Dan Martell - March 28, 2016


7 Marketing Strategies Startups Can Learn Shady Internet Marketers ｜ Dan Martell


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

204.80888

Word count

2,138

Sentence count

131


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about what startups can learn from internet marketers and how to leverage them in order to grow their business. I also talk about the benefits of cross-promoting and how you can leverage them to get your product in front of your audience.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.200 What startups can learn from internet marketers.
00:00:02.600 Now I know, right off the bat you're going,
00:00:04.040 internet marketers for real?
00:00:05.360 Those schemey guys trying to sell me teeth whitening
00:00:08.320 in iKai or Asai Perry and all these crazy products online?
00:00:11.440 Yes, I'm gonna share with you guys a quick story.
00:00:13.880 You know, all startups want more growth, traction.
00:00:16.920 They want more revenue.
00:00:18.360 And they're always trying to figure out
00:00:19.960 how can they make their product deliver on these things.
00:00:21.760 But here's what I've learned.
00:00:22.640 You know, I was building Clarity,
00:00:24.280 and it was a marketplace for entrepreneurs
00:00:25.720 to get expert advice from other entrepreneurs.
00:00:27.640 And I remember, it was a few months into it,
00:00:29.480 and all of a sudden we started getting a bunch of traffic.
00:00:31.800 And I started looking at,
00:00:32.720 where was all this traffic coming from?
00:00:34.540 And I realized we had certain individuals
00:00:37.060 that were signing up for Clarity
00:00:38.540 and then promoting it to their audience.
00:00:40.640 But I couldn't understand,
00:00:41.580 how could one person drive 30, 40,000 people
00:00:45.720 to their profile?
00:00:46.720 And I realized it's because they built an audience.
00:00:48.740 And honestly, I didn't even understand
00:00:50.720 this world of internet marketing.
00:00:52.240 But it turned out that many of my friends,
00:00:54.480 people that I've known for five, six, seven years,
00:00:57.080 who I thought were just bloggers,
00:00:58.800 We're essentially using these techniques
00:01:00.760 to build educational programs,
00:01:02.800 to serve their community, to help other people.
00:01:05.760 And when I talk to them about their business model,
00:01:08.120 because when I thought of Clarity,
00:01:09.240 I'm like, well, Clarity's kind of an educational product.
00:01:11.720 We're helping people get connected over the phone
00:01:14.080 to solve some of their biggest business challenges.
00:01:16.260 It's information, right?
00:01:18.140 And they showed me how they've been able
00:01:19.980 to build their business,
00:01:20.820 how they've been able to monetize that.
00:01:22.700 The way they looked at it,
00:01:24.160 I realized there were so many opportunities
00:01:26.600 for tech startups, technology companies
00:01:29.320 to use and leverage these approaches
00:01:31.660 that I wanted to shoot this video.
00:01:32.820 There's seven different ones,
00:01:34.100 and there's probably many more,
00:01:35.760 but I just wanna share with you guys
00:01:36.920 the big ones that I've learned.
00:01:37.920 The first one is funnels.
00:01:40.420 There's so much when it comes to building your signup flow
00:01:45.380 and your registration process and your paywall
00:01:48.560 and all these different aspects.
00:01:49.960 A lot of these companies call them funnels,
00:01:51.720 a lot of these internet marketers,
00:01:52.900 and what they do is they think about,
00:01:54.480 well, if I already have a customer in my funnel,
00:01:57.020 how can I upsell, cross-sell, or down-sell
00:02:00.540 them something else to increase the total cart value?
00:02:03.800 That's the way they talk about it.
00:02:05.220 So maybe as a tech startup,
00:02:06.360 you call it lifetime value of a customer.
00:02:08.200 The way that most tech startups do it now
00:02:10.000 is by creating different packages or tiers of products.
00:02:13.280 But I would argue that if you just ask yourself,
00:02:15.840 my customer has a pain, they have a need,
00:02:18.480 and yes, my technology solves that pain,
00:02:20.980 but there could be other ways
00:02:22.780 that you could help solve it better.
00:02:25.120 And that could be by offering services
00:02:26.780 or consulting on top of it.
00:02:28.320 But I just want to inspire you maybe
00:02:30.080 to think about how can you upsell or downsell.
00:02:33.560 Maybe they don't want the enterprise version
00:02:35.360 but then you downsell some other thing.
00:02:36.960 I've seen companies do this with live events.
00:02:39.420 They have their yearly events
00:02:40.860 and as people sign up for their SaaS business,
00:02:42.700 they say, hey, do you want 50% off
00:02:44.500 or a ticket to our yearly event?
00:02:47.100 So that's the first one, funnels.
00:02:48.540 The second one is promotional partners.
00:02:50.480 Look, here's the deal.
00:02:51.880 You, if you depend on you and yourself and your resources
00:02:55.280 and your employees and your team's community
00:02:58.160 to get the word out about your product,
00:02:59.680 or maybe you're trying to hustle to get press,
00:03:02.320 that could work, and for many startups,
00:03:04.200 that is one channel, but I will argue with you
00:03:07.200 what I've seen, a lot of information marketers,
00:03:10.040 internet marketers, the way they do joint ventures,
00:03:12.700 the way they do affiliates, the way they partner
00:03:15.140 with other companies that have large email lists
00:03:17.840 and communities to get their product in front
00:03:20.280 of their ideal customer is phenomenal.
00:03:22.520 Like seriously, you need to understand how they do this.
00:03:25.240 Many of them do launches.
00:03:26.600 The reason why, it's an event.
00:03:27.900 They create a competition.
00:03:29.280 They create the ranking,
00:03:30.460 who's the best promotional partner.
00:03:32.180 Whatever it is, for your product,
00:03:33.720 maybe you have some kind of affiliate program,
00:03:35.980 or you could create one,
00:03:37.400 and just find a dozen other companies like yours,
00:03:40.260 and you guys can cross-promote each other.
00:03:42.620 It is such a simple and powerful idea.
00:03:44.540 It's one that I wanted to mention.
00:03:45.740 So promotional partners.
00:03:47.020 The third is focus.
00:03:48.960 Most companies don't realize that the more they focus,
00:03:52.740 the larger the market's gonna expand.
00:03:55.540 They don't focus on one customer.
00:03:57.500 Instead, they say, we're the easiest, fastest way
00:04:00.200 to do this result, or get this result.
00:04:02.320 It's everything to everybody.
00:04:03.820 They focus on being super broad,
00:04:06.960 and it doesn't matter who you are,
00:04:08.400 if you have this problem, we can solve you.
00:04:10.200 Internet marketers, I've never seen them do this,
00:04:12.560 because they know that it'll fall flat.
00:04:14.500 See, a lot of online marketers, internet marketers,
00:04:17.360 information marketers, they get paid on performance.
00:04:19.700 So they need to make sure that when they do a promotion,
00:04:22.600 it performs, it works.
00:04:24.540 So they can't go broad, they go hyper-focused.
00:04:27.240 They say, if you're this type of person
00:04:28.900 with this kind of problem, we have a solution for you.
00:04:31.600 And that is a huge thing, so that's number three.
00:04:33.480 I really wanted you guys to learn and understand
00:04:35.920 that if you don't have a number one customer avatar,
00:04:39.220 that you don't really have a focus for your marketing
00:04:42.220 and your initiative, so that's number three.
00:04:43.780 Number four is copywriting.
00:04:45.380 I mean, I'm guilty of this.
00:04:46.720 I'll be honest with you guys.
00:04:47.760 In the early days of building startups,
00:04:49.440 I just thought, whatever, you label a button,
00:04:51.580 you create a homepage, you write some marketing copy,
00:04:53.920 you set up some emails, whatever.
00:04:55.480 It doesn't matter, just get it done.
00:04:57.720 And I can tell you from experience,
00:04:59.640 talking to some of the world's number one
00:05:01.560 top internet marketers, that they are able
00:05:04.220 to triple, quadruple their performance
00:05:07.680 based on copywriting.
00:05:08.880 From the landing page, to the subject line,
00:05:11.200 to the email copy, to the sequence of words,
00:05:14.720 the way they overcome objections,
00:05:16.340 the way they understand their customers' needs.
00:05:18.280 And yes, they are selling.
00:05:19.780 Don't think selling is a bad word.
00:05:21.680 Selling is conveying enthusiasm for your product.
00:05:25.620 It's coming from a place of integrity.
00:05:26.860 If you truly believe, if somebody use your product,
00:05:29.380 that they will be better off,
00:05:31.420 then it is your responsibility to do whatever you can
00:05:34.000 ethically to get them to use that product.
00:05:36.560 And copywriting is such a huge, huge way to do that.
00:05:40.400 So that's number four.
00:05:41.240 Number five is paid acquisition.
00:05:43.140 Most of these internet marketers,
00:05:44.860 they cannot depend on inbound content marketing or press.
00:05:49.040 Nobody's gonna write about their next educational product.
00:05:53.040 It's not newsworthy.
00:05:54.120 It's not like getting featured on TechCrunch or whatever.
00:05:56.300 But they focus on paid because it scales.
00:05:59.460 They focus on different channels that they'll go test
00:06:02.720 because they understand their economics in their business.
00:06:04.940 They understand the unit economics.
00:06:06.480 They understand if I spend $3 to get this email,
00:06:09.380 that email turns into $20 revenue over the next 12 months
00:06:12.240 and they're willing to find other channels to scale that.
00:06:15.180 So startups is all about repeatable, scalable businesses,
00:06:18.120 but many of them, when I talk to them,
00:06:19.500 I go, okay, what are you doing for paid acquisition?
00:06:21.400 And they go, oh, well, we've tried Facebook ads.
00:06:23.320 We've tried doing some stuff.
00:06:24.920 No, no, no, no, no, no.
00:06:25.740 It's not about trying, okay?
00:06:27.520 It's about dominating.
00:06:28.760 It's about deciding, I need to make this channel work.
00:06:31.760 I need to make this channel work.
00:06:33.340 It's not about dabbling or playing around.
00:06:35.700 It's getting it to work 100%.
00:06:37.840 So paid channels, if you've never done this at scale,
00:06:41.600 Trust me, I call it building a growth engine.
00:06:43.780 Paid is part of that.
00:06:44.980 Once you understand the economics of your product
00:06:47.000 and lifetime value and your churn rates
00:06:48.620 and all these other metrics,
00:06:50.020 you need to be focusing on paid to scale the business
00:06:53.500 the biggest way, fastest way possible.
00:06:55.660 So number six is email marketing.
00:06:57.640 This to me is a fun one.
00:07:00.180 I had no clue how powerful email marketing is.
00:07:03.480 I gotta be honest, even though I did it fairly well,
00:07:05.820 we've been written up, Clarity got written up
00:07:07.400 as like the best emails ever sent by a startup
00:07:09.520 because of the things that I was learning.
00:07:12.660 But the truth is, is there's so much more you can do.
00:07:15.220 Things like creating goodwill.
00:07:17.000 It's, you know, if somebody comes to your website
00:07:18.960 and you don't collect their email,
00:07:20.120 maybe by creating value for them,
00:07:22.000 giving them some kind of ebook or PDF
00:07:23.880 or content on your blog,
00:07:25.440 getting that email and then nurturing that relationship,
00:07:28.560 using it and then making offers within that email
00:07:31.140 to get them to sign up for your product.
00:07:32.560 Once they're in that funnel, use that funnel structure
00:07:35.100 to do an upsell, downsell,
00:07:36.300 to increase the lifetime value of your business.
00:07:38.400 These are things that every tech startup
00:07:40.740 needs to implement in their business.
00:07:43.000 Email marketing, to me, should have been number one
00:07:45.160 because it is the most powerful, potent strategy.
00:07:48.580 So that's number six.
00:07:49.760 Number seven is building trust.
00:07:51.980 It's goodwill.
00:07:52.800 It's before I ask you to give me anything,
00:07:55.920 I want to earn your trust.
00:07:57.180 I want to create value for you.
00:07:59.600 Internet marketers, information marketers,
00:08:01.680 are world class at this.
00:08:03.460 I've seen them in their sales process say,
00:08:06.460 look, you know what, we're gonna create these free videos
00:08:09.220 and you can consume them and the videos provide value.
00:08:11.940 They give training, they teach you how to do stuff
00:08:13.860 and if you never consume or buy their product or offer,
00:08:17.820 you will be better off from watching this.
00:08:19.740 Most startups are like, hey, here's our product,
00:08:22.000 sign up for it and that's how your life's gonna be better.
00:08:24.220 There's so many better ways to actually sell
00:08:27.320 or get people on board and the way I look at it
00:08:29.740 is goodwill is something you earn over time.
00:08:32.520 It's creating so much value that they feel
00:08:35.120 like they reciprocate.
00:08:35.940 I mean, a lot of people know about Evernote
00:08:37.360 and the freemium business model.
00:08:38.720 A lot of people upgraded for Evernote to the paid version
00:08:41.780 just because they felt almost a sense of responsibility
00:08:45.280 to pay for something, even though the free version
00:08:47.520 would have continued solving their problems.
00:08:48.940 And that is the level of goodwill over time,
00:08:51.460 using email, because email shows up in their inbox
00:08:53.920 is still the highest performing marketing channel.
00:08:56.320 It's something you have to do.
00:08:58.740 So I just wanted to share these seven.
00:09:00.820 I'm gonna quickly recap.
00:09:02.120 So number one is funnels, okay?
00:09:03.700 So make sure that you think about
00:09:05.020 How can you increase lifetime value by upsells,
00:09:06.960 downsells, and crosssells?
00:09:08.300 You guys can go Google and learn more about those.
00:09:10.580 Number two is promotional partners.
00:09:12.560 That's the word I like to use.
00:09:13.680 Some people call them affiliates, joint ventures,
00:09:15.420 JVs, et cetera.
00:09:16.660 Getting partners in your space that you guys can start
00:09:19.600 promoting each other to get more customers.
00:09:21.980 Number three is focus.
00:09:23.220 Getting your number one customer avatar nailed.
00:09:26.800 Four is copywriting.
00:09:29.120 How do you get your words to sell?
00:09:31.860 You know, even free content needs to be sold.
00:09:34.440 Don't kid yourself, it doesn't matter what it is,
00:09:36.600 it needs to be sold, copywriting will help you do it.
00:09:38.600 Five is paid acquisition, building that growth funnel,
00:09:41.160 building that channel to get a lot of people in the system,
00:09:44.180 in your funnels to scale the business.
00:09:47.060 Number six is email marketing, so really thinking about
00:09:50.180 how do you build goodwill and communicate,
00:09:52.000 and what's the message and the information
00:09:53.420 that you want your customer to learn over a period of time.
00:09:56.160 Number seven, which is the whole package,
00:09:58.720 is creating goodwill for your customers by value first,
00:10:02.580 building their trust, and over time they will eventually,
00:10:05.380 when they have the need, they'll think of your business
00:10:07.420 and they will sign up.
00:10:08.260 That is number seven.
00:10:09.940 I want to invite you to subscribe to my channel,
00:10:12.520 if you're not, to share this with somebody in your world,
00:10:15.140 a tech founder, somebody starting a new technology company
00:10:18.360 that's already trying to scale and increase their revenue.
00:10:20.420 Share this video with them.
00:10:21.860 I want to challenge you to live a bigger life
00:10:23.660 and a bigger business, and I'll see you next Monday.