hello everyone it’s Evan Carmichael
welcome to another webinar it just
turned eight o’clock and so I’m ready to
go I’m excited to have you guys here on
board this is the first one that I’ve
done through Google+ to the hangouts and
so it’ll be an interesting experience
and I’m looking forward to your feedback
if you like it or not I first a grand
wall to Beal that and ask questions you
can see there at the bottom of the slide
if you tweet any question with the
hashtag ask Evan I’m going to be
monitoring that throughout the next hour
looking for your questions and I really
enjoy answering them for you so
hopefully you guys will have some
interesting questions for me to answer
there and that will be on every slide so
we’ll we’ll have a little bit of time at
the end to answer questions but also if
something comes up as we go through and
you have a question just feel free to
send that tweet out with the ask Evan
hashtag so welcome to another webinar
again it’s exciting to have you guys
here I just came back from another event
it was a fundraising event for
Alzheimer’s where again I was talking
about the same topic of building a
marketing machine seems to be a popular
topic in one that entrepreneurs really
care about and it was awesome to see
people kind of face to facing and help
them with their challenges and now I’m
excited to be here with all of you and
try to help you guys out as well so you
cannot build a successful business
without having a well-oiled sales and
marketing machine and that sucks it
sucks because most entrepreneurs are not
great at sales and marketing you may be
really good at what you do and I hope
you’re really good at what you do I hope
you’re one of the best at what you do in
the world that’s how you can get success
as an entrepreneur but that’s not enough
you also have to be out there talking
about yourself promoting your business
and that’s the other side of it so it’s
not
being great at what you do you have to
get people to find out about you and I
have a lot of people come to me and say
I’m really good at what I do i I really
help people I i love my business i love
seeing the smiles on the people’s faces
when they see that i’ve helped them and
i just wish people would know about me I
wish is a way for people just to say my
name and how people come to my website
and check me out so they have to spend
all this time doing the marketing myself
and I know it’s a big frustration the
first realization here is that it’s not
it’s not on them you can’t blame the
world it’s not their fault that they
don’t know about you it’s on you it’s up
to you to get out there and market
yourself and promote your business
because the cover is not coming this is
on you to go out and do and you can do
it and today we’re going to talk about
ways that you can do it a quick little
story but myself I’m not the world’s
greatest networker or salesman I guess
I’m a little shy or a little introverted
I’m not the kind of guy who would go
into an event and introduced myself to
everybody and hand up my business card
and say hey you have to do business with
me I won’t sit down on the on on a plane
and talk to the guy next to me and talk
about my business and I that can hurt
you know that that’s definitely
something I can limit me as an
entrepreneur and so instead of you know
giving up instead of failing with my
company I had to find a different way to
stay I had to find a different way to
operate and if it wasn’t going to be me
going out and finding people that I had
to find a way to get them to come to me
and that’s why I created this marketing
machine program and these are the
systems and tools that I use to help
myself be a magnet for new business so
I’m not out networking and doing cold
calls instead people are finding me
and wanting to work with me and I find
that people who do that are more likely
to become a customer buy more refer
friends and be more of an ideal fit for
what I’m doing you know you could be a
great networker in sales person that’s
awesome but today we’re going to be
talking about building that marking
machine and getting people to find you
so let’s get through this presentation
and again if you guys have any questions
feel free to send a tweet with the ASCAP
and hashtag and I will be happy to
answer it for you so a little bit about
me you guys found me somehow if you’re
on my newsletter list or twitter twitter
page or Google Plus whoever you found me
hello nice to meet you i’m evan i love
entrepreneurs my goal is help a billion
entrepreneurs through the website and
through these presentations a quick
little background when I was 19 I had a
biotech software company built it up
sold it when I was 22 I was a venture
capitalist helping entrepreneurs grow
their business and we raised half a
million to 15 million dollars for
companies looking to expand a few
miscellaneous facts have helped set two
World Records I work 20 hours a week I
use a stand-up desk I write a vespa I
help raise funds for Kiva which is a
organization that helps entrepreneurs in
developing countries we’ve helped fund
3,000 of them so far create a line of
entrepreneur trading cards graduated
from U of T University Renault and enjoy
salsa dancing be in the DJ and the
Toronto Blue Jays looks like we have a
good team this year and so excited for
all your baseball fans out there so
that’s a little bit about me quick thing
about the questions again as they come
feel free to tweet with the escapement
hashtag and I’ll also try to answer some
at the end but feel free to send them in
as we come as I’m monitoring it from my
dashboard here so in the last webinar
that we did I’ve talked about the first
five strategies for building the
marketing machine just a quick recap
number one is over different like crazy
so whatever you’re doing for your
existing customers find a way to go way
above and beyond expectations way beyond
what they ever thought you were going to
do for them to
wow them with your service because
they’re going to be more likely to come
back buy more refer more clients on to
you and it’s a great way to build your
business through your existing customers
number two is land bigger deals so this
is the challenge where a lot of
entrepreneurs deal with small clients
and it’s great maybe at the beginning
just to get some cash flow coming in but
it’s just as much work to sell a big
client as the seller small client and
typically the smaller guys cause a lot
more headaches you know I like working
with entrepreneurs but I don’t sell the
entrepreneurs my service is because it’s
it there were two we’re too needy and
demanding in comparison to bigger
companies and so as much as fast you
want to go up and try to land bigger
deals work with bigger companies number
three build a lead generating website
this is a big way of how I drive traffic
to my business and new new sales
opportunities and there’s a little bit
of you know work revolves around keyword
research and SEO and I mean touch a
little bit on that later on today but
it’s such a cost-effective way to build
a business and have people find you
because when people are looking for help
they usually go to google and they start
searching so you want to show up get
business using newsletters number four
and the idea here is that I somebody
visits your website you don’t want them
just to make a decision to either buy
from you or not people like to date
before they get married and same thing
with closing a customer the more they
like you know you trust you the more
likely they’re going to become a
customer so instead of just have
somebody come to your website and hope
they remember to contact to or come back
to the site again give them an incentive
to sign up for your newsletter we are
providing them valuable ongoing helpful
information and so then when they do
have a challenge they’re going to come
to you because they know you like you
trust you and so you want to try to
capture their information as much as
possible the people who are coming to
your website and not just let them go
and hope that they contact you and then
get results from social media was a
fifth and social media is is a scary
thing for a lot of people can be a huge
time sucker for a lot of people i
started with twitter and thought it was
so stupid you know people talking about
their cats and with date for dinner and
then i thought i would look up my
company name and my website and found
that people were talking about me and i
wasn’t part of the conversation and so
there definitely is a use for social
media in a way that you can drive
business growth through it you did the
number one rule for for you know sales
and marketing you want to hang around
where your customers are and so if your
customers are in social media then you
want to be in that that play box as well
so that’s what we covered before if you
guys have any questions about that you
know feel free again tweeting with the
ask Evan hashtag but otherwise we’re
going to move on to the new stuff today
and dive a little bit deeper into the
new strategies to help you build that
marketing machine so the next five
strategies and these are the ones going
to talk about today I’m really excited
get in the media form strategic
partnerships sell more to current
customers have a loss leader and a
back-end and test test test so get in
the media so this is the first point of
the day you may notice here on the
screen that the the numbers here a
little bit off you see my mouse that
shows that it’s number 19 that’s because
these are all different worksheets that
I sell off my website and so this is
worksheet number 19 so don’t get
confused by the numbers being off we’re
still going to talk about kind of five
main strategies today so I love trying
to use the media to leverage their reach
and expose me as an expert to my target
audience if you think about your own
experience of reading a newspaper are
you more likely to read the ads are you
more likely to read the story and more
likely read the story and what’s going
to cost you less to get into the paper
spending on advertising or getting the
story written about you and it’s usually
getting the story written about you so
the next question is how do you get into
the media and what I found is as
entrepreneurs we should be experts of
what we do right again hopefully you’re
one of the best in the world
specifically at what you do now all you
have to do is let people know that
you’re
expert and be a resource whenever the
media is writing about any topic any
news story any trend that’s happening
you always see that they quote an expert
why can’t you be that expert if you can
be a reliable source in an expert
opinion for these reporters you’re at
life and their job easier you just have
to let them know that you exist number
one so when I was first starting out
getting into the media I made a list of
all the reporters who covered
entrepreneurship and it was a big list
that covered international media
national media and also local media and
depending on what your business is you
don’t necessarily need to go after
national media maybe local as a great
way to start for you and so I made that
list and I looked at some of the stories
that they’ve written before and I wrote
to them a lot of times you can easily
find the email address of the reporter
and I would comment on their story and
say hey i love this story and then also
providing some feedback for them my
opinion and let them know if you ever do
another story like this I’d be happy to
be an expert for you and share my two
cents the other thing I did was I
created press releases and would
consistently send them out every two
weeks a new press release to my list and
I would always get picked up somewhere
the trick with the press release is you
have to write it like a story so most
restful uses our way to promotional and
it just showcase you know how great you
think you are that’s not a good news
story nobody’s going to pick that up you
have to write a story for them so give
them stats and give them numbers and
give your expert analysis talk about a
trend that’s happening or comment on a
story that that is developing in the
news or specifically to your industry
I’ve had a lot of times reporters who
may be a little bit too lazy but they
would copy and paste exactly what i
wrote is my press release into their
publication because it was a story and
they’re more likely to pick that up so
every time I set something up I would
always get somebody pick it up for me so
you want to make that targeted list
the next thing can help with the media
is have a media page so big fear for the
media is that you know you position
yourself as an expert you say you’re an
expert but you have no proof to back it
up and so you want to create a page on
your website somewhere that talks about
how you’re an expert and how you know
what you’re talking about and so even if
you even if you’re starting with a local
newspaper put it up if you’ve done a
guest blog post somewhere put it up do
anything you can to build momentum now
my media page might be a little bit more
impressive at least now than what you
guys are working on but if you start at
the beginning so if you go to my media
page you’ll see I’ve been in the New
York Times and Wall Street Journal and
Forbes magazine and I’ve done a bunch of
TV appearances as well and what the
reporters are worried about is you’re
going to make them look bad right your
job is to make them look good and they
don’t want to be quoting somebody who
has no idea what they’re talking about
oars or you know isn’t given the right
facts and opinions and so having a good
media page that talks about yourself and
your experience and how you know what
you’re talking about and hopefully shows
some previous experience will help when
reporters are going to that page and
hopefully they’ll want to get in touch
with you and see that take you know what
you’re talking about so have a good meet
at page and make it visible off your
website the next is a service that I use
called PR leads and this is a great way
to get into the media basically what
happens here is reporters from this is
most American market will post to PR
leads with their stories they say I have
a story about XYZ topic and I need an
expert to help me up and they’ll say
exactly the type of person they’re
looking for and they’ll tell you what
their deadline is and you’ll get two to
three emails a day with all the leads
that are coming in for reporters and
these are guys who have stories they
work at major publications and they’re
looking for help and I use these guys to
get me into the New York Times so there
are some major you know internationally
known publications on there and also
some lesser-known ones and even if it’s
outside your demographic you know if
you’re targeting only
certain state or certain province or sit
in city even if that’s you know that’s
the only place you can get your
customers so I’m based here in Toronto
Canada and I do a lot of local media if
my business was only about helping
Torontonians that’s fine but I could
still be an expert in the Houston
Chronicle that still helps me even
though it doesn’t give me customers from
Houston if that’s not my idea my idea of
an ideal customer I can still put that
on my website and say hey I’m recognized
expert I’ve been quoted in these
newspapers and that helps you convert
more sales of people who are visiting
your page and I can put it on my media
page so I’m going after new media it
shows that I’ve birdie has some
experience now Pierre leads I’m not
affiliate with them in any way it is a
paid service it’s ninety nine dollars a
month so you have to I guess justify
cost benefits he was worth it or not I
don’t think there’s any kind of minimum
commitment so you can get on for you
know nine in my box and try it for a
month and see if it’s a good fit for
what you’re doing or not but I found it
to be extremely helpful because you have
this list of reporters who have a need
and who are looking for experts and you
could be that expert to help them fill
the gap so definite want to look at get
into the media and using them to help
promote your brand one of my favorite
quotes from famous entrepreneur PT
Barnum he was a promoter and ran the
barnum & bailey circus without promotion
something terrible happens nothing and
this is a big problem for a lot of
entrepreneurs you can be awesome of what
you do and have the best product or
service in the world and really really
take care of your clients but you have
to get out there and spread the word you
have to promote your business whether
you’re a great salesperson or great
networker or a great might have to do
something to let people know that you
exist otherwise nothing is going to
happen number two
form strategic partnerships this is
another one of my favorite ways you have
Li grow my business and this works for
any kind of business if you’re just
starting up or if you already passed the
startup stage the idea here is find
somebody who is already selling to your
target market and partner up with them
find a way to help each other out so
that they can introduce you to their
clients and this again can work if
you’re just starting up you find
somebody who already has your your
market and you go talk to them introduce
yourself to them it’s a lot easier to
talk to potential partner than it is to
go cold call on a potential customer if
they see whether you might be able to
help them out then they’re going to be
more receptive to talking to you as well
and it works really well because your
clients already have or your ideal
clients already have a trusted
relationship with this person and if
they say hey you have to go talk with
Evan then they’re more likely to take
that recommendation and when they come
to you then they’re going to be almost
pre-sold right somebody who they like
and trust and they already work with
said you have to talk to this person and
so they can be more likely to do it and
I’m going to be a better fit in terms of
ideal customer there hopefully going to
spend more money with you ask less
questions be less difficult and so the
first step is figuring out you know who
is your ideal client and then look at
who else is buying from them a quick
example this is a very young Bill Gates
I’ve shown this picture a few times and
people didn’t know who I so I had to
head to explain that this is Bill Gates
and he’s told in a really old version of
Microsoft that fit on the old floppy
disks for any of you guys who remember
those floppy disks Microsoft built their
business through partnerships and it
worked at the very beginning at the
business and it has continued to work as
they’ve grown their business their big
deal was with IBM an IBM makes computers
and the deal was for every computer that
IBM made they would ship it with
Microsoft software
with windows installed already on it so
instead of having instead of Microsoft
happened to go knock on doors and
convince people who had computers to
install windows they made a partnership
with the people who are selling the
computers and said install windows
automatically on every computer that you
sell it was a great way to reach their
market really quickly through making one
partnership deal now that was the big
deal to put microsoft on the map but
they were already an established company
they weren’t a huge company but they
already had million-plus in sales by the
time they made that deal with IBM so it
wasn’t just a pure startup with no
revenue now even more recently when
Microsoft is trying to get into new
markets they partner up so a recent
example was Expedia and that’s a travel
website you can book flights and hotels
to it they decided they wanted to get
into the travel business but they
thought we don’t know anything about
travel so they weren’t sure what to do
and so they partnered up with american
express a company that had a lot of
experience of travel and together they
launched Expedia and the partnership ran
out after a couple years and now
microsoft owns it and so they used the
experience and credibility of American
Express to be able to launch his new
venture and so I really respected how
Microsoft built their business and
partnerships and when I was first
starting my business the software
business I was 19 I was scared I had no
idea what I was doing and you know
excited to launch new business but also
panicking and overwhelmed and not sure
what to do next and after you know after
I freaked out for a little bit I
realized you know not the first guy to
try to sell software before and I looked
at companies like Microsoft and McAfee
into it and look how they got started
not how Bill Gates makes extra million
dollars now but how did it go from 0 to
1 how to make that first million that’s
what I want to learn from and we put
those strategies to work for us and any
problem you’re facing right now whether
in your business life or otherwise
somebody’s already solved it you’re not
the first person to go through this and
so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel
and come up
with tons of innovative ideas look at
what’s already been done look at people
who’ve already solved the challenges
you’re facing right now and see how they
did it and from there you’ll get a lot
of ideas that you can apply to your own
business so the one that I pulled from
Microsoft was this concept of partnering
and using basically companies who
already had my target market and making
an arrangement with them so they could
help me it could be a formal arrangement
where they get a commission so you give
them a piece of every sale that goes
through or it could just be a loose
arrangement where you agree to help each
other out every partner will act a
little bit differently so you have to
play each one case by case but it’s a
awesome way to grow your business and
getting referrals in from partners is an
easy way to get new clients one of the
best ways to do it is think before and
after so you can make a deal with your
direct competitor although it’s hard to
make it work typically your competition
doesn’t like to refer business to their
competitors it could work if they are
overwhelmed I don’t have anybody else to
farm it out to but typically it’s hard
to do so your best bet in terms of
getting partners on board is look at who
people are buying from before they buy
from you and after they buy from you so
you’re you fit somewhere on the buying
spectrum for your clients so before they
buy from you they’re going to somebody
else and then after they buy from you
they’re going to somebody else as well
those two suppliers those groups of
suppliers are potential partners for you
especially the before one because
whoever the bind from before they’re
going to need to buy from you next and
so if that supplier saying hey you gotta
go work with this company then you get
that warm lead in and you’re much more
likely to close the deal so make a list
of all the companies that people are
buying from before you and after you and
maybe the best way to started is just to
make the list of types of companies and
then you can narrow down to exact and
specific people that you can potentially
call up and introduce yourself and
usually people are pretty open to
partnership arrangements and partnership
meetings
so it’s a lot easier to call on a
potential partner or email them up and
say hey here’s what i do i think mabel
to help each other out and line up some
kind of coffee meeting or a phone chat
to to discuss it usually that’s a lot
easier than calling up on a customer and
saying hey I have a great product or
service for you so a great way to be
able to build your business one example
this is ty warner who had the beanie
babies if you guys are filled with
beanie babies one quote he said was we
really did it partnered to expand our
product to children who wouldn’t be
shopping in upscale shopping malls we
saw McDonald’s as the best avenue to get
these kids to see them so what he did
was he partnered up with McDonald’s and
when he first sold beanie babies it was
only through higher end stores in higher
in malls and that’s how beanie babies
got started but he wanted to reach a
wider audience and so he said instead of
trying to go and knock on all these
individual retailers and say hey sell
our stuff he made a partnership with
McDonald’s who already had a huge market
of kids that right that’s who is going
after people who weren’t necessarily the
upscale market and you need a
partnership with them and they helped
distribute his product and get his name
known and so it works for the biggest
companies and it worked for the smallest
company so you just have to find
somebody who already has your target
market and is doing a good job with them
who’s not a direct competitor to you and
find a way to be able to work together
number three sell more to current
customers it’s really hard to get new
customers I know it’s frustrating and
and time-consuming and overwhelming to
go out and find new business it’s one of
the hardest ways to grow your company
and an easier way is to sell more the
people who are already buying from you
they know you they like you they trust
you they bought with you before they
enjoy the experience and hopefully
you’re doing a good job with them and
you’re servicing them well and there’s a
lot of revenue and money left on the
table with a lot of these relationships
with your clients and an easy way to
quickly grow is to look at your existing
base and see what else you can do for
them
is there another product or service you
can offer is another way you can get
more money from your existing base you
don’t want to you know over pitch them
and make them feel pressured to buy from
you but a lot of times it’s looking at
what other problems do they have and is
there a way that you can help them out
if you’ve helped them with one problem
chances are they’re going to trust you
to help them with another problem and so
it’s a fast way to grow your business
even if you only have a few clients an
important formula to remember I’m
looking at if you’re looking at your
overall sales it’s made up of four three
things one your price to the quantity
that somebody’s buying from you and
through the frequency at which they’re
buying from you so i’m not going to talk
too much about the price today a lot of
entrepreneurs do underpriced their
services and you need to charge more for
what you do both for active being able
to have more revenue to support your
business but also to feel better about
yourself you know you want to charge
what you’re worth you want to charge
your pricey you’re happy with and not
beat yourself down and have to accept
you know lower prices just to win a deal
and that also comes with you know
landing bigger clients and we talked
about earlier on tonight so we’ll ignore
price for now but you really should
experiment with charging little bit more
the next one is quantity and so this is
when people are buying from you you’re
trying to increase how much their bind
from you instead of buying one you want
them to buy five or ten of whatever it
is that you sell in the frequency is you
want to increase how often they’re
coming back to you so if you have a
purchase where they’re coming once a
year you want them to come every three
months or every two months so you’re
looking for ways to position your
product or service to get people to buy
more frequently and in bigger quantities
and that might mean just selling more of
what you already do but often it means
adding on to it selling something
complimentary that works with what
you’re already selling here are a few
ideas that might help you you can give a
small discount so you’re getting people
to come back
to increase more if you give this a
slightly small discount on what you’re
selling give them some kind of free
bonus if they take action now a
money-back guarantee to reduce the risk
give them some kind of recognition you
could put a picture up on on your
website or in your office place
somewhere give them some kind of award
it could support a cause so it goes to a
good cause if they if they buy from you
now give them free delivery a limited
edition sell gift certificates creative
rewards program where people are buying
frequently from you have a subscription
package this is an important one that a
lot of people don’t do instead of having
them by you know once a year from you or
every six months put them on a package
think about what your business is and
how if it’s a product or service how can
you get them to sign up scription
package with a binding from you every
week every month whatever it is how can
you bundle whatever you’re selling or
find some way to offer value to them on
an ongoing basis that they can justify
paying you every month because even if
you have money coming in every month it
relieves so much frustration and pain
and worry that then you can focus on
growing your business so what I live
whatever it is that you sell try to
figure out a way to make a subscription
package so you have money coming in
every month and there has to be
obviously a lot of value that you
provide it’s not just you know trying to
scan them out of money it’s given them
real value for what they’re paying every
month and then cross promotion so if you
have multiple products or services if
they buy one you can promote the other
one at the same time so they’re more
likely to buy that one as well so those
are a few ideas I’m treating them with a
lot more on your own organ if you have
questions you can ask me for those of
you who’ve just joined or joins you know
little recently if you do have a
question you can tweet with the hashtag
ask Evan and I’ll answer it for you guys
as we go along number four lost leader
and a back end the idea here is you need
to find a way to get in to work with
your ideal clients in a low-risk way for
clients to bring you on especially ideal
clients who are going to spend a lot of
money with you it can be
risky and scary for them to do it and so
if you can find an easy way that does
not cost them a lot of time or money to
be able to start working with you then
it’s easier to get them to say yes and
then sign bigger deals and bigger deals
and bigger deals so you need to find
your thin wedge into the market and may
mean losing some time and a little bit
of money on it to build that
relationship up a friend of mine in
these groups that we run called
mastermind groups where it’s basically
entrepreneurs get together once a month
and we talk about our businesses he
recently shared his sales process and
how he goes and pitches big clients and
is it you writes proposals and it’s a
multi-step thing lots of meetings and I
compared it to what I do and I don’t
write proposals and I work with big
clients as well I’ll work with Microsoft
and american express and and and big
brands and they asked her proposals but
i never create them what i’ll do is
instead of putting a huge proposal
together what it does what a big
proposal does it takes up a lot of your
time and effort you have to make
estimations that you don’t know all the
facts behind and a lot of times with
proposal changes after you actually
start working with them just like a
business plan changes once you start
running your business so instead of
writing a huge proposal I just try to
find a small way to get started has the
biggest reason for the proposal for them
typically is to reduce their fear to
show them that I know what I’m talking
about and if they start working with me
that they’re not going to look bad in
front of their manager present you lose
their job and so I look for any way to
get started on a really small scale that
can show what I do can give them a lot
of value and they don’t have to go and
get huge approval for so whatever the
proposal is find some small way just to
get started on the deal and then move
forward from there if you do an awesome
job you over deliver like crazy they
love working with you they’re going to
want to hire you back for more projects
the key is just to get started reduce
risk up front and get started on
something so that they’re more likely to
follow through later on down the line so
one of the things that I do is we’ll
create quarterly reports and when I’m
going in and talking to some of my
clients I work with big brands who are
trying to reach entrepreneurs and they
have no idea how to do it big big
companies suck I sell into entrepreneurs
for whatever reason they just do a
really bad job of it and so the law
often hire me to help them and one of
the things I’ll do to showcase that I
know what I’m talking about is i’ll give
them quarterly reports on the state of
entrepreneurs and this comes from mostly
questions that people are asking me and
data that we have on our website and
trends that we see occurring just from
all the information that we already
gather this is stuff that we were to do
for ourselves I collect this information
so i can create YouTube videos and
create webinars and create new content
for the website so it’s no extra work
really for me to do maybe to make it
look a little nicer with the powerpoint
than what I would you know just make for
myself but that’s it it’s it doesn’t
cost me a lot of time or money but it
looks great because our clients or
potential clients they don’t have access
to this stuff so I don’t want you to go
out and think I got to have a loss
leader haven’t told me to have a loss
leader and I’m going to go out and spend
a lot of money on this loss leader to to
win the business I don’t want you to try
to spend a lot of money I want you to
try to find a way that you can do it
without spending money but there’s high
perceived value so these are your four
options the one that we were looking for
as much as possible is the top left high
value low cost so there’s a high
perceived value they think is really
helpful they love what you’re doing for
them but it doesn’t actually cost you
that much time or money to put together
if you can do that and that becomes your
entry point then you can almost pump
these things out and show the value and
show that you know what you’re talking
about and show how you can help them
without the fear and the scariness is
going through a huge proposal and all
the money is going to be involved in it
so my my strategy
guess you’re getting in is once there’s
a little bit of interest just find any
little piece that I can just to get
started one tiny little project give me
something tiny that I can work on and
then I’m going to blow their socks off
with the results and they’re going to
want to go back and do more sometimes
it’s me saying here can also help with
this system this but you should send
coming back to say ever know is awesome
can you help us with all these other
projects and then we just move forward
and we don’t need to have a proposed and
we don’t need to have huge budgets lined
up for they end up coming to me and so
hopefully that will help you guys bring
some a few ideas for what you can do for
your clients as well are your prospects
number five the last point here they
want to talk about is test test test
with any system that you use in your
business you want to optimize and test
it to get the best results and so it’s
number of different ways that that will
do it here the first that I want to
highlight is with my newsletters so I
talked a little bit earlier on about the
importance of newsletters and how you
can turn people from from casual
observers on your website to leaving
their information and allowing you the
permission to contact them and build a
relationship if you have a news release
that you’re building up you want to make
sure people are opening your emails
right and that’s mostly going to come
from your headline it’s the single most
important factor is what you call what
the subject line is of your newsletter
and this applies to anything that you do
the headline is the most important thing
if you’re writing a piece of content a
blog post a newspaper article if the
headline sucks they’re not going to read
the rest of it so you go out and spend a
lot of time working on your headline so
I’m always testing and having a better
headline can double or triple the number
of people who open up your emails and so
right there you have a much better
chance of boosting your conversions so
here are some things that we’ve tested
we’re always running tests on our
newsletter list we have about 70,000
people on a newsletter list and I’m
always testing things to try to get the
best result so few the results and hope
you can apply this to your business the
force is negative versus positive we
found that people would do a lot more to
avoid a negative than to achieve a
positive and that that kind of sucks for
me because I’m I like being the positive
guy don’t like being the negative guy
don’t think negative and so sometimes it
requires me to you know do a little
extra mental gymnastics to come up with
I start with a positive headline and
then figure out okay how can I make this
into a negative in how to help them
overcome a negative so the example on
the right says under the number it says
the two key factors that are holding you
back that’s how to avoid a negative the
next is using caps so we tested using
all caps some caps no caps we found the
all caps version up performed name
versus no name that’s putting their name
in the subject line so our newsletters
will always start with for John and then
the headline and if people see their
name in the subject lead to open it all
i care about with my headlines I want
them to open up the email because then
they’ll read what’s written there at
least I have a chance with my first
paragraph to capture them if they see
the headline and just delete it right
away no matter how much time and effort
I spent creating my newsletter crafting
that awesome content they’re not going
to do anything with it I found morning’s
work better than afternoons use your
newsletters are sent out now at five in
the morning I’m not up in five in the
morning but I guess a lot of you guys
are and so that that seems to be the
best time in Tuesday’s or wednesdays
work the best compared to the rest of
the week and I test it every day and
every time and that’s what pulls out
best for me now this is very different
than other people in my presentation
this morning one of the women in the
audience said well i found that
saturday’s work best for me and she
works with a residential community those
are her customers and that’s great you
know i work with entrepreneurs so maybe
different the important thing is that
you’re testing because i can have a huge
impact if i sent it on a tuesday i might
get twice as many people to open it and
if i sent it on a saturday
and so I wouldn’t have known that unless
I tested it and if I’m doing all that
work to create the content and try to
promote myself and what I’m doing at
least want people to read it right and
you want to give yourself the best
chance at success and that comes from
being able to test so you don’t have to
be a genius and have everything figured
out from the start just test test test
and see what works so on the right hand
side here this page is the three
categories number question or how to and
this was a sample that I ran on my
newsletter where the content of the
newsletter was exactly the same exactly
the same content within the newsletter
but the only thing different was the
headline so the first was a number so
the two key factors that are holding you
back the second was a question know how
to grow but need a push and the third
was a how-to had a great business and
make it succeed and the number really
outperformed the other two and so we
also found that if you write the number
two instead of writing TW o that has a
big impact as well so we now as much as
fossil try to use a number and also try
to avoid a negative instead of going for
positive now again this is what what has
worked for me and this is across
millions of data sets as we’ve tested
over the years it may not work for you
it may not be the exact same thing but
the important lesson here is that you
test everything with your business you
want to try to test because if you can
double or triple your results of things
that you’re already doing it’s so much
easier than to go out and try to get new
customers coming in from a brand new
method one of the thing i love the test
is to my website and when you’re low
looking at traffic to your website you
shouldn’t care so much about how many
visitors come to your site a lot of
people say oh I had 100 people my
website yesterday and they’re happy with
it it doesn’t matter how many people
come to your website when you should
care about the conversions how many
people are converting to become
customers of your business I like using
google analytics hopefully you guys know
Google oolitic so using a finger
business as well it’s a free system
really is really pretty easy to use
don’t be too much of a geek to figure it
out one of the my favorite resources
then Google Analytics is called goals
and what you can do and this is again
free you can track how many people hit
your confirmation page so say you’re
selling a product online after they buy
from you they have to go to confirmation
page they thank you for your order you
could track who went to that page but
also what key word they used to get
there so you can track exactly from a
keyword in Google Google search right to
a sale and you can figure out exactly
which keywords lead to business for you
so it’s not just about getting traffic
you want traffic that is coming from
clients and if you’re thinking about
your SEO efforts and you’re trying to
rank in Google you want to rank around
the keywords that are driving revenue
for you not just driving traffic to your
website so one of the things that I’ll
do every month is look at the goals for
my business and any keyword we basically
have a report that comes out and then I
see how I’m ranking for those keywords
so keywords that have generated business
you look every month and see how we’re
ranking for it and if we are at the top
then there’s only to do anything else
you already ranked at the top nothing
else to do but if you’re generating
sales from something when you’re on page
two and Google then by investing some
time and energy into ranking higher that
could have a significant impact on your
business and it’s all coming from
data-driven decisions so it’s not just
guessing as to which keywords will help
and again all that is free and built
into Google and it looks for you the
other side of things is AdWords the
AdWords are the advertising tool that
google allows you to basically bid on
different keywords you’ll see it at the
top and a side of mostly google searches
and AdWords is a great way to test if a
keyword is going to work for you or not
SEO can take time it takes time to write
content and get it ranked and you want
to make sure that you’re doing it around
keywords that are going to work so a
great way to start is to run some
AdWords test different keywords use your
goals the track which ones are bringing
in sales and then that will tell you
which keywords to focus on for your SEO
if a keyword has worked and converted to
adwords that’s only going to do better
on the SEO side of things because people
are buying and people more likely to
click on the organic results then on the
ads so just another way to test and you
know the more online your business is
easier it is to test all these things
but you want to test as much as possible
and improve improve improve because it’s
so much easier to go soon to go out and
just try to bring in new customers all
the time so that’s it for the
presentation for today 45 minutes thank
you for bearing with me if you have
questions uh the best way to do it is to
tweet with the hashtag ask Evan and I’ll
be monitoring that and hopefully
answering some of your questions so feel
free to login to twitter and send some
questions along and be happy to answer
them for you these these sheets have all
come from from worksheets that i sell so
you can also check those out online and
there’s the link there at the bottom for
worksheet so you can check those out and
i’ll hang around for a little bit
answering the question so see if anybody
has something coming in hopefully you
guys like the Google+ format I’d love to
get some feedback on that as well I know
the link may not have worked at the
beginning and hope that there are a few
technical issues getting started but I’m
looking at doing this on an ongoing
basis and having more of these webinars
for you if you guys are enjoying and
finding value in it I’m also going to be
giving the the presentation should be
live on my youtube channel I don’t know
how long it’s going to take for it to go
up and and be live but it will be up on
the site and hopefully you guys can
leave a comment on there and give it a
thumbs up I love seeing your comments
coming in and we’re going to do more
these workshops as we go along as well
so the next webinar is going to be the
last part of this so the marketing
machine we’ve done part one and we just
finished part two and so we’re going to
do part three it’s the last one it’s a
14-point system and that’s
set for May thirtieth I will confirm the
details as they come out so I typically
like look at the last thursday of the
month as my webinar day and hopefully
you guys will be able to join in for
that and again you know when i started
with my businesses the i was not a great
marketer and I was not a great network
her or sales guy and it I don’t want see
agitated but did it was hard for me to
get out and pick up the phone and try to
make sales and be a networker and what
you have to really find with your
business is a way to be yourself and
have success and build around your
strengths and if my business relied on
me to be out there knocking on doors and
going to networking events and being the
sales guy we would fall like I’m sure I
could develop my skills and learn a
little bit more but it’s not what I’m
naturally good at I’m not a naturally
good networker and so I tried to build a
system around what I was really good at
how people come to me and that’s what
this marketing machine is all about and
hopefully in the third part without and
answer your questions and give you guys
a complete resource to be able to go
home and continue to build your business
I want to see you succeed I know it’s
tough starting up a business and one of
the hardest most grueling difficult
challenging frustrating things that you
can do and it’s great to go out there
and try to get some help seek advice you
know don’t be afraid to reach out if
it’s to me or other people because I
know it’s hard to do a long so thank you
for joining me on this webinar again if
you guys had a good time I’d love to
hear from you and hopefully we’ll see
you on the 30th I’ll send out the
details as we get a little bit closer
and again the webinar is going to be
available on YouTube and I’d love to see
your feedback on there and answer any
other questions that come in so thank
you guys have a great weekend good luck
growing your business and I look forward
to hearing from you soon take care
welcome to another webinar it just
turned eight o’clock and so I’m ready to
go I’m excited to have you guys here on
board this is the first one that I’ve
done through Google+ to the hangouts and
so it’ll be an interesting experience
and I’m looking forward to your feedback
if you like it or not I first a grand
wall to Beal that and ask questions you
can see there at the bottom of the slide
if you tweet any question with the
hashtag ask Evan I’m going to be
monitoring that throughout the next hour
looking for your questions and I really
enjoy answering them for you so
hopefully you guys will have some
interesting questions for me to answer
there and that will be on every slide so
we’ll we’ll have a little bit of time at
the end to answer questions but also if
something comes up as we go through and
you have a question just feel free to
send that tweet out with the ask Evan
hashtag so welcome to another webinar
again it’s exciting to have you guys
here I just came back from another event
it was a fundraising event for
Alzheimer’s where again I was talking
about the same topic of building a
marketing machine seems to be a popular
topic in one that entrepreneurs really
care about and it was awesome to see
people kind of face to facing and help
them with their challenges and now I’m
excited to be here with all of you and
try to help you guys out as well so you
cannot build a successful business
without having a well-oiled sales and
marketing machine and that sucks it
sucks because most entrepreneurs are not
great at sales and marketing you may be
really good at what you do and I hope
you’re really good at what you do I hope
you’re one of the best at what you do in
the world that’s how you can get success
as an entrepreneur but that’s not enough
you also have to be out there talking
about yourself promoting your business
and that’s the other side of it so it’s
not
being great at what you do you have to
get people to find out about you and I
have a lot of people come to me and say
I’m really good at what I do i I really
help people I i love my business i love
seeing the smiles on the people’s faces
when they see that i’ve helped them and
i just wish people would know about me I
wish is a way for people just to say my
name and how people come to my website
and check me out so they have to spend
all this time doing the marketing myself
and I know it’s a big frustration the
first realization here is that it’s not
it’s not on them you can’t blame the
world it’s not their fault that they
don’t know about you it’s on you it’s up
to you to get out there and market
yourself and promote your business
because the cover is not coming this is
on you to go out and do and you can do
it and today we’re going to talk about
ways that you can do it a quick little
story but myself I’m not the world’s
greatest networker or salesman I guess
I’m a little shy or a little introverted
I’m not the kind of guy who would go
into an event and introduced myself to
everybody and hand up my business card
and say hey you have to do business with
me I won’t sit down on the on on a plane
and talk to the guy next to me and talk
about my business and I that can hurt
you know that that’s definitely
something I can limit me as an
entrepreneur and so instead of you know
giving up instead of failing with my
company I had to find a different way to
stay I had to find a different way to
operate and if it wasn’t going to be me
going out and finding people that I had
to find a way to get them to come to me
and that’s why I created this marketing
machine program and these are the
systems and tools that I use to help
myself be a magnet for new business so
I’m not out networking and doing cold
calls instead people are finding me
and wanting to work with me and I find
that people who do that are more likely
to become a customer buy more refer
friends and be more of an ideal fit for
what I’m doing you know you could be a
great networker in sales person that’s
awesome but today we’re going to be
talking about building that marking
machine and getting people to find you
so let’s get through this presentation
and again if you guys have any questions
feel free to send a tweet with the ASCAP
and hashtag and I will be happy to
answer it for you so a little bit about
me you guys found me somehow if you’re
on my newsletter list or twitter twitter
page or Google Plus whoever you found me
hello nice to meet you i’m evan i love
entrepreneurs my goal is help a billion
entrepreneurs through the website and
through these presentations a quick
little background when I was 19 I had a
biotech software company built it up
sold it when I was 22 I was a venture
capitalist helping entrepreneurs grow
their business and we raised half a
million to 15 million dollars for
companies looking to expand a few
miscellaneous facts have helped set two
World Records I work 20 hours a week I
use a stand-up desk I write a vespa I
help raise funds for Kiva which is a
organization that helps entrepreneurs in
developing countries we’ve helped fund
3,000 of them so far create a line of
entrepreneur trading cards graduated
from U of T University Renault and enjoy
salsa dancing be in the DJ and the
Toronto Blue Jays looks like we have a
good team this year and so excited for
all your baseball fans out there so
that’s a little bit about me quick thing
about the questions again as they come
feel free to tweet with the escapement
hashtag and I’ll also try to answer some
at the end but feel free to send them in
as we come as I’m monitoring it from my
dashboard here so in the last webinar
that we did I’ve talked about the first
five strategies for building the
marketing machine just a quick recap
number one is over different like crazy
so whatever you’re doing for your
existing customers find a way to go way
above and beyond expectations way beyond
what they ever thought you were going to
do for them to
wow them with your service because
they’re going to be more likely to come
back buy more refer more clients on to
you and it’s a great way to build your
business through your existing customers
number two is land bigger deals so this
is the challenge where a lot of
entrepreneurs deal with small clients
and it’s great maybe at the beginning
just to get some cash flow coming in but
it’s just as much work to sell a big
client as the seller small client and
typically the smaller guys cause a lot
more headaches you know I like working
with entrepreneurs but I don’t sell the
entrepreneurs my service is because it’s
it there were two we’re too needy and
demanding in comparison to bigger
companies and so as much as fast you
want to go up and try to land bigger
deals work with bigger companies number
three build a lead generating website
this is a big way of how I drive traffic
to my business and new new sales
opportunities and there’s a little bit
of you know work revolves around keyword
research and SEO and I mean touch a
little bit on that later on today but
it’s such a cost-effective way to build
a business and have people find you
because when people are looking for help
they usually go to google and they start
searching so you want to show up get
business using newsletters number four
and the idea here is that I somebody
visits your website you don’t want them
just to make a decision to either buy
from you or not people like to date
before they get married and same thing
with closing a customer the more they
like you know you trust you the more
likely they’re going to become a
customer so instead of just have
somebody come to your website and hope
they remember to contact to or come back
to the site again give them an incentive
to sign up for your newsletter we are
providing them valuable ongoing helpful
information and so then when they do
have a challenge they’re going to come
to you because they know you like you
trust you and so you want to try to
capture their information as much as
possible the people who are coming to
your website and not just let them go
and hope that they contact you and then
get results from social media was a
fifth and social media is is a scary
thing for a lot of people can be a huge
time sucker for a lot of people i
started with twitter and thought it was
so stupid you know people talking about
their cats and with date for dinner and
then i thought i would look up my
company name and my website and found
that people were talking about me and i
wasn’t part of the conversation and so
there definitely is a use for social
media in a way that you can drive
business growth through it you did the
number one rule for for you know sales
and marketing you want to hang around
where your customers are and so if your
customers are in social media then you
want to be in that that play box as well
so that’s what we covered before if you
guys have any questions about that you
know feel free again tweeting with the
ask Evan hashtag but otherwise we’re
going to move on to the new stuff today
and dive a little bit deeper into the
new strategies to help you build that
marketing machine so the next five
strategies and these are the ones going
to talk about today I’m really excited
get in the media form strategic
partnerships sell more to current
customers have a loss leader and a
back-end and test test test so get in
the media so this is the first point of
the day you may notice here on the
screen that the the numbers here a
little bit off you see my mouse that
shows that it’s number 19 that’s because
these are all different worksheets that
I sell off my website and so this is
worksheet number 19 so don’t get
confused by the numbers being off we’re
still going to talk about kind of five
main strategies today so I love trying
to use the media to leverage their reach
and expose me as an expert to my target
audience if you think about your own
experience of reading a newspaper are
you more likely to read the ads are you
more likely to read the story and more
likely read the story and what’s going
to cost you less to get into the paper
spending on advertising or getting the
story written about you and it’s usually
getting the story written about you so
the next question is how do you get into
the media and what I found is as
entrepreneurs we should be experts of
what we do right again hopefully you’re
one of the best in the world
specifically at what you do now all you
have to do is let people know that
you’re
expert and be a resource whenever the
media is writing about any topic any
news story any trend that’s happening
you always see that they quote an expert
why can’t you be that expert if you can
be a reliable source in an expert
opinion for these reporters you’re at
life and their job easier you just have
to let them know that you exist number
one so when I was first starting out
getting into the media I made a list of
all the reporters who covered
entrepreneurship and it was a big list
that covered international media
national media and also local media and
depending on what your business is you
don’t necessarily need to go after
national media maybe local as a great
way to start for you and so I made that
list and I looked at some of the stories
that they’ve written before and I wrote
to them a lot of times you can easily
find the email address of the reporter
and I would comment on their story and
say hey i love this story and then also
providing some feedback for them my
opinion and let them know if you ever do
another story like this I’d be happy to
be an expert for you and share my two
cents the other thing I did was I
created press releases and would
consistently send them out every two
weeks a new press release to my list and
I would always get picked up somewhere
the trick with the press release is you
have to write it like a story so most
restful uses our way to promotional and
it just showcase you know how great you
think you are that’s not a good news
story nobody’s going to pick that up you
have to write a story for them so give
them stats and give them numbers and
give your expert analysis talk about a
trend that’s happening or comment on a
story that that is developing in the
news or specifically to your industry
I’ve had a lot of times reporters who
may be a little bit too lazy but they
would copy and paste exactly what i
wrote is my press release into their
publication because it was a story and
they’re more likely to pick that up so
every time I set something up I would
always get somebody pick it up for me so
you want to make that targeted list
the next thing can help with the media
is have a media page so big fear for the
media is that you know you position
yourself as an expert you say you’re an
expert but you have no proof to back it
up and so you want to create a page on
your website somewhere that talks about
how you’re an expert and how you know
what you’re talking about and so even if
you even if you’re starting with a local
newspaper put it up if you’ve done a
guest blog post somewhere put it up do
anything you can to build momentum now
my media page might be a little bit more
impressive at least now than what you
guys are working on but if you start at
the beginning so if you go to my media
page you’ll see I’ve been in the New
York Times and Wall Street Journal and
Forbes magazine and I’ve done a bunch of
TV appearances as well and what the
reporters are worried about is you’re
going to make them look bad right your
job is to make them look good and they
don’t want to be quoting somebody who
has no idea what they’re talking about
oars or you know isn’t given the right
facts and opinions and so having a good
media page that talks about yourself and
your experience and how you know what
you’re talking about and hopefully shows
some previous experience will help when
reporters are going to that page and
hopefully they’ll want to get in touch
with you and see that take you know what
you’re talking about so have a good meet
at page and make it visible off your
website the next is a service that I use
called PR leads and this is a great way
to get into the media basically what
happens here is reporters from this is
most American market will post to PR
leads with their stories they say I have
a story about XYZ topic and I need an
expert to help me up and they’ll say
exactly the type of person they’re
looking for and they’ll tell you what
their deadline is and you’ll get two to
three emails a day with all the leads
that are coming in for reporters and
these are guys who have stories they
work at major publications and they’re
looking for help and I use these guys to
get me into the New York Times so there
are some major you know internationally
known publications on there and also
some lesser-known ones and even if it’s
outside your demographic you know if
you’re targeting only
certain state or certain province or sit
in city even if that’s you know that’s
the only place you can get your
customers so I’m based here in Toronto
Canada and I do a lot of local media if
my business was only about helping
Torontonians that’s fine but I could
still be an expert in the Houston
Chronicle that still helps me even
though it doesn’t give me customers from
Houston if that’s not my idea my idea of
an ideal customer I can still put that
on my website and say hey I’m recognized
expert I’ve been quoted in these
newspapers and that helps you convert
more sales of people who are visiting
your page and I can put it on my media
page so I’m going after new media it
shows that I’ve birdie has some
experience now Pierre leads I’m not
affiliate with them in any way it is a
paid service it’s ninety nine dollars a
month so you have to I guess justify
cost benefits he was worth it or not I
don’t think there’s any kind of minimum
commitment so you can get on for you
know nine in my box and try it for a
month and see if it’s a good fit for
what you’re doing or not but I found it
to be extremely helpful because you have
this list of reporters who have a need
and who are looking for experts and you
could be that expert to help them fill
the gap so definite want to look at get
into the media and using them to help
promote your brand one of my favorite
quotes from famous entrepreneur PT
Barnum he was a promoter and ran the
barnum & bailey circus without promotion
something terrible happens nothing and
this is a big problem for a lot of
entrepreneurs you can be awesome of what
you do and have the best product or
service in the world and really really
take care of your clients but you have
to get out there and spread the word you
have to promote your business whether
you’re a great salesperson or great
networker or a great might have to do
something to let people know that you
exist otherwise nothing is going to
happen number two
form strategic partnerships this is
another one of my favorite ways you have
Li grow my business and this works for
any kind of business if you’re just
starting up or if you already passed the
startup stage the idea here is find
somebody who is already selling to your
target market and partner up with them
find a way to help each other out so
that they can introduce you to their
clients and this again can work if
you’re just starting up you find
somebody who already has your your
market and you go talk to them introduce
yourself to them it’s a lot easier to
talk to potential partner than it is to
go cold call on a potential customer if
they see whether you might be able to
help them out then they’re going to be
more receptive to talking to you as well
and it works really well because your
clients already have or your ideal
clients already have a trusted
relationship with this person and if
they say hey you have to go talk with
Evan then they’re more likely to take
that recommendation and when they come
to you then they’re going to be almost
pre-sold right somebody who they like
and trust and they already work with
said you have to talk to this person and
so they can be more likely to do it and
I’m going to be a better fit in terms of
ideal customer there hopefully going to
spend more money with you ask less
questions be less difficult and so the
first step is figuring out you know who
is your ideal client and then look at
who else is buying from them a quick
example this is a very young Bill Gates
I’ve shown this picture a few times and
people didn’t know who I so I had to
head to explain that this is Bill Gates
and he’s told in a really old version of
Microsoft that fit on the old floppy
disks for any of you guys who remember
those floppy disks Microsoft built their
business through partnerships and it
worked at the very beginning at the
business and it has continued to work as
they’ve grown their business their big
deal was with IBM an IBM makes computers
and the deal was for every computer that
IBM made they would ship it with
Microsoft software
with windows installed already on it so
instead of having instead of Microsoft
happened to go knock on doors and
convince people who had computers to
install windows they made a partnership
with the people who are selling the
computers and said install windows
automatically on every computer that you
sell it was a great way to reach their
market really quickly through making one
partnership deal now that was the big
deal to put microsoft on the map but
they were already an established company
they weren’t a huge company but they
already had million-plus in sales by the
time they made that deal with IBM so it
wasn’t just a pure startup with no
revenue now even more recently when
Microsoft is trying to get into new
markets they partner up so a recent
example was Expedia and that’s a travel
website you can book flights and hotels
to it they decided they wanted to get
into the travel business but they
thought we don’t know anything about
travel so they weren’t sure what to do
and so they partnered up with american
express a company that had a lot of
experience of travel and together they
launched Expedia and the partnership ran
out after a couple years and now
microsoft owns it and so they used the
experience and credibility of American
Express to be able to launch his new
venture and so I really respected how
Microsoft built their business and
partnerships and when I was first
starting my business the software
business I was 19 I was scared I had no
idea what I was doing and you know
excited to launch new business but also
panicking and overwhelmed and not sure
what to do next and after you know after
I freaked out for a little bit I
realized you know not the first guy to
try to sell software before and I looked
at companies like Microsoft and McAfee
into it and look how they got started
not how Bill Gates makes extra million
dollars now but how did it go from 0 to
1 how to make that first million that’s
what I want to learn from and we put
those strategies to work for us and any
problem you’re facing right now whether
in your business life or otherwise
somebody’s already solved it you’re not
the first person to go through this and
so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel
and come up
with tons of innovative ideas look at
what’s already been done look at people
who’ve already solved the challenges
you’re facing right now and see how they
did it and from there you’ll get a lot
of ideas that you can apply to your own
business so the one that I pulled from
Microsoft was this concept of partnering
and using basically companies who
already had my target market and making
an arrangement with them so they could
help me it could be a formal arrangement
where they get a commission so you give
them a piece of every sale that goes
through or it could just be a loose
arrangement where you agree to help each
other out every partner will act a
little bit differently so you have to
play each one case by case but it’s a
awesome way to grow your business and
getting referrals in from partners is an
easy way to get new clients one of the
best ways to do it is think before and
after so you can make a deal with your
direct competitor although it’s hard to
make it work typically your competition
doesn’t like to refer business to their
competitors it could work if they are
overwhelmed I don’t have anybody else to
farm it out to but typically it’s hard
to do so your best bet in terms of
getting partners on board is look at who
people are buying from before they buy
from you and after they buy from you so
you’re you fit somewhere on the buying
spectrum for your clients so before they
buy from you they’re going to somebody
else and then after they buy from you
they’re going to somebody else as well
those two suppliers those groups of
suppliers are potential partners for you
especially the before one because
whoever the bind from before they’re
going to need to buy from you next and
so if that supplier saying hey you gotta
go work with this company then you get
that warm lead in and you’re much more
likely to close the deal so make a list
of all the companies that people are
buying from before you and after you and
maybe the best way to started is just to
make the list of types of companies and
then you can narrow down to exact and
specific people that you can potentially
call up and introduce yourself and
usually people are pretty open to
partnership arrangements and partnership
meetings
so it’s a lot easier to call on a
potential partner or email them up and
say hey here’s what i do i think mabel
to help each other out and line up some
kind of coffee meeting or a phone chat
to to discuss it usually that’s a lot
easier than calling up on a customer and
saying hey I have a great product or
service for you so a great way to be
able to build your business one example
this is ty warner who had the beanie
babies if you guys are filled with
beanie babies one quote he said was we
really did it partnered to expand our
product to children who wouldn’t be
shopping in upscale shopping malls we
saw McDonald’s as the best avenue to get
these kids to see them so what he did
was he partnered up with McDonald’s and
when he first sold beanie babies it was
only through higher end stores in higher
in malls and that’s how beanie babies
got started but he wanted to reach a
wider audience and so he said instead of
trying to go and knock on all these
individual retailers and say hey sell
our stuff he made a partnership with
McDonald’s who already had a huge market
of kids that right that’s who is going
after people who weren’t necessarily the
upscale market and you need a
partnership with them and they helped
distribute his product and get his name
known and so it works for the biggest
companies and it worked for the smallest
company so you just have to find
somebody who already has your target
market and is doing a good job with them
who’s not a direct competitor to you and
find a way to be able to work together
number three sell more to current
customers it’s really hard to get new
customers I know it’s frustrating and
and time-consuming and overwhelming to
go out and find new business it’s one of
the hardest ways to grow your company
and an easier way is to sell more the
people who are already buying from you
they know you they like you they trust
you they bought with you before they
enjoy the experience and hopefully
you’re doing a good job with them and
you’re servicing them well and there’s a
lot of revenue and money left on the
table with a lot of these relationships
with your clients and an easy way to
quickly grow is to look at your existing
base and see what else you can do for
them
is there another product or service you
can offer is another way you can get
more money from your existing base you
don’t want to you know over pitch them
and make them feel pressured to buy from
you but a lot of times it’s looking at
what other problems do they have and is
there a way that you can help them out
if you’ve helped them with one problem
chances are they’re going to trust you
to help them with another problem and so
it’s a fast way to grow your business
even if you only have a few clients an
important formula to remember I’m
looking at if you’re looking at your
overall sales it’s made up of four three
things one your price to the quantity
that somebody’s buying from you and
through the frequency at which they’re
buying from you so i’m not going to talk
too much about the price today a lot of
entrepreneurs do underpriced their
services and you need to charge more for
what you do both for active being able
to have more revenue to support your
business but also to feel better about
yourself you know you want to charge
what you’re worth you want to charge
your pricey you’re happy with and not
beat yourself down and have to accept
you know lower prices just to win a deal
and that also comes with you know
landing bigger clients and we talked
about earlier on tonight so we’ll ignore
price for now but you really should
experiment with charging little bit more
the next one is quantity and so this is
when people are buying from you you’re
trying to increase how much their bind
from you instead of buying one you want
them to buy five or ten of whatever it
is that you sell in the frequency is you
want to increase how often they’re
coming back to you so if you have a
purchase where they’re coming once a
year you want them to come every three
months or every two months so you’re
looking for ways to position your
product or service to get people to buy
more frequently and in bigger quantities
and that might mean just selling more of
what you already do but often it means
adding on to it selling something
complimentary that works with what
you’re already selling here are a few
ideas that might help you you can give a
small discount so you’re getting people
to come back
to increase more if you give this a
slightly small discount on what you’re
selling give them some kind of free
bonus if they take action now a
money-back guarantee to reduce the risk
give them some kind of recognition you
could put a picture up on on your
website or in your office place
somewhere give them some kind of award
it could support a cause so it goes to a
good cause if they if they buy from you
now give them free delivery a limited
edition sell gift certificates creative
rewards program where people are buying
frequently from you have a subscription
package this is an important one that a
lot of people don’t do instead of having
them by you know once a year from you or
every six months put them on a package
think about what your business is and
how if it’s a product or service how can
you get them to sign up scription
package with a binding from you every
week every month whatever it is how can
you bundle whatever you’re selling or
find some way to offer value to them on
an ongoing basis that they can justify
paying you every month because even if
you have money coming in every month it
relieves so much frustration and pain
and worry that then you can focus on
growing your business so what I live
whatever it is that you sell try to
figure out a way to make a subscription
package so you have money coming in
every month and there has to be
obviously a lot of value that you
provide it’s not just you know trying to
scan them out of money it’s given them
real value for what they’re paying every
month and then cross promotion so if you
have multiple products or services if
they buy one you can promote the other
one at the same time so they’re more
likely to buy that one as well so those
are a few ideas I’m treating them with a
lot more on your own organ if you have
questions you can ask me for those of
you who’ve just joined or joins you know
little recently if you do have a
question you can tweet with the hashtag
ask Evan and I’ll answer it for you guys
as we go along number four lost leader
and a back end the idea here is you need
to find a way to get in to work with
your ideal clients in a low-risk way for
clients to bring you on especially ideal
clients who are going to spend a lot of
money with you it can be
risky and scary for them to do it and so
if you can find an easy way that does
not cost them a lot of time or money to
be able to start working with you then
it’s easier to get them to say yes and
then sign bigger deals and bigger deals
and bigger deals so you need to find
your thin wedge into the market and may
mean losing some time and a little bit
of money on it to build that
relationship up a friend of mine in
these groups that we run called
mastermind groups where it’s basically
entrepreneurs get together once a month
and we talk about our businesses he
recently shared his sales process and
how he goes and pitches big clients and
is it you writes proposals and it’s a
multi-step thing lots of meetings and I
compared it to what I do and I don’t
write proposals and I work with big
clients as well I’ll work with Microsoft
and american express and and and big
brands and they asked her proposals but
i never create them what i’ll do is
instead of putting a huge proposal
together what it does what a big
proposal does it takes up a lot of your
time and effort you have to make
estimations that you don’t know all the
facts behind and a lot of times with
proposal changes after you actually
start working with them just like a
business plan changes once you start
running your business so instead of
writing a huge proposal I just try to
find a small way to get started has the
biggest reason for the proposal for them
typically is to reduce their fear to
show them that I know what I’m talking
about and if they start working with me
that they’re not going to look bad in
front of their manager present you lose
their job and so I look for any way to
get started on a really small scale that
can show what I do can give them a lot
of value and they don’t have to go and
get huge approval for so whatever the
proposal is find some small way just to
get started on the deal and then move
forward from there if you do an awesome
job you over deliver like crazy they
love working with you they’re going to
want to hire you back for more projects
the key is just to get started reduce
risk up front and get started on
something so that they’re more likely to
follow through later on down the line so
one of the things that I do is we’ll
create quarterly reports and when I’m
going in and talking to some of my
clients I work with big brands who are
trying to reach entrepreneurs and they
have no idea how to do it big big
companies suck I sell into entrepreneurs
for whatever reason they just do a
really bad job of it and so the law
often hire me to help them and one of
the things I’ll do to showcase that I
know what I’m talking about is i’ll give
them quarterly reports on the state of
entrepreneurs and this comes from mostly
questions that people are asking me and
data that we have on our website and
trends that we see occurring just from
all the information that we already
gather this is stuff that we were to do
for ourselves I collect this information
so i can create YouTube videos and
create webinars and create new content
for the website so it’s no extra work
really for me to do maybe to make it
look a little nicer with the powerpoint
than what I would you know just make for
myself but that’s it it’s it doesn’t
cost me a lot of time or money but it
looks great because our clients or
potential clients they don’t have access
to this stuff so I don’t want you to go
out and think I got to have a loss
leader haven’t told me to have a loss
leader and I’m going to go out and spend
a lot of money on this loss leader to to
win the business I don’t want you to try
to spend a lot of money I want you to
try to find a way that you can do it
without spending money but there’s high
perceived value so these are your four
options the one that we were looking for
as much as possible is the top left high
value low cost so there’s a high
perceived value they think is really
helpful they love what you’re doing for
them but it doesn’t actually cost you
that much time or money to put together
if you can do that and that becomes your
entry point then you can almost pump
these things out and show the value and
show that you know what you’re talking
about and show how you can help them
without the fear and the scariness is
going through a huge proposal and all
the money is going to be involved in it
so my my strategy
guess you’re getting in is once there’s
a little bit of interest just find any
little piece that I can just to get
started one tiny little project give me
something tiny that I can work on and
then I’m going to blow their socks off
with the results and they’re going to
want to go back and do more sometimes
it’s me saying here can also help with
this system this but you should send
coming back to say ever know is awesome
can you help us with all these other
projects and then we just move forward
and we don’t need to have a proposed and
we don’t need to have huge budgets lined
up for they end up coming to me and so
hopefully that will help you guys bring
some a few ideas for what you can do for
your clients as well are your prospects
number five the last point here they
want to talk about is test test test
with any system that you use in your
business you want to optimize and test
it to get the best results and so it’s
number of different ways that that will
do it here the first that I want to
highlight is with my newsletters so I
talked a little bit earlier on about the
importance of newsletters and how you
can turn people from from casual
observers on your website to leaving
their information and allowing you the
permission to contact them and build a
relationship if you have a news release
that you’re building up you want to make
sure people are opening your emails
right and that’s mostly going to come
from your headline it’s the single most
important factor is what you call what
the subject line is of your newsletter
and this applies to anything that you do
the headline is the most important thing
if you’re writing a piece of content a
blog post a newspaper article if the
headline sucks they’re not going to read
the rest of it so you go out and spend a
lot of time working on your headline so
I’m always testing and having a better
headline can double or triple the number
of people who open up your emails and so
right there you have a much better
chance of boosting your conversions so
here are some things that we’ve tested
we’re always running tests on our
newsletter list we have about 70,000
people on a newsletter list and I’m
always testing things to try to get the
best result so few the results and hope
you can apply this to your business the
force is negative versus positive we
found that people would do a lot more to
avoid a negative than to achieve a
positive and that that kind of sucks for
me because I’m I like being the positive
guy don’t like being the negative guy
don’t think negative and so sometimes it
requires me to you know do a little
extra mental gymnastics to come up with
I start with a positive headline and
then figure out okay how can I make this
into a negative in how to help them
overcome a negative so the example on
the right says under the number it says
the two key factors that are holding you
back that’s how to avoid a negative the
next is using caps so we tested using
all caps some caps no caps we found the
all caps version up performed name
versus no name that’s putting their name
in the subject line so our newsletters
will always start with for John and then
the headline and if people see their
name in the subject lead to open it all
i care about with my headlines I want
them to open up the email because then
they’ll read what’s written there at
least I have a chance with my first
paragraph to capture them if they see
the headline and just delete it right
away no matter how much time and effort
I spent creating my newsletter crafting
that awesome content they’re not going
to do anything with it I found morning’s
work better than afternoons use your
newsletters are sent out now at five in
the morning I’m not up in five in the
morning but I guess a lot of you guys
are and so that that seems to be the
best time in Tuesday’s or wednesdays
work the best compared to the rest of
the week and I test it every day and
every time and that’s what pulls out
best for me now this is very different
than other people in my presentation
this morning one of the women in the
audience said well i found that
saturday’s work best for me and she
works with a residential community those
are her customers and that’s great you
know i work with entrepreneurs so maybe
different the important thing is that
you’re testing because i can have a huge
impact if i sent it on a tuesday i might
get twice as many people to open it and
if i sent it on a saturday
and so I wouldn’t have known that unless
I tested it and if I’m doing all that
work to create the content and try to
promote myself and what I’m doing at
least want people to read it right and
you want to give yourself the best
chance at success and that comes from
being able to test so you don’t have to
be a genius and have everything figured
out from the start just test test test
and see what works so on the right hand
side here this page is the three
categories number question or how to and
this was a sample that I ran on my
newsletter where the content of the
newsletter was exactly the same exactly
the same content within the newsletter
but the only thing different was the
headline so the first was a number so
the two key factors that are holding you
back the second was a question know how
to grow but need a push and the third
was a how-to had a great business and
make it succeed and the number really
outperformed the other two and so we
also found that if you write the number
two instead of writing TW o that has a
big impact as well so we now as much as
fossil try to use a number and also try
to avoid a negative instead of going for
positive now again this is what what has
worked for me and this is across
millions of data sets as we’ve tested
over the years it may not work for you
it may not be the exact same thing but
the important lesson here is that you
test everything with your business you
want to try to test because if you can
double or triple your results of things
that you’re already doing it’s so much
easier than to go out and try to get new
customers coming in from a brand new
method one of the thing i love the test
is to my website and when you’re low
looking at traffic to your website you
shouldn’t care so much about how many
visitors come to your site a lot of
people say oh I had 100 people my
website yesterday and they’re happy with
it it doesn’t matter how many people
come to your website when you should
care about the conversions how many
people are converting to become
customers of your business I like using
google analytics hopefully you guys know
Google oolitic so using a finger
business as well it’s a free system
really is really pretty easy to use
don’t be too much of a geek to figure it
out one of the my favorite resources
then Google Analytics is called goals
and what you can do and this is again
free you can track how many people hit
your confirmation page so say you’re
selling a product online after they buy
from you they have to go to confirmation
page they thank you for your order you
could track who went to that page but
also what key word they used to get
there so you can track exactly from a
keyword in Google Google search right to
a sale and you can figure out exactly
which keywords lead to business for you
so it’s not just about getting traffic
you want traffic that is coming from
clients and if you’re thinking about
your SEO efforts and you’re trying to
rank in Google you want to rank around
the keywords that are driving revenue
for you not just driving traffic to your
website so one of the things that I’ll
do every month is look at the goals for
my business and any keyword we basically
have a report that comes out and then I
see how I’m ranking for those keywords
so keywords that have generated business
you look every month and see how we’re
ranking for it and if we are at the top
then there’s only to do anything else
you already ranked at the top nothing
else to do but if you’re generating
sales from something when you’re on page
two and Google then by investing some
time and energy into ranking higher that
could have a significant impact on your
business and it’s all coming from
data-driven decisions so it’s not just
guessing as to which keywords will help
and again all that is free and built
into Google and it looks for you the
other side of things is AdWords the
AdWords are the advertising tool that
google allows you to basically bid on
different keywords you’ll see it at the
top and a side of mostly google searches
and AdWords is a great way to test if a
keyword is going to work for you or not
SEO can take time it takes time to write
content and get it ranked and you want
to make sure that you’re doing it around
keywords that are going to work so a
great way to start is to run some
AdWords test different keywords use your
goals the track which ones are bringing
in sales and then that will tell you
which keywords to focus on for your SEO
if a keyword has worked and converted to
adwords that’s only going to do better
on the SEO side of things because people
are buying and people more likely to
click on the organic results then on the
ads so just another way to test and you
know the more online your business is
easier it is to test all these things
but you want to test as much as possible
and improve improve improve because it’s
so much easier to go soon to go out and
just try to bring in new customers all
the time so that’s it for the
presentation for today 45 minutes thank
you for bearing with me if you have
questions uh the best way to do it is to
tweet with the hashtag ask Evan and I’ll
be monitoring that and hopefully
answering some of your questions so feel
free to login to twitter and send some
questions along and be happy to answer
them for you these these sheets have all
come from from worksheets that i sell so
you can also check those out online and
there’s the link there at the bottom for
worksheet so you can check those out and
i’ll hang around for a little bit
answering the question so see if anybody
has something coming in hopefully you
guys like the Google+ format I’d love to
get some feedback on that as well I know
the link may not have worked at the
beginning and hope that there are a few
technical issues getting started but I’m
looking at doing this on an ongoing
basis and having more of these webinars
for you if you guys are enjoying and
finding value in it I’m also going to be
giving the the presentation should be
live on my youtube channel I don’t know
how long it’s going to take for it to go
up and and be live but it will be up on
the site and hopefully you guys can
leave a comment on there and give it a
thumbs up I love seeing your comments
coming in and we’re going to do more
these workshops as we go along as well
so the next webinar is going to be the
last part of this so the marketing
machine we’ve done part one and we just
finished part two and so we’re going to
do part three it’s the last one it’s a
14-point system and that’s
set for May thirtieth I will confirm the
details as they come out so I typically
like look at the last thursday of the
month as my webinar day and hopefully
you guys will be able to join in for
that and again you know when i started
with my businesses the i was not a great
marketer and I was not a great network
her or sales guy and it I don’t want see
agitated but did it was hard for me to
get out and pick up the phone and try to
make sales and be a networker and what
you have to really find with your
business is a way to be yourself and
have success and build around your
strengths and if my business relied on
me to be out there knocking on doors and
going to networking events and being the
sales guy we would fall like I’m sure I
could develop my skills and learn a
little bit more but it’s not what I’m
naturally good at I’m not a naturally
good networker and so I tried to build a
system around what I was really good at
how people come to me and that’s what
this marketing machine is all about and
hopefully in the third part without and
answer your questions and give you guys
a complete resource to be able to go
home and continue to build your business
I want to see you succeed I know it’s
tough starting up a business and one of
the hardest most grueling difficult
challenging frustrating things that you
can do and it’s great to go out there
and try to get some help seek advice you
know don’t be afraid to reach out if
it’s to me or other people because I
know it’s hard to do a long so thank you
for joining me on this webinar again if
you guys had a good time I’d love to
hear from you and hopefully we’ll see
you on the 30th I’ll send out the
details as we get a little bit closer
and again the webinar is going to be
available on YouTube and I’d love to see
your feedback on there and answer any
other questions that come in so thank
you guys have a great weekend good luck
growing your business and I look forward
to hearing from you soon take care
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