Selling straight from your content

Transcript

Welcome to Meaningful Work Remarkable Life. I’m your host Brook McCarthy and I’m a business coach, trainer and speaker living and working on the unceded lands of the Camargo people here in Sydney, Australia. In this podcast, we explore the paradoxes inherent in working for love and money, magnifying your impact and doing work you feel born to do. We explore the intersections of the meanings we bring to work and the meanings we derive from work.

A woman found my website. She downloaded a lead magnet. So she filled out a form. She gave me an email address. And from that point, my email marketing software starts tracking her. And I can see that she’s visiting this sales page, that sales page. She’s checking out this mastermind, that group program. And then she filled out an application form to my Audacious Mastermind. I responded via email. Uh, I sent her a Bonjoro video and a link to the invoice. She paid the invoice that same day, that afternoon. And the invoice was for $9,000.

Now this kind of thing happens in my business fairly regularly. I’ve been selling group programs on the internet through my website for about 10. I know it would be longer than that. I think it was 2012. I did my very first e-course. But it appears to be very uncommon for a lot of business owners I spoke with. And this podcast episode was inspired by a conversation I had with a small business colleague.

We were talking about networking and I said to her, look, I don’t really like networking. I like people for sure. I like meeting interesting people, but I find most networking events very draining and, you know, not very fulfilling, not very interesting, not very fulfilling. And I live in Sydney, so if I wanted to, you know, I could go out seven nights a week, three events a night. But you know, that would make me miserable. Even as an extrovert, that would make me miserable.

So anyway, I’m having this conversation with my colleague and she looks at me kind of aghast and she says, well, if you don’t do networking, how do you get your clients? And I’m like, well, through my content, like through my marketing, right?

And the funny thing is, I know this person is marketing because I see her marketing on the internet. And she is not unlike many of the other business owners that I speak with where they are diligently or somewhat diligently marketing their businesses on the internet, doing all of the nurture marketing activities. But the activities that they do that actually bring them sales are quite separate, which means that marketing is a separate and different thing from sales.

Now this is one of the reasons why I created my Ignite Visibility Accelerator — to really marry these two things together. Because sales is not marketing and marketing is not sales. However, these things should work hand in glove. Marketing should be delivering a steady stream of qualified leads to your business.

And if you have sales pages, if you have the ability to take credit card payment over your website, if you are selling some kind of group course or group program or mastermind or whatever it is, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be able to sell directly from your content without sales calls, without long protracted meetings and conversations with prospects.

So an example, a little kind of sample—sample, example—that’s a funny combination. I like it. Sample example. Awesome. Of, you know, some of the things that I’ve done lately, some of the experiments that I’ve run, some of the launches I’ve run, is I just wrapped up the Life’s a Pitch Party.

This is five days of pitch scripts. So there’s about 25 pitch scripts in total in five PDFs delivered over five days via email. I also have a community. This time I ran it in WhatsApp. I’ve run it before in a Facebook group. And then on the Friday, the last day of the Life’s a Pitch Party, I did a free masterclass called Becoming Unforgettable.

I’ll make sure to link up the recording in the show notes. So go and check that out. And then below the recording of Becoming Unforgettable, there was a big call to action and a button redirecting to the Ignite Visibility Accelerator, which Becoming Unforgettable talked a little bit about.

Now this is one of the ways, one of the activities or the marketing campaigns or the launches, whatever you want to call it, that I do to warm up my people from cold to warm to hot. So hopefully you’re aware of this idea. I’m sure if you’re listening to this podcast that you’re aware of what a funnel is, you’re aware of the fact that people somehow stumble across us over the internet.

They somehow or another find out about us through the internet. And then they go from, you know, I’m vaguely aware of who this person is, I don’t really know them, I don’t really like them, I don’t really trust them, to warming up to them, to I’m hot to trot, credit card in hand, I’m actively seeking a solution to the problem that your business is solving.

So this is one of the things that our content is designed to do, right? And our content is continuously needing to hit various points in that funnel simultaneously. Because of course, if—let’s pretend we’re on Instagram or we’re on LinkedIn—some of those people that are seeing our updates are cold people. Some of those people that are seeing our updates are warm people. And some of those people who are seeing our updates are hot people.

So our content needs to talk to all three kinds of ideal clients. And not one piece of content will satisfy all of those. So please don’t attempt to do that because you will only dull down your impact. But one piece of content will need to be for a warm audience, the next piece for a hot audience, the next for a cold audience, the next for a hot audience, and so on.

Now, what does this have to do with the future? Well, might you ask, because this season of the podcast is all about the future and I have much to say—much to say. I love talking about the future. I love utopian novels. I love dystopian novels. I love, you know, pontificating with friends and family about what the future will hold.

So there’s a few different things that are going on that are impacting us in our small businesses and particularly in relation to selling direct from your content. The first thing is we’ve got what the pundits are calling the trust economy. So what does this mean? People are way more cautious.

Now my email marketing software also tracks sales page views, and it does this groovy little thing where if somebody visits my sales page or if they visit the checkout page for my three main programs—my two masterminds, Audacious Mastermind and Momentum Mastermind, and the Ignite Visibility Accelerator—if somebody visits the sales page more than three times in a period of time, then I get notified and that person’s email address gets automatically sent to a Google Sheet.

And so I can see on this Google Sheet that people are looking at the sales page a hell of a lot more. They’re looking a lot before they buy or don’t buy.

The other thing that’s happening is there’s far less desire from people to get on sales calls. Now I have heard that this is also a generational thing. You know, when I’ve done kind of custom training, I’ve been flown around Australia and I’ve trained small business owners on behalf of large companies who’ve paid me.

And, you know, the word on the street, the things that I hear people say, is that younger people do not want to get on the phone. And I think, you know, this is not a radical idea, right? Like younger people generally would rather go back forth, back forth, back forth than have a conversation. But this is not just an age or generation thing either. It appears, and it’s clear in my business as well, that there is far less desire for people to get on the phone and talk through whether or not they should buy something.

Now I’m always happy to talk to people. I’m not anti-sales calls. If, and let me clarify my point before I continue, I’m not anti-sales calls and I’m not pro-sales calls. So I am indifferent to this.

If a business owner comes to me—if one of my clients says to me, “Brook, I do not want to do sales calls, I would rather stick needles in my eyes”—that’s fine. Let’s figure out a strategy because you’re going to need one in place of a sales call.

Now I’m happy to talk to anyone who’s happy to spend several thousand dollars in my business. I’m not that keen on talking to people who want to inquire about a $27 thing or a $97 thing or a $9 thing. I sell at those price points as well. Because, you know, I don’t want to talk to very indecisive people and people that, you know, that is a big ask. I don’t want their money if $97 is too much of a stretch or $9 is too much of a stretch.

But I’m happy to talk to people who are looking at a bigger ticket item. I want people to do their due diligence. Sometimes, especially for one-to-one, I might turn people down or tell them that it wouldn’t be appropriate. And also I might suggest a different program—maybe they’re looking at one mastermind and I’ll tell them actually the other mastermind makes more sense, or something else makes more sense for them.

So what do you do when you’re selling and you can’t? You know, sales calls are less of a thing, people don’t want to talk, maybe you don’t want to talk to them. Maybe you’ve got young children. It’s really common—I know when my kids were young, my business was chaos. My life was chaos. You know, the idea of having a sales call at that time was hugely stressful and anxiety-inducing. That wasn’t something I had capacity for emotionally or otherwise.

But the other thing that I want to bring up in relation to the future is it’s quite possible—it’s very possible—that in future, at some point (I’m not going to make a prediction), social media becomes useless. It becomes a low-value place to go. And therefore people stop going there because if we keep getting AI slop and bots and we’re on social media looking at videos of bots, then increasingly people are like, “Well, this isn’t actually fun anymore. I’m going to go and do something else. Play a video game. Watch a movie. I don’t know. Count your socks, say g’day to the dust mites, whatever.”

So if social media becomes useless, that’s going to be hugely impactful for small business because even though, like I said earlier, a lot of small businesses, you know, their sales activities and their marketing activities are separate, they are still effective. Social media is still effective for meeting people in the first place.

Yeah. So what are we going to do then? What are we going to do if social media becomes useless and people don’t want to have sales conversations? How then do we do the one-to-many selling?

Because the other concern about, you know, provoked by that conversation with my colleague, is that it’s all well and wonderful to go to networking events and it’s all well and wonderful to cultivate face-to-face, in-real-life relationships. And, you know, I have nothing against these things. However, they aren’t so useful or practical when you’re trying to sell a hundred or a thousand spots to something—even when you’re trying to sell ten spots to something.

And it’s lovely for me living in Sydney, but what about people living in remote or rural areas or in places where it’s just not really viable? There’s not options to do that kind of thing. What happens then? How do we do the one-to-many reach and the one-to-many sales without sales calls and potentially without social media?

Now you know what I’m going to say next, right? You’re waiting for it. The marketers are going, yeah, yeah, she’s going to mention email. Of course I am. She’s going to mention email this and the importance of growing your email list. Of course I bloody well am because seriously, if you are not on board with this, you are living under a rock. What is your excuse?

There is a massive return on investment. What is commonly quoted is 4,200% return on investment for email. It continues to outperform every other digital channel.

But the other interesting thing that’s happening is if all of this is to come to fruition—if social media is to become more useless and sales calls will become increasingly rare, especially for kind of that one-to-many sales—then it’s quite possible we’re going to have a revival in websites and a revival in blogging.

Because of course, to get on somebody’s email list, you have to opt in, and you normally opt in on a landing page, and the landing page is in effect a web page inside of your website. So increasingly I am getting inquiries that are finding me through—they’re finding me through ChatGPT. They’re finding me because they’re searching for these things.

And if you’re wondering about all this and you’re like, I don’t know how it works, I don’t know how to get found on AI platforms, you know, how does SEO relate to AI search? Well, then there’s a great free resource—not my free resource—it is from Content Rebels and it is the Geo Success Playbook: How to Increase Visibility and Traffic from AI Platforms. Go and download it. It’s free. I would happily pay for this resource. It is chock-a-block, chock-a-block with value. So especially if you’re a geek, especially if you are an SEO geek, go and check it out.

Now this is music to my ears because I am a website nerd and I am a blogger from way back. I have been blogging consistently every single month. And when I say consistently, I’m going to swap that word out actually. I’m going to say I have been committed to blogging. This is something I talk about in my Momentum Mastermind. Forget about being consistent because I am the last person you want to talk to when it comes to consistency. I am not consistent. What I am is committed. I am committed.

So January 2010, I committed to publishing one blog post a month, every single month, and that is what I have done. So currently my website has 249 pages. Jeez Louise. And between the podcast episodes and the blog posts, it has 313 pages.

Now this means that I stand an excellent chance of being found when somebody is on ChatGPT looking for digital marketing for small business, online selling for small business, small business digital marketing, etc. Business coaching, small business, etc.

So there’s a lot more detail to it, of course. And if you’re not geek-inclined, you can always hire a geek. You do not have to know these things. Yeah. This is kind of like learning ancient Greek. It is a completely different language. You’ve got to choose your lane, right? You can’t be great at all things.

But one of the fundamentals of search—and this is all kinds of search, whether it’s search on Google, whether it’s search on social media, whether it’s search on AI or, you know, voice like Alexa or Google—“Hey Google, tell me who’s the best business coach in Australia,” etc.

The fundamentals of this is that if you want to be found for certain search terms that show buyer intent—so the person is actively seeking, you know, insert your profession here—you have got to talk about it. You have got to talk about it.

And I’m going to attempt to wrap this up and tie it in a neat bow, which is always a bit tricky because I’m the boss and I have much to say. You are going to be talking about it. And if you just listened to me say “313 blogs and podcast episodes on my Hustle & Heart website” and you were like, “Oh my God, kill me now, I need a stiff drink in a dark room,” then listen closely.

If you are going to be talking about your topic, you have got to, number one, have a passion that runs deep, and number two, you have got to be committed to staying engaged with that topic, to not getting complacent. And I say this with all of the love, because this is a very natural, normal, human, common tendency—to get complacent. I am guilty of it, of course. We all get complacent because our brains are efficient and lazy. And we go, “I know enough,” and we don’t think we’re complacent, and actually, we are.

So especially for the future, especially for search, especially for passion, especially for your key topic of expertise, especially for selling direct from your content, you have got to commit to staying engaged and active. You are the main character energy in your business, in your particular topic of expertise.

That is all I have to say. I would love to hear from you. Don’t be a stranger. I’m actually one of those freaks that uses social media the way it’s supposed to be used, which is to talk to people. So come and find me. Bye.

Real quick before you go, if this episode has gotten you thinking, gotten you excited, or has you changing the way that you do business or life, would you do me a super quick favor and write me a short review? Your podcast review means so much to me and it helps other values-based business owners just like you to find this show, which is a fantastic gift to me.