The BEST ways to reach your customers - Evan and @SKellyCEO - Lunch & Earn

This one is from Exit Outlet that J-Rice posted for us on his behalf. Marketing these days is evolving as audiences are becoming harder to see and meet face to face with online presence growing. What are the best ways to reach out to your demographics in the beginning before you can simply buy the audience with a big marketing—

Yeah, I think again, some of the things being disruptive, the example I gave you almost 20 years ago, you wanna be, how do I actually be part of the conversation How do I get found first? And I think to Evan's point, you don't want to do the same old boring content, but there's loads of obviously digital channels where you can connect with your audience. And I think number one, so point number one, go where your audience is, find out where your audience is and go there. And, you know, it could be Instagram, could be Facebook, could be Twitter. And then what is the exceptional authentic content that you can serve up that speaks to the excitement of your product or service. And then I think, you know, our view of life is then it's all about recruiting the volunteer army. It's all about exciting people. When they get hold of your product, they tell all their friends. You know, here I just saw a drone that takes video footage. Awesome, awesome. Called Lily. Check it out online. Check the YouTube. And if you're a skier, or you, your dance classes, you can have a little drone flying around above you watching all your moves. It's just awesome. It's got a 20-minute battery life. But that, that if the product's half as good as YouTube video, then it's just going to blow away and it's going to go viral and it's going to create a community. And the best way you do it is it's almost like recruit one volunteer fanatic who's using your product and that person will give you 100 and those 100 will give you 10,000. And those 10,000 will be the 100,000 because products that are awesome, services that are awesome, it's all about being referred by the viral economy.

I love it. I just bought a drone that also has a GPS sensor built in. Yeah, so this is the one.

Check it out. Check it out on YouTube. It's a bit of a crazy suggestion, but if you're a mad skier or you're one of those kite surfers or something crazy like that, then you would have just a ball and it kind of matches down. It's almost like a bird of prey comes back down when you want to call it back in. Awesome.

Right. So here's an opportunity to be visionary because the guys who are going to do it are the skiers, are the surfers, are the whoever. Like, be the entrepreneur who's walking down the street answering questions, right? Like, whatever your business is, be the first to take this and apply it to your industry because every skier is going to start doing this, but nobody's doing it in software. So how can you be the software guy to do it? Or how can you be a baseball player to do it, right? These are opportunities to leverage what's being used in other industries and apply it to your business, which may be a little more—

And on that as well, one thing that's changed, right? You remember the old Mad Man metaphor around, Mad Man metaphor around kind of advertising, and it was like think, feel, do, think, feel, do. And that was sort of the advertising process. The world's changed again. So it's about do, think, do, think. And there's intermediate states to do, feel, think, engage the conversation. And it's not a one-hit with this stuff. It's all about the conversation. And then people will buy when they're ready to buy. But what it means is if you're just starting up as an entrepreneur, the first thing you've got to do is do and then feel, think. And also, you know, the measurement around analytics on digital is so powerful. If you've got it wrong, you can do real quick course correction and you can kind of do the next campaign literally the next day. With a whole different sentiment to make sure you kind of get it right, to find out what the— you know where the audience is. And now it's how do you get the audience sentiment and the audience frustration and express that in the way you're going to sell your products and solutions to wow them. And so I do think the world's changed again. It's no more kind of Mad Men metaphor. It's all about do, feel, think, engage the conversation. You've got to be part of the conversation.

My view on it is I think as an entrepreneur, you can't do everything. I think too many entrepreneurs try to do everything. You have accounts on all the social media platforms and you're trying to post everywhere. And as a result, everything is mediocre because you also have a business to run. And so you're just posting boring stuff. And because people say, oh, you need to be on Instagram. So then you get on Instagram too, and then you're posting more boring stuff and nothing is working out for you. I would say one, to Stephen's point, figure out where your audience is. I would couple that with what are you great at being able to do? Like, are you good on camera and can you make video? Are you great at taking pictures and can you go into Instagram, right? Are you great with words and can you write blog posts or LinkedIn posts or go to Twitter? So couple where the audience is with something that you are naturally good at and then can destroy and dominate. Then you don't need to spend money, right? My YouTube channel has 200,000+ subscribers and 20 million+ views, and I've spent zero on advertising because I pour my love into the work, and because it's good, people want to share it. And that should be the goal of your marketing. Whatever you post, don't just spam stuff out there. If you're gonna make an Instagram post, be proud of it. Create something that you wanna show your grandkids and say, look what Grandpa Evan made, right? Grandpa whoever made, right? Like you're proud of what you made and then people will see it and share it and then they become your army like Stephen said, the people out there.

Hey Evan, I got a question for you. So yeah, I think what you've done is awesome. And I've got huge respect for you. And you're a legend in the world of entrepreneurs and gaming as well. You know, I know you love it. I know you love it. So you're a legend out there. But one thing I massively respect also that you've done is the focus you apply to your message, which is really compelling. And even kind of the word believe, the focus and relentless focus and consistency. How do you value for the entrepreneurs out there kind of watching today the relevance of the focus and simplicity?

I think one, it's super helpful for yourself. Just like, believe is my guiding principle. I believe everybody has one word that guides them forward. You just have to figure it out. And I think too many people live by accident and are living by reacting to things in the external environment instead of purposely setting forth to create a plan for themselves. And as entrepreneurs, this is something that we can do, right? We are breaking free of the box of the typical world and we're creating out to create a better one for ourselves and the people around us. And so understanding what you stand for helps me, one, with like making decisions like, is this about belief or not? If it's not, I'm not going to do it right. You know, I love working with you guys. I love having these sessions. There's a lot of companies that I don't work with because they're not about belief, because they don't care about entrepreneurs, really just want to sell products. And so having that one word helps make a difference for me to say yes or no to and also helps keep me motivated. Like, I have a big goal. I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. You know, part of what I do, the things that I create, I want it to be at scale. You know, I love helping one-on-one entrepreneurs. It feeds my soul. But I want to be able to have a huge impact. And so making videos on YouTube, writing my book, doing speaking engagements, you know, the things that have the potential to reach massive audience and have massive impact. Right. More than just Denton universe, right? This is what I want to create. And so I think, uh, having that clarity and focus helps as entrepreneurs because you're doing too many things. You're everything from the CEO to the janitor. You're responsible for the marketing as well as product creation as well as customer service as well as cleaning up, you know, the shop, uh, and, you know, being able to focus on these things only helps. So in terms of marketing, again, I would come back to you, pick what you're really you're naturally talented at, combined with where your audience is, and just focus on that and don't get distracted by people telling you you need to be on LinkedIn or you need to be on Instagram if that's not where your audience is and what you're naturally good at. I mean, I believe in believe. It's everywhere. It's on the wall.

But also, to your point, I just looked again, the level of spamming and email, it's crazy. There's 20 billion a day. So it's just no good to do what everybody else is doing because no one reads this stuff. You got to go where the audience is, to Evan's point, find the really thing to unlock their dreams in terms of the products and services and be part of that conversation. And then the consistency of focus is so compelling and you gain huge trust. And I think Evan says it all, it's about authenticity. It's a really undervalued word, but authenticity of everything. And that's how you create this volunteer army of raving fanatics who are your best salespeople. They're your fans and they believe in what you're trying to do and how you're trying to change the world. And they get excited about the product. And you know, and I know, when you get excited about something, you see some really cool technology, you tell all your friends about it. And literally you've told hundreds of people, thousands of followers within seconds.

I'm so excited right now. I'm getting hot. I want, I almost want to take off my hoodie. It's too hot. The energy is awesome in here.

Dude, right?

Yeah.