How to ethically use fear to reach the right customer Ep. 001

Modern Marketers with Blake Beus and Greg Marshall

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In this episode we go over ways to reach the right customer using fear.

But how do you use fear to sell and still be able to sleep at night?

Transcript

[00:00:00] Blake Beus: Yeah, let's just, let's just dive in. So we were, we were talking about a bunch of different things here before this call. We should have hit record just,

[00:00:06] Greg Marshall: yeah, we probably should just record our entire conversation all the time.

[00:00:10] Blake Beus: All the time, body cams.

[00:00:15] Blake Beus: Um, but we were, one of the things we were talking about was different angles and marketing. We started talking about fear, which is I made the observation. I think fear is probably the biggest thing to make people make a decision today. You've been using that with some of your clients and stuff, but I thought it was interesting.

[00:00:32] Blake Beus: I love, you know,

[00:00:34] Greg Marshall: tell about that. I thought, you know, it's, it's tough because you want to use fear as a way as human beings, we tend to not respond. To benefits as much as we will responsive fear, particularly if we want fast action. Right? So if you look at like some of the things that we want to accomplish, we'll use like weight loss, right?

[00:00:56] Greg Marshall: If I say, Hey, I can help you lose X amount of pounds because you're going to feel more excited and more energy, blah, blah, blah. Right. That might get you excited. But if a doctor says, Hey, if you don't lose 30 pounds in the next 30 days, you're going to die. Well, that that causes you to act faster. Right?

[00:01:15] Greg Marshall: Cause you're fearful of what's going to happen if you don't

[00:01:18] Blake Beus: act. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It, um, while I just barely relaunched a sales pitch for, for one of my products. And I was just thinking that through when we were talking about the fear is I don't, I don't have a whole lot of language that gets them to start thinking about those fears.

[00:01:37] Blake Beus: Now I do feel like sometimes we're in. We have so much fear hitting us people with like all these sensational headlines and stuff. So I feel like it can definitely be overdone. Yes. But there's legitimate or abuse right. Or use to manipulate, but there's legitimate ways to, to use, use that fear. And I'm definitely, I need to think more about that with my current sales page, because I don't think I have.

[00:01:58] Blake Beus: Of that kind of the, uh, the, the stick and the carrot. I have mostly carrot. Yeah. You know, all these things you want, but I want a little bit of a stick in there to, well,

[00:02:06] Greg Marshall: I think to what, what, you know, I was talking to a bunch of clients earlier this morning about, um, something specific when people reach out and they want more sales.

[00:02:16] Greg Marshall: What they're not saying is I want a hundred thousand, 200, $300,000 in sales spread out over the next 20. What they're actually saying is I need sales today and I want sales yesterday. Right. And so with that being said, you have to focus more on, well, how do I create incentives to make people act now?

[00:02:38] Greg Marshall: Versus they see a product. They like it. Well, I'll eventually get to a and most people's like, uh, language when they're selling stuff is like, Hey, we'll, we'll be around at any time. So. Buy from me for many times. Right. We all know that, you know, we're laughing cause it's like, we know that doesn't work

[00:02:57] Blake Beus: like that.

[00:02:57] Blake Beus: Not only does it work, but it kind of lacks Lex the confidence in our products. And we all want to use very soft, very friendly, very kind, sure language. And I get that. That's like my default time, which is one of the reasons I've struggled. And I noticed I missed this on my own, but, um, The, the reality is, is that for the right kind of customer and you know, what industry you're in or whatever, what you're selling literally is kind of not really life and death situation, but it does help them avoid a very painful situation yes.

[00:03:35] Greg Marshall: Or prolong it right where it's like, they feel a certain level of pain and they've been feeling it for eight years or seven months or whatever. And they want to like fix it. Well, our job as marketers and salespeople. Give people solutions that they can solve the problem immediately and end the pain.

[00:03:54] Greg Marshall: That's basically what we're trying to do is, and their pain, but we have to help them get out of their own ways. So we have to create all these incentives and reasons to act now, or else they're going to prolong. No, absolutely.

[00:04:08] Blake Beus: I mean, uh, w w what kicked this whole part of this office earlier when we were first chatting before we hit the record button, was your headline.

[00:04:17] Blake Beus: Yeah.

[00:04:17] Greg Marshall: Yeah. One of the headlines that, um, you know, we were thinking about, and this is, this is almost like sad to say, because, um, as a, as an online marketer, I started off in sales in person. Right. And I used to really emphasize my sales. Uh, deliveries to talk about urgency and why you need to do it now.

[00:04:37] Greg Marshall: But on digital, I hadn't used that mindset as much until I was thinking about this offer that wasn't converting in the past, working with this company and they brought me on to help them figure it out. So I said, well, if we need this to come from. We need to really focus on how to get people to come in.

[00:04:56] Greg Marshall: So the start of it all is the hook. And we use the hook where, um, we said the hook says you are currently earning 36% less than your competitors by not having this skill. And what that does, is it number one, it gives you the fear of loss. Number two, we're using a random number. So we're. 50% or a 75%, we're using 36%, which is the real number, but it also communicates that this is a real statistic and it's not, if it's too whole, it sounds made up, right?

[00:05:33] Greg Marshall: Because most statistics are not 75%, 25. They usually like 26.2% or something. Right. So we used the number specifically to demonstrate that this is a real stat and we're using the. Almost the fear of like you were being left behind because you are not keeping your skills up and that's what hooks them

[00:05:53] Blake Beus: in.

[00:05:54] Blake Beus: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Now that that's, that's something, when you told me that I instantly was thinking I'm stealing that headline.

[00:06:03] Greg Marshall: What's a good headline. And we came up, we came up with it together. Um, between myself and this company, while we were brainstorming, we're thinking, well, how do we demonstrate that what we have, which is thinking exercise, everyone should do, which is how do we demonstrate what we have to offer in a way that makes people understand and realize that they need us and they need us now.

[00:06:29] Greg Marshall: Right? Right. And that's where this all came about is while we know who we're speaking to our core audience there, their whole. Goal is to increase the revenue and their money, particularly as a personal brand. So we need to have statistics that show how by having this scale. Well increase their, their income increase, uh, you know, their status and also help them to not feel like they're being left behind, which is why we use this headline FOMO.

[00:07:01] Greg Marshall: Very, very

[00:07:03] Blake Beus: well. I almost, uh, earlier this year, Well mowed some GameStop shares that it's almost almost active. I almost did cause I didn't want to miss out on the whole GameStop thing. Um, but, uh, no that's uh, and, and the other thing too, is you're that particular person you're speaking to in those ads. I just barely realized while you're talking.

[00:07:24] Blake Beus: Is a very competitive personality. Yes. Those people are very competitive people and they don't, like many of them are probably already pretty successful, but they don't want to be less successful than that guy over there. That's doing the same thing. Yeah.

[00:07:38] Greg Marshall: Well, I call that the. You know, the, the, the gorilla pound on the chest, right?

[00:07:43] Greg Marshall: Yeah. So like that person wants to, you know, in this space, right. They're competitive. Meaning we're going after successful people, successful people typically have a drive they're competitive in some way, and they do have the bad habit. I think. Of comparison. Right? Well, I'm doing good, but I don't feel nearly as good as I should because that guy's doing better.

[00:08:09] Greg Marshall: Right. Even though you shouldn't do that, it's what we do. And so we're almost using that as a way to be able to go, Hey, this is a real statistic you are. If you don't have this skill, there are people making 30, 40, 50, 60% more money. Just by understanding how to public speak correctly. Right. So we're using that competitive nature to help them step their game up.

[00:08:33] Greg Marshall: It's a way to motivate

[00:08:34] Blake Beus: them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's super interesting. And I, I, and I think, you know, I mean, we see ads all over the place, billboards, Facebook, whatever. And as, as you look at those, the ones that tend to have the most comments and things are the ones that are usually have a little bit of fear in there.

[00:08:51] Blake Beus: And, you know, Polarizing that's the other thing usually are things that make people say, oh, hell yeah, that's totally true. Or, oh, hell no, that's completely. Yeah. That's such bull crap. It drives emotion. It drives

[00:09:04] Greg Marshall: emotion. Yeah. That's where I think you strong marketing and sales really. I mean, sales and marketing pretty connected.

[00:09:10] Greg Marshall: Right. Which is you have to drive the emotion because we do not act unless we feel emotional. So if you think of. I know a lot of the posts that I see online, where people are getting like really upset. It has like a billion comments is because it's driving an emotion of either. I agree strongly with you, or I strongly disagree.

[00:09:30] Greg Marshall: It's never in the middle. Yeah. Right. Somewhere in the middle. You have to choose a side. Yeah.

[00:09:35] Blake Beus: And I feel like, um, Just taking a step back at the larger, larger picture of everything out there. We see this same principle in all of the clickbaits and sensational headlines, which I feel is an abuse of the concept, the principle or whatever, but it's, it happens a lot and it happens all around us.

[00:09:56] Blake Beus: These companies are doing it because it works. Now we can take this and make it non click baity and use it for growth in a more reasonable way. That makes a ton of sense. Um, but, but yeah, I

[00:10:09] Greg Marshall: mean, we're basically always in business to try to help customers. At least that's what I hope all of you guys are in business for right.

[00:10:18] Greg Marshall: Is we actually want to help these customers and we just want to help them get out of their own way. And when you can use strategy, Right that we're, you know, like a lot of the media uses to get you to click. But you can use it in a helpful and more positive way versus at times I feel like it's used the other way, you know, we won't get too deep into that, but that's just kind of sometimes what I feel.

[00:10:40] Greg Marshall: Yeah.

[00:10:41] Blake Beus: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so we've talked, we've talked about fear and I think we've talked about that a whole lot, but before this call, we talked about some other things and I don't know if you're listening to this podcast, you're going to read. There's going to be a lot of random stuff that we're going to talk about because we're out there actively doing this stuff, and there's a lot of things these kind of pop up.

[00:11:01] Blake Beus: Uh, but one thing I've been meaning to talk to you about that we didn't talk about before this call, uh, is I set up and ran my first LinkedIn conversation ads this week. Okay. Have you ever used LinkedIn conversation ads?

[00:11:14] Greg Marshall: Yeah. So I've used LinkedIn. For the actual distribution? No. Um, I've used LinkedIn ads for, uh, clicks, the website, landing pages, uh, awareness, video, marketing, all that.

[00:11:27] Greg Marshall: But I use LinkedIn messaging in a, in a unique way. So my objective with all of my, uh, all of my marketing for my business or anyone that's in the service-based business is to try to drive, uh, an inbox response. Right. So, um, Yeah. I mean, so when you're doing inbox, response marketing, basically what you try to do is start a conversation so that you can then move them on the phone.

[00:11:54] Greg Marshall: Yeah,

[00:11:55] Blake Beus: yeah, absolutely. So this, this strategy I thought was super unique. So I had this unique situation where, uh, my client needed to speak with account managers at a very large company. Got it. Uh, because they have a product that specifically helps them and helps their customers. It helps the relationship between them and their customers.

[00:12:18] Blake Beus: And this company has tens of thousands of employees and we needed to speak with just account managers. So LinkedIn actually lets you target big company employees of a big company by title. And so once we did all the targeting and everything was about 1800 people, but then this is where the conversation ads come in.

[00:12:36] Blake Beus: It's like a mini bot. If you've ever done many chat bots or anything like that, we can set up a little flow and a little conversation that. Briefly, uh, gets their attention, then explains the value proposition and how it can help them, and then prompts them to book a call with, uh, you know, the, the, the sales manager of the team with, with this service, because it's a software as a service company.

[00:12:58] Blake Beus: But, um, I was surprised at how cheap those ads were, which they were crazy cheap, and I've always heard LinkedIn ads are expensive if you're going for conversion, all of these things, but these conversations ads. We're 10 to 15 cents per cent, which is so cheap and it's targeted. It's directly targeted to the very specific people now that that cost changes because they did some other targeting for some other, you know, large companies just to see how the price has changed.

[00:13:27] Blake Beus: Uh, and it definitely does change a little bit, but. It was crazy. And I'm super curious to see how that's

[00:13:33] Greg Marshall: going to work. I'm going to have to use that because that's actually, so I've used messaging ads on Facebook and on Instagram, but yeah, you got to

[00:13:41] Blake Beus: build your list and everything on Facebook, on LinkedIn, you don't, you just target them and you can send them the message

[00:13:46] Greg Marshall: I'm going to have to for sure.

[00:13:47] Greg Marshall: Use that because I've seen some of those ads in my own. And I have your attention. They do, because you're like, do I know this person? Which is like, that's pretty much the key. Cause that's almost the most powerful headline is if I have to ask myself, do I know this person, they have my attention. Yeah.

[00:14:05] Greg Marshall: Right. And then what do you do? You go on and click? Who is this person? He started learning more about them. So it makes sense that that would be a very powerful marketing tool. Okay. As soon as we, you know, stop this podcast, I'm gonna have to test

[00:14:19] Blake Beus: all after the show off to show you a few things that I learned because it's, um, it's a more clunky ad platform.

[00:14:26] Blake Beus: Like it's a definitely a clunky app platform. And I did make a mistake when I was setting it up because they have, uh, they have a campaign group level, a campaign level, like a targeting level, and then an ad level. Three of those have a draft mode. Oh, and so you, I, I had set everything to active except for the campaign group, which you set that up one time and then you spend a couple of hours and you're like, oh, She never turned it on active.

[00:14:54] Blake Beus: So then you'd hear it on what was

[00:14:55] Greg Marshall: supposed to, and you probably thought similar to what I thought. I remember thinking like, man, these wires, the no impressions, like it's not serving. And then you realize, oh, because it's not on,

[00:15:05] Blake Beus: it's not turned on. It turns out you've got to turn ads on for them to

send.

[00:15:10] Greg Marshall: But yeah, I think, you know, what's interesting about, you know, moving into, uh, Lincoln. As I feel like LinkedIn is probably an underutilized platform because there's not as many people bidding for the same exact audiences with the same message, because you see kind of a saturation when you're doing a Facebook and Instagram ads, because it's the simplest to get in.

[00:15:33] Greg Marshall: Right. At least the perception is that itself. Right. It's actually, you know, you have to know what you're doing to get good results, but the perception is like, well, if I click the boost, Or if I just click a button that Facebook suggest to me, I technically have an ad running. Right. And you don't really have that on LinkedIn.

[00:15:49] Greg Marshall: In fact, it's a little clunky because you got to go to the advertise and it opens up a new page. And then when you open up a new page, then you actually have to know how to target. Then you have to know, you have to submit all the drafts and make sure you're not in draft mode on three different levels for tax you go live.

[00:16:05] Greg Marshall: Right. Right. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, LinkedIn is definitely a platform. You always have an opportunity. If you can use a platform that other people don't really know how to use or it's perceived as hard. So no one tries it. Right.

[00:16:19] Blake Beus: Well, and the other thing, the old marketing phrase, you hear all over the places you need to go where your customers are hanging out.

[00:16:28] Blake Beus: And, uh, I always say. For the longest time. I always wrote off LinkedIn ads because I never, I never go to LinkedIn ever, like never, ever, ever do I go to, you know, whenever my, my whole history of going to LinkedIn is usually when I was working at a regular job and I started hating my job. So I started looking for jobs on LinkedIn, you know, uh, and, uh, but I know.

[00:16:53] Blake Beus: Hit LinkedIn to browse the content. Now that is changing. Definitely that's changing. But the thing I like about these conversation as is. If people have the app on their phone, it actually, I think it actually does a push notification to their phone because it's a new message.

[00:17:06] Greg Marshall: It does because that's how I'm seeing these conversation as, and I remember thinking like, how are they doing that?

[00:17:14] Blake Beus: It's not intuitive, but it's actually really easy. It's, it's easier than setting up a Facebook, uh, like a mini chat bot using Facebook. The, the, the it's not as sophisticated. You can't do that. Cool things, but it's very, very simple to get the, that the, the, the flow set out

[00:17:30] Greg Marshall: simple as good. Yeah. Right. And the, the big, I mean, the thing that impacts any marketing or sales the most is the who you're talking to.

[00:17:40] Greg Marshall: Right. So like, that's where LinkedIn seems to be. Especially if you're in B2B or you're looking for a specific title, Facebook, you can target some of these, uh, some of these audiences, but. They're tough because either the audiences are really tiny for Facebook to figure out, um, so your CPM costs or costs of reach.

[00:18:02] Greg Marshall: These people are through the roof and there's so much noise on Facebook and Instagram that, that same, you know, quote unquote CEO that you're targeting is also being targeted. Other interest based. Where they're targeting and he likes golfing and he likes to go to the movies and he likes all this stuff.

[00:18:20] Greg Marshall: Right. And so what happens is you're really just competing. You're spending more to get in front of the same person that someone else is getting in front of. And so the math usually just doesn't work because you have to be SAR where you can get their undivided attention and then move them off the platform.

[00:18:36] Greg Marshall: So they're isolated. So you can. You know, drum up some

[00:18:40] Blake Beus: business. Right? Well, and I think about attention quite a bit. So, uh, I just relaunched a membership that I was doing, and I was delivering this membership through a Facebook group and the Facebook Facebook group as a delivery tool and tons of people deliver memberships through Facebook group.

[00:18:57] Blake Beus: Cause it's free. If everybody has Facebook, there's few, there's not very many hurdles to overcome. Um, but the, the distractions on Facebook are astronomical, just absolutely insane. And what a lot of people don't think about is even, even for me, when I would hop into Facebook to go to the group to put out a new poster or do new live video, you know, deliver the things that the group is supposed to deliver, I had to Wade through.

[00:19:25] Blake Beus: Political posts or my crazy uncle spouting conspiracy theories or whatever, to

[00:19:30] Greg Marshall: get to my notifications or keep coming up before, get all of this stuff. There's just, it it's

[00:19:35] Blake Beus: like, I dunno, it's like trying to read a book in a casino, like on a math book, in a casino, you just can't do that, you know? Um, and, uh, there is definitely time place for Facebook ads and I've run a ton of those myself.

[00:19:48] Blake Beus: Greg you've helped me with a ton of those ads. And, uh, but LinkedIn, when people are on LinkedIn, they're there for business

[00:19:57] Greg Marshall: and they're more it's because there's not as much noise there. It's almost a more isolated environment. If you've done sales for a long time, you understand that it's always better to sell one-on-one and a place where there's no distractions versus trying to sell.

[00:20:15] Greg Marshall: One-on-one, like you said, in a casino or something, you know, an amusement park. That's basically what it's like. It's like selling an amusement park when you're trying to sell in an overly crowded noisy. Uh, too many notifications world and LinkedIn is more of the library. Right. There's things going on, but it's not, you know, it's not attacking your dopamine so crazy that you're reacting every two seconds I'm clicking something.

[00:20:40] Greg Marshall: Right. Right.

[00:20:43] Blake Beus: So, yeah. So I was super stoked to talk with you about that. And, uh, um, I, I can't wait to talk about the results that we would get out of it,

[00:20:50] Greg Marshall: but, uh, yeah, I think too, like, What's interesting about most of these marketing channels is folks on, uh, testing, right? So, um, you have to test a lot and you have to be looking for new tests to run.

[00:21:04] Greg Marshall: And I think, um, with LinkedIn, one of the things that I like to do with a platform to get better at it is to run a ton, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 campaigns of the same. Uh, platform and just trying to test messages or test delivery, test audience, to get a good feel of it. I look at it as like repetitions.

[00:21:26] Greg Marshall: Like if you're trying to be better at the piano or a sports or something like that, you have to do reps in order for you to feel competent at it. And I think one of the best ways to get good at it is to almost mentally think, well, I'm just going to go. And all I care about is reps not necessarily results at the moment, but the actual reps of being able to go through and get a feel for it.

[00:21:46] Greg Marshall: Is that something that you tend to do? Do you follow something like that?

[00:21:50] Blake Beus: I, I definitely do, but there are times because here's the thing I overthink. I overthink everything. I overthink everything. So. Uh, much, so much. So recently I've been trying to not overthink quite so much and just, and just, uh, do some things and then check back later.

[00:22:11] Blake Beus: So when I think of testing, because I'm a numbers and a data guy, I think of like statistically significant testing, where we have split audiences where there's a zero overlap overlap, and we have. We, you know, we have a large enough volume that we can make a call and the percentage of increase on one over the other is better, is better by a big enough margin that it can't just be like chocked up to, you know, time of day or whatever.

[00:22:33] Blake Beus: Um, and frankly that's, sometimes that's just not feasible. Uh, and so testing what I do right now is just get a ballpark for some baselines and then run some ads. See how they're working this conversation ad there's one campaign, one targeting one ad because it's a low volume ad. There's only 1800 people in the whole audience.

[00:22:57] Blake Beus: And so I don't, I can't have audiences of millions of people where it can all be statistically significant and random enough to make sure that it's working. Uh, and so we just have to see what's working and have to see what the cost per acquisition is and the cost per call. And then on the back end, uh, because this is for a higher ticket kind of offering and service, uh, on the backend, we need to.

[00:23:19] Blake Beus: On the call. And I talk with the sales team about this after, cause I'm not taking any sales calls, but I talked with the sales team afterwards and I asked them, you know, okay. Was this the right kind of person. When did we get the right person on that call? If not, then we go back and sometimes you can't fix that with targeting.

[00:23:36] Blake Beus: We fix it with the language we're using in the ads. We want the language and the messaging to get them to the right person, to raise their hand and say, oh, that's me. And that's the help that I need. Um, and so that's the kind of testing I've been hearing a lot more of

[00:23:50] Greg Marshall: lately, you know, it's actually interesting.

[00:23:52] Greg Marshall: That leads me to kind of. Uh, we were talking about actually right before we hit record, which was, um, how the numbers volume is not always superior. Right. So I've told you. You haven't, you only have 1800 people in this audience, right? Yep. So you can't make the goal. Like we need to get 20,000 views or 40,000 clicks on a website.

[00:24:15] Greg Marshall: Cause there's only 1800 people. Yeah. And I have found myself getting caught up in this many times where you mistake volume for success. Right. So you're like, oh, well that video that I saw on YouTube has a million views. It must be generating tons. That's not necessarily always the case and it must have

[00:24:37] Blake Beus: good information in it.

[00:24:38] Blake Beus: Yes. Right?

[00:24:39] Greg Marshall: Yeah. Don't be the case even to make these assumptions. When in reality of a smaller, more targeted, lower volume approach can work much better, especially in the B2B space because you, what makes you money is, well, if you get out of those 1800 people, you sign up five of them, but all five of them are.

[00:25:02] Greg Marshall: 20 30, 40, $50,000 contracts. I mean, you could be selling court million dollars off of just five people, right.

[00:25:09] Blake Beus: Or more. Yeah. And that's, that's pretty feasible for this particular instance.

[00:25:14] Greg Marshall: And how much does it cost for you to reach them?

[00:25:17] Blake Beus: I think total, literally total we're we're doing $25 a day. Total. The estimate is probably going to be less than $500.

[00:25:24] Blake Beus: So even if we hit people multiple times,

[00:25:27] Greg Marshall: So think about that you invest $500 and let's say five of those 1800 people and their contracts that were 10, 15, 20,000. You spent 500 again.

[00:25:37] Blake Beus: Well, yeah. And this particular service is it's, it's a, it's a monthly subscription and each account manager has probably 20 to 50.

[00:25:46] Blake Beus: Um, of their clients that they work with, that would be a good fit for this particular product. And so, and the, and the subscription costs, uh, it starts at about a thousand dollars a month and goes up from there. And so it very easily could be for the right account manager. If 10% of their workout, it could easily be $10,000 a month.

[00:26:08] Blake Beus: Each, each person that they speak.

[00:26:10] Greg Marshall: So imagine you're spending 500 and you get a hundred, 501

[00:26:13] Blake Beus: time. And, and this particular client is really good because once people are on the system, people love it. They've got great customer support. So once they're on board, They stay on post at their retention rate is insane.

[00:26:28] Greg Marshall: So it's great. Lifetime value. You spent 500, they stay on two years. You made $240,000 off 500. Yeah, you can, you can never dream of making that kind of money stock market,

[00:26:42] Greg Marshall: maybe, you know, maybe Bitcoin or something like that, who knows, but. That's C the FOMO, that's all

[00:26:48] Blake Beus: that we're missing out. Throw some, throw some, our daily tips, throw some money. Don't follow my financial advice

[00:26:53] Greg Marshall: there. I don't just, I mean, but yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? It's like, that is an unbelievable rich.

[00:26:59] Greg Marshall: And if you get caught up in volume versus the right person, you could be spending more than you need to tax to get the sure. Right. Well,

[00:27:08] Blake Beus: and that's the thing. If we want to go back to organic marketing, cause we were talking about this with your organic videos, like Greg's really good at getting a short video out every day, almost, uh, related, related to his services and things.

[00:27:21] Blake Beus: And some of those videos have five views. Some have like 10, whatever, but you consistently get calls for people that say things like. I've been watching your videos. I haven't commented on any of them, but I need your help. And my customer ha uh, my, my company has, I don't know, a hundred employees, this is our revenue and everything, and we need help.

[00:27:42] Blake Beus: And you close a 12 month contract based on a video that had 10 views.

[00:27:46] Greg Marshall: Yeah. Which even to me, you know, I get caught up in that too. Cause I'm like, how could only 10 views, 20 views actually generate any money? Cause it's such a low volume, but yeah. What I have to keep reminding myself as if you reframe that and you're putting out those videos and you're getting 20, 30 views per video, sometimes less.

[00:28:09] Greg Marshall: And, but over time, you're getting a hundred of the most qualified people who keep watching them that will do business with you. Then you're speaking to the right person. Those videos are profitable because it's not costing me any money to like outside of maybe production costs, which isn't even that.

[00:28:25] Greg Marshall: 'cause some of these, I'm doing a off my phone. So really the investment is low. The only investment I have is maybe 10, 15 minutes of time. Yeah. Right. But they, it compounds over time. These people are watching these videos. It draws you up big contracts with clients it's worth it. And

[00:28:44] Blake Beus: that video is out there forever.

[00:28:46] Blake Beus: Exact like you take 10, 15 minutes now, but you know, it's out there for years. Um, it, it re, it reminds me of me. It makes me think of the, what we see most. Like I hop on YouTube. I have my favorite channels with millions of subscribers and I, I sit down and watch them and they, they all have some sort of a picture and offer one of the guys.

[00:29:04] Blake Beus: I watch, he, he does cooking and he's got, he just, he just wrote a cookbook and it's for sale on Amazon, uh, knowing how publishing works. He's probably the book is $20. He's probably getting a buck from that book. It's his very first book. Right. Um, but he gets millions of views and he's probably making decent money, but his margins.

[00:29:27] Blake Beus: Yeah, right. And so people are sitting down there thinking, okay, I'm doing business online. I'm trying to grow something. Whatever this guy has millions of viewers. Uh, and there's no way I can compete with that. So I'm just going to stop. But the thing is, is his margins are tiny. So if you have an offer that is a, you know, a service.

[00:29:44] Blake Beus: Or you're a contractor or a plumber or electrician, all of these non-sexy industries out there, you have much, much, much bigger margins. You're not trying to get a million people to buy your book so you can make a million dollars. You're getting a hundred of them. You can make you make a million dollars off of a hundred of the right clients, because what is that $10,000.

[00:30:09] Blake Beus: Each client, is that a million times? A hundred. Yeah. Which is very easy for, uh, a contractor or a service-based business to have a $10,000,

[00:30:19] Greg Marshall: which I, and that's where, you know, it goes into strategy. Right? What are you, are you looking to be popular or are you looking to make sales and grow your business?

[00:30:31] Greg Marshall: Because they're not always correct. There are, of course there's outliers where they're very popular and they make a lot of sales. Those are celebrities, but that's a very different style and approach that like, you know, 1% of the world ever makes. Right. Right. And unless your goal is to become an actor, an actress, to have some kind of celebrity in that way, which is very difficult, right.

[00:30:55] Greg Marshall: Then you're going to want to go the other approach, which is you have to build a business and you have to. Who you actually want to target? What can you do to help them and how to make a sustainable, right? And so the wrong approach is I need 8 billion followers to make money. That's because that's, you don't need that.

[00:31:14] Greg Marshall: You just need the right people to be following you and taking action and love what you do. And I love the, the article or the quote. I can't even remember, but Seth. Talked about the 1000 true fans. And like you only need a thousand true fans to really, truly make a living. Right. Cause they, from, from there, those people can refer people out for you.

[00:31:34] Greg Marshall: That's like your tribe. And so that's how you can grow. And I just, I just liked that mindset versus feeling the pressure to have a million subscribers or a million, this or a million. It makes it so easy

[00:31:49] Blake Beus: to just get. Yup, because you're, you're kicking and screaming and scratching and crawling for the first a hundred subscribers and doing that for the first thousand.

[00:31:58] Blake Beus: And you, you, you hit a thousand and you're like, I'm old. I only need to do this a thousand more times to get to a million. Uh, and, and it's, so that mind frame makes it so easy to just stop, get overwhelmed, just quit. Say it's not worth it, but really it's, it should be shifted around in that. How, you know, Do is my business model, the right kind of model for the people that are my followers.

[00:32:24] Blake Beus: And if not, pivot, make adjustments, successful businesses, pivot all the time, all the time. I've pivoted like a bajillion times in my business. Well,

[00:32:33] Greg Marshall: here's, here's the other thing too with, um, if you, if you get too trapped in the vanity metrics, right? Uh, yes. Um, if you get too trapped in that, what happened?

[00:32:43] Greg Marshall: Yes, there's a time and a place you can use it, but you could be chasing the wrong thing and it becomes this weird cycle. Or if you're like just chasing followers with likes, you're, you're doing things that aren't necessarily designed to increase your business. Right. You're doing things just to increase views.

[00:33:00] Greg Marshall: For example, if I just put up like a bunch of cat videos and it gets millions of views, does that mean my business group? No. No. It's just entertained millions of people.

[00:33:11] Blake Beus: You entertain millions of people. The model most people have with something like that is I'm going to monetize YouTube ads, but it's pennies like as

[00:33:19] Greg Marshall: so slim.

[00:33:20] Blake Beus: And the, and the, the, the number of pennies you're getting, you know, based on a million views get smaller every year because of that's how competition that's how bad that's how bad supply. Yeah. That's supply and demand works

[00:33:32] Greg Marshall: well. And you're also giving up all your power to the platform, which we know very well with running ads and stuff like that.

[00:33:39] Greg Marshall: We won't get too deep into it. Cause we got so upset. Last December, was it December 29th? We were ready to

[00:33:47] Blake Beus: we'll talk about that. I do want to talk about this. We'll do it on a different episode. We

[00:33:51] Greg Marshall: were cheers event. So you have to stay tuned for that one, because that was a kind of a funny Ana, a NASA funny, extreme.

[00:33:57] Greg Marshall: Oh my

[00:33:57] Blake Beus: gosh. I swore a whole lot that January, January 20, 20, I swore a whole lot,

[00:34:04] Greg Marshall: but I think, you know, like with, with the whole vanity metrics too, if you're I've worked and this is what taught me this. Okay. Before. Um, I've worked with individuals like this. I also had to believe, well, the more followers you have, the more money you're going to make.

[00:34:20] Greg Marshall: Well, the more views, the more anything, right. I, but it's, it's, that's not true because I've worked with people who have, um, there was a scenario where I worked with a quote unquote influencer, right. And they had, uh, I wanna say it was close to 600,000 followers. Right. And they w they, they actually, uh, reached out to myself and a couple of other people.

[00:34:40] Greg Marshall: That was part of this little group. Cause they couldn't sell anything with 600,600,000 followers and they could not sell anything. And that's when it like really hit me where I was like, all right here, this lady has this outward, you know, like his look of success, all these followers and all these vanity metrics, but behind the current.

[00:35:08] Greg Marshall: Hey, I haven't sold anything. I'm talking zero. Really? Not now. Like I sold one, I'm talking zero, nothing, nothing, nothing, no sale. Right. And I'm like, that almost sounds impossible. It almost

[00:35:22] Blake Beus: sounds impossible. It feels impossible. It feels impossible. Mostly. When I launched my first product was this, which was a social media calendar to help people grow on social media.

[00:35:32] Blake Beus: I had 300 followers

[00:35:36] Greg Marshall: and I can assure you, you sold

[00:35:37] Blake Beus: a lot more hundreds of thousands of dollars of that calendar. Uh, and I had 300 followers at the time. And so just imagining having 600,000 followers and selling zero is insane

[00:35:52] Greg Marshall: and what's even crazier. Not only do they have these amount of followers, but they also they're on the, on the surface.

[00:36:01] Greg Marshall: Their page seemed engaging and all these comments and likes and shares. And you're so great. And you're the coolest and this, this and that. Meanwhile, it didn't translate to sales. And so basically that showed. That you should not be. And it's very seductive, right? Because I know I've thought many times, wow, what would it be like to have a million followers?

[00:36:24] Greg Marshall: Or they have this huge, this, a huge subscriber list or whatever. Right. And if it can, it can cause you to like, lose your focus because it doesn't directly translate into dollars when really what you really are saying when you want all that. Most of the time is you want more sales? You're thinking it's going to translate to more sales.

[00:36:46] Greg Marshall: Right. Right. And that's, that's where you go. Well, there's probably a better approach because if I just spoke to 10 people tomorrow, Right. And sold them all on a hundred thousand dollars. I'd be a millionaire, right. That's only 10 feet

[00:36:59] Blake Beus: and there's people that do those deals, right? Like, absolutely. Yeah. Um, I think we get caught up on those metrics because that's what we see.

[00:37:07] Blake Beus: Right? Yeah. And we'll dive into algorithms. We have lots of conversations around algorithms, but that's what algorithms do is they bubble up the most popular content. Uh, and so then that's what we see. So then we feel like that's what needs you need to have to be successful when behind the. Apparently, some of them are selling nothing.

[00:37:25] Blake Beus: Yes. Um,

[00:37:26] Greg Marshall: and very embarrassed. Like I would, oh, I felt embarrassed for her because as she was speaking, she had the tonality of arrogance is never good. Right. And I arrogance crushes, many things. The more arrogant you are, the more holes they're going to be in things you can't see. Yeah. And she was speaking in a very arrogant manner.

[00:37:53] Greg Marshall: Like I am this huge celebrity while simultaneously getting zero sales. Oh. And it was tough. Cause it's like, that's embarrassing. You're telling us the massive influence that you have, but you don't have as influence that you think. And so that's just like, I just, I can't believe, I mean, to this day, that is like, in my mind, I still think of that 600,000 followers.

[00:38:22] Greg Marshall: No sales. Yeah, man. So if you're getting currently discouraged about like, you don't have a billion subscribers or you're not getting these massive views or people that are in your same space are getting more views or more. That doesn't always necessarily equate to dollars. And so if your goal is to make more money and sales and grow your company, focus on that versus the vanity.

[00:38:48] Blake Beus: Right. Uh, and I will put a little plug in here on this, and then we'll, we'll wrap it up and talk about how people can connect with us if they want to. But, uh, I feel like Tik TOK is one of those places you can. Subscribers insanely fast. Yeah. But the way that people consume Tik TOK content is a very, um, ADHD.

[00:39:12] Blake Beus: Like if that makes sense, like it's a dopamine hit. It's like, it's like a slot machine, I guess we're coming back to, it's like a slot machine of things you're just swiping through there. Maybe people are, maybe they're liking it. Maybe they're commenting on it, but very rarely do. Hit the name, go to the link in the bio, click on that and actually take action.

[00:39:32] Blake Beus: Yep. Uh, and so I, I get people asking me all the time, how do I grow on Tik TOK and all this stuff? And we can dive into that on another episode. But most of the time I tell them, well, is that what. Is that where your customers are hanging out and we have a conversation about customers, and I know it maybe sounds super old school cause Facebook was yesterday's news, but Facebook from an organic standpoint, there's so much potential on there because of the people that are spending money are oftentimes hanging out on Facebook.

[00:39:59] Blake Beus: And the people that aren't spending money are on tick. Now that's probably going to share that might be well, it, it trends younger, right? Like Tik TOK trends, younger, historically speaking, the, the demographics that spend the most money online is from like the 35 to the 50 age range. Um, and those people aren't chilling on Tik TOK.

[00:40:19] Blake Beus: They're

[00:40:19] Greg Marshall: just. Well, you compare tick-tock to casino, which if you notice, I'm sure there's a lot of people in casinos who don't have very much money. So maybe there's a direct correlation to that. Right. But I think to, to play to your point, a metric that I think is very important that I feel like almost known talks about, but you've heard me say this many times is marketing.

[00:40:45] Greg Marshall: Consuming the actual marketing. So the longer you can have someone consume your content, the more invested they are in you, which is why like video, particularly at least one to two minute videos sometimes longer, because if they're consuming the marketing content, I believe you have a higher influence over that person.

[00:41:07] Greg Marshall: If you take marketing consumption in to like, let's say the rock, for example, the reason why I feel like he compounds. Is because we are consuming his marketing at huge levels, right? He's made hundreds of movies. He's been in hundreds of episodes of shows and wrestling. He's got his social media accounts.

[00:41:29] Greg Marshall: So what you're doing is you're consuming his content and you're consuming more and more of it. Therefore you feel more invested in it. Therefore you buy from him, right? That's the same thing you can do with your market. Is your goal is to get people to consume it more. Right. And if it's only 10 people that really are your customers and that's, that's the market, but they're consuming all of your stuff handled.

[00:41:56] Greg Marshall: When you said earlier, I've been watching your videos for a while. And then that is I that's basically the script of every time I talk to someone, they say I've been watching your videos every time. So that's how I keep investing more and more in. Just because I paid attention to the scene, they're consuming the content, the more content they consume, the easier the sale, right.

[00:42:19] Greg Marshall: Because the content has sold them already. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:23] Blake Beus: And it's, and it's one of the best ways to get the, that marketing consumption is to make sure that the content is value based. And that does take a little effort. It does. It's, it's a little bit more effort than, uh, you know, What is it called a mix, a mixed tape.

[00:42:39] Blake Beus: When you take someone else's Tik TOK and you're like react to

[00:42:42] Greg Marshall: us. Yes. Which, I mean, it takes more effort and the thing is, it's more long-term too, right? So it's not C we're also deuced by the overnight result. And the problem with that is sometimes you tend to, you know, try to take shortcuts when you could get a result.

[00:43:02] Greg Marshall: Now you, but you can get a better than. More consistent results that compounds. Yep. If you take your time into going, I'm going to focus on a core market and give them as much value as possible. And I'm not going to venture out of that. And what that does is you start to be able to craft your message better and better, and to get better at doing it and things start to compound, but you don't get, you know, you don't make a video and tomorrow, you know, you get 10 deals, right.

[00:43:32] Greg Marshall: I don't work that way. You have to be consistent because people are gauging. If you know, if they see do it consistently, the longer you do it, the more seriously than. Yeah, because they're like, this person is committed

[00:43:44] Blake Beus: well, and a lot of people will go back and watch back to this. Right. So maybe that video from a month ago, didn't get in front of the right person, but this other one did and they go back and they watch the others.

[00:43:54] Blake Beus: All right. Let's wrap this up. Yes. Okay. So let's, uh, Greg tell everybody how to get in

[00:44:00] Greg Marshall: touch with you the best ways, you know, visit my website, Greg marsal.co not com. Uh, and then, you know, you can find me on social media. Greg Marshall is typing. My Instagram is motivation GM. I like to post motivations of their most, you know, kind of the irony of that is I like to do it because it helps keep me motivated as well as anyone who just would like some extra motivation.

[00:44:23] Greg Marshall: So that's basically how you can reach out to me either visit the website, Greg marshall.co, or a following on Instagram motivation, GM, or just look me up, Greg. Um, and you should be able to find me. Alright, cool.

[00:44:35] Blake Beus: Uh, and then me just Blake, bruce.com and, uh, B as in boy is an echo U as in uniform, S as in Sierra and it's pronounced like juice, juice.

[00:44:45] Greg Marshall: There you go. Blank. The juice,

[00:44:49] Blake Beus: the juice, um, uh, yeah. And then, uh, my current project that I'm working on right now, actually just relaunched. I talked about it a little bit here. It's called SM three stands for social media moneymakers, but I also kind of expanded it to marketing masters and a bunch of other things.

[00:45:05] Blake Beus: Um, but it's a, it's a community. You can just find that on my website. Um, and yeah, looking forward to connecting with you guys.