The Live Q&A Call - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #87

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish. And this is the I love marketing podcast, Everybody. It's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. And welcome to the live I Love Marketing episode extravaganza.

Yes, this will be exciting. I'm using a little mini recorder here today. Dean is on GarageBand. We are recording this live on a conference line. We've got hundreds of people on the line. Last I checked, there was something like 900 people registered for this call. How many people actually have showed up live? I have no earthly idea. It could be even more because I didn't check on that for a while. So I have no idea how many people are on the line. But welcome to all of you. We're going to go about an hour, maybe a little more. Hopefully we'll try to stick to an hour. Stick it to an hour, Dean. So what are we going to do today other than answer questions and talk about marketing?

You know what's been really exciting? This is a good time for us to kind of catch up, too, because I've been working like crazy on this breakthrough blueprint program. We're all the way up to profit activator number six now. We were working on today, and it's been exciting to see all the ads and all the before unit things that everybody's been doing. We've been working with the case study group to go through, and, you know, I'm kind of doing some coaching calls with them. And we're. Everybody's going through the format of creating their compelling offer and then the materials that they're going to use to educate and motivate people and deciding on what their. What their cookies are that they're going to offer to get people to meet with you so you can present your. Your Mafia offer. And some of the offers that people are coming up with are just incredible. And now we're just moving into the. Into the during unit. And so it's been. I'm excited about showing off some of this stuff at the conference in a few weeks. We're just three weeks away right now. Tomorrow, three weeks from tomorrow will be together in Phoenix.

Yeah. By the time this episode actually goes up, it's going to be more like two weeks away.

That's exactly right. Yeah.

So. Yep. And we know that the vast majority of people that are listening that are serious are actually going to be at this conference live or you're going to be watching it live stream over the Internet now. So that means I'm actually going to recommend that you sign up for this thing if you are not currently signed up for it and get signed up for it right away because not only.

Will you get, you're going to try and sell somebody something, are you?

Perhaps that could be the case. No, we're not selling anything. We're just making recommendations for people to have a much glorious life. And yes, of course I'm selling something. I would be lying if I was. I'm going to give people a couple of links and you can check them out after you listen to this episode with us.

Okay?

Right now. Is that okay, Dean? Or should I just wait until the end until I give out the links?

But you can't unring a bell.

We can do whatever we want.

No, I think you should give them.

So write these down. These are not like there's actually going to be a slash and all that. So you have to write this down. You will not remember this. I don't think so. The first one is going to take you to the entire sales letter so you can actually see how we market this event. So there's a link that's going to take you directly to the order page. If you're just ready to say, boom, we're ready to sign up. If you haven't, for whatever crazy reason you haven't signed up, I'll give you that link. So the first one is the full sales letter. The second link I'm going to give you is direct to the order page. So here you go. The first link. Www.ilovemarketingthenumber2.com ilovemarketing2.com live L I V E. Okay, that will take you to the full sales letter and you can watch a pretty fancy, snazzy video with people that were at about last.

Oh, that's a great video.

Yeah. So everyone should go and watch it just to see the puppet of me. It shows the puppet and at the end of the video, it's a short video. Dean actually is holding the puppet. That in and of itself is better than any of the yate profit activator strategies. The second link will take you directly to the order page and it's ilovemarketing2.com get started. G E T S T A R T E D I love marketing to the number2.com getstarted and those are the two links that will tell you all about our event. And we're going to see a lot of you there live. Me and Dean love helping people. We're quite approachable, except when we don't want to be. And we're scared and afraid Then we run backstage and hide from people. But for the most part, we look forward to hanging out with everyone. It will be awesome. We have great speakers, including Sean Stephenson, the three foot giant, great guy. Dr. Edward Hallowell, the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist in the world. Trained at Harvard, taught at Harvard for 23 years. Been on Oprah six times. Dr. Phil, I mean, you name it. Famous dude. The Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, he will be our celebrity guest. John Benson, the creator and Inventor of the 3x formula Video sales letters. The inventor of the ugly video sales letter worth tens of millions of dollars to marketers all over the world. Ms. Marie Forleo. Rich, happy and hot MarieTV. Our good friend, she's awesome. Mr. Ed Dale. He's incredible marketer, businessman. And Robin Robbins, the awesome Robin Robbins. She is the top marketer on the planet for the people in the IT industry and just a powerful direct response marketer. Plus we're going to have some special guests giving 10 minute talks. 20 will be there. It's going to be pretty awesome. So this will be just a really, really cool gathering and we're going to talk about all kinds of marketing stuff, do some hot seats and things like that. That's October 3rd, 4th and 5th in Phoenix, Arizona. October 3rd, 4th and fifth. And we're doing a half day coaching session on the 6th. And if you'd rather just call and talk to a human being, you can contact my office right now. No one's answering the phone because we're doing this episode, you know, in the evening. But you know, you can call tomorrow if you want. But maybe we'll be sold out by then. So you should really go online and you know, get yourself signed up. But our phone number is 480-858-0008 and if anyone ever forgets our phone number, just go to joepolish.com that's my office number there. Alright Dean, I'm done rambling about that. Let's get into teaching people some good marketing stuff.

Yeah, so we got some questions here. So I think what we could do is maybe think about some of these questions. I sent you an email with the questions that I got and you sent me one with some of the ones that you had.

Yeah, yeah. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to let you just read them because I don't know if we'd be able to get through all of them. We'll pick ones that we think are applicable to everyone listening, then we'll open.

It up and we'll take some from. From the listeners.

Yeah. And if you do ask a question tonight, it's Star Zero puts you in the queue. Chantelle will take your question and try to ask a question that really, you know, I mean, would be relevant to everybody and, you know, useful and stuff for. Ask an important question for yourself and for anyone listening. And we'll get to whichever ones we can with the timeframe we have and with giving me adequate time, of course, to pitch our seminar, too. Don't be felt right. You know, I mean, it's about time we, you know, make some money off of this free podcast.

Right? There we go. Okay, so this was an interesting question because somebody emailed in. Kurt emailed in and said, I have a new bike adventure business that has six unique bike tours, and they range from seven to eight days, and longest is 20 days. It's a combination of cycling on the road and high mountain passes on dirt roads. Each bike tour caters to a single target market. We specialize by having bike tours just in Colorado. Average price is around $3,000. We're limiting it to 20 to 30 people per bike tour, and it's coloradobikeadventures.com what would be your best way of selling out each bike tour in advance before the actual date of the bike tour? Now, this is kind of interesting because everything's falling into line here. Like, I like this URL coloradobikeadventures.com that's a pretty cool thing. Now, who would be, if I'm thinking through this, that who would be the ideal target market for this? Somebody who likes biking and somebody who likes biking in Colorado. Right. And those. The people who would be interested in going on a bike tour would be certainly people who would be a subset of people who would be interested in seeing about biking in Colorado. Like, if you had a guide, because we always look at this, right? You select single target market, then we want to compel people to call you. So I would look at doing something that is like not saying necessarily that you're doing these bike tours, but getting the pool of people to draw from by getting people who might think about that, maybe they're getting this guide or maps or top 10 places to bike in Colorado, which would be like your guide to biking in Colorado that's compelling to get people to raise their hand. And then when you send them out with that, now you've got all of the information about all of the bikes tours, you know, so you're educating and motivating people. You're educating them about all the places that they can bike and then motivating them to join you on one of these specific tour dates, you know, and if you had it on the whole thing, fantastic.

I like that.

I like that too. You know, I mean, it's some one of those things where every, you know, when you're educating and motivating people, if you can build a big pool of people. Because this is what. When we talk about this in the Breakthrough Blueprint program, the difference between visible prospects and invisible prospects. People who are interested in bike tours in Colorado are largely invisible prospects. It's not the same as chiropractors. You know, chiropractors are a visible prospect. You can get a list of chiropractors, you can get a list of 40 year old women if that's your target audience. You know, that's the kind of thing where the, you know, when you're looking at this, if you have invisible prospects, you want to be able to build a pool of them so that you can continue to market to them, so that you can continue to send them information. Like you could send a weekly email with all kinds of exciting stuff about different tours that you've been going on in.

Colorado.

You know, they're showing all of these things and then at the same time is to have it be offering the next tour or you've constantly got the, that you've got the whole catalog, you know, the calendar of when your events are.

Yeah, very good. I'm sitting there looking at the site right now too, and I got some suggestions on this. But you can tweak around the site all day long. But until you actually do what you're suggesting, Dean, that's an infinitely better way to pre sell and position people in advance so that you've got this list.

And that's the kind of thing like who did a great job of this is Nike. And they maybe did this in other cities. That would be what they did in Toronto was they set up this series of running races and running events and clubs where it was like run Toronto. And everybody was, you know, they did it this whole summer where it was, everybody was joining these, you know, almost like meetup groups for runners in Toronto that were sponsored by Nike. So they gathered all of the serious runners in Toronto and you think about they're doing something that is valuable to the running community, but they're also for them building their pool of their very best target audience. Yep, totally. I think that's a pretty cool.

Yeah. You know, also what I'm not seeing here too Which I think would be helpful. And again, I do. I like the name also. It's great when you go to the site. You know, it's mountains, which are beautiful, but there's not in. You know, there's not. I would almost test different pictures with bikes and showing people doing this stuff. And then up at the top with the menu, it's like home. About Blog Contact bike adventures for 2013 that is overlaying white clouds and you can barely even see it. And so I would make that stand out, make it black if you're going to have it over the cloud area, if you're going to keep that same photo. And also I would test incorporating some videos because the question was, I have a new bike adventure that has six unique bike tours. They range from seven to eight days and the longest is 20 days. Combination of cycling on each road, blah, blah, blah. Each bike tour caters to a single target market. Well, I would come up with separate URLs for each individual bike tour because then you can test different things and you can buy ads on Facebook and various things targeted specifically for those areas for those individuals, that niche. And the average price is around three grand. Why we do a video and I would test videos with you just explaining, you know, what's going to happen, what's going down. And as you do all of the tours and this probably may already exist, I just don't see it here up on the site. And I've clicked through different parts of the site and I do not see it. I would actually have people that have been on the tours saying glowing things about it and how it's the best money they ever spent and it's just awesome. And I would test that stuff out. And as far as selling out, each bike tour get one close to sold out. And if you have lists and you're building your list, you shoot an email out saying there's only two spots left and create that continual urgency. So the people that are sitting on the fence thinking about it sign up and come up with your very best mafia offer for people to be like, yeah, got to do it.

What was very interesting today, I'm going to share. So it's kind of a new articulation of a strategy in the during unit. Because this is the kind of thing where you're gathering people. You know, you've got the during unit of a bike adventure. Like this would be from the moment that somebody places a reservation that they're going to come on this tour all the way till the tour ends and they Everybody waves goodbye and they go home. That's where profit activator number five is in delivering a world class or a dream come true experience for somebody. And then in profit activator number six, about providing after sales service would be what would happen after they leave the tour. What are all of the opportunities that you have then? So when you look at it, here's the distinction that I made because I've been thinking about this for years, but actually going through and creating all the modules for the breakthrough blueprint is really helping me articulate in crystal clear ways all the stuff that I've been thinking about here. So when I look at it that in your during unit, you've got two things going on. Number one is your core objective, which is to deliver the result that somebody thinks they're getting. If somebody buys one of these tours, they're thinking that they're going to have a great Colorado biking experience that is safe and, and fun, right? That will be the core. So you've got to first of all deliver on the core. But then in every single situation, there are what I call strategic objectives, which are when you can orchestrate some marketing around those things. Just like you were saying, Joe, when you've got it comes right down to it and there are, you know, just a few spots left kind of thing for one of these tours, what do you do with the people who are already booked on this tour? You know, if they're already there, Maybe part of your strategic objective for these tours would be that people bring a friend or refer somebody to come on the tour that they're already coming on. That could be a strategic objective that if you don't orchestrate, it isn't going to happen. Another strategic objective could be that they have such a good time that they book their next tour before that tour even ends, right? That they commit to coming on another tour and you have to have a process in place to orchestrate that. Another strategic objective might be that I don't know whether they sell equipment or sell other bike related things that somebody would buy a new bike or maybe there's some sponsorships of bike makers that will sponsor some of these tour things as an opportunity there. For every single during unit situation, there are several, when you really think about it, strategic objectives that you can do. You know, a strategic objective would be that they introduce you to their friends, that you get exposure because of them being on that tour. Now one of the best examples of that is, you know, Dan Kennedy always talked about the guy from that hotel in Las Vegas that when people.

Yeah, Bob Stupek.

Bob Stupek. That he would have. When you'd come, they would have free postcards that were already postage paid. And you could send the postcards to everybody and they would tell people, just put the address on here and put it in this mailbox and we'll mail it off to people. And then of course, they're getting all the names and addresses of all their friends. They're the people that they would send these things to.

Oh, you know, you gave me a great idea just by saying that from an old school thing, which is a great idea, and how it could be applied here. For instance, if they're taking these people out on the bike tours, and this would apply to anyone listening that has any sort of experiential thing that people would want to brag about and send either a postcard or a picture or a video. So you actually take a video out there and you can have like an iPhone. Right. Just devoted just for this. Or just have someone on the crew who's leading the tour, one of the people take videos. Everyone say, hey, would you like to send videos to any of your family or friends? You know, we'll just stand over here and you literally get. Get a coloradobikeadventure.com backdrop. Or you actually embed the video on a page that is emailed and it's like, so John wants to say something to his sister. Hey, Judy, this is John here. I'm right in the middle of a bike tour in Colorado and I just wanted to say hello, look at the beautiful mountains behind me. And then they take it upon themselves to email it to every one of their friends. Or hey, I'm out on a bike tour. I just wanted to say hi to you and send it to a group of friends. And you just say, enter all the emails of all your friends. Or you just give the people the video and say, we'll shoot the video for you. You send it out to whoever you want.

You put it up on your Facebook page and tag everybody in the tour on it. So it shows up on your Facebook page.

Yeah, so something like that is real.

Simple, but they're the kind of things that only happen when you orchestrate them. You have to think ahead. What is my strategic objective and how can I create the circumstances that are going to make that a reality? What's the best way for me to reach that strategic objective? And the interesting thing is when you move into the next profit activator, providing after sales service is what happens from the moment they leave, everybody's waving goodbye, oh, I'm going to miss you. I had a great time. Whatever, it's over. Everybody would assume that was a great tour. Now, when you move into profit activator number six and you extend the value and the relationship that you're adding, what kinds of things could you do to make that an incredible marketing opportunity for you? I think it's kind of cool so that as we're connecting all the dots here, you're seeing how all of the profit activators apply to any business. So you're seeing how they apply to this biking business here. Because when you think about what's happening after somebody leaves the tour, what are they going to be doing? What's the next things that they're going to be doing? They're going to be going back home, they're going to be talking about it to all of their biking friends, they're going to be showing the pictures about it, they're going to be posting up their pictures and videos on Facebook. That's the kind of thing that's happening there. And now all of those people, when you move into the after unit, you've got to build that relationship and orchestrate those referrals. So I think we over answered the question, but it was in such an instructive way that every single business this applies to.

Yeah. So, you know, because of the length of time we took on this question, I would like to layer this as a template for all the other questions that we answered because it could take everyone through it. I mean, you can use the 8 profit activators which you can get on ilovemarketing.com if you want to print out the breakthrough DNA report. And you just look through it, okay, checklist, Narrow your focus. Select one target market at a time. Number two, use direct response offers to compel prospects to call you. Number three, patiently and systematically educate and motivate prospects to meet you when they're ready. Activator number four, present your unique service offer in a way that makes it easy to get started. Number five, deliver a dream come true experience designed from your client's perspective. Number six, provide after sales service even after you've already been paid. Number seven, nurture lifetime relationships and focus on lifetime value. And number eight, orchestrate referrals by giving your clients the opportunity to feel great. And so you can, you know, every, every question that people ask, you got to really say, okay, am I looking at all these? When we do the conference in October, it's really built around how people are using the eight profit activators and giving people tools and strategies and techniques so that they know what to do and how to do it and where to do it and what time to do it, and seeing other people that are successfully doing this day in and day out. And that's why we go deep with these eight profit activators because it's all built around the before, during and after unit with these as the stepping stones.

There you go.

So pick another question, Dean, unless you want me to.

Next. Okay, here's another one. So Tanya Warner asked, besides direct mail pieces, how can a real estate agent market to apartment dwellers when placing door hangers is considered trespassing? So, you know, there's an interesting thing here because when we get back to this is a before unit question here. And she selected the target market of apartment dwellers, which are visible prospects. You can get a list of people who live in apartments, you know where the apartments are. You can mail, even using every door, direct mail, you can send mail directly to those people. But she's asking, placing door hangers is considered trespassing. And I guess what she's asking is how can you do things that are kind of lower, low cost things without doing direct mail pieces? And there's a lot to be said for getting in front of the people who are already in motion. See, a lot of times when you're looking for buyers in real estate, you're looking for the place where they are and sending a direct mail piece directly to them. Is your thinking going to kind of spur them into action? That's one approach that you can do. But the other approach that you can take is to get in front of the people who are already in motion. So if somebody's looking, if somebody is an apartment dweller, what are the kinds of houses that they're going to be looking for and where are they going to be looking for them? Craigslist might be a good place for people to start looking at that. That's how you can get in front of renters. Not even necessarily people who are renting apartments, but people who are renting homes as well. You could do things like one of my favorite lowest cost strategies is using public notice flyers where you could use, you know, ugly yellow flyers that have pictures of homes that you could say, you know, free list of homes you can buy for less than $600 a month or list of foreclosed homes or bank owned homes you can buy for less than $600 a month or something that would be the equivalent of what people are paying in Rent in those areas, you could use little, you know, Dean Graziosi calls them bandit signs. Little, like ugly yellow handwritten signs that you can buy for a buck and put in front of intersections coming in and out of those apartment complexes. Those are the kind of things where, you know, get in front of people. That's how I would. That's how I would answer that. What do you think?

Okay, well, you know, I mean, look, you're the real estate guy, and for purposes of timing and all the other questions, I'd say leave it to that. And also, I don't know the reason for saying beside direct mail, but if.

Given the choice, because of the cost, not spending.

Yeah, no, no, I understand that. But I mean, the cost is all relative. I mean, once you have a control piece and you know that you can actually make. Make it work, then go do it versus just. I would still say try to achieve success with direct mail because the moment you do, it's pretty darn easy to scale. But, yeah, let's go to another question.

I've got one more. And then we'll go to yours if you want. This one was asking about Facebook advertising for local service businesses, like a local family portrait photographer, a cake decorator or a hairstylist or anything like that. Keeping in mind that Facebook is an entertainment venue. What sort of entertainment ideas are there that could be put into an ad? And then the landing page for these service businesses who do the same sort of thing over and over, I'm thinking the enticement would have to be valuable and entertaining. Maybe something like top 10 funny wedding cake designs or top 10 pics of creepy things found in carpets. How does this sound? You know, and that's. I think you're kind of on track there. You know, it's still. I think that compelling is an override of necessarily of funny. You know, I don't think it has to be entertaining. Entertaining kind of gets attention, but it doesn't necessarily build interest and desire. You know, whereas if you can have something that is compelling for people that's free, that is that they can get by, you know, just going to that clicking on that ad, that's going to be the winning formula there. You know, it's not so much about. You got to remember that you've got to be able to connect. Connect the dots. You know, like if you're saying, like if we use our biking example again for Colorado, if it was, you know, the top 10 places to bike in Colorado, it's in the same family, it heads in the same Direction.

Right.

So you want to make sure that you are able to connect that whatever offer you make to the next thing that you're going to offer people when you start educating and motivating them. So you don't want to paint yourself in a corner by just being funny. It's got to be relative.

Yes. And I do actually like the top 10 picks of creepy things found in carpets. And so taking that in a different sort of application outside of Facebook advertising, they. That could actually be made to work. All right, good. You want me to do the next question?

Yeah, sure.

Okay. This one's actually kind of interesting. It came in, it says, how do you go about landing large companies who own restaurants you want to get. I've called and talked to the lady who handles things, sent her some material, but still nothing. Any idea on this? And so my point is, I don't really quite understand this question. And so one of the things is like, like, you know, it's almost like narrow your focus and select one target market is also part of getting really clear on what it is you're actually trying to do. So I'm not sure what this person means by how do you go about landing large companies who own restaurants you want to get? Well, land them for what? We're not sure. And you've called and talked to the lady who handles things. I don't know what that means. And you sent her some material, but still nothing. Any ideas on this? Well, I would almost kind of say what I said earlier. Go through the, you know, the profit activator checklist for one. What is the target market? What are you selling? What is your focus, and what is the direct response offer? You sent someone materials, but still nothing. Well, obviously you sent it to the wrong person or it was something that was not compelling or not targeted. And so this we just simply need more clarity on before we could probably help you.

I'm going to assume that what. But what they're talking about is.

That.

They are trying to land a large chain of restaurants. Let's say somebody who owns like several units of a specific restaurant.

You're saying like Red Lobster or something, huh?

Like Red Lobster or like what's that egg place that we go to by you?

Well, there's only like two of them, but us Egg or PETA Jungle. You know what's funny? PETA Jungle has taken off. You know, they started in Arizona here. And I used to actually clean the carpets for the two guys that actually owned them when I had my carpet cleaning business years ago.

Now that We've got a whole bunch.

Of PETA jungles that are popping up everywhere.

Yeah. So, you know, my approach to that would be that you have to get incredible results for one of the restaurants, you know, and then they're all going to. They're going to want to get it into every restaurant, you know, but you've got to spend your time and effort creating the proof of concept in one. Just like the way the franchise model works. You start with the prototype, you start at the very core, the beginning, and then you move forward from there. The results should be compelling enough that they're going to want to roll it out into all the restaurants.

Yeah. Well, there you go. So if your assumption was correcting, you're a better man than me. Only in this area.

Only in this particular restaurant chain.

Field question. Yeah, we're talking the last three minutes.

Yeah.

All right, so next question. I am an attorney. Okay. That's how it starts out. And I just have to apologize in advance for that.

So.

And I'm kidding, of course. I love when attorneys come to our events because I tend to make attorney jokes and most of the time they tell us jokes back because attorneys tend to know more attorney jokes than anyone else. So, anyway, that being said, the question. I'm an attorney and I'm unsure if special reports are best for my market because it seems like people just want to speak to me via a free consultation rather than read a special report and then call. Do you have any insight on this? Well, for one, unfortunately, I did not see his website, so I don't quite know his niche, nor his.

J1 waivers. Apparently. Your complete guide to J1 waivers.

Okay, well, then here's what I would say. For one, what I remember is that people want to make an intelligent, informed decision, even if they have to act right away. If they have any possibility of getting rid of any of the fears that stands in their way of talking to someone, hiring someone, they will do it. You know, Gary Halbert always used to say, if somebody wants what you're selling, the only thing that stands in their way is fear. Remove the fear and they will buy. And sometimes that fear comes from, I can't afford it. Well, some people can get the money, but they don't because there's still that fear. Is it going to be worth it? You know, we've talked about that quite a bit on past episodes. So what I would say is.

It.

Says here that they want to speak with me via, read a special report and then call and wondering if special reports are best for the market. Well, education based marketing works in almost any environment. And if you just change this question to, via a free consultation to say, like a free video, if people want something right away, have you ever tested recording a video of all of the things that people are asking you? And if people are constantly talking and asking the same questions, put all of that online into the form of a free report. They opt in, they get access to answering those questions, things like that. These are very simple things that could easily be tested. And I can bet you that the amount of time you would spend doing free consultations, you could really leverage yourself by automating that process. Because so much of all of this marketing is simply just automating and selling in advance. So you're not doing manual labor by doing, you know, free consultations to people that have not given you any other information other than they want to talk to you. So what else would you suggest?

Dean well, I think that one of the ancillary benefits of doing education based marketing is that you've got the opportunity to can and clone yourself where you've got the information about these J1 visas or whatever it is that you specialize in. That 80% of the information that you have about it applies to everybody. And that's the kind of thing where you want to educate them as much as you can about all the stuff that's standard so that you're not individually spending time with people doing that. So if I were doing something like this, I would look at it, that I would advertise and offer the free guide to that. Then I would look at maybe even doing, instead of individual consultations, doing workshops or seminars where people can come to a class all about it, that you steer everybody to the Tuesday night J1 waiver workshop. And then at the workshop then you sign them up to get a consultation, which now, because they know 80% of the stuff, is only to see how it applies to them. And that's, I don't know what the involvements are of, you know, what's involved in the J1 waiver, what the issues might be, what people might be concerned about. But I'd be looking for what are the cookies, what are the things that people would want to know, how it applies to them specifically, and how could you do it in a way that it's kind of starting the process, you know, where you're by virtue of signing up for that one on one consultation, it's that they're moving forward and now they're going to pay money to move forward with this you know?

Yeah. Yep.

Yep.

Okay, good. So let's go to the next one. You want me to do it?

Yep.

Okay. Hi, Joe and Dean. I do have a question for the call tonight if you're interested. As you know, we're a digital print and mail company and we've helped many companies increase their campaign response rates through adding personalization to their mailings. We can change text and or graphics based on prospect information to make the mailing campaigns more personal and relevant. However, the personalization is a tough sell sometimes as these mailings do cost more to produce than a typical static mailing. So here is my question. It is actually twofold. Have you seen a significant increase in response rates when more personalization is used in mailing campaigns? And what do you think the value might be of adding a route map to mailing campaigns showing how to get from the prospect's house to the mailer's business, or even to a location where the mailer has completed a project that he or she would like the prospect to see, such as a house they sold, new roof landscape project. This is a new service we're offering and I'm concerned that price will scare many away. I'm thinking of a Mafia offer of 1,000 free maps, $150 value on your first order of 2,500 mail pieces or more. If you need to contact me prior.

To the call, blah, blah, blah, the.

Phone number, so and so. If not, I'll be on the call with you with the rest of the ILM fans. Have a great call and ILM episode. They're always awesome. P.S. i've been working with Vance Morse from Platinum 2.0 and he attributes an increase in his newsletter response to adding a name personalization to the letter and the inserts. I would ask him to test out maps, but prospects looking into clients windows to see clean carpets could be kind of creepy, which is pretty funny actually. So the question about personalization, you know, I mean, it depends on if we've seen a significant increase. I mean, certainly in my direct marketing career, I've done tons of personalization and I've seen bumps in some areas and others where I haven't. And of course, I hate to use the default thing, you got to test it. But of course we know that to be the answer.

It's going to make a difference where you can make it seem like they're the only one getting it. Like I put up on I love marketing. We've talked about it before. The birthday card postcard mailer where it says happy birthday Dean, Right on the front. And you go to the personalized URL. That kind of personalization is very powerful because it makes it seem like it's the only, you know, you're the only one to get it. But in some kind of things where geography plays a role, you can sort of get that same kind of personalization effect by grouping things almost like a specific neighborhood. Even if it's a neighborhood of 20 homes. How many homes are in your little neighborhood, Joe? Like something like that, where it's got a name, you know?

Right, right. I have like nine in my neighborhood.

Nine homes in your neighborhood? There's 50 in my neighborhood. And you know, so having those kind of things where you're, you're getting that sense that this is specifically for you makes a difference. But sometimes, like just being able to have a personal salutation on, you know, on a letter or something like that often doesn't get the kind of bump. It's not a breakthrough bump, you know.

Yeah.

You know, and it's John Weibel and his company's Mailings Unlimited, which, you know, people are welcome to look them up on the Internet. They do all kinds of cool stuff. And you know what? I love the maps. The maps is very cool. And what I would definitely do is, you know, of course, certainly make a mafia offer like that and obviously document before and afters when people are creating results for people. One thing to borrow from the bodybuilding industry, and my client Bill Phillips years ago did probably the greatest usage of modern day before and afters with his physique transformation contest and just the way that he leveraged those. But it's amazing how many businesses can literally do before and afters, but they don't really use that much of it in their marketing. I'll even say this myself. We've got tons of before and after stuff and I could do a much better job of the people, how much they've gotten results. One of the things I've often thought about with just teaching people marketing, you know, this year at this conference, there are people that are going to come to this conference and they're going to be at a certain place and they're going to learn all kinds of cool stuff at the conference. They're going to take the big manual that we hand out with different tools and templates and sales letters and strategies and processes, and they're going to put it to place in their business. In a year from that date, they will have doubled, tripled, quadrupled. People will cut their work time in half. Their client Acquisition cost, all kinds of stuff, their conversion rates will go up. And part of it is just keeping it before and after just to show what person in their right mind would not want that if they just knew it was available. The best that you can take these success stories of what you're probably doing day in, day out, but you're just not documenting it, you're not turning it into a story and telling people. Because a lot of times we're going to give you these maps and here's what people can do with them versus here's how a, a landscape company, just by the addition of this map, which increased their cost by this, but here's what it did to their revenue. Then all of a sudden it becomes a pretty much more compelling sale. And that's why education based marketing and free reports are so critical, because you can't demonstrate that with a sentence. In many cases you have to tell the story and you know, so anyway. So what else, Dean, would you say to this?

I think that's the thing is realizing, you know, where is it going to be really, you know, a breakthrough use of it. Like if you're sending a birthday card like I was talking about, and you can make it seem like it was the only card that was sent, that's a great use of personalization. But just to like put a salutation on it or something like that is, you know, a. That's not a huge use. Was I talking with you about this, Joe? There was, I saw an article. There's a Porsche dealer here in Toronto. And what they had done, they were using like personalized direct mail. Like absolutely, custom direct mail. They would go out with a Porsche 911 and they would kind of position it as if it was coming out of the driveway in front of. They went to this neighborhood with all these big houses and they took a picture of the Porsche like it's coming out of the driveway of your house. And then they would, in the van put that picture onto a postcard that said it's closer than you think and inviting people to come for a test drive of a new Porsche and they would print the postcard right there that was only for them. It would have a picture of the house there. So if there's a way to personalize, even using, if they can do searches from Google, Street View or something like that, where you're making it seem like it's the only house that's getting it, that's kind of a good use of digital variables.

Absolutely. That's a crazy good idea.

Yeah.

I like it. One of my favorite things outside of envelopes that just worked really well. And just even thinking about it, there's applications that I've not done this on that I could be. That would bump response. And it's a Gary Halbert idea. So when you're printing the front of the envelope, when you're doing things, envelope mailing, it's going to, you know, you're going to be personalizing it if you set it up anyway. And so what he would do is it's almost like a handwritten note where people have seen teaser copy that's handwritten, but it looks like it's printed by a computer. But what he would do is he would have it highlighted in yellow and it actually look like someone. John, you know, so it would be a different font. If you're doing, you know, and you really want. If you're going to do. You know, I would actually like Glenn Thomas, which has the actual real pen technology where literally training Richard Rossi's guy, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I've used him for some stuff and he has a device that literally writes with a pen. I mean, it's a robot that's like.

Being used in the White House for the auto signers. When the president is signing a handwritten note, that's what they're using. Is that kind of a thing.

Go figure, huh? So, you know, what would happen is so if you'd write on the envelope like the address and then you'd have off to the side, you know, John, you really gotta see this. But that. John, you really gotta see this would be highlighted, you know, so there'd be a layer of highlight over it. And it actually looks so damn real. And that little bit of personalization is so simple to do because you're already personalizing the front of the envelope. And I think that alone is a way to where it really stands out and really makes a difference. And I think incorporating things like that, they're cheap and they're easy and it just adds a bump. That's what I would say there. So, John, thank you very much for the question. Okay. Trying to think if we should answer all these Dean. Or if we should try to just take some from the. So if you have a question for us, then press star zero Chantel will actually take your name and put you in the queue and we'll answer some questions. We might not spend a lot of time on them, depending on what they are, because we don't have a lot of time left. But more of a reason to hopefully whet your appetite to get your butt down to the three day conference and then immerse yourself in spending three days with us and you'll see how awesome it is. So if you just recently joined us, this is live. So welcome to the call Shantelle. Let me know if we have any questions. We have a few people in the queue. Okay, let's go ahead and take them in the order in which they came in. First we have Robert. Robert, please go ahead. Yes.

What my issue was in the janitorial business I was running into. I had been listening to some James Tolleson recordings and I had misplaced them and they were my catalyst to my business.

What would you recommend?

Now you said James Thomas Tolleson.

These were the old, I don't know if you remember him. He had a southern accent. He was doing the I can speeches.

You mean Tollison, Dan Kennedy's friend?

Yeah, yeah.

But this was the older man. I believe he's passing this time.

Yeah.

Okay. And so your question is, is what, what would we recommend for?

Well, yeah, I mean like as far as listening material just for my business to increase it other than Piranha Marketing, obviously I have your take front of marketing album such as that. What would you just recommend for my like general keep my mind fresh, sharp, active, you know, stuff like that.

Well, you know, of course, because of the world that we come from, you know, all the people that we interview on, I love marketing is an example. Many of them are have audio programs, you know, people like Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, his latest version of product launch formula. If you want stuff in the marketing world, I would say all the people that we interview on, I love marketing. They're just extensions of people that we know are bright and are doing cool things. That's why we invite them to be guests. As far as my favorite audio program of all time, which per se isn't a, you know, for marketing purposes, but, you know, Lead the Field by Earl Nightingale. I mean Nightingale Conant just has, you know, tons of really good stuff.

Yeah, that's highly recommended, like I said. And I just, you know, I know that question. I threw it out there and I appreciate the answer. I like I said I noticed I had those tastes. It always brought me up in the morning. I would go to work fresh and I just, you know what I'm saying? I was looking for a fresher perspective. So, so that's, I mean, you know, things are doing okay. Actually I ran into an instance today, but other than that everything seems to be fine. So I do appreciate all that.

Yeah. You're welcome. You're welcome. And you know, read Steven Pressfield's new book, Turning Pro, which I think is short and spectacular.

I will do that. Thank you. I will.

Cool, man. And hopefully, you know, come to our conference. I mean, because what else could be possibly more useful than being at a three day conference?

Correct.

Cool.

Thank you so much, Robert. Okay, Shantelle, let's take the second question. Next we have Timothy. Timothy, please go ahead.

Okay. Yeah. Hey, Joe. Hey. I appreciate you guys. I really love, I love marketing. But the question I have, I'm a carpet cleaner and I recently joined got your system on Rich Cleaner. And I was trying to implement some of the systems, but I live in an area where there's not a lot of high end client sales. So I know you kind of geared your marketing towards that. And I was wondering, is there any way where maybe I have to put pricing or pricing on some of my advertisements to attract business?

What you think about that?

Well, you know, I mean, what I would say in terms of high end instead of like focusing it towards the high end because you know, the vast majority of the population is not high end. I would say focus, depending on what you mean by high end, but high income. What I focus on is getting the highest prices for the very best service from the very best clientele. I mean, that's sort of how I tend to structure it. And that's always how I've sort of operated ever since I kind of learned direct response. Because at the end of the day, the business all of us are in, be it a carpet cleaner or whatever, is we're in the arithmetic business. So how do you make the math work? So one of my main things that is the mafia offer that I came up with in 1992 was a free room of carpet cleaning with a carpet audit. So I focused on taking away all the threat and fear of doing business with me. And I would put my money where my mouth is and say, hey, I'm going to give you the best cleaning you've ever seen. If you don't like it, you don't ever have to do business. But there's no cost or obligation for anything else. I literally know that the cleaning is so great that I'm going to let you try it for free. I would target that at homeowners. So I would pick the area where you're in the nicest homes, like you know, for the area where you live. What would be given the choice? Who are the people you would like to do business with? You know, my father was a locksmith, you know, passed away in 2003. But, you know, he grew up as a. I mean, very poor and never made a lot of money in his business and, you know, interesting business because he couldn't drive through a neighborhood and know who was going to lock their keys in their car that evening or what couple's going to get into a fight and lock one of them out, that sort of stuff. Whereas in your business, you literally can drive through neighborhoods and know, yeah, these would be really probably great homes. And so target those people with a great offer. And so instead of advertising price, advertise like a free room. But get really skilled at the carpet audit process and educating people and use consumer awareness guides, which. The great thing about buying my stuff is that you don't have to write any of the letters or the ads. All that stuff is already written for you. It's just a matter of picking the people and testing things out. So going to neighborhoods with the I miss you letter and offering a free room of cleaning, go to interior designers, dry cleaners of clothing, carpet retailers. Go to the people in town that service the types of clientele that would be the best for that. And the other thing I say all the time, which sounds kind of weird, some people, we just don't live in an area. Well, then move, move somewhere else. That's not always easy, of course, because people have families, and that's not always the easy answer. But sometimes if you're in such an area that it literally is not conducive to running the type of business you want, then either getting to a different business or get into a different area, but in your particular case. So anyway, instead of me babbling, does that help?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I guess I tried the free.

Room letter and the problem I was running into was that people would like to offer, they would call. But I guess when it came to purchasing the services, you know, a lot of them, I don't know if my pricing was too high because I did the packaging, they liked it. But a lot of them say, well, I just can't afford it. You know, I want to get it done. I just can't afford it. That's why I was asking, maybe I should start advertising a price or something that they can, I guess, see to relate rather. Because I hate going out there and not wasting my time, but doing all this work and servicing them, and then I turn around and, oh, you know what? It's a good service, but I really can't afford it. But I really like your work.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't hide anything. I mean, I'd still offer the free room of cleaning and just show them a price in advance. Just so. So if people really do sincerely want something done but they can't afford it, then yeah, you don't want to be wasting their time, you don't want to be wasting yours. And in your particular case, you definitely want to target. So is it true that they really can't afford it, or is it just that you've not overcome the value to price? Objection.

Well, what I think it is because what I've been doing, I. I passed them out and then I acquired a mailing list in which I mailed some out. Now, the mailing list was, you know, areas where nicer homes, you know, income value was. I mean, the income bracket was higher and doing those, I had more success targeting like that as opposed to maybe walking an area out. So. But the areas that I mailed out to were out of the area that I live in. So your point about maybe moving to another area, I may have to consider as far as expanding my business outside of the area I live at in order to maybe get the prices that.

I need to get. Yeah, well, certainly go where the money is. I mean, you got to be able to do that. Dean Jackson does a really great job talking. I don't know if you've listened to past episodes of I Love Marketing where we talk about referrals and things like that, but a good portion of your business is profit activator number eight, where you orchestrate referrals. Part of this is birds of a feather flock together. So once you start getting more clients that are the type that you want in those areas, they can refer you to people very similar to them, and you won't be running. You can make that offer every time you're in a home or you have a good client or go to people that you've already done business with that would fit that criterion. Say anyone that you'd like to offer a free room of cleaning for that's a friend of yours. And anyone that takes us up on this, I'm going to give you X a free room or a certificate of. I have these things called Fiber Bucks because my carpet cleaning company, I changed the name of my company in the beginning from Substance Superior Carpet Care to Fiber Tech. And I created Fiber Bucks. And they were like these valuable things, dollar figures. And I would literally give people credit whenever I needed to incentivize people, thank them for referrals that sort of stuff. I would do that. And anyone in any business can create their own version of that. Dean, do you have any comments? I mean you pretty much know I.

Was going to say about the referrals like that you hit it on the head that you know, profit activator 8 but also leveraging, kind of like we were talking about in the, in the during unit. Every time you do get a job, you have, you know, to have the strategic objective of turning that job into the, the next job, you know, because proximity of the neighbors around that house that you just cleaned the carpet, a referral from the, the people you know right there while they, you know, before you've even left from cleaning their carpet. Those are all, those are the kind of things that you really want to leverage the opportunities that you have.

Yeah. Yeah, okay, that sounds good. Yeah.

So, and you know, how long have you had the. Had the system?

I got at the beginning of the year in January. So I'm pretty new at it. So I've been trying to understand it first and then implementing things, you know, a little at a time, maybe a couple strategies. But from what I've implemented, I mean they work because I tried the referral sheet. I get them to fill it out before I leave and they're happy to do that. I do the follow up letter, I guess the after unit where you part of referrals and send them a free room of cleaning. So it works. It's just probably targeting the right people. I think that's my problem is just sending the message to the right people because I know if you're sending it to people that are renters or who don't really care about their carpet, you're going to get taken advantage of. So I guess that's the issue that I'm trying to overcome is just targeting that key audience, that niche of people that I'm trying to market to and just limited to those individuals. Yeah.

And it always goes back to profit activator number one. You got to narrow your focus and select your right target market because you could have everything else. Right. But if you don't have that one right, especially from a money standpoint, you're going to still run up into frustration and you have the very best strategies on the planet for professional cleaners and restorers. And so hopefully you'll make it out to the conference this year and you can meet a bunch of people that are in similar businesses as yours. Just continue to add, just jump into it as much as you can. Keep using it, keep learning it over the years. It'll just keep getting better and better. Use all the access and stuff that we have available for you. And we appreciate it.

I appreciate you. Thanks, John. You awesome.

Thank you, Timothy. All right.