Dan Martell - March 28, 2016


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

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Evernote Acai Berry
How To Build A SaaS Product That People Love How To Do Market Research For Your Startup (Market Research Techniques)

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

204.81

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).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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.