Getting The Fundamentals of Marketing Featuring Clay Hebert at Joe Polish’s Genius Network - I Love Marketing Episode #412

Nobody cares about you until they know that what you do can help them. Then they care about you. So by starting with you and your and by using verb your noun, you automatically make it about them and not about you. So everyone in here look at your website. Chances are it says something about your business or your offering or your framework or whatever. That's all great. That comes later. Challenge yourself to come up with a verb, your noun.

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Clay Aver is a marketing and branding strategist, speaker and storyteller. He loves words and he believes we make marketing harder than it needs to be. He escaped corporate America to attend the most selective MBA program in the country. He was one of only nine people to learn directly from a marketing expert, Seth Godin. For six months, Forbes called him one of the next generation of business and media influencers. And he was named one of Entrepreneur magazine's 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs along with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

Marketing, branding and positioning. And actually another one, messaging. So start with positioning. What's the positioning? And the simplest way to start positioning is opposite adjectives and an XY graph so you all have paper in front of you. Draw a vertical line and a horizontal line. Positioning is the beginning of all marketing. And for positioning, you want to own opposite adjectives. So I'll give you a simple example. If I say what are the two competitors to, let's say the post office, who would you say? FedEx and UPS. Exactly. FedEx and UPS. So draw a vertical line and then draw a horizontal line. You want to choose opposite adjectives for your business and we're going to do it for FedEx, UPS and the Postal service. Opposite adjectives are adjectives like fast and slow, expensive and cheap. Exclusive and open. TED. The TED conference is very exclusive. Toastmasters or even TEDx is fairly open. Right? These aren't right or wrong. The idea is not to choose the right one. The idea is to choose two opposite adjectives so that you're in a quadrant completely by yourself. So FedEx owns fast and expensive. There's an arrow in the FedEx logo to remind you that they're fast and they're happy to own expensive. If I need to mail a Rolex to Tucker and it's got to be in Austin by tomorrow, I'm not using the postal Service. They own fast and expensive and they're happy to. Now the postal service is happy to own slow and cheap, the exact opposite of fast and expensive. If I'm going to mail a birthday card to my grandma and I'm a week early, which I never am, I could just buy a stamp and take it to the postal service. So yes, they're competitors, but they're really not competitors at all because FedEx is over here and the Postal service is down here. Plot yourself and all of your direct competitors on that and then say, how are you different? And what two words do you want to own? And with a personal brand? And we can go into personal branding if you want personal brand, you want to own one word, Right? So like if I say, who is the vulnerability woman, who would that be? Brene Brown. Exactly. If I was like, who's the hustle guy?

Gary.

Gary and the four hour guy. Tim Ferriss. Right. You all know their name with just their word. So with a personal brand, you want to own one word. With positioning your business, you want to own opposite adjectives. So two words. Branding, in a word, is the collective feeling of what people feel and know about your brand. So a brand is not a logo, it's not a color palette, it's everything all rolled into one. But this, again, this is a room full of expert direct marketers with branding. Tesla sold $21 billion and they do not buy ads. Tesla has never bought an ad. That's because they built a brand. Yeti Coolors built a billion dollar company selling a product that nobody needed. Nobody had sandwiches that were spoiling, nobody's beer was getting warm. Yeti came around and they solved a problem that we didn't even know we had, which is we weren't proud to brag about our cooler. We worry too much about the product and the features and the benefits and not enough about the story and what I call a portable story. So Yeti created a cooler. Sure, it's three times better. So it should cost $100. Compared to the Coleman, that works fine, but it costs $300. That additional $200 in the price is the story. It's because a Yeti cooler is worth bragging about. And then they have brand extensions and can sell $30 mugs for people who can't afford the $300 cooler. But they can get the mug that's worth bragging about and those opposite adjectives. So we'll take Joe and Genius Network. We're all here. The opposite adjectives. Tips for that. We never talked about it. We don't know what they are. But one of them could be because there's a lot of masterminds you can join, right? One of them could be, it's super fun and it's super generous. I've been parts of masterminds that are, you know, there's the okay content, but everyone's kind of eyes on their own paper and they're trying to get the most value so they can take it away and they see it as competitors. This is super generous, super sharing. You guys are all helping each other work with each other, and it's fun. Joe is a fun person. This entire everything around us is fun. Right? So those may not be the exact ones, but if someone said to Kathy, if someone said, I'm thinking about joining Genius Network versus a different mastermind, what makes Genius Network different? Fun, Generous. There's a hundred other adjectives you could use. The framework for explaining what you do. A great place to start, sort of like the atomic element or the sourdough starter of positioning and messaging for your business is a framework I came up with called verb, your noun. So what is the noun that your customers want? Verbed? This little magic phrase does a few different things by using you and your. You're automatically framing it and talking about your customers, not ourselves. Remember old school marketing, direct marketing? We used to be so proud of the plaque that said established 1926. The customer doesn't care. They care about themselves. I used to do a ton with crowdfunding, Kickstarter Indiegogo, the positioning around that. An average marketer would have said, I'm the world's leading crowdfunding strategist, or worse, gone with a platform name and been like, I'm the world's leading kickstarter strategist. That's the wrong thing because it's about me. Nobody cares about you. Nobody cares about you. Until they know that what you do can help them, then they care about you. So by starting with you and your and by using verb, your noun, you automatically make it about them and not about you. So everyone in here look at your website. Chances are it says something about your business or your offering or your framework or whatever. That's all great. That comes later. Challenge yourself to come up with a verb, your noun. So for crowdfunding, mine was fund your dream. I did the work to figure out it doesn't matter if they're doing a leather wallet or a new kind of drone or whatever, that entrepreneur or that creative had a dream that they want funded the fund. Part of crowdfunding is really what they wanted. Crowdfunding, again, is just one tool to get There they had a dream they want funded. So I said, fund your dream. And another little tidbit or tip. The goal of any headline is not to close the sale. The goal of the headline is to get them to read the sub headline or get them to scroll down or get them to click play on the video. The goal of any headline is to earn permission for them to go a little bit deeper. So think about a headline like an opening line. If you're at the bar and you walk up to somebody, the headline, the opening line, might get you the chance to ask them if you can buy them a drink. And then down the road you get the phone number. And then down the road it can progress. Everyone tries to make their headline so complete, they try to jam it. Full of industry buzzwords and things like that. Think of the most primal. I call this the alarm clock test. So go get any issue of Men's Health magazine and on the COVID it will say some version of six pack abs or rock hard abs and some version of more sex. And some version it plays around every cover every month. Because when guys wake up in the morning, that's what I mean by the alarm clock test. Before the dreams fade away, the alarm goes off. What do guys want? Six pack abs and more sex. So that's why Men's Health puts that on every single cover, because it sells magazines. So your challenge for you guys is that's not the business you're in. But challenge yourself to think of what's your verb, your noun? What's your predict your future, see your future? What is the verb that your customer what is the noun that your customer wants? Verbed. And then what's that verb? This is what I mean by we make it too complicated. If you start with verb, your noun, as the atomic element of your marketing and messaging language, everything can flow from there. You might end up with seven verb, your nouns. Cool. Now you just wrote half your website to tell your client's story, speak to them in their pain, verb, your noun, whatever that is. And then if you can, reinforce it with stories of you helping a customer. I teach this framework called Perfect Intro. And the best way to explain what you do is to do it through the story of someone that you've helped some transformation. Best way for Joe to sell Genius Network is to tell his favorite story, of which he's got hundreds of someone who was maybe struggling really hard with something before they found Genius Network and then came into this group of generous, helpful entrepreneurs. And two years later, whatever problems they had were solved. It's like a mini hero's journey of your customer. Yeah. The more you can do that, the better. That's another thing that myself included, almost everyone could do better. Use video of your customers, interview them and show that hero's journey. Because as soon as you say that headline and your customer's like, okay, I'm interested, they scroll down, they click play on the video. Now what they're wondering is, what's it going to be like? Is it for me? Is it for people like me? And if you can show a video of your customer that does that. Do not use first name, last initial as your testimonial. Do not use Michael F. The last time I said Michael F was in the third grade and construction paper was involved, like, full name or not at all. And video is even better. There's nothing better than actual video of an actual customer. So, yes, testimonials, yes social proof, and make them real. If it's an embedded tweet, if it's, you know, whatever, but make it real. What is the word that you want to own in your personal brand? Personal brand. And this is one of those things. Like I said, this room is amazing. Direct marketers, but brand. Direct marketing is, I put a dollar on the top and $2 comes out the bottom or even $1.10, that's fine. Brand. You don't know, like, you don't get an immediate return. It's not measurable in a funnel when it comes to books. A book is one of what I call the bricks in the wall of your personal brand. So once you know your word and what word or phrase or even opposite adjectives you want to own for your brand. And it's okay. Like, if you're building a business around coaching, it's okay if your word is vulnerability and that Brene Brown already has that. Brene Brown doesn't have time to coach everyone in America. She doesn't even really do coaching. So it's okay if your word is taken, but from a positioning perspective, it's obviously better if it's unique and you sort of own it. A book I love. So what Tucker's built with scribe. There used to be gatekeepers in our world, and the gatekeepers have all left. In the last 10 years, the gatekeepers are gone. Gatekeepers are huge. Traditional publishers, music agents, comedy agents, everything else. Look at the brands. Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube. The gatekeepers have left the building. And nowadays the gatekeepers, there's some that are still left. Publishers have consolidated, Right. Some of the big fancy Buildings still exist in New York City, but the thing about gatekeepers is they don't want you until you don't need them. It's not about a platform, it's about owning the words. And a book is the strongest, biggest pillar in your personal brand. 20 years ago Tom Peters said talked about personal branding. He said our most important job is to be the CEO of ME Inc. And the importance of building your personal brand. He said this 20 years ago. Don't get hung up on I don't need to build a personal brand because I'm not good at the platforms or the tools. Think about owning a word and then building your bricks in the wall that can be social proof, Testimonials, media articles, etc. And then another little rant on this. People get really excited nowadays if they get the chance to write for Inc. Or Fast Company or whatever. Do it once if you want to do it once. So that when you put as Seen in Ink on your website it's legitimate and true and then never do it again. And then also repurpose that on your own site, on medium, on blog. You are working for free for them. And positioning wise, you know what they're going to say. Oh it's great to have a column in such a prestigious magazine as Ink magazine. No, it was prestigious when they made it with paper and ink because it was scarce. Now they will take anybody and anyone can write for Ink online, right? Not in the print one. Most people aren't doing the fundamentals. Most people don't know their positioning and this book came out in the 80s. Most people don't know verb your noun. So and I would say get good at this. I mean only get good at this if you want to grow your business. Marketing is about understanding humans, not the product you sell. And how many think about Apple, the Apple holiday ad. A kid goes home and he's like a floppy haired kid and he's home and it looks like he's ignoring his family and he's on his phone the whole time. And at the end of the commercial after it looks like he's ignoring his family for a whole minute, it turns out he was using his phone to create a mini documentary of his family Christmas. He hooks up his phone to the TV on Christmas morning, plays the whole thing stitches together with music and of course the parents and grandparents are crying. That compared to Verizon who's selling gigabytes and coverage maps. That's your opportunity is to figure out the story that your business is telling. Because we all have roofs over our head in this room. We all have food on our table. We're not buying flowers. We're not buying. Think of Super Mario, the little guy and then the flower, and then Big Mario, who's invincible and throws fireballs. Stop selling the flower. Start selling Super Mario. Lululemon sold the first million pairs of yoga pants to women who do yoga. And then they sold the next 10 million pairs of yoga pants to women who do brunch who think they are a kind of women who maybe does yoga, but they don't know where the nearest yoga studio is. That's fine. It's not unethical, but it's the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves.

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