being yourself. The interesting thing with on-line especially, offline is still more polished and better, but on-line is the more authentic you are, the better. People don't mind the mistakes. It should be as good of quality as you can get it, but it doesn't have to be polished, because sometimes when it's too polished, they think it's paid actors and they don't think it's real. They think, "Oh well, they paid for that. It's advertisement. Of course, they're going to say it's great because they were paid to say it's great." When it's a person and it seems authentic and it seems as if you're just everyday Joe, now it's something that's relatable.
If you noticed over the past few years, what's the biggest craze on television? Reality TV. Reality TV is because it makes you feel as if you know somebody, even though working in that industry, I can tell you it's scripted, and it's all planned and so forth, and they know what to say next, so forth and so on, but you think it's real, and it feels real even though it's not. They do that to make it more personal. That's the beauty of now on-line, you can do things and it doesn't have to be 100% professionally polished, and people will resonate.
That's why You Tube videos can go into the millions, and it's some little kid dancing. Of course, I don't know if you can be able to sell anything with it unless it's a choreography or something of that nature, but people are like, "I just like it. It was so cool," and they share it, but when's the last time they've shared a polished commercial? They don't.
Robert Plank: Never, unless it's really funny.
Jeff Beale: Unless it's really funny. Yeah. I think the only ... The one I remember, the latest one I remember that was shared that was viral was the Van Damme when he was straddling those 2 tractor trailers.
Robert Plank: I think like every now and then there's something like a Dollar Shave Club commercial or something, but very rarely.
Jeff Beale: See, but they've figured it out, though. They figured out that men ... They don't really key in on the quality of the razor, if you think about it. They figured out that the humor will get people to share it. The mass volume of numbers will get in front of enough men, and those men will look at the deal and say, "You know what? That's a good deal, because I'm already spending X amount of dollars," and it stays in your head because you think of the entertainment of the actual commercial.
Those type of things do work, but most companies don't execute it in that way. Most companies execute it in the same way that they would a television advertisement, and it doesn't go viral because people are like, "Oh, it's another commercial." That's the reason the Internet has been so successful when it comes to video, and you look at any other type of source like Sirius Radio, any type of streaming source, what is the biggest thing that they harp on? "We don't show commercials." People don't want to see commercials. That's why.
Robert Plank: That's a pretty big insight right there. I think that that's why people need you to kind of clean up the marketing efforts, right?
Jeff Beale: Yeah, and the best thing about a commercial, people love a commercial that they don't even know is a commercial. Like I said, the Dollar Shaving Club, yeah, we know it's a commercial, but they don't say how great their razors are. They don't say anything about that. They don't say anything about, "We have been in the business with titanium and platinum," they just have fun, and people like that in the entertainment. If your commercial can entertain and educate, then you can win. You just figure out how can your commercial entertain and educate?
I was telling one client about floors. Well, when a person is looking to buy new flooring, the biggest thing on their mind besides cost, and they'll be willing to pay more if you can get the other values in line. They want it to be fast with installation, they want it to be painless with dealing with your business, and they want other people to say, "Wow! You've got the best floors ever!" Of course, resale value helps, if they can improve the resale value.
Most people don't really care about the type of quality of the wood, and they don't care about this is cherry oak versus ... They don't know and they really don't care. They just want when people walk in the door saying, "That is beautiful." Now, what I told them is, a lot of things they'll have questions about, you can put into some sort of advertisement or social post in which you're explaining to them some of the myths of floors. For instance, they may say your floor is water resistant. Being water resistant doesn't mean it's waterproof. If enough water gets on it, it's still going to damage the floor, and that's not what's told when it's sold to you, but that's what it is. It's not waterproof, just water resistant.
You could spill a glass of water and don't worry about it, but if you have a water leak, you'll still have to replace that floor. Those type of things make a person feel as if you know what you're talking about, because a lot of other people aren't going to tell them that. They may also know what's the difference between hardwood and laminate. Your knowing that difference and the difference of how you lay it to make your house look larger, and you have examples to show them, now make you a very credible source when it comes to dealing with somebody with the floor.
The last thing, most people when they get floors, especially when it comes to floor damage, they go through their insurance company. What are the 5 things you need to know when you talk to your insurance company? Because most people want the best value for what they're going to claim, so they're not going to want to be cheap, but they're not going to want to have to come out-of-pocket either. That's why they have insurance. You letting them know how to deal with your insurance company, the right answers to the right questions, this type of thing makes it easier to deal with you than other flooring companies that might just come in and give an estimate and say, "All right, this is how much we charge," and they maybe try to haggle with you to lower their rates.
People will pay more if they feel there's more quality. Think about this. When's the last time you went to a Bentley dealership and argued about how much a Bentley cost? You don't. You don't even know how much a Bentley costs half the time. Yeah, because you just know that they're said to be the top-of-the-line car. If you really did research on a Bentley, you find out they only get 12 miles to the gallon, you always have to take them in for service and everything at 5,000 miles, so they're really ... I talked to a guy that sold Bentleys, and he told me it's not affording owning one as far as like purchasing, it's actually the upkeep that most people can't afford.
Most of the time, these cars come back within a year because the upkeep is so much, people buy them and they can't afford them. They have to bring them back. Knowing that, the value has been put up so high with that quality of car. If you can do that with your business, to put up the value so high that people don't even want to ask how much do you charge, you'll win every time, because they've already made the decision that if this is not extremely out of my means, I am going to do business with them, they're not going to bark about the price.
That's the whole goal of authority marketing is to become an authority so much, now I'm not saying that you escalate your price because of it, but so much that that isn't even a concern when you get to the actual closing of the business, because they've already decided they're going to purchase. It's sort of like ... Think about it. How many times have you met people that say that they don't have any money, but then they show up with something that you know costs some money, and you're like, "I thought you didn't have any money?"
Robert Plank: They have priorities.
Jeff Beale: People buy what they want. Exactly. They'll go out and buy some Jordans for $200, but they might not pay their light bill, so you're like, "I thought you were broke." No, they were broke for that. That wasn't of value.
Robert Plank: That's funny, and it sounds like all the things that you're mentioning here today, it seems like you're going after like the emotion of some kind, whatever the hot button is there, like in the case of the Bentley thing it's like, well, who cares about all these little facts and figures when how cool for you to be driving it, and drive it off the lot, and drive it home, people see it. Even like with the floor case study you said there, the number 1 reason to get a new floor is to show it off so everything thinks, "Dang! How'd you get that?" Sure there's like a few little objections or common things there, but it seems like that combination you said there about how you kind of have the wow factor, I guess, have the big raw feeling from using it, and then you kind of have these objections that you know they already have but you explain them away quickly, and that way people can tell that you know what you're doing because you already have their questions in their mind before they even ask them.
Jeff Beale: Exactly. Exactly. It's all about emotions. It's all about understanding what drives a person to make a decision. To be honest, a lot of it doesn't include price. Truly, if you can tap into what makes them work, you can understand that. For instance, people that buy security systems, they don't buy security systems for all the features. They buy to be secure. You can have it to where your mobile phone connects and this and that but it never sets off an alarm ever, people aren't going to buy your security system, because they're like, "Well, that's nice, nice features, but if somebody breaks in, it's not going to help."
You find out what the emotional triggers are. That's why you can't just base it on demographics and geographics. You just can't say "Just because you're this age, this gender, this ethnic group, this income level, you will buy what I'm selling." It's really finding out what keeps them up at night?
Volvo did a great job when they went after the soccer moms. What did Volvo hang their hat on the most? "We are the safest car you'll ever buy." That's what they hung their hat on. They would show the mom with the kids. Moms were like, "I like BMW's, but if I ever was in an accident, I'd be safer in a Volvo," so they bought Volvos. For many years, they thought Volvos were the safest cars out. You look at, let's use televisions. We all love 4K, right?
Robert Plank: Oh yeah.
Jeff Beale: The funny thing is when you ask the sales guy, which if you get an honest one who'll tell you, most of the time you'll never see 4K, because first of all you have to have the right cables, you have to have the right television station, you have to have the right cable box. You have all these things have to be in order for you to even see 4K. They can't sell you a 4K and say, "Well, you probably will see 4K once in a blue moon."
Same thing with cameras. They show you these pictures. It was funny. We was watching a commercial last night. My wife was telling me ... She has an iPhone, actually, and she was like, they were showing a commercial with all these pictures of great photos, and they said taken with the iPhone. My wife was like, "My iPhone pictures don't ever look like that." I said, "Yeah, because it's not Photoshopped." They never said it wasn't edited. They just said "taken with an iPhone."
What you're seeing is after it has been taken, put to production, post production has been done, Photoshop has been done and, yeah, now it looks beautiful, but they're not lying, but they know that most people buy these phones and they take selfies and they want to take pictures, and that's a driving force. People will buy a phone, and I'm guilty, because I just bought my last phone because of that, because I want to make sure my pictures are high quality. I want to make sure my videos are high quality, because I do videos for my marketing, so I want the clearest videos I can get from my phone.
What I found in my research of going through phones, here's the secret with that. Your cameras mostly have ... Most of them have the same megapixel rate. The key is the lighting. That's the key. You can have the highest pixel rate, but if you don't have a lot of light, you're not going to get those great pictures, so that's the secret to it, but they don't tell you that, because if that's the case, you wouldn't buy another phone, you would just go buy some professional lights.
Robert Plank: Interesting.
Jeff Beale: And they sell phones.
Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. Lots of good stuff today, and you had lots of cool stories and little lessons here and there. Where can people find out more about Mr. Jeff Beale? Where can they find out about your book, your blog, and all that cool stuff?
Jeff Beale: Sure. They can actually go to MrMarketology.com. That has everything about me, but even more important, actually the all about me funny is 1 paragraph. You can only find 1 paragraph, but what you will find are marketing strategies such as this, and I'll be talking with other experts and sharing my point of view as well, and you'll find that on the site. Also, my social, all of them: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, not LinkedIn, Google Plus, are all Mr. Marketology, so if you go to those platforms, look up Mr. Marketology or put Mr. Marketology at the end, you'll find me.
Then you can even find me easily at JeffBeale.com. I try to make myself very accessible, so hopefully if I'm doing my job correctly, you can find me easily.
Robert Plank: Awesome. Thanks for all that stuff and, yeah, I really liked all the marketing nuggets you dropped on us today, and I think that ... The big thing other than the stuff like the 4 C's of marketing and differentiating and course correcting and stuff, I think that, especially that little Apple lesson about how ... That was pretty dang powerful for me. You want a camera that takes good pictures, and they kind of get you with this thing that's true, but also really dang cool, and even showing all these pictures taken with the iPhone, man, it kind of messes you up a little bit, doesn't it? Because you think, "Okay, I want to take good pictures for myself but, man, imagine the possibilities if I could use this same device to take all these awesome photos." Thanks for that lesson there.
Jeff Beale: Oh, you're welcome, man. If there's 1 takeaway that I would like the listeners to know is that understand your audience. Find out exactly who that is, what their needs are, and then find out how can you benefit them? If you can do that and put that into a compelling message, you won't have any problems becoming an authority in your market.
Robert Plank: Perfect. Well said. MrMarketology.com. Thanks so much for being on the show, Jeff.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:00 — 32.0MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS
