221: Stop Building Your Business on Rented Land

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Welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast.

Your go to resource for mastering the.

Art and science of Digital Product entrepreneurship.

My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and.

I help business owners generate consistent revenue.

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Need to be glued to their desks, constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today and my special guest today is Abby Heman. Abby is the Global marketing director at GetResponse, a leading email and marketing automation platform serving over 400,000 businesses worldwide. She is passionate about helping business owners scale what works, cut through complexity, and build longtime growth engines that convert. Abby, I am super excited for our conversation today and I have so many questions for you. But before we get into all that, can you tell the good audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people or how GetResponse helps people?

Definitely. Thank you so much for having me. It's one of my favorite topics. I've been in SaaS marketing for over 10 years, much of that in the email marketing space. I also feel that temptation that always comes as I've continued in my marketing journey pulls me away sometimes from email marketing into more kind of short term quick wins that really weren't sustainable for the businesses I was representing. And then I was seeing it happening time and time again with our customers and folks I was working with directly. I'm excited to talk about one of these favorite topics because it's relevant for me as a marketer, but also what I see with our audience and get response customers, which is how creators and marketers can take back some control of their audience and grow on channels they actually own because too much of us are just too reliant on the whims and regulations and changes that come from other platforms. And so this is what I'm excited to keep talking about whenever I have the opportunity.

I know a lot of people are going to be able to relate to the discussion we're having today and we're really going to be diving into what it means to build your business on rented land versus owned land. Now before we delve into all of that, can you define that for the audience?

Definitely. So this is what we like to call owned land versus Rented land. And you don't want to build your entire business infrastructure on rented land. Rented land refers to platforms that you don't control. Think Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, even Google. Right. Like we don't control the regulations, the requirements, all of the rules that they put forward for how you can market or post and Target people. These are excellent platforms that are a good opportunity for helping you discover audiences. One of those are just those rented platforms. You're building your business on someone else's terms, they change the rules. You'll have your limit potentially reached quickly with who you can target or how often, or shut down your account altogether or shut down their business in a particular country. You would lose access to your audience or the people, the human beings that you're trying to communicate to. And owned land is channels that you own specifically like your email list, your website, the data that's in your CRM spaces where you have direct and permission based which is important relationship with your audience. This is something we feel really strongly about, is that rented platforms are excellent. They're often necessary for reach and new discovery. But you don't want to build your business on them alone. You want to have your owned land and access to that data. If you cannot reach your audience without platform permission, then you don't fully own your business and you're more like a guest. So that's really what we want to help get across is that you definitely need both.

I can tell you horror story after horror story of people that I know, like my business best friends or clients or just people that I've worked with with over the years where things have just happened. Like Facebook just shut down their account and they could never get back into it. So they lost the ability to interact in their Facebook page, their Facebook groups, to run ads. It was a nightmare. It was nothing that they had done. I think their account had gotten hacked in this one particular situation and they couldn't get it back. They tried and tried and could never get it back. It was such a nightmare. And we know what's happened with TikTok in the past year. That's been an up and down situation. I do have one question for you. You talked about the west side and the email list and I 100% agree. Those are our own platforms. It's what we own. I'm just curious, what are your thoughts.

On podcasting as long as you are able to eventually turn these listeners into folks that you can also contact or gain access to directly. It's such a great good idea, right? Most folks who are listening into podcasts are quite interested in what the host has to say and they're probably going to be interested in other forms of digesting the content from their favorite podcast host. So that's where maybe signing up for a newsletter that you can send with advanced notice about some of the new materials you have Coming out is just another great way to get access to another communication channel. You've got their ears in the podcast. It'd be great to get their eyeballs sometimes in particular via their email address. So I think podcast is another such excellent communication and engagement channel with an audience. I just always recommend to try to find a way so you can actually get access to those listeners in another channel, for example, via their inbox. And it's just another opportunity to connect with your content or message.

I'd like to delve into this a little bit more and anybody who's been around me for any sort of time, they know that I'm a huge fan of email marketing. I also have my newsletter, Profit Club. It's one of our memberships, email marketing and that weekly newsletter that we're sending out. A lot of people really struggle with getting people from these rented platforms into their own platforms. What are you seeing that's working well for folks?

It's such a good point, right? We're all busy. We have a thousand things going on, lots of different channels. We enjoy listening to our favorite creator through their podcast and that's what we're used to doing. Contact them via the inbox. Right? We don't expect emails from them necessarily, but almost always you can find a scenario. We have a great example of one of our GetResponse customers who primarily built their business on Instagram. They had a hundred thousand followers and we're doing a lot of training for basketball players, helping give trainings and development to different basketball players. They love watching their Instagram content, their videos, and they got all their tips from them on Instagram. They were able to create and then promote a downloadable training program that needed their email address to deliver. And then that turned into hey, here's additional way for us to continue to share this good content you like from us on Instagram, but in the email channel. And so it's just to try to find what it is that folks really enjoy about your content and then try to imagine a scenario of a slightly different format that can take typically in some form of downloadable or other type of asset. This lead magnet is the term that's almost as old as time when it comes to digital marketing. It is just basically a different format in a way that you can deliver it off of this rented channel that folks are using to engaging you with and downloadable content, other things that are more accessible. Whenever you send a direct one to one link or access, it still works. It always has worked. And it does still work. As long as you're finding the right content and format that will get them to share their email address with you.

I would say that would work on all of those rented platforms, whether it's Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. Some might work work a little bit better than others.

Yeah.

Let me ask you this. Let's just say someone is having trouble getting reach on social media or even getting people to see their stuff on social media. That's honestly one of the biggest complaints that I'm getting right now. They're like destiny. I can't even get Instagram to show my stuff anymore. The reach out there is just non existent. What would you recommend to those people to start growing their own audience?

Yeah, and that's where I would say diversity in terms of the channels that you're trying, but then in particular getting really specific on the audience that you are looking to serve. Most of us are a little bit guilty of going too broad with what we're trying to share and then we can't be specific enough to be really valuable for our audience. And I think if you can be very specific, like for example, I want to help parents with children interested in basketball. Just to use this one example in this specific region I can set up really specific trainings in person engagements as well as digital trainings. I can create more relationships with one on one and group physical trainings that I can help promote digitally and have happy customers share more about me. It's that kind of counterintuitive of getting a smaller audience at the beginning. But you get hyper focused on how to serve them really good content experiences that then often helps you gain enough traction and have enough happy customers to actually help you share the news and then you can actually scale that to a broader audience like that may be across different channels as well. So I definitely it's diversification in digital channels. Sometimes it means back one on one in this ever increasing digital and AI powered world. What I'm seeing more and more of is what's actually driving is relationships. One on one relationships in person events is happening more and more common as well when you can and when it makes sense for your business or for your audience. Because it's something different that actually stands out in people's minds and deepens their relationship with you and they're more willing to then share, promote you tell their friends about it. And that's just that slow and steady approach which is how people truly build audiences that grow with them.

I really love that tip. For those that are listening, they know that I do a Lot of live events. We do five live events and hobbies a year, if not more than that. I do a lot too in my personal brand, so I love those tips. I want to switch gears just a little bit. We've talked about the risk of relying too heavily on platforms like social media. Let's talk a little bit about marketplaces. Also for those who are listening, this might be like Udemy or Etsy. What are you seeing there and how do we get those people into our own world?

Yeah, and that's also where I think lead magnets in the form of a webinar, a download or a gift kit, you know, whatever it is that is driving people to that marketplace, whether it's Udemy or Etsy. If you're selling products on Etsy, for example, like what is it that your audience is most interested in? For example, I've seen some cool things before with some of our customers that are small business owners selling crochet kits. Right. You prepare all of the kits, the thread, the pattern and everything. But you also have people who are beginners, like I don't know how to get started, I don't know exactly what to do, but they're interested in doing this so they can offer a free download that is like the quick guide kit with 1, 2, 3 tips with a few extra templates and a getting started that gets them to leave their email address and then you can actually start connecting with them on, hey, how is it going? Did you go through the tips? Let me know if I can help you. Here's the best kit for beginners like you. It helps you keep that going. Usually people are looking to learn. And that's why at GetResponse we decided to add webinars into our platform because like you said, having these live events where you can build digital experiences with your audience directly is very natural. Hey, I'm an expert in accounting and I do tax services that I like to promote online. But I also, during tax season will give five free consultations, sign up and I can run through and do a 30 minute session for free. These are all ways to incentivize people to go, hey, I would like to get a little bit of access. You're done a chance. It's going to be a fit for me and it's all for free. You can do it digitally, it can be via downloads and those are great examples in any commerce or a knowledge service based scenario. Maybe a webinar, maybe a download all helps you get the email address. They move on to say, hey, remember you were interested in starting that crocheting hobby this winter. Don't forget we still have a good solution for you. That's the basic of where you get started with that.

And for sure that lead magnet is so important. And once you get people on your email list, it's important to send out that weekly newsletter so you're staying in touch with them and you don't ignore them.

Exactly, exactly.

So Abby, I would love to pick your brain a little bit while I have you here. I know that GetResponse serves over 400,000 businesses worldwide and I'm sure you have seen a lot of things that are working and I'd love to hear about some of those. So what are you seeing right now that is working related to email automation and long term customer engagement?

For sure, when I've talked about and it's working with quite a few of our customers is what I'm calling these Quick wins. Quick wins. So launch one strong lead magnet. I gave the example of GBG Hoops, the basketball training that started on Instagram. They created a basic getting started guide for parents looking to help improve their basketball skills. Promote that on Instagram, get people to your website, get them to download it and then you can start monetizing digital versions of your training for people who can't come to the physical location as an additional revenue stream. Super easy, super simple. You don't have to hire a bunch of new people to be able to do this. And it's something that can be an additional revenue stream that's working well for them. We also have a cosmetics company for example, so it's a bit different, but I'm showing you the scale, abandoned cart, something very simple like somebody visits a website, they put a product in there. We've all done this. We all do this all the time as we shop online and we put something in our cartoon and then we forget about it and move on and we should get an email to remind us. And it's not just something that big brands can do. That's something any of us that are selling digital products. It's very simple now to have a website and to be able to automate the way that you can engage with website visitors to help them take the actions that you would like them to do. And it's not complicated if you have a basic website now even with GetResponse, you're able to track and do pop ups on your website to say, hey, it looked like you were checking this. Why don't you fill this form out? I'll send you a quick training video directly to your inbox and then I'll help you keep track. So there's lots of things you can do even before you actually start selling your products, to start automating the experience of visitors to your website to help them proceed with that next action you want them to take, which will help you eventually turn that for your business. That's all things that you can automate using technology, not to know how to do code to pop things up in your website. It's something that you can just easily install and launch with a marketing platform.

And I think that's an important point. Anybody can do this. I mean, we've set up the cart abandonment emails and they were super easy to set up.

That's the beauty of technology now and these platforms. It's not complicated. I'm not a technical person. That's not what I do. It's not what a team does. We're marketers, we like to be creative and connect with people. But that doesn't mean we can't leverage technology that makes it easy for us to capture folks on our website.

Before we wrap it up, do you have any last minute tips for the audience?

It's a great question and I just feel really strongly that anybody out there that has an idea and has an idea on how they can be helpful to their audience can create a business. You should not build it only on rented channels. So it's excellent if you have found momentum and a General audience on YouTube as a good starting point. But just know for the longevity and security of your business and your investment, you should definitely be finding your next step into how to turn that into a long term viable business for yourself. And that starts by capturing that email address. Create a lead magnet that they can download, leave their email address and then send them regular email communication with updates and news. You can still send them back to the channel where they found you and where you post your videos. But for the health and safety and security of your business, make sure that you capture that email address and stay in touch via their inbox. Because things can change. Things change with Google. We see it happening right now. If SEO and online search was a main way to capture an audience that's changing like never before. YouTube rules change, TikTok regulations with different laws in different countries, you never know what can happen. But GetResponse has been in business for more than 20 years serving email marketing. And I'll tell you, the world has changed a lot and so has email marketing. But we are still here and it is still a viable, accessible channel that has really stood the test of time and it is going to continue to do so even as all of these other things develop. So that's my plea to anyone out there with a creator business or a small business. It's excellent to use these social media channels for discovery and expansion, but always capture that email address and stay in touch with them in the inbox.

And speaking of free gifts, you have one for the audience too?

Yes, we do. We have a new guide called Owned vs. Rented and it gives you step by step instructions for how you can leverage these rented lands to gain discovery and strategies that have worked for getresponse customers, folks who are creators, folks who are small businesses who actually turned their kind of rented land only business into a sustainable revenue generating business on their own terms, on their own land. And we also offer a 30 day free trial that comes with dedicated onboarding support so you can actually talk to a human being that will help you set this stuff up while you're testing it out, hopefully with a comprehensive guide, good examples from similar customers or folks like yourselves, and the dedicated support we want to be there for you if you're ready to take the next step.

I love the dedicated support aspect of that. I think that really puts that personalized, humanized touch on it.

This stuff. It's hard. I mean, it's hard because we're all doing so much. We're all trying to do a thousand different things and it's impossible to be an expert in everything. So it's really important to get the help where you can and we're happy to offer that.

Well, Abby, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing all of your wonderful knowledge with everybody.

Thank you so much for having me. It really was a fun conversation.

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today.

If you love the show, I'd appreciate.

A review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.