Small Business Big Marketing » Interviews

SBBM #30: Secrets to using Facebook as a small business marketing tool

Tim — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:13:09 +0000

Jennifer Sheahan AKA PPC Mom (that’s pay-per-click), hands over her best kept secrets on how to use Facebook as a small business marketing tool. She talks about Fan Page design, Facebook Ads and answers all those other questions that we all asking ourselves when deciding if Facebook’s right for our business. Luke is his usual immature self, Tim maintains the seriousness that is Small Business Big Marketing plus we vent our deep-seated anger about stock photography. Tim also shares the truth about what happened on the August 2010 Intensive that we held recently in Melbourne.

Duration: 34 minutes

And here’s this week’s links:

Pay-Per-Click Mom – This is Jen’s site

The Small Business Big Marketing Intensive – Book now for October, 2010

52 free marketing ideas in 52 weeks – Our gift to you that just keeps on giving

Flying Solo – Get involved in the Marketing forum

Advanced Fan Page Solutions – This is who we use to create Fan Pages that sell

The Transcription People – A great way to create product to sell

Luke working in Prague – Right!

Clickbank – An affiliate network that we use all the time

SBBM 29: Why marketing should be at the heart of your business

Luke — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Pete Williams sold the MCG for $500 at the age of 21, has been named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, owns a phone company, a finger food business and has his finger in more pies than that little bloke in that nursery rhyme…what was his name? In this jam-packed episode Pete explains why he relies so heavily on marketing to make his business ideas the success they are. Pen and paper at the ready team. Go!

Duration: 32 minutes

And here’s this week’s links:

Flying Solo (Australia’s best micro business community)

Who is Pete Williams?

The Transcription People (We use them and they’re the best)

Trendwatching (Stay ahead of the game)

One Minute Millionaire (The book)

Pete William’s PR kit (How To Turn Your Million Dollar Idea Into A Reality)

Send Out Cards (the best direct marketing tool around for small businesses)

Replace Myself (A great way to learn the art of outsourcing…we do it)

The 4-Hour Work Week (The Book)

52 marketing ideas in 52 weeks (Sign up for free)

Onlinejobs (Outsource to The Philippines)

SBBM #28: How to generate free publicity.

Tim — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:32:59 +0000

Rebecca Derrington Source Bottle

Free publicity. Bring that on! And no, it’s not a joke. The very lovely Rebecca Derrington, founder and owner of Source Bottle shows you exactly how to get it.

Plus we are mightily proud to announce the coming together of Small Business Big Marketing and Flying Solo … Australia’s #1 site for the micro business owner. Hi Guys! As of this episode we will be their exclusive podcast.

Duration: 34 min.

And here’s this week’s show notes:

Source Bottle (Free publicity!)

Flying Solo (Our new partner in crime)

Small Business Big Marketing Intensive (Our upcoming marketing workshop for small business owners)

ProBlogger’s Book (A must-have if you do or are thinking of blogging)

Help A Reporter Out (For our American friends and those who want some PR in the US of A)

Flip Shelton interview (How to work with a publicist)

Sam Maratino interview (How to get your business on TV)

The Transcription People (The folk who lovingly transcribe every one of our shows…use them!)

Sticky Names Workshop (When you need a sticky name for a business, product, service or promotion)

The Sony Bloggie (Amazing camera for video blogging)

Google Forms (An easy way to create online surveys)

Skype (Just get it!)

Free marketing ideas (One per week for 52-weeks! Straight out of Tim’s best-selling marketing book Cha-Ching!)

SBBM #27: How to Raise Sponsorship.

Tim — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:38:30 +0000

There’s this guy Tristan who’s running 52 marathons in 52 weeks…all over the world. He wants to raise $100,00 for UNICEF. He also wants some sponsors to join him (financially, not physically!). So we interview his marketing guy on the ground in Australia and give him our thoughts on what he should be doing to attract and retain sponsorship monies. Believe it or not, we both have experience in this area of marketing that’s not for the faint-hearted. If you currently use sponsorship in your marketing arsenal, or work for a cause that’s wanting to fund raise then have your pen and pad at the ready as there’s more marketing nuggets in this episode than ever before.

But we don’t stop there…we’re extremely excited to almost announce a major national partnership. Plus Tim vents his spleen about outdoor advertising and shares some insights he learnt from attending a major car auction business just this morning.

Duration: 40 min.

Here’s the links we mention in the show:

Run Like Crazy (Follow Tristan’s madness)

Unbounce (how to buld web pages that convert)

Everyday Hero (Donate to Tristan’s cause)

Sony Bloggie (They make video blogging easy – every small business should have one – we’ve both got one)

Small Business Big Marketing (Our upcoming marketing workshop)

SBBM #26: It’s a listener love-in!

Luke — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:56:45 +0000

Listener questions are the focus of today’s show. So, we go head to head shedding our marketing spotlight on such curlies as How do we define marketing?; What are the options to cold calling?; How would seeding work for a helicopter company?; and Is social media for B2B businesses? PLUS we chew it over about Foursquare. Give you the heads-up on Google Places. Share a ripper new Twitter application for Bakers (yes, Bakers!). And reveal a great viral example of an offline brand mastering the online world. All this plus so much more in Small Business Big Marketing.

Duration: 32 minutes

Links from today’s show:

The Small Business Big Marketing Intensive (Book now before it’s too late!)
Will It Blend?
FourSquare
BakerTweet
Google Places
Hootsuite
52 Free Marketing Ideas

SBBM #25: 10 Marketing Nuggets to Help Grow Your Business (Part 2)

Luke — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:13:18 +0000

Part 2 of 10 Marketing Nuggets to Help Grow Your Business, find out the next 5 (or more!) great marketing tips.

Duration: 24:33

6. Get speaking - Here’s the best training course around to get you in the public speaking zone.
7. Network (face-to-face!).
8. Optimise your page titles.
9. Outsource – You can’t do everything.
10. Sort your email signature out.
11. Under promise and over deliver.

Podcast Transcription

Ms Evancich: This is the Small Business Big Marketing show with Tim Reid and Luke Moulton. This show is lovingly put together for small business owners by small business owners to get practical ideas about attracting more customers more often. So, if you’re serious about building your business strap in for the ride. Now, here’s your hosts, Tim and Luke.

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey. Welcome back to Small Business Big Marketing.

Luke: Dot com.

Tim: Dot com. Say hello listeners.

Luke: Hello listeners. How are you going?

Tim: Hello. Hey, don’t forget this is the show that … we basically make marketing simple, Luke, I would say. Because that’s our little kind of …

Luke: We certainly do.

Tim: … tagline.

Luke: And we try to give people tips to essentially bootstrap their marketing, Timbo.

Tim: I don’t think we could make marketing difficult. We’re not that smart.

Luke: No.

Tim: You know. I’ve actually been listening to a great podcast that is called Six Pixels of Separation. And they … well they are a little bit of … they’re the … they’re the marketer’s marketer.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Yeah, those guys. So if you want a bit more … if you want a bit more intellectual marketing beyond Small Business Big Marketing head over to that. Why did we promote them, Luke? No, they deserve it. You’ve got to share it around. There’s enough to go around, isn’t there?

Luke: Correct.

Tim: Lukey, what’s on your mind?

Luke: Timbo, I’ve actually been working on doing a bit of a campaign for Flippa because we’re turning one, actually it’s our first birthday.

Tim: Oh, beautiful.

Luke: So and, you know, maybe there’s a bit of a tip in that, you know …

Tim: I hope so. I hope so. I hope it’s not a promo.

Luke: No. Celebration your successes, I think.

Tim: Yeah, I agree. Yep.

Luke: And, you know, no one else is going to turn around and congratulate you on one year.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: So congratulate yourself.

Tim: Make it valuable to the client though, not as a navel gazing exercise.

Luke: Don’t worry, we are indeed.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s …

Luke: We’re actually giving away … going to be giving away some credits, so.

Tim: That’s a good idea. And in fact if you’ve won an award, celebrate that on your packaging or your website.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And if you haven’t won an award, enter an award. Enter something that gets you an award. Because it is an important … it’s an important thing to be able to share.

Luke: Timbo, we’re giving away more tips and we said there’d only be …

Tim: I know. I know. This is the second part of a two part show, listeners, that we started last week and it’s … but you didn’t ask me what’s on my mind.

Luke: Timbo, what’s on your mind?

Tim: I’ve started blogging again on SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Luke: Look out.

Tim: Yep, look out, because there it is. Little blogs. Little … little … I was going to say nuggets, but these are nuggets. But just little stuff that’s on my mind. When I see … when I see marketing that really disappoints me or really excites me I’ll just … I might take a photo of it and comment on it.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And there’s a few posts up there now and we’re back … so back blogging. I love that.

Luke: And just on that, another tip I suppose.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: There’s a pretty cool iPhone and iPad app to make blogging easy. It’s called BlogPress.

Tim: BlogPress.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: All right, okay.

Luke: It’s what I’ve been using, which is pretty cool.

Tim: Your little baby iPad that would be now, what, a week old?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: A week and a bit old.

Luke: Just a bit younger than my daughter.

Tim: Lukey, the other thing on my mind, the intensive is going beautifully after that price drop.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: It wasn’t an easy thing to do, you know, to drop the price so drastically and to air it on …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: I can’t say national. What do I say? On a podcast. To the world.

Luke: Worldwide podcast.

Tim: Yes, yes, coming at you. Going well, listeners. There’s only a few days now, if you’re listening to this fresh off the shelf, there’s only a few days before the early bird discount finishes.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And then the price does go up a little bit. But hope to see you at the Caulfield Racecourse in August for a two day Small Business Big Marketing intensive which you can check at SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com. Yes.

Luke: And, listeners, if you … if you actually want to check out our setup, how we actually record these podcasts …

Tim: Yes.

Luke: … go to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com. We’ve actually taken a photo of us essentially recording. We’ve got … we’ve got a MacBook Pro, we’ve got a microphone and we’ve got a couple of iPads. We’ve got … basically it’s …

Tim: Oh, Lukey.

Luke: … it’s an Apple outfit.

Tim: This is an Apple store. This is an Apple store. You could just come in here. There’s a photo of it. We’re doing this show out of my lounge room. A lot of the shows … most of the shows we’ve done out of the studio but when we don’t have access to the studio it’s either your den …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … of inequity, or my lounge room with my beautiful boy sitting on the couch playing with an iPad, loving it and being quiet as we record. Jack, that’s enough. Now, Lukey, in our last show we started to share a lot of kind of really practical stuff and we …

Luke: Yes, Timbo.

Tim: They were out top ten marketing nuggets to get you some instant interaction with your clients and prospects and we shared five.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: At the end …

Luke: What were they, Timbo?

Tim: Well good question. Get onto Formspring.me.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Schedule your Tweets using a client such as Hootsuite.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Book into a course. Don’t stop learning. Be active in forums.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And ask for referrals. Have a referral strategy.

Luke: Indeed. That was episode 24. So we’re up to episode 25.

Tim: We kind of felt that we just were bombarding with …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … kind of lots of practical marketing advice.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So we cut it in half.

Luke: So hopefully if you listened to episode 24, hopefully you’ve taken action on one of those points …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … and we’re just about to share with you the next five or maybe more tips.

Tim: Oh, Lukey, Lukey, Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: So here we go, back into Part 2 of episode whatever you said it was and I think you share tip number six.

Luke: Get speaking. Discover and find speaking engagements. Now, Timbo, you’ve also got a strategy on this.

Tim: I’ve got many … well, hey, well first of all you and I as a result of this we’ve done a number of speaking engagements. We’ve got some great ones coming up. I think we might have mentioned we’re doing one at the City of Yarra. If you’re from the City of Yarra in Melbourne and a business owner, we’re speaking to business owners in that area in August.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Lukey, I found out last Friday that I’m speaking at Flying Solo live.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: Four hundred people at the Sydney Technology Park in, I think it’s September. Check it out, flyingsolo.com.au is a great website for solopreneurs. That came about because I asked.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You know.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: I’ve got … you know, I’ve got a number of speaking engagements coming up. I think speaking is possibly the cheapest marketing strategy you can do.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Possibly.

Luke: And it doesn’t necessarily mean having to stand up in front of 400 people.

Tim: No.

Luke: It can also be doing a webinar or setting up a joint venture with someone offering a complementary service to yours.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: You can … you can offer a webinar to your list.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, people, yeah, we … people are scared of public speaking. There’s so many ways of overcoming that, that’s another show in itself. And in fact we should do one because public speaking … and in fact we are going to put a link in the show notes, listeners, to a lady whose course I’ve done, Joanna Martin. If you want to learn about public speaking and about selling from stage in a really practical way there is no better way than … than … than following Joey.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Joey’s advice.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So get out there. How do you get speaking engagements? We will put a link in the show notes. Another … another lady I met on Twitter only last week has written a whitepaper on how to find speaking engagements. Approach companies that you know and offer to speak at their next conference, networking groups, BNI groups, your favourite, chamber of commerce groups. Just ask, “Would anyone like me to speak at an upcoming function?”

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And it builds your profile. Joey Martin talks about this invisible line in between the audience and the stage and it’s the line of expert. And once you cross that line and get up on the stage, rightly or wrongly you become the expert. And that’s a good thing because people start to then go, ooh, maybe they know a fair bit about what it is they do, I’ll buy off them.

Luke: Yep, good one.

Tim: So that’s a good one, Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: Number eight in our top ten marketing nuggets …

Luke: Hang on, you …

Tim: … to get you some …

Luke: You’re skipping ahead.

Tim: … instant interaction. What have we got?

Luke: You skipped seven.

Tim: Oh, we did skip seven. Well you said number eight.

Luke: Did I?

Tim: Yeah. I don’t know. Number seven, networking.

Luke: Networking.

Tim: This is … when I say networking, get a bit bored of networking. However, you know, when I say bored, you read any marketing book and it says, oh, you’ve got to network, you know, got to go to your chamber of commerce and network.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And I … and I’ve said it before, there’s an element of cringe factor around networking for me.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You?

Luke: Yeah, that’s a bit of … there’s a bit of wank factor.

Tim: I thought you said wank factor there for a minute.

Luke: At the risk of …

Tim: Getting another explicit.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Hey, live the dream, don’t worry about it.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: I have met a fellow recently, Craig Wirral, the house calling lawyer. And I met Craig on LinkedIn and …

Luke: House calling lawyer?

Tim: The house calling lawyer. Isn’t that a great name?

Luke: It sounds worse than Jehovah’s Witness.

Tim: Don’t say that. He’s a big guy. He’ll come and get you.

Luke: Ooh, sorry.

Tim: Sorry, Craig. Craig is a networking machine and only in the last couple of weeks he’s taught me some really good advice. Inadvertently we’ve been to a networking function together.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Which he invited me to. We had a feed only the other night after that networking function and just watching Craig in action, he’s not everyone’s style but he does go to networking functions with the aim of networking, yeah, of getting business.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Now, that may sound obvious but in fact I also saw a person, and I was observing a person at the same networking function who just stood in the corner and sent text messages out or Tweets out or something.

Luke: Yep. That’s not networking …

Tim: Well why go?

Luke: That’s social media.

Tim: That’s not even that. I mean, it’s like, mate, don’t be there, you know.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Get home, hug your cat. So there is … there is a skill to networking. I don’t like small talk despite the fact that, you know, that … no, I don’t. I mean, I like to have a chat but what I do at these networking functions is get your elevator pitch down to a fine art, tell people what you can do for them really briefly and I finish all my little one minute spiels, which a lot of these network functions have, by saying, “If you have a marketing question please come up and ask me tonight.” And what invariably happens is you have a little line of people who are ready to start talking about good stuff, not small talk, not the weather.

Luke: Yep. Yep.

Tim: Yeah, so I do like the old networking. And I can see … clearly I can see more of its value than I did maybe 12 months ago where I kind of … because I didn’t like the small talk thing I kind of avoided them.

Luke: Yeah, yep.

Tim: What about you, Lukey, do you like a bit of jabbering, jabbering away?

Luke: I … one … one danger I think of networking is … is getting stuck … getting stuck with the one person.

Tim: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke: So, you know, it’s one of those things where you just go, right, okay, cool, nice to meet you and …

Tim: Well I think you do. I think … I think you do. I think you’ve got to be conscious of the time. Invariably a networking function is an hour or, you know, maybe an hour and a half at the longest, it shouldn’t be any longer. And just, you know, have a conversation. You don’t have to be rude about it but …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … move on.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Be conscious of the fact that this is not a cocktail party where you can talk all night.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You are there for a business reason.

Luke: Oh, actually going back to one of our earlier points, Timbo, I certainly find it easier at courses, like when you’re there for a couple of days.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Because, you know, you … you go and … you go and have a break, you get a coffee and you get to see different people at different times of the day.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: You might sit next to someone different and you get to share yourself around without …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … blatantly having to … to walk up to every Tom, Dick and Harry and shake their hand …

Tim: Yeah, absolutely.

Luke: … and give them your business card, so …

Tim: I’ll give you a little networking tip for when you go to a course. Be the first person to grab the microphone when they say any questions. Stand up and introduce yourself in an interesting way.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And I don’t know why, but there is a little bit of magic about whoever that first person is that asks the question, oh, gee, they’re courageous and …

Luke: Yeah, ballsy.

Tim: Ballsy, yeah, yeah, you know. So a little additional networking tip.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Lukey, number eight?

Luke: Back to a bit of online marketing here, Timbo.

Tim: Yes. A bit of geek stuff here, a bit of tech talk.

Luke: Optimise the page titles on your website.

Tim: Oh, what’s that?

Luke: Now, what does that mean?

Tim: Correct.

Luke: Well when you have a website open, if you’re using … if you’re using Firefox or IE …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … you will see in the …

Tim: IE?

Luke: Internet Explorer.

Tim: Right.

Luke: The very very top of the screen is a page title and it should have … certainly should your business name but that should be different for every one of your pages and it should be optimised to your keywords. Now this is …

Tim: Yeah, right, okay. So now we’re getting …

Luke: Now …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Now we’re getting into dangerous territory …

Tim: Yeah, this is …

Luke: … because I could bang on about this for hours.

Tim: Yeah, I’ll just go and get a coffee.

Luke: Yep. Anyway, you should … you should know what people are typing into search engines to find your services.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: They should be your target keywords. Those target keywords should be in your page titles. That’s about as simple as I can make it.

Tim: Yeah, no, that’s fair enough. And there is a … there is a good tool Domain Samurai that helps you identify …

Luke: Market Samurai.

Tim: Market Samurai.

Luke: Yep, we’ve had those boys …

Tim: Yeah, we have.

Luke: … on before.

Tim: We’ll put a link in the show notes to those.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because that is actually a really simple cheap tool that will allow you to identify keywords that are completely relevant to your business. So what you’re saying is basically, I mean, a website is just a list of … a series of pages, that’s all it is.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And you’re saying that every single page at the very top of the browser …

Luke: Yes.

Tim: … there is the opportunity to put a page title.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: The lazy web developer will put a series of number or letters or code that has no meaning to anyone except him or her but the smart web developer will put a series of keywords and phrases …

Luke: Yes.

Tim: … that are specific to that page.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So that when the Google spider goes, “What is that page about?” and the first thing they do is look at the page title …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … it goes, “I know exactly what that page is about.”

Luke: Yes. The other thing you need to think of with … with your page titles as well is they’re the things that appear in Google’s results, the blue … you know, with every result in Google …

Tim: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Luke: … there’s a blue line.

Tim: Little blue line.

Luke: So not only optimise it for your target keywords …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … but optimise it to sell as well.

Tim: Okay. Lukey, this is wonderful advice and I know how important this advice is in getting you to the top of the Google, not someone … not something everyone can just wander into their … the backend of their WordPress content management system and change.

Luke: Actually if they have WordPress it’s very easy. But …

Tim: Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Okay. But let’s just assume that, you know, basically the action here is call your web developer and say … what’s the question, are my page titles optimised?

Luke: Yeah, well first thing is look at your page titles. If they’re all the same.

Tim: (15:03).

Luke: Yeah, you need to … you need to optimise them. Then call your web developer.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And say, “Can we do it and how much is it going to cost?”

Tim: Yeah. And it shouldn’t cost a lot. I mean, that’s a …

Luke: No, not at all. If you … if you tell your web developer …

Tim: It’s an hour’s work.

Luke: Depending on how many pages in your website.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. Sorry, all web developers out there.

Luke: Yeah, if you tell your web developer what page titles you want changed it should be a fairly …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … quick and simple task.

Tim: Yeah. And, you know, that Market Samurai tool that we spoke about is not only great for identifying keywords for your page title but just generally keywords if you’re going to do an AdWords campaign, if you’re going to write a blog, if you’re going to write copy for your website …

Luke: Yeah, it can also …

Tim: … it’s just going to generate …

Luke: … also track your rankings in Google as well for those keywords.

Tim: Yeah. So …

Luke: So it’s a very cool tool.

Tim: At the …

Luke: I use it …

Tim: At the expense …

Luke: … almost every day.

Tim: Yeah, you do like it. And hello to Ben and Eugene.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: From Noble Samurai.

Luke: And Brent.

Tim: And Brent.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Didn’t meet Brent.

Luke: No.

Tim: Now, Lukey …

Luke: Next one.

Tim: Outsource, outsource, outsource. Listeners, we are giving you lots of work to do and hopefully there’s just one little gem in there, one little nugget, as we’ve called these, that’s going to get you … get you interacting with your prospects a whole lot quicker and a whole lot more authentically. But we don’t expect you to be able to do it all yourself. So you’ve heard of outsourcing, there’s been many books written about it. Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris is probably the leader of the pack.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But there is no reason not to outsource something. Whether it be to your … whether you … you might have a PA or a VA either here or overseas. Now, this is going to cause me trouble again, I just thought, as I say this. And hello to … to my VA Nicole who is Australian.

Luke: And does a fantastic job.

Tim: And does a fantastic job. But, but, if you just want to do it on the real cheap then we’re going to put a link to some … our show notes to an outsourcing site that is called … I think it’s called … I can’t even remember what it’s called right now but …

Luke: Anyway, we’ll drop it in the … the show notes.

Tim: It is fantastic. And it shows you how to outsource a lot of the really really mundane stuff …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … that will help you get some of these gems into action sooner rather than later. Classic thing being page titles.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: I mean, that is a mundane job.

Luke: Good segue from the last one.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, it was.

Luke: And you don’t … don’t think that you have to hire and commit yourself …

Tim: Nah.

Luke: … to a VA and …

Tim: No.

Luke: … be paying, you know, two, three, four, five hundred dollars a month. Go to Elance.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: I … I have a couple of hobby websites.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: And I don’t have the time nor the inclination to continue adding content to them.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So I can quite often get reasonable blog posts written for around $10 each.

Tim: Yeah, well why wouldn’t you?

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: Outsourcing is a good one. This next one is simple and underdone.

Luke: Sure is.

Tim: What is it?

Luke: Email signatures, Timbo.

Tim: Number ten.

Luke: You have a pretty good email signature.

Tim: Thank you.

Luke: And you even put current offers in your email signature.

Tim: I do.

Luke: Very very clever, Timbo.

Tim: I do.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Sometimes it scares me that I wonder whether by putting links into my email signature they’ll end up in the spam box but …

Luke: Yeah, I …

Tim: … it doesn’t seem to.

Luke: I don’t think so.

Tim: What?

Luke: You know, perhaps if you put too many.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Maybe. But, you know, I …

Tim: Or maybe like, you know, free porn.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You know, bang, spam.

Luke: Yep. Yep. We won’t …

Tim: No, no, that was …

Luke: We won’t use that as a keyword.

Tim: No, not a great keyword for anything.

Luke: Probably won’t put that in the show notes either.

Tim: No, no, Luke. So the tip here on email signatures is it is an opportunity to promote your business.

Luke: And it’s free.

Tim: Oh, yeah, it is free. And it is about … it is about having it populated with content that not only has, you know, how are people going to find you. Yeah, put your postal address, name, title. But then … and but don’t crowd it with every single social media channel that you’ve ever come across.

Luke: No.

Tim: But maybe put your LinkedIn, your Twitter in there, your website obviously.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Whatever you think is important and is going to share a bit more of yourself with those that you send emails to. And, yeah, as you say, I mean, I’ve got a number of email signatures which I just choose which one I’m going to send out to who and it has current offers in it, yeah.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Seems to work really well.

Luke: Now, we did say ten at the start.

Tim: Correct. Correct.

Luke: But, you know.

Tim: Yeah, in … in the tradition of Small Business Big Marketing under promise and over deliver.

Luke: Over deliver.

Tim: Lukey.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So that is …

Luke: That was always a … I think that was always a Japanese mantra.

Tim: Was it really?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: I’ve heard of … there’s … there’s modern marketing books coming out now that you say, over promise and over deliver. You know, all this stuff. Whatever. Whatever. But I think the under promise thing is a good one. We said ten. Here’s number 11 which is under promise and over deliver …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … in everything you do, you know. Like I think the worst thing you can do is set someone up to have these hugely high expectations of your business delivery and then not meet them.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Whereas if you say this is what I am going to do for you. I have a logo designer, right. I have in my little team I reckon the world’s best logo designer.

Luke: He is awesome.

Tim: Unbelievable. Now, he’s not the world’s best logo designer because he does the world’s best logos, although he’s right up there, right.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: He’s also highly efficient. He also provides me with, you know, if I say, “Can I have five concepts?” he’ll give me ten.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: He then once it’s finished provides them in every file type, he then does logos for all the different social media channels. He then does, you know, mono versions, colour versions, grey scale versions. I mean, it’s just fantastic what he provides and subsequently that I provide my clients.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: It’s just a simple example of, you know, it blows you away.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And you just think, my God, what wonderful value.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And at the end of the day marketing is about creating great value.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: So that was number 11, Lukey. That is it, mate.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: That is it. We have rattled on. I hope there’s been some gems there, or nuggets as we called them at the start. I think there … I think there has been. We’ll put those … we’ll put that list in the show notes.

Luke: Yeah, there’s going to be quite a few links in there.

Tim: With the links.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Yeah, there will be. And …

Luke: So make sure you go to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and also you’ll be able to sign up for 52 marketing inspirational tips.

Tim: Correct. One chapter of my book.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Every week.

Luke: Every week.

Tim: For one year.

Luke: Completely free.

Tim: Gee, we’re getting a lot of signup. So what happens is, listeners, is not only … sign up, give us your name and email. Every week for one year you’ll get a chapter of Cha-Ching! for free delivered fresh to your inbox. But also in giving us your very precious contact information …

Luke: Yes.

Tim: … which we respect highly, you will be the first to know about things when we launch them or when we’ve got news.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: We should have done an email about Isabella. It wouldn’t have been that interesting …

Luke: No.

Tim: … really for everyone but you. Is she on LinkedIn yet? I haven’t got an invitation. So that is … that’s a good thing, go to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com. Next week is going to be a listener show so please … next week, yeah, well I think next week.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: We’ve got to start doing these more frequently.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: If there is one email that we get consistently from people, Lukey, it is like, “Guys, I can’t wait for the next show.”

Luke: Yep.

Tim: A lot on Twitter, you know, “Love your show. Why don’t you do it more regularly?” It’s because it’s sort of … it’s a labour of love at the moment.

Luke: It is indeed.

Tim: That’s changing slowly.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And it will become more frequent. But that’s … that’s wonderful that people want to hear more of us.

Luke: We are certainly trying very hard, Timbo, to slot it into our very busy lives.

Tim: Oh, Lukey, very busy lives. Give me a break. Yeah, well, yeah, we do. I mean, it is …

Luke: Please, come on.

Tim: Yeah, okay. You’re busy. You’re going to get busier too, by the way, as little Isabella starts to crawl and …

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: … you know, wants to go out and wants Daddy’s money. So the other thing, so please go to the website, sign up to that, check the show notes, because there’s going to be a lot of gold in these show notes. And also, and I know we keep saying this, but, you know, if there’s one thing you could do for us, listeners, it would be to go to iTunes and leave a … leave a little comment. It doesn’t have to be five star 100% positive.

Luke: No.

Tim: Constructive feedback …

Luke: Constructive.

Tim: … is always welcome.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: As long as it’s about Luke. But that would be … that’s a good thing and, as we’ve said, we’re on Formspring now. We’ve got a Facebook, Small Business Big Marketing … no, what is it? Facebook.com/ …

Luke: SmallBusinessBigMarketing.

Tim: That is correct. So there’s a whole lot of ways of getting to us. If you want us to come out and speak at an event or a function or something that you’ve got coming up in an association or a business that you may be connected with, we’d love to.

Luke: Yeah, indeed.

Tim: We would love to.

Luke: Timbo, I think that’s about it.

Tim: That’s enough, Lukey.

Luke: We’ll catch you next time, listeners.

Tim: Join the intensive.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Hey. Big prize prop, Lukey. All right, listeners, until next time, stay healthy and happy.

Luke: Indeed. Seeya.

Tim: Seeya.

Ms Evancich: You’ve just come that little bit closer to getting your business booming thanks to the Small Business Big Marketing show with Tim Reid and Luke Moulton. Please keep in mind that the information, opinions and ideas expressed in this show are those of the hosts and interviewees and theirs alone and they don’t necessarily reflect those of their past, current or future employers.

Lovingly transcribed by The Transcription People

SBBM #24: 10 Marketing Nuggets to Help Grow your Business (Part #1)

Luke — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:21:08 +0000

Every now and then we like to surprise and delight you (actually we aim to do that all the time!), our treasured listener, with some little marketing nuggets laser-focused on building your business. So, with notebook and pen in hand (or iPad if you’ve succumbed to the Apple maketing machine as we have), sit down, strap in and get ready to action one or two of them…beacuse, as always, the magic’s in the action.

Duration: 26:52

Formspring – Here’s how we use it.
Schedule tweets – We like Hootsuite.
Book in to a course – We like our 2-Day Intensive that’s coming up this August, 2010.
Be active in forums.
Ask for referrals – We use this. Ask when Tim’s next free Referral Marketing webinar is here.
…. Although we said 10 – we’ve split this show in two, so tune in next week for Part 2.

In other news…Luke’s got a second baby already…and has lovingly called it iPad. Tim’s been booked to speak at this year’s Flying Solo Live.

Oh yeah…and join us on our Facebook and leave a written review on iTunes.

Podcast Transcription

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey. How are you, Dad?

Luke: Very well, Timbo. Yourself?

Tim: Very good, thank you. Good morning, listeners. This is the morning for us. Good morning and welcome back to Small Business Big Marketing.

Luke: Dot com.

Tim: Dot com. The show where we hope to inspire by within five years, Luke, every small business owner in the world.

Luke: Five years, Timbo?

Tim: Well, I mean, I said in the world …

Luke: What were you doing five years …

Tim: … I didn’t say …

Luke: What were you doing five years ago?

Tim: Yeah, good question. Establishing a business.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Establishing a business. My business is about six years old.

Luke: Yeah, I was trying to think.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: I remember when you walked … walked through the doors when I was working at (0:59) I had my own web development business and you said, “Lukey, build me a website.”

Tim: Did I? Goodness me, that was a long time ago.

Luke: And I don’t want to pay anything for it.

Tim: It feels … yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’d be right. Yeah. Yeah. No, look, I … it’s been a long ride really.

Luke: Yeah, yep.

Tim: Can’t believe it’s six years.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: But anyway I didn’t come here to reflect on my …

Luke: No.

Tim: … business building acumen.

Luke: Timbo …

Tim: How are you, mate?

Luke: I’m …

Tim: How’s Isabella?

Luke: She is doing beautifully. She is … she’s sleeping quite well. All these … all the horror stories that every bloke has delighted …

Tim: Not true.

Luke: … in sharing with me, so far, touch wood …

Tim: All lies.

Luke: … she’s been pretty good. In saying that, my wife has been fantastic.

Tim: Lovely.

Luke: Given that I drove about, well I spend a couple of hours in the car a day.

Tim: You do.

Luke: So she … I think she wants to make sure I get home okay.

Tim: Now, Lukey, you told me a very very interesting story. So your wife rings you yesterday and says what?

Luke: Well I … I was on my way home and I had rang … rang my wife Kim and said, “Anything you want me to pick up?” and she’s gone, “No, no, we’re all good. By the way, I’ve ordered you an iPad.”

Tim: There it is.

Luke: What a beautiful woman.

Tim: That is love.

Luke: And …

Tim: That is love right there.

Luke: And funnily enough I’d just before I’d spoken to her I’d actually sneakily purchased one.

Tim: Is sneakily a word?

Luke: It is now.

Tim: Yeah, okay.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: So … so there you go. Your wife Kim …

Luke: Yes.

Tim: … expresses her love, her deepest love for you by buying you an … ordering you an iPad.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: She rings … or you ring her, she tells you that and you’ve actually got one sitting … sitting … what, sitting in the baby seat in the back?

Luke: Correct.

Tim: Strapped in?

Luke: Correct. So she had to quickly go back onto Apple’s website and cancel.

Tim: Wow. And now interestingly, that’s … that’s interesting. I’m looking at your iPad right now and you seem to hold the same opinion as me that it’s a … it’s a lovely object of desire.

Luke: Yeah. I’m … I’m trying to … I’m determined to turn it into a productivity tool but so far I’ve failed miserably.

Tim: Well, yeah. Yes. I … I can’t … yeah, we couldn’t force it into being a productivity tool right this minute.

Luke: No.

Tim: But we do love it, we’re both sitting here, listeners, with our iPads. We have our show notes on our iPad. Lukey is showing me some amazing apps. Pinball. Angry birds.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Yeah. So, look, there is a way to go, isn’t there? But still I’m not disappointed I got one. And it’s got me blogging again which I’m excited about.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because I find that being able to sit in a cafe and write a blog is much more creative for me than it is sitting at a laptop in the office writing a blog.

Luke: Yeah, it’s … it’s just … it’s a lot less formal. You know, you can feel like you can … you can sit on the … sit on the couch and not …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … be isolated.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: I mean, even … even with the family around.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: Sort of it’s a … it’s a convenient tool. It’s certainly great for social media. I’ve got Twitter open right now as we speak.

Tim: You’re clever. Look at you. (3:57). Hey, Lukey, just a big big shout out to our favourite listeners, which is all of them.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Because Small Business Big Marketing continues to do really good things on iTunes and although that’s great for our egos it is really appreciated that the listeners have decided to continue to download it at a feverish rate and leave so much feedback. And that feedback not only helps us stay at the top of iTunes but it actually helps us know what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong.

Luke: Yeah, we’ve had … we’ve had quite a few …

Tim: We have.

Luke: … listener feedback in questions over the last …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … last month.

Tim: Ripper questions too. Really really good stuff.

Luke: Yeah. And we … we might do an episode … basically an episode dedicated to those …

Tim: Next ep.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Next episode …

Luke: Next episode.

Tim: … is listener questions. So, listeners, if you want to get one in before we do that episode in a week’s time or so, then send it to questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and just put your question and maybe a link to your website so we can get a sense of exactly what it is you do. Now, Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: This is an exciting show because today we’re not going to interview anyone.

Luke: No.

Tim: We are going to share with our listeners ten marketing nuggets to get them instant interaction.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: So ten marketing nuggets to get you, the small business owner, instant interaction. So what does instant interaction mean? It just means something you can do right now, once the show’s finished, although feel free to pause at any of the ten points that we share with you if they excite you enough, to get you interacting with your prospects and clients on a more regular, more … what’s the word? Authentic basis.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: Yeah?

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So let’s get into number one, mate. Number one, that would have to be mine. We’ve got our names here … we’ve got our name against each one on our little iPad. Number one is Tim’s. Now, number one Formspring.

Luke: Formspring.

Tim: Lukey.

Luke: Tim.

Tim: Yeah, I’m a big …

Luke: You’ve been raving about Formspring and I’ve got to be honest.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: I really haven’t looked into it much, so …

Tim: At all?

Luke: Oh, I’ve had a quick look.

Tim: Okay.

Luke: So tell us?

Tim: Tell, okay. So Formspring, Formspring.me, M-E. And if you want to check out our Formspring, which Luke hasn’t contributed to at all, it’s Formspring.me/sbbm for Small Business Big Marketing. Now, I have no idea why it is called Formspring but it’s basically a website where if you setup a free account people can come and ask you questions of which you then provide the answer. And over the course of time your Formspring profile builds up. And for me, and for us, it’s going … it’s going to be a great way of people asking questions of us which we can give instant answers to.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And you could say, oh, well you can do that on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, but, yeah, absolutely you can, but this is a dedicated question answering format.

Luke: Okay.

Tim: Yeah. So I really like it. When you answer the question … and, you know, you can ask questions anonymously or you can ask questions, you know, with your name and email and all that type of stuff. Once you answer the question it then heads out back through Twitter and Facebook. And I just really like it as a value-add to your prospects, as a real way of interacting with your prospects that maybe wasn’t there before. And it’s very very instant. If anyone knows why it’s called Formspring please let me know, because it’s doing my head in.

Luke: Sounds awesome.

Tim: Yeah. And so it’s Formspring.me and you can check us out. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that. I suggest you as a small business owner get a Formspring page because it’s going to allow … and then put it out on your Twitter and your Facebook and your LinkedIn and any other social media you have, even your … if you happen to advertise I wouldn’t hesitate by putting a Formspring profile in your … in your advertising or your direct mail and say, hey, if you’ve got a question that you’d like to ask anonymously or whatever …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … then come on over and … and I’ll feed you back an answer.

Luke: Cool. Good one.

Tim: Number two, Lukey. Number two.

Luke: Number two.

Tim: Of our ten marketing nuggets …

Luke: Oh, I like this one, Timbo.

Tim: … to get you some instant interaction. What have you got?

Luke: Schedule Tweets.

Tim: Controversial. Controversial.

Luke: Now, Timbo, I know you’ve done it.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: I certainly do it myself.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: You … this is particular important, I think, for people that are operating in multiple time zones.

Tim: Oh.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: If you want a global audience.

Luke: If … if you have a … if you have a global audience or you want to try and attract a global audience …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … scheduling Tweets for other countries time zones is … is a pretty cool thing to do because …

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: And you can also appear that you’re working 24 hours a day.

Tim: Oh, yeah, but I don’t reckon that … yes, yeah, possibly, but …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: What I like about it is the fact and I … yes, we do have a global audience so scheduling Tweets is important to us so we know that there’s stuff going out when we’re punching a few zeds. But I also like it because the reality is you’re not in front of your computer …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … all day …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … being able to Tweet.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: When I first started doing it about a year ago scheduling some Tweets I did think it would … it defeated the purpose. But now it just allows me to start conversations when I’m not there, it allows me to share information …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … when I’m not there. And what it does is then if I get back after a day’s work, there might have been four or five Tweets that have gone out and people will have got … some people might have re-Tweeted them, some people might have responded to them and then I start the conversation, you know.

Luke: The thing about social media, and particularly Twitter, and Facebook, is regularity. I think you’ve always got to try and be regular and consistent to …

Tim: Absolutely.

Luke: … to keep the conversation with your audience.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: To keep it happening. And a good … a good twit … a good twit.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: A good tip, you know, if you’re struggling for things to Tweet about is, you know, go through … if you’ve got an FAQ on your website or you’ve written some articles on your website …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … go through and pick … pick out, you know, a dozen or so short tips.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: And schedule them into Twitter. And one of the good ones, I think you use it, Timbo, so do I, is Hootsuite.

Tim: Hootsuite. Yeah, once again … oh, actually I can figure out where that name came from because Twitter, Owl.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Hoot.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah, strange. Hootsuite I think is the only Twitter client that I found that allows you to schedule.

Luke: There’s another one called CoTweet.

Tim: CoTweet.

Luke: Which is a bit more advanced. It actually lets teams Tweet and use the same account.

Tim: Right. What I’ll … I’ll let you into another secret, Lukey, and listeners, is that, yes, scheduling Tweets is a good thing. I also … if I think I’ve … if I’ve got a little bit of a gem of a Tweet, maybe a little marketing tip or an idea or a link or something, I’ll Tweet it immediately, I’ll cut and paste it into another Tweet and maybe send it a couple of weeks down the track.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because sharing it just once often means not everyone … well clearly not everyone’s going to see it. So it gives … it give the opportunity for people to see it.

Luke: Yes, that’s something I do with Flippa too. I actually … I actually repeat it within 12 hours, because that’s when obviously …

Tim: Oh, yeah, yeah, global.

Luke: … the audience global … global audience, all that sort of stuff.

Tim: Lovely work, Lukey. There’s a whole lot we could … we … we should do … we should find a Twitter expert. Although I reckon we could answer enough questions on Twitter but it is, it’s still growing.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You know, we … if you listened to some of our early shows 12 months ago we really hammered Twitter. I think we’ve pulled back a bit. But it’s still there, it’s growing strong and been a very useful business tool, certainly for my business.

Luke: So another string to the bow, Timbo.

Tim: And I … Lukey, you’ve got your own personal Twitter account, I’ve got mine, but we do have a Small Business Big Marketing Twitter account which has been a little bit dormant. Only because we’ve kind of been doing our own but I think what we will be doing is sending out more Tweets …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … through that as well as our own accounts. So that’s … the Twitter handle for that is therealsbbm.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Okay, number three in our top marketing nuggets to get you some instant interaction.

Luke: And it’s one of yours, Timbo.

Tim: Yeah, I do like this. Book into a course, Lukey. You can never ever stop learning. Did I say earning? You certainly can’t … don’t stop earning.

Luke: No, no, you said learning.

Tim: At … did I? Okay.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Well never stop learning. We talked about this in a previous show just recently where, you know, as small business owners we can get so caught up in the day to day doing of our business that we often forget to educate ourselves. And just from a pure marketing point of view the world continues to change at a rapid pace. Point number one in this show we talked about Formspring. You know, what was Formspring six months ago? It might have been there. I don’t know, it might have been a beta version of something. Now it’s there, it’s real and the marketing world’s changed. You cannot stop learning and so I would suggest, listeners, go and book yourself into a course, whether it be a one hour course, a webinar, a full day or a two day intensive, Luke.

Luke: Two day marketing intensive, Timbo.

Tim: Two day marketing intensive, what a great idea. We’ll talk about that in a minute.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But you can’t, you know, you cannot stop learning. And, you know, I think more and more too, we mentioned webinars, do webinars. Webinars are such gold.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You know, for an hour you might pay, you might pay 50 bucks, you might pay less. Some are free, you know. But, you know, 50 bucks to listen to an expert on a particular topic I think is gold, you know. So that’s … that’s a … that’s a bit of a no brainer.

Luke: And I certainly know, Timbo, you’ve quite often picked up business.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well absolutely. I mean, you … I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking at going to some kind of training or some kind of course and seeing it as a … as a networking opportunity.

Luke: Yeah, definitely.

Tim: Absolutely not. I mean, you’re full … they’re full of likeminded people there. And particularly in the type of courses we’re talking about where clearly it’s going to be around some aspect of marketing. There’s going to be people there who you’re going to connect with. I went to a three day course earlier this year or late last year, I can’t remember, but I made a number of contacts there. And … and have subsequently done business with them. But also shared knowledge.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: It’s been fantastic. Lukey, we’re going to pause there and talk about the intensive.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: The Small Business Big Marketing two day intensive at Caulfield Racecourse in August. The news is that we are, I am, going to be dropping the price significantly.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: Yes, there it is, you heard it first on Small Business Big Marketing.

Luke: Dot com.

Tim: Dot com. You’re going to ask why I did that.

Luke: Timbo, why’d you do that?

Tim: Great question, Lukey. There is three things. And this is in absolute transparency. And for all those listening who have booked, yes, you will see 50% of your money refunded.

Luke: 50%.

Tim: Well, no, no.

Luke: No.

Tim: That’s not true.

Luke: No, not 50%.

Tim: 100%. We’re cutting the price by 50%. You’ll get 100% of your money refunded. Because …

Luke: No, it’s not. Anyway, go on.

Tim: Is that right?

Luke: No.

Tim: What’s right?

Luke: If you say they get 100% of their money returned …

Tim: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke: … they get it all back.

Tim: Yeah, that’s right.

Luke: They’re coming for free, Timbo.

Tim: Geez. I tell you what, numbers was never my thing. And it’s still not. So, okay, so here’s the thing. I got the price wrong. Yeah.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Absolutely got the price wrong. As you said to me before we turned the microphone on, often we think we’re our audience and as much as we like to think well we are, we’re small business owners and we’re people who understand the small business market, what I found is the people who were booking and who were enquiring were medium sized businesses. And that’s great. You know, can’t … you know, nothing wrong with that, we love medium size businesses. We’re here to help small to medium size businesses. But we want to see more small businesses …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … at the intensive. And it just … they just weren’t coming along. They were baulking at the price. Despite the fact that I thought the price was fairly reasonable, particularly given the amount of quality free bonus we were giving away. Okay. But that’s life. I got it wrong. And I think there was also an element of greed.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Where I thought, you know what, gee, if I get that many people at that number then, gee, you know, here we go, everyone’s a winner. But … and I was just so excited about getting the intensive up I didn’t put enough thought into it. Because part of the intensive for me, and for Small Business Big Marketing, is it’s … it’s a … it’s a large part of where we want to take this brand.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You know, to be able to run multiple intensives throughout the year is, you know, certainly from my point of view, really fundamental …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … to the next five year plan. Anyway. So got the price wrong. Weren’t seeing enough small businesses and solopreneurs booking. And so we’ve dropped the price 50%. All the value remains unchanged. So there is still about just under five grand’s worth of free bonuses. There is still a June 30 early bird offer and the price does go up by another … by 500 bucks it goes up after June 30.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So really enough of that. But I think there was learning there, (a) I wanted to tell … share that with our audience and tell them to get in there. If you’re a small business owner the price is now just so accessible. The reason I’m not saying what the price is I really do want you to go to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and click on the Intensive button and find out all about it. Because if I just say the price alone you won’t see the value and that’s really important.

Luke: Yep, go and check it out.

Tim: That was a bit of honesty there, wasn’t it, Luke?

Luke: It was, yes, very refreshing, Timbo.

Tim: (17:24).

Luke: No, no. It’s … I think it’s always good to be transparent.

Tim: You just said I’m a liar.

Luke: No, not …

Tim: Yes, you did.

Luke: No, no, no. No.

Tim: Look me in the eye.

Luke: No, Timbo.

Tim: Okay, lovely.

Luke: Not at all.

Tim: Lovely.

Luke: Okay, next one.

Tim: Did you blow wave your hair today?

Luke: No. There’s a little bit of product there.

Tim: There is a little bit of product.

Luke: Not unlike yourself, Tim.

Tim: No, true.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: True. At least I shaved.

Luke: At least I’ve got … and at least I’ve got more hair than you.

Tim: Lukey, number four, what have you got?

Luke: Be active in forums.

Tim: Yeah. Ripper.

Luke: Certainly … certainly something I’ve been trying to do recently for Small Business Big Marketing is go and spend a bit of time in flying solo forum. Certainly with … with Flippa as well I spend probably at least a minimum 20 minutes to half an hour checking out forums where I know that our audience are hanging out. And, you know, it’s … it’s a good way to find out what your audience wants.

Tim: Yeah. Cheap research.

Luke: Very cheap research. And also interact with your audience and help them, answer questions and become the expert.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: And another bonus is that quite often it’s good for SEO. In most forums you can … you can drop a link back to your site …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … in your signature, you can add a signature.

Tim: So does … does that … does that make it a back link?

Luke: It makes it a back link.

Tim: Yeah, that’s important. So what’s a back link, Lukey, for those …

Luke: Oh, it’s a link on another site that links back to your website.

Tim: And who loves those?

Luke: Google loves those.

Tim: Google do love those. So that’s … gee, cheap research.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Cheap marketing.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Cheap way to get back links. Adds value to your site.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: How do you find forums?

Luke: There are a number of certainly top 100 forum lists. Off the top of my head I don’t know but we’ll drop it into the show notes.

Tim: So if you were to key in, like let’s say you were an accountant.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Would you just key in accountant forums Australia and …

Luke: Yeah, you might. Not sure that there’s a lot of people hanging around discussing tax law, but …

Tim: Oh, rubbish. I reckon that’s not … I reckon that’s a bit harsh. Say sorry to all the accountants listening.

Luke: Sorry, accountants.

Tim: Thank you.

Luke: Photography is a good one.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: So if you’re a professional photographer …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … there … there are truckloads of photography forums with amateur photographers.

Tim: Or asking about, you know, how do I get shutter speed right or how do I get …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: What’s the best camera for night time …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … or …

Luke: So …

Tim: So it’s about responding and adding value.

Luke: Correct. Basic thing you can do is type in the particular topic you’re interested in to Google, followed by forum. So photography forums, for example. And perhaps if you want to be country specific, you know, photography forums Australia, for example.

Tim: Yeah, okay. That’s a great one. And we are going to have a forum one day soon.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: True.

Luke: Hopefully a couple of weeks off actually.

Tim: I thought you were going to say no. Is it really that …

Luke: No.

Tim: Is it pretty close?

Luke: It is pretty close.

Tim: My goodness.

Luke: And …

Tim: All right.

Luke: I just want to also have a … do a bit of a shout out here to someone who’s helping us …

Tim: Oh, yeah.

Luke: … with that and that’s Charlie Leetham. Charlie is helping us out with some WordPress stuff and she’s done a …

Tim: Lovely work, Charlie.

Luke: If you want to check out Charlie, ask Charlie Leetham and Leetham is spelt L-E-E-T-H-A-M.com.

Tim: I love Charlie as a girl’s name.

Luke: It is quite a nice …

Tim: It’s a great name.

Luke: … girl’s name.

Tim: It’s actually a good name, girl’s name, boy’s name, dog’s name.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Sorry to all those Charlie’s who aren’t dogs but.

Luke: Your dog’s name is Charlie.

Tim: Oh, it is too. I didn’t even think of that. How funny. Hey, Lukey, I like that one.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Tip number five, ask for referrals.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: I cannot … I’ve just started, talking of webinars just before, I’m running a webinar on referral marketing.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because I believe that it is one of the most underdone aspects for a small business marketing strategy, yeah. And I believe … the reason I believe … let me share some statistics, I saw some statistics the other day. They’re American statistics and they are from marketing officers of small to medium businesses and they, 54% of them, and there was about two and a half thousand interviewed, 54% of them said that most of their leads come from referrals, right. 54%, most of their leads come from referrals. Next question was, “Where are you going to put your money in the next 12 months in order to generate your business in order to generate enquiry?” In the top 15 list of answers, referral marketing did not exist. Yeah. So how did that work? And my theory is people don’t know how to go about referral marketing.

Luke: Yeah, yep.

Tim: They kind of … when someone kinds in, you know, word of mouth, “Hey, you should” … oh, we get lots of referrals from word of mouth but that’s like crossing your fingers and hope that they come in, there’s not a … there’s not a strategy in place. So I think get a referral marketing strategy. Start asking for referrals.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Asking friends, colleagues, clients, hey, you know, do you like what we’re doing? Who would you … could you refer us to a couple of people?

Luke: The way … the way I used to do it when I had … when I had a web development business …

Tim: Did you have a web development business?

Luke: Yes.

Tim: I didn’t know that.

Luke: Yeah, yeah. You should remember I developed a couple of websites for you, Timbo.

Tim: That’s right.

Luke: We actually used to put on a client day twice a year and …

Tim: You were very good at that.

Luke: And we’d take them to a winery. Usually involved alcohol.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke: But it doesn’t have to.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: And we’d basically shout them a good time and then hopefully, I mean apart from saying, “Thanks everyone for coming. We hope that you remember us …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … when you’re speaking to others.” Didn’t try to sell them anything on the day.

Tim: Yeah, I was critical of those. Because I reckon … I was very very … I thought the stuff that you did, like I remember doing a cooking class at the Victoria Market with you guys.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You had bus winery tours, sailing days.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You really did do it very well. My criticism, and I think I might have even said it to you way back then, was why not ask … where’s the ask? Where is the ask?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: It’s business.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You know. Take your family out for a nice sail on the bay and don’t ask for anything but this is business. And I just think … and, you know, listeners, feel free to email us in if you think I’m wrong here but …

Luke: Questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim: Thank you. But, you know, like I just don’t think there’s anything wrong with the ask. And maybe you’re scared of the answer. Maybe you’re scared someone will say …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … no.

Luke: No.

Tim: I’m not going to refer you. But that’s not going to happen.

Luke: No.

Tim: That’s not going to happen. I just think … and in terms of a referral marketing strategy, implementing one, we’ve done a previous interview the head of SendOutCards, Kody Bateman. SendOutCards is a wonderful way of asking for referrals. You can actually setup, and I have a strategy that I share on this webinar that I run, which is about actually a six month plan where you send a fun card, you send … you send a card asking for a referral the next month, the next month you send a thank you card, thanks for your business.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Next month you ask for a referral. And you can spread that over six months, 12 months, whatever it is, but that is an automated campaign that goes out to everyone you know, so there’s a huge amount of leverage and you’ve got a referral strategy. And it, you know, it costs peanuts.

Luke: A dollar a card.

Tim: A dollar a card. So, yeah, cheap stuff. Referral marketing, Lukey.

Luke: They really should have an iPad app.

Tim: It is … I am told SendOutCards are … they do have one. It’s in … well it’s not even in development, it’s developed, it’s being beta tested.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: I know someone who’s seen it. Plus an iPad app. But I’m not allowed to say either of those things because I … it is in development. And, you know, that will be amazing to be able …

Luke: What better way …

Tim: … to act on a prompting.

Luke: … to act on a prompting.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: Guys, we did say ten, didn’t we, Timbo?

Tim: Lukey, what are you going to do to our listeners?

Luke: But, look, we actually got to the end of this podcast and ended up … we decided we thought we might turn it into two shows because there’s a lot of info here.

Tim: There is.

Luke: So …

Tim: There is.

Luke: … we’re going to pause at five.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So make sure you have subscribed to iTunes and you’ll be able to pick up the next five next week, Timbo.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. And also … well five or more, Luke?

Luke: Well …

Tim: Five or more, who knows. But the thing is there was a lot of stuff there that we just shared.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And I think too given that it was a really … one of the more practical shows that we’ve done, although I hope all our shows are practical, is take one of those five gems, or nuggets, as we called them, listeners, and go and implement one.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Okay. Hopefully it was good listening. But the listening … there’s no magic in listening. There’s magic in doing. So …

Luke: Correct.

Tim: So choose one and go and do it. And if it works, can you tell us about it?

Luke: Yeah, please do.

Tim: We’d love that. So up until …

Luke: Question …

Tim: … until next time.

Luke: Questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com if you want to ask us a question or send us some feedback and tell us how it went.

Tim: You started to talk quietly and then you built into a crescendo then. It was quite nice.

Luke: Yeah, I can actually …

Tim: Very (26:12).

Luke: Yeah, anyway.

Tim: So …

Luke: We’ll catch you next time with the …

Tim: We will.

Luke: … next five or maybe more …

Tim: Lovely listeners …

Luke: … tips.

Tim: And don’t forget to go and book into the intensive which has had an incredible incredible price drop, Luke, just for our small business listeners.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: Catch you later.

Tim: Seeya.

Luke: Bye.

Lovingly transcribed by The Transcription People

SBBM #23: Meet Yiying, The Twitter Fail Whale Designer

Luke — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 23:35:21 +0000

Imagine being responsible for designing one of the world’s most famous online branding…and being paid less than five bucks for the privilege! Our guest did exactly that… and she’d do it again tomorrow! Meet, Yiying, the designer of Twitter’s Fail Whale… Yiying was a delight to have on the show where she shares:

The story behind that famous design;
The critical elements to writing that perfect creative brief;
The importance of visual branding;
How much you should pay for a logo;
Her dream to redesign the Google logo…In fact, she’s already done it!

So, grab a cuppa and a note pad… and strap in in for another ripping episode of Small Business Big Marketing.

Duration: 37:30

Links discussed in this show:

Yiying’s website
The Small Business Big Marketing Intensive
Join us on Facebook

Podcast Transcription

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey. What is that sound I hear?

Luke: Well that’s right. That’s right, Timbo, I have had a lovely gorgeous daughter about a week and a half ago.

Tim: Probably you haven’t. Your wife might have.

Luke: Yes, well she did do all the hard work.

Tim: Yep, correct. Correct. Congratulations, mate.

Luke: Thanks, mate.

Tim: Gee, noisy child, hey, all that crying …

Luke: No, she’s …

Tim: … just quiet it down a bit.

Luke: She’s been an absolute angel so far.

Tim: Has she?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Has she? A marketer to be, do you think? Has she got the glint in her eye?

Luke: Yeah, look, she’s not talking yet so it’s a little too early to tell.

Tim: Yeah, it is hard, yeah. But often you can tell, a bit of gut … gut instinct.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Gut feel, you know, like …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … look at her and go, yep, cut out … cut out for marketing, hey.

Luke: I think we’ll have to wait and see on that one, Timbo, but …

Tim: Is she wearing the big brands? I mean, you’ve got … I know you’ve got a … what’s the stroller you’ve got?

Luke: Oh, I can’t remember the brand.

Tim: Yeah, a McLaren.

Luke: But I tell you what …

Tim: McLaren.

Luke: … it’s got more bells and whistles than my car that pram.

Tim: Mate, that … that stroller would win a Formula 1 race.

Luke: Yep, yep. No, she’s currently wearing Bonds.

Tim: Oh, yep.

Luke: Good Australian brand.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, good.

Luke: Taken overseas now and made in China. But anyway.

Tim: Okay, okay, that’s fairly …

Luke: (1:28).

Tim: Fairly intellectual of you to start the show. Hey, listeners, congratulations to Lukey and his lovely wife Kim and welcome to the world little baby Isabella.

Luke: Isabella.

Tim: Great name.

Luke: Thank you very much.

Tim: Great name. So it’s … it’s just lovely to have an additional part to the Small Business Big Marketing family. Is she on Twitter yet?

Luke: No.

Tim: Or LinkedIn?

Luke: No. I’d better go and register all her social media and give it to her as her week two birthday present.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: I must get … I must get LinkedIn with her. And people of that age, what is she, a week and a half, what social media are they into, is it … are they more MySpace or Facebook?

Luke: Well she is actually … I have put her on my Facebook so you’re welcome to check out the …

Tim: And she is on Small Business Big Marketing’s Facebook. Well sort of like …

Luke: Introduction.

Tim: … an announcement.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And you know what, Lukey, putting all that aside, beautiful, there is a sense of family developing in Small Business Big Marketing.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: You got a lot of pats on the back or …

Luke: Yes, yeah.

Tim: … comments on our Facebook wall when I announced that you had become a father.

Luke: And also on Twitter I received …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … a lot of lovely feedback from family and friends …

Tim: Friends.

Luke: … and …

Tim: You were going to say fans. God you’re arrogant. I hope she doesn’t inherit that. I know what listeners would be thinking …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … no, he’s not, you are Tim.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: What do you mean yep? Hey, Lukey?

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: But there is, I mean, you know, we started this out and this whole Web 2.0 or whatever it is, Web 2.0 is antique now, but community, you know, like as marketers building community. And I honestly feel I could say as of the last show there’s a … there’s a real sense of community developing and its taken time.

Luke: Yeah. I think a lot of people struggle with whether they should actually put themselves out there. I certainly know that some of the … some of the people that … even the people that I work with don’t want many people knowing about the private parts of their life. But I, you know, I think that if you’re going to connect properly and develop rapport with people then, you know, you should be sharing these sorts of things, you know.

Tim: There’s a fine line.

Luke: There is a fine line.

Tim: You know, like if my wife had a baby I wouldn’t announce it on a podcast but … no.

Luke: Yes, you would.

Tim: Yeah, I would, yeah, yeah.

Luke: Hang on, haven’t you announced that you’ve got a dog?

Tim: I think I did. In fact, we are doing this show from my home.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And my dog …

Luke: Charlie.

Tim: … Mr Charlie Bucket to you is wandering around. So if you do hear a bark every now and then, listeners, just put up with him because he’s a lovely little fella. Hey, community also in the sense, Lukey, getting lots of listener questions.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: And feedback.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: And written reviews on iTunes.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Which are, you know, great. And, listeners, if you haven’t …

Luke: And I think that was after … because in the last podcast I made a very sensitive appeal …

Tim: Oh, yes.

Luke: … that we wanted to hear more from you and we still do, so.

Tim: Yes, you did.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You did. In fact I think we lost half our audience. We’re down to two.

Luke: One of our listeners I think even setup a Twitter hash tag, I love Lukey I think it was.

Tim: It did not.

Luke: Seriously.

Tim: Are you serious?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: I’m very upset.

Luke: Yeah. There was only one message under the hash tag.

Tim: Listener, if that is you could you please contact me questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: I’m very cross. But there is good community. One of … the next show in actual fact we’re going to just dedicate to listener questions because we’ve got some rippers.

Luke: Yeah, we’ve …

Tim: So we will do that. Lukey, I won’t ask what’s on your mind, which is where we start.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because we’ve kind of covered that.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Clearly Isabella …

Luke: Isabella.

Tim: … is on your mind.

Luke: Timbo, what’s on your mind, mate?

Tim: My little baby is on my mind, Lukey.

Luke: Which is?

Tim: An iPad. Stop it. Stop it. I’ve got an iPad. I did not intend to go and buy one. I can honestly say … maybe subconsciously I did. I was wandering through the shops on Friday night, the Friday they came out, and I walked home with one.

Luke: You just did it to tease me, didn’t you?

Tim: Yeah. Look, maybe I did. But I can now say a week into owning it that, yeah, I like it. It’s an object of art. It is not an object of productivity or … it hasn’t improved my business life one iota. Except that I have the ability to consume more blogs …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … and video and podcasts and stuff like that. So, you know, whereas I found it hard to go and, you know, sit down and read a blog with the laptop or in front of the computer …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … I know do it. What’s your smile about?

Luke: This is one of the main reasons …

Tim: Here we go.

Luke: … why I haven’t got one.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Is I believe it will take time away from my family.

Tim: Right.

Luke: It is so easy to consume more stuff …

Tim: Right.

Luke: … on the web with an iPad …

Tim: You’ll get over that.

Luke: I’m sure I will. But when I get one I’m not sure that my wife will.

Tim: Yeah, okay.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Fair enough.

Luke: I think … I think it’d be a great tool for people travelling.

Tim: Yeah, absolute ripper. And school kids.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: School kids who are carrying so much in their bags, you know, like a school kid in high school is a chiropractor’s dream. So the iPad is the chiropractor’s enemy.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But, yeah, you know, look, I’m glad I got one. I haven’t quite figure out its role in life. I want to start blogging from it, it will allow me to blog more. But then I’ve got to get the photos onto it somehow, you know. The iPad store, the app store, a bit of a ghost town, you know. They say there’s thousands of apps. Most of them are iPhone iPad apps. So they’re not dedicated iPad apps. Haven’t lost faith in it by any stretch, love you Apple. But, yeah, it’s not … it’s not a deal break … dealmaker, you know?

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Now, Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: Little story. Little story. Had a plumber, had a plumber come earlier this week to my place.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Reason for the plumber coming.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Blocked toilet, blocked toilet. Which, you know, classic plumber job, don’t you reckon?

Luke: Yeah, yeah. Well …

Tim: You know, like …

Luke: You would think so.

Tim: Part of the gig, you know. Not your favourite part of being a plumber.

Luke: No.

Tim: But part of the job.

Luke: Possibly a reason why you wouldn’t become a plumber.

Tim: Correct. Correct.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: So he gets here, and I’ve got other things that I want him to do, change shower heads and do other stuff. I take him to the toilet as the first stop as this is the first thing you do and he looks at me and he goes, “I don’t do shit.” There it is. Okay. So I said, “What?” He said, “Yeah, I don’t do shit.”

Luke: Wow.

Tim: “You wouldn’t either if you’d seen what I’d seen,” he said.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: You know, so I go, “Well, hmm, interesting. Maybe should have told me that before you came.”

Luke: Yeah, done a little bit of …

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: Asked for a quick brief on the job perhaps.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right. So anyway he did some stuff and the toilet is still blocked and he’s given me the number of a guy who …

Luke: Who does shit.

Tim: Who does shit, yeah, yeah.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: So point being, like, I mean, that’s a pretty obvious marketing lesson to me.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But maybe it’s not.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Maybe the lesson is be really clear as to what you do and what you don’t do. And I’d even as far as going … indicating what it is you love. Like I say to my clients, “I don’t love marketing plans,” in fact I don’t do marketing plans, yeah.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But I’ve got people who can do marketing plans. I’m much more like let’s go and do it, you know.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: Here’s what I suggest you do, here’s why I suggest you do it, here’s how we do it, now let’s … you into it? Right. Let’s do it.

Luke: Yep. You prefer to workshop it, Timbo.

Tim: Oh, that sounds a little bit kind of Oprah. But I’d prefer to just kind of, yeah, I’m a practical …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … emotional marketer.

Luke: Yeah, you prefer the group grope, yep.

Tim: The group … I thought … I thought you said that.

Luke: Just … just on … going back to tradies, I’ve got an interesting one as well. I have an electrician that’s done a little bit of work of work on our house and he sent me an invoice and it was someone that I’d, you know, someone referred me to this guy and I hadn’t actually seen or heard his business name because he just came and said, “My name’s Peter,” and lovely bloke, which is why I want to get him to do more work. But I looked at his first invoice and his business name is P&S Electrics. Now, say that when you pick up the phone, try and say P&S Electrics really quickly.

Tim: P&S Electrics.

Luke: Correct. Now, that’s probably someone who hasn’t really put a great deal of thought into his business name and may perhaps need to reconsider.

Tim: Well, yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of tradies do that, they kind of go just with their first name or whatever, you know, their name, you know …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … Evan’s Electrics or whatever it might be, P&S Electrics. There is … it is worthwhile. I’ve just … I’ve done a whole lot of naming the last few months for different clients …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … and getting it right, gee it’s good.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: It’s good from my point of view but the client, you just hear the penny drop. When the client gets the name, they just go, “You nailed it.” You know, “Like we love it. We saying it. We love answering the phone,” you know. And, you know, yeah, clearly P&S Electrics is not something that you can just be punching the air about.

Luke: Yeah, and funnily enough he never actually says his business name when he picks up the phone.

Tim: Right. And hello to all those electricians out there. Lukey, we have got a ripper guest today.

Luke: Yes, we have.

Tim: We have got the Yiying. The Yiying. That’s her name Yiying.

Luke: Yiying, yep.

Tim: And Yiying is responsible, she designed the Fail Whale for Twitter.

Luke: Yes, she did.

Tim: Do you know what that is, Luke?

Luke: I know what it is.

Tim: What is it?

Luke: Basically it’s when … when Twitter goes down, as in when it’s unavailable …

Tim: The whale goes up.

Luke: … or there’s an error on their site somehow …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … this beautiful, beautifully illustrated whale …

Tim: It does.

Luke: … appears on the screen and …

Tim: Being lifted by whatever the Twitter birds are.

Luke: Yes, little …

Tim: Sparrows or ..

Luke: … sparrows or something.

Tim: Sparrows. She designed it.

Luke: She did.

Tim: So that’s kind of like a good thing to have on your portfolio, global brand.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: But interestingly enough the way it came about isn’t maybe how you would expect it to. So she’s going to share that up front with us …

Luke: Yes.

Tim: … in her interview. She is … she is a … is the word dearth of information? Is it a dearth of information? She is an ocean of information. We’ll use ocean.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Because this is about Fail Whale. So Yiying is an ocean of information about creativity and particularly the importance of branding and logo. She’s very very very passionate about. And I think if you’d … listeners, if you don’t attach importance to your visual design, then maybe by the end of this show you will.

Luke: Yes, indeed.

Tim: Because her passion is, you know, it’s very tangible, isn’t it?

Luke: Sure is.

Tim: So, Lukey, we started by asking Yiying how she came to design the Twitter Fail Whale.

Luke: Fail Whale.

Tim: Over to Yiying.

Yiying: I did the image … initially it wasn’t for Twitter at all. I did it when I was a student at uni and I did it as an eCard and sent it to friends when overseas friends invite me to come over for party on Facebook. So instead of sending emails all the time and say I can’t come, I just did a visual eCard which is that image. Sort of I’ve got a big dream to achieve but sort of it’s kind of hard to do it, it’s kind of surreal, I’m just sending it, you know, overseas as little birds lifting up a whale as some dream impossible to achieve kind of thing. If you get it. And then I put it online as exposure kind of before I graduated from uni. And after a year or two years’ time the cofounder from Twitter he just picked it from iStock, that’s the story.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: Is that right? Just straight out of iStock?

Yiying: Yep. Because iStock at the time, in the beginning when I joined it it was sort of like a share like … almost like community based website like Flickr pretty much.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Yep.

Yiying: But in the beginning it wasn’t for commercial use and then later on it was just gradually become more commercial and engaged with Getty Images.

Tim: Hey, Yiying, did he buy the high res or the low res version?

Yiying: He actually bought it as … he … I’m pretty sure he bought it as a vector, as a standard licence.

Tim: Okay. So it was actually around 50 US as opposed to the 25 US that you could have got.

Yiying: I think it was actually five bucks.

Tim: No way.

Luke: Wow.

Yiying: Yeah, yeah. That was … that was back then. Because Twitter was a … I think they were just as a start …

Tim: Yeah.

Yiying: … start-up company because they’re all entrepreneurs.

Tim: Yep.

Yiying: And (13:58) understand that situation, you know, when you …

Tim: Yep.

Yiying: … you start up a company with not a lot of income and they just did it and …

Tim: Can I just get this really right and really clear …

Yiying: Yeah, sure.

Tim: … for our listeners, Yiying?

Yiying: Yep.

Tim: You’ve designed the Fail Whale logo for Twitter, one of the biggest brands in the world right now, you got paid $5?

Yiying: Yeah.

Tim: Wow.

Yiying: No, actually probably even less than that, to be honest. Because at the time iStock gives probably 40% or 30% to the contributor and they keep probably 60%-ish.

Tim: Okay.

Yiying: So I probably literally, $5 times 30% probably just $1.50.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: We’re just getting the hat out and passing it around the studio. By the end of this interview we may well have doubled your … the amount you made from that logo.

Luke: Hang on, Timbo, I’ve actually seen Yiying’s client list, I don’t think she needs it.

Tim: Okay. Okay. So the payoff came afterwards, Yiying, correct?

Yiying: What’s that, sorry?

Tim: The payoff, having designed that logo and not getting paid a lot, maybe a coffee in Maccas, you have subsequently got a whole lot of work as a result of it, yeah?

Yiying: In a sense, yes. I guess it’s not just because of that but it’s very hard to calculate to be honest but I would say yes.

Luke: So, Yiying, I’ve seen your client list, I’ve seen amongst others there’s Animal Logic there. So how have you … how have you come to pick up these such fantastic clients? I mean apart … apart from the fact that you’re a very talented designer, what have you done to actually attract these sorts of clients?

Yiying: Animal Logic at the time was actually even before for the Fail Whale business actually.

Luke: Wow.

Yiying: That was right after I finished my uni and one of my friends was working at Animal Logic and (15:51) each other and the design community always are around and that’s how we actually … and also that’s how other people pretty much traditionally get their jobs and everything.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Networking.

Tim: Networking.

Yiying: Networking, absolutely.

Tim: You’re a good networker. I met you at TED, didn’t I? We were networking.

Yiying: Yeah, that’s right, we met at TED Darling Harbour.

Tim: Did I come up and sort of glushingly … is glushingly a word, Luke? Did I come up and go, “Are you the Twitter designer? And can I meet you?” and …

Luke: Can I have your autograph?

Yiying: Oh, we know you. We know you.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, have you signed any autographs?

Yiying: Yes.

Tim: Oh, wow, really? Luke and I are still waiting.

Yiying: We did actually, because when I was in … when I was over in San Francisco …

Tim: Yeah.

Yiying: … last year we had a fail party which is sort of, what do they call it? They call it the celebration of failure of the economic and they actually did a huge cake with the jam doing like a … going … economic going down.

Tim: Yeah.

Yiying: That sort of graph. And I think I bought like 500 Fail Whale cards and I just signed them away and then gave them to people.

Tim: Oh, so you weren’t asked, you actually decided you’d hand out some autographs off your own bat, did you?

Yiying: I didn’t even thought that’s an autograph, I just thought it’s sort of giving away …

Tim: Oh, yeah, nice gift.

Luke: Yeah.

Yiying: Gifts, yeah, exactly.

Tim: Hey, Yiying?

Yiying: Yeah.

Tim: Can we talk …

Yiying: Yep.

Tim: As you know, our listeners are generally small business owners.

Yiying: Mmm hmm.

Tim: And like many of us, creativity is often a very scary thing. You’re … is it … am I right as saying you’re regarded in the top 100 creative people around the place at the moment?

Yiying: That’s according to the newspaper.

Tim: Some crazy statistic. So you’ve got a bit to say on creativity. So what do you believe defines creativity, what is being creative?

Yiying: I think, and from my own point of view, finding creativity it’s actually finding the creativity from yourself. So it’s not something that you come out and hunt for, it’s something within you. It’s … you’ve just got to dig it out. I believe everybody has creativity in themself, it’s almost like a seed. It’s just you need … you really need the good weather and you need to look after it and also dig it out later on when it … when it actually grows. So everybody would be able to have …

Luke: Is there anything that you can do to encourage that creativity out of you?

Tim: Oh, good question, Lukey.

Luke: Can you, you know, is it a matter of finding things that inspire you or is it …

Tim: Let’s start at the easier stuff, is there a tablet you can take … no, no, no don’t even go there. Don’t go there.

Luke: Yeah, don’t go.

Tim: Good question, Luke.

Yiying: I would take (18:38). Because it’s funny that … that was sort of off the topic, you can feel free to cut it later on, because it was funny that one of the drug and alcohol use young people community, they actually approached me days before and asked me to do another interview with them and I thought that’s a little bit sort of freaky because I said, “Oh, I’m actually … I’m not really sort of getting involved of one of those things,” like I … because I come from a very traditional family and I don’t really have a lot of a chance to, you know, get drunk and probably drugged up and get some inspiration and see shapes and …

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Yiying: … and hearing, you know, hearing colours, that sort of thing. I don’t really have …

Tim: I love that phrase, hearing that colours. That is just … I just love it.

Yiying: Hearing colours.

Tim: Yeah.

Yiying: And seeing sounds.

Tim: Seeing sounds.

Yiying: That sort of thing.

Tim: Yeah.

Yiying: I … like, I mean, you know, there’s people doing that and I totally think that’s, you know, different people have different way of doing things, but for me I do believe that there’s a natural way to get naturally high. Because sometimes when people look at someone’s work such as the Zodiac Symphony, which is like Zodiac (19:49) which is inspired by mathematic equations, some people look at it and just go, “What did you take?” and I said, “Well I just studied maths and I thought maybe to link them up and see them … see some of the relationships between some of the very sort of geeky boring statistics with some interesting colour and shapes and” …

Tim: So, Yiying, I just want to summarise the interview so far, you made $2.45 from designing the Twitter logo … Twitter Fail Whale logo. In ways of becoming creative you suggest alcohol and the Zodiac Symphony?

Yiying: No, I didn’t suggest alcohol and the Zodiac Symphony.

Tim: Okay.

Yiying: I said I believe the fact that without taking alcohol, without … without, you know, taking drugs you can still be very creative. That’s …

Tim: Absolutely.

Yiying: That’s my point of view. Because that’s just … that’s just how, from my own experience, I haven’t taken anything extreme yet.

Tim: Do you get frustrated when you see small businesses promoting themselves in a very, what I call, wallpaper fashion? And by that, I mean just stuff that you don’t notice.

Yiying: The stuff that I don’t notice, you mean, for example?

Tim: I just see a lot of small business not, I guess, having the courage to promote themselves in a creative way so they fall back on maybe standard names, standard designs and …

Luke: You know, the best example I’ve come across so far …

Tim: Yeah, go.

Luke: … I’ve seen recently is a local …

Tim: My website?

Luke: No, no. A local Lions Club magazine.

Tim: Yeah.

Yiying: Yep.

Luke: You should see some of the design in there. It is bereft of all design.

Tim: Yeah, but what goes around comes around. That might be like retro in five years’ time.

Luke: Yiying, do you … do you … I mean, obviously you can’t take on every client that approaches you possibly, I mean I understand that you’re quite popular, do you …

Tim: Do you want to do a drawing …

Luke: Do you pick and choose who your clients are?

Yiying: In the beginning I’m actually not. Like even doing interviews and stuff, like I don’t really have a chance to … because I don’t have any assistant or anybody to …

Tim: Yep.

Yiying: … really help me and choose whatever. But I …

Tim: Just take whatever interviews come along?

Yiying: I trust my instincts. And I … it’s almost like … like you said before, I was listening to the interview of you with the Bra Queen and I was sort of laughing while I was listening, I think it’s …

Luke: That’s Tim’s favourite by the way.

Yiying: I think everybody is … can really see them as a brand, to be honest.

Tim: Yep.

Yiying: And when you approach somebody it’s your attitude and also your way of saying things, it all has a certain value. Same thing with small business, you … you don’t really see yourself as, you know, you know, just go to approach people and because of that that you want to make money but also you make connections and maybe that connection might take you to some further steps, you never know.

Tim: Yeah, okay.

Yiying: And I always sort of thinking, you keep a good intention in yourself and try to help people as soon as … sorry, just help people in the same time as much as you can, not really expecting too much of a return. And sometimes it turns out quite nicely. Same thing with how I upload, you know, images onto iStock. iStock, I really wanted to showcase my work, that’s my intention. But in the same time people who like my work might see some of my personality in it and maybe that would lead me to somewhere else. I don’t really have like a huge, a very huge desk like … what do you call it? Sort if … how do I find the right word? I don’t really have …

Tim: I think what you’re saying is do good things and good things will come.

Yiying: Yeah. It’s like …

Tim: Yeah.

Yiying: … you don’t really have a huge expectation in the beginning because it, you know, even you expect really high, if you have a lot of big aims, things could really screw up sometimes, you know.

Tim: Yeah.

Yiying: Things happen. So I think it’s really sort of building up … building up a good relationship with you, with your clients, with your friends and something good will return to you as well. It’s just a very general sort of philosophy that I believe in.

Tim: Yeah, it’s a great philosophy.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Yiying, the critical components, getting back to a little bit of rational marketing strategy, the critical components of a creative brief. So if one of our listeners is about to go and brief someone to do a logo tomorrow or website design, what are those things that they must share with their designer to get the best result?

Yiying: Okay. Firstly you’ve got to understand your keywords of your company. So usually if I’m … if somebody briefs me, if somebody wants me to design a logo I usually ask them to summarise in ten words of what their company is, mostly adjectives. So that will give me an idea of what kind of colour, what kind of shape, what kind of, you know, look and feel they’re looking for. And also through your words I will have a sense of what you want the logo or identity to be appealing to the viewers or the audience, which I think is very important. And also I think once they … once they’re ready to give me, you know, their idea or the look and feel of how the logo should be, then I can start it to work and I will start to find the right typography to match it up. Another very important thing is, I think, especially when you ask somebody to design something, you need to be open to their idea as well. You need to communicate rather than always sort of go, “I am the right person, like I’m always right,” not really listening to the designer. Because it’s a … it’s a two-way communication.

Luke: Yiying, I mean, obviously you’ve had a bit to do with iStock photo, what do you think of other crowd sourcing design sites like 99designs, for example?

Yiying: I think iStock photo it is, it’s a great way, and also Getty Images, they are great channels for creative people. Especially you know how to use it wisely. I suppose different creative people, say, if you’re a photographer or, say, if you’re an illustrator, you should really treat your work differently to different sites. For example, some photographer would put their images onto Flickr and I think now from two years’ time I sort of really realised the importance of taking care of your intellectual property (26:33).

Tim: Choosing the right places to show your work.

Yiying: Absolutely.

Tim: It’s all part of your brand, isn’t it?

Yiying: Absolutely.

Tim: Do you think 99designs and Elance and oDesk are devaluing designers’ work?

Yiying: Well from my own point of view, I sort of … I wouldn’t really use 99designs simply because I see logo design as a craft and I really … I believe the fact that logo design is not something that you can just, you know, grab an image and put some text and that’s it. That, you know, that’s the work.

Tim: Yep.

Yiying: Most of the time when clients approach me we actually sit down and we chat about it and really are getting to knowing what they … they need for and what their business is. And I actually just do the tailor for them. I mean, it’s almost like buying clothes, it really depends on people’s choice. I mean, you can really go to a supermarket and just get a, you know, get a t-shirt. But if you are actually going to, you know, go to some important business meeting or whatever, you’re actually wanting to choose the clothes, or for your 21^st birthday or something like that, you’re actually wanting to choose something that is actually you, that is actually for you or for your business.

Tim: Yep.

Yiying: So I think really importantly for logo agency especially, it’s not like clothing, you can just wear this today and you can wear that, you know, next day, it’s something that probably would grow with you. Imagine, you know, McDonald’s when they start their business if they change the business logo all the time then people wouldn’t remember it as (28:09). I mean, it doesn’t necessarily saying that, you know, a good logo would make your business brilliant, but I do think a good logo, almost like a name or almost … it’s part of you, it’s a part … it’s part of the culture. So I really think to get a good logo I’d recommend people to actually get a good logo designer to design it for them. Because later on ultimately it will become the asset of the company.

Tim: Love it. Absolutely … can we frame that, Luke? Is there any way of framing audio? Because what you just said, Yiying, about logo design is spot on. This is a really really tough question because I know there’s no right answer to it, but I know all our listeners are thinking it, how much does a logo … how much should you pay to get a logo designed? And I know you can’t answer that with a figure but how do you go about it because obviously that’s going to determine who you then choose.

Yiying: Yeah, absolutely. I think usually when I am getting approached by people, it really … it depends on how big the company or the organisation is. Sometimes if it’s a start-up company I would consider give a bit of discount. And also, you know, it really depends on what kind of application you would apply for. So, say, if you are actually just doing business consultancy then you don’t really have any product to apply the logo on. Maybe you probably would have annual conference then you might want to use the logo, just print it on t-shirt as a promotional item. But, say, if you actually have a company like a fashion brand and you … you asked me to do a logo for you, maybe later on when you’re like Supreme and some other company, when your company is growing bigger, that actually … the logo actually becomes your asset.

Tim: Yep.

Yiying: And you can actually use that as … as a fashion accessory you can probably print it on t-shirt, you can print it on scarf, or even make some accessory out of it. Then the logo actually could transfer into item onto mugs onto mouse pad. So the value of the logo actually becomes bigger and …

Tim: Increases over time.

Yiying: Yeah, so it actually increase with the business. So for me, like I’ve learned a lot after even like after I graduated, I realised that actually the logo grows with the business. So don’t even think that, you know, you paid 500 bucks the logo would just, you know, the value of the logo would be just like that.

Tim: Yep.

Yiying: But it’s actually a constant evolving of your company that actually also makes the logo grow. For example, if you paid $500 or $5000 or even like ANZ, the recent campaign of their logo …

Tim: Like $15M, wasn’t it?

Yiying: Yeah, it could be …

Tim: That is wrong, wrong, wrong. So, yeah, that is wrong.

Yiying: I was looking at it and … that was …

Tim: Hey, Yiying, one last question, one last question.

Yiying: Yeah. Okay. Go.

Tim: Because we know that you have a very big dream project. What is it?

Yiying: Well I was actually really, I mean, I’ve already done it actually. I’ve just not … haven’t got the chance to release it. I have a dream job which is really refresh the current Google logo.

Luke: Oh, cool.

Tim: You actually got the gig?

Yiying: I haven’t got the gig. I just … I had a … I just had like had the passion of doing it, that’s it.

Tim: So you’ve done it?

Yiying: Yeah, I’ve done it. Because I just thought, I was looking at it, I received a very random email from one mate of mine and they just said, “Well you probably can do a better job.” I mean, I respect what has been done but I just thought, why not just try …

Tim: When are we going to see what you’ve done?

Yiying: Huh?

Tim: Can you release it on our show?

Yiying: I mean, that’s the thing, like I don’t know whether there’s any problem with the … the copyright, you know what I mean?

Tim: Nah, there’s absolutely none. You check with your lawyers and come back to us. But we would love to release it to the world on Small Business Big Marketing.

Yiying: I’ve done it. I mean …

Luke: Exclusive.

Yiying: I’ve done it and I’ve also done a very cool little animation about it. And I’m sure you … I can show it in private time if I come to Melbourne later on. I mean, I’d love to show you.

Tim: All right. Well we might do that. We might do a little … when you’re in Melbourne …

Luke: We’ll get a trademark lawyer on our next show, Timbo, and we’ll see what we can do.

Tim: When you’re in Melbourne next …

Yiying: Yes.

Tim: … come along and we’ll do our very first vodcast and we’ll reveal your work on it. Can we do that?

Yiying: Yeah, why not.

Tim: Sweet.

Luke: Fantastic.

Tim: Love it. Hey, Yiying …

Luke: Yiying …

Tim: … thank you so so much for sharing.

Yiying: Cheers.

Tim: Loved it.

Luke: Thanks, Yiying.

Yiying: Thank you.

Tim: See you soon.

Yiying: It’s great to talk to you.

Tim: Bye.

Yiying: Seeya.

Luke: Bye.

Yiying: Bye.

Luke: What a fantastic interview with Yiying, Timbo. What did you reckon?

Tim: I reckon she is a highly passionate individual and highly creative.

Luke: She sure is, yeah. And one of … a couple of points I got from that was you never know where inspiration is going to come from and I think people certainly need to … to always look around. You know, you’re not always going to find it in a book. So …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And to keep putting yourself out there. Certainly one of the things that she has done is to …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … put her work out there and …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: And she, as a result, the universe has provided …

Tim: Oh, yeah.

Luke: … as you would say, Timbo.

Tim: Absolutely. And it has. And she … she does, she just puts it out there and good on her, I reckon. So we have got a couple of other things, Lukey. Listeners, don’t forget to sign up and come along to the Small Business Big Marketing Intensive. It’s a two day marketing workshop at the Caulfield Racecourse in Melbourne in August. Go to our website Small Business …

Luke: 2010.

Tim: 2010, yeah, that’s right. Because we don’t want people listening in five years’ time to this episode and going, “How do I get in?”

Luke: Correct.

Tim: August. Caulfield Racecourse. Two full days of marketing gold, Lukey.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So go to our website SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and click on Intensive and you can read all about it.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: What else have we got, Lukey?

Luke: We have our Facebook page, Timbo, if you want to …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … join us on Facebook.

Tim: Do join us. We are building that community and you will find out more things that are going on. You’ll have the opportunity to contribute to the show.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: There’s a little video of Lukey and I being quite silly and immature.

Luke: So just go to Facebook.com/SmallBusinessBigMarketing if Facebook is your thing.

Tim: Lukey, $5 I spent on fiverr the other day.

Luke: F-I-V-E-R-R.com.

Tim: Correct. And that is … we have now got the Small Business Big Marketing milk carton and cereal box, I think. Which is of absolutely no use.

Luke: I just want to know what we’re going to put in them, Timbo.

Tim: I have no idea, mate. But, yeah, that’s a bit of fun. We continue to spend $5 on things that we can use to promote our show.

Luke: Yeah. So …

Tim: I don’t know how we’re going to use those two things …

Luke: No.

Tim: … but anyway they’re done.

Luke: But, listeners, if you give fiverr a go we want you to write in to us.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Either tell us on Facebook or …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … send an email to questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com …

Tim: And …

Luke: … and tell us all about it.

Tim: We’ll upload those … those little packaging exercises to Facebook and to our show notes.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Hey, thanks once again to The Transcription People.

Luke: .com.au.

Tim: Yeah, they continue to transcribe every show. And, Lukey, we even got an email earlier this week from a fellow, and I don’t have it in front of me, but basically saying what a great thing it is to transcribe every show …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … because it helps …

Luke: The hearing impaired.

Tim: … the hearing impaired.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: So that’s a, you know, something often we don’t consider.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: That, you know, there’s a whole market of people out there that are either hearing impaired or sight impaired, they run businesses. So it’s a good question to ask yourself as a small business owner, what are you doing to make it easy for those people with those impairments to do business with you.

Luke: Accessibility.

Tim: So thank you to that listener who sent that in and thanks to thetranscriptionpeople.com.au for continuing to transcribe every show. Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: Enough.

Luke: That’s it.

Tim: Last thing.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Listeners, go to our website and sign up and you will get a marketing idea a week for 52 weeks.

Luke: For 52 weeks from your …

Tim: Crazy.

Luke: … your fantastic book Cha-Ching! Timbo.

Tim: Cha-Ching! Are we mad?

Luke: We’re crazy.

Tim: We are just whacky whacky people.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: So go to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and sign up there and you will automatically start to receive a marketing idea a week from my book Cha-Ching! If you can’t wait a week …

Luke: And they …

Tim: … for a year, buy it.

Luke: And there’s a … there’s also a work …

Tim: There is a worksheet.

Luke: Worksheet, thank you, Timbo.

Tim: At the end of each of idea.

Luke: At the end of each idea, so …

Tim: It’ll help you implement it.

Luke: So it helps you put it into action.

Tim: Lukey, enough talking, I think.

Luke: Yeah, indeed.

Tim: We must go. That is far too long for anyone to listen to us rambling on. Listeners, thanks a million for being part of the show. We’re nothing without you.

Luke: No, indeed.

Tim: You’re the wind beneath our wings.

Luke: That’s enough, Timbo.

Tim: Sorry.

Luke: We’ll catch you next time, guys. Seeya.

Tim: Seeya.

Lovingly transcribed by The Transcription People

The Small Business Big Marketing INTENSIVE – 2 HUGE Days

Luke — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:26:23 +0000

Off the back of Australia’s #1 Marketing show, I’m very please to share with you The Small Business Big Marketing INTENSIVE – 2 HUGE Days at The Caulfield Racecourse in Melbourne, Australia.

Fri, Aug 20 to Sat, Aug 21

This is a highly practical marketing workshop for business owners (or marketers thereof) keen to discover how to create high impact marketing on a low impact budget.

No BS…no theory…no joking.

If it’s not for you, then please pass on to those you know that will benefit.

For details please visit: http://smallbusinessbigmarketing.com/intensive.html

Yours in marketing success…TIM REID

SBBM #22 – Is Advertising for You? Russel Howcroft Thinks So.

Luke — Fri, 21 May 2010 23:26:22 +0000

For those of you who aren’t familiar with our beguile of of the advertising industry, just read the first chapter of Timbo’s book – Cha Ching. However, we thought we’d get Russel Howcroft, arguably Australia’s “Mr Advertising”, on the show to defend his industry. Russel tells us about his advertising background, the success of the Gruen Transfer, and argues that televisions is still the cheapest form of advertising on a cost per thousand views basis.

We also launch our fist Marketing Intensive…

Duration: 42 minutes

Show Notes

Small Business Big Marketing 2 Day Marketing Intensive – Click here for more details

Podcast Transcription

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey. Look at you.

Luke: How are you, Timbo?

Tim: Oh, yes, good thank you, Luke. How are you?

Luke: Very well thanks, mate.

Tim: Very very serious, like given I’m trying to sort of build the energy and you’re bringing it one down.

Luke: Bringing it down. No, I’m sorry. Sorry, mate. I had a big day yesterday. I had a long day …

Tim: I know you did.

Luke: … so I will try to keep the energy up.

Tim: I know you did. And it’s good, you’ve … have you blow waved your hair?

Luke: Something like that.

Tim: You have, haven’t you?

Luke: And you haven’t shaved so …

Tim: A little quaff.

Luke: … we’re even.

Tim: Correct. Correct. Lukey and listeners, welcome back to Small Business Big Marketing the place where you, the small business owner, and if you’re not a small business owner, turn off. Yeah, we’ll get them to turn off. What do you reckon?

Luke: Don’t turn off.

Tim: No, no, don’t turn off.

Luke: You might be a marketing manager, you might be someone looking for inspiration.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. Might be a chemist.

Luke: You might be a chemist.

Tim: Anyone who needs to stay in contact with their customers.

Luke: Hopefully a legal chemist.

Tim: An illegal chemist?

Luke: A legal, not illegal.

Tim: Absolutely, absolutely. As opposed to …

Luke: Not a backyard …

Tim: No. Like an industrial chemist.

Luke: … meth lab chemist. We don’t want any of those.

Tim: Right, okay. And so a place to come, small business owners, to learn how to do marketing that works, really.

Luke: Correct. And that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, Timbo.

Tim: Cost an arm and a leg.

Luke: We’ve got …

Tim: And …

Luke: We’ve actually got a user … a user. We’ve got a list …

Tim: Speaking of meth labs.

Luke: A listener question that we’re going to address …

Tim: Oh, Lukey.

Luke: … towards the end of the show.

Tim: Lukey, this listener question is from Martin Leow, I don’t know how to pronounce that. It brought a tear to my eye.

Luke: It did.

Tim: It really touched a nerve. And so it’s a big question and Martin is clearly in a little bit of strife with his business and by God we’re going to pull him out of it, Luke.

Luke: We’re going to try.

Tim: We are going to pull him out. Hey, Lukey?

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: What is on your mind?

Luke: What is on my mind, I have one big thing on my mind actually, Timbo.

Tim: Yep, yep.

Luke: Going through our stats of recent …

Tim: Luke, Luke.

Luke: Tim.

Tim: You … I was hoping that you’d just be honest with our listeners.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: I’ll ask you again, what’s on your mind?

Luke: What’s on my mind is that …

Tim: What was meant to happen today?

Luke: Oh. Oh, right, yes.

Tim: Right. Yep.

Luke: See my wife’s expecting and the due date was today.

Tim: Today, yeah, yeah.

Luke: So that is …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … very much on my mind. I thought you meant in relation to our listeners. I’m always thinking of others, Tim.

Tim: Luke, it was a leading question and all the female listeners in our audience have just completely switched off …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … or …

Luke: You selfish …

Tim: … finally come across to my side.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: My God.

Luke: Yes, apart … apart from my wife being very pregnant …

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: … and due today …

Tim: Okay. What’s on your mind from a …

Luke: … which is very much on my mind.

Tim: And that is a wonderful thing. And I just saw her and she’s looking large and lovely.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: What is on your mind besides that?

Luke: So if we do … if we do have to interrupt this broadcast, folks …

Tim: It’s because the …

Luke: … I’ll be on my way to hospital.

Tim: Yeah, won’t that be exciting. And I’ll just keep going.

Luke: You’d love that.

Tim: I’ll sit in the backseat with you.

Luke: The episode would go forever …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … if I left you to your own devices, Timbo.

Tim: Wouldn’t it.

Luke: So the other …

Tim: Go on. Go on.

Luke: The other thing that’s on my mind, Timbo …

Tim: Right.

Luke: … relating to our listeners.

Tim: Oh, right, this is serious stuff.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Is that we have thousands of listeners, we’ve got thousands of downloads every month.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: In fact I actually had to change our hosting, we were getting so …

Tim: I know we’ve … I love … I love getting those emails from you where you go …

Luke: We’re about to shut you down.

Tim: Yeah, that’s right.

Luke: So … and we probably hear from, oh, regularly we probably hear from sort of 50, 60 to 100 per month.

Tim: God bless them.

Luke: Now, compared to … compared to the number of listeners we have …

Tim: Right.

Luke: … for me it’s not a significant enough percentage to me.

Tim: Yeah, okay.

Luke: I want to hear from more.

Tim: Oh, Lukey, I think I know where you’re going with this.

Luke: You know …

Tim: You got a bit of something on the liver?

Luke: No, no, not at all.

Tim: With our listeners, with our loyal listeners, you are getting … you’re saying … let me … have I got this right?

Luke: No.

Tim: You …

Luke: You don’t.

Tim: You don’t know what I’m going to say.

Luke: You don’t. I do.

Tim: You’re getting upset because we hear from a beautiful few, 60 to 100, that’s pretty good, you want to hear from more.

Luke: I want to hear from more, yeah. I … look, we love it when we get feedback from … from listeners and we love … also love the questions as well. So please, and I’m talking to you, that’s right.

Tim: Luke’s pointing at the microphone.

Luke: You. Send feedback …

Tim: Oh, Lukey …

Luke: … questions, comments …

Tim: … you’re getting a bit …

Luke: … to questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim: Well they could also go to Facebook.

Luke: Or Facebook, yeah.

Tim: Hey, Facebook.com/SmallBusinessBigMarketing. I sense ego here, Lukey. I sense ego. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it. Do you want just fan mail, would that …

Luke: No.

Tim: … would that appease you?

Luke: No, no.

Tim: What if I sent a letter? What if I used my Send Out Cards account and sent you a greeting card a day just telling you what a wonderful person you are and how much I love your …

Luke: Send Out Cards.

Tim: … your bouffant.

Luke: You’ve always got to plug …

Tim: Here we go. Here we go.

Luke: … one of your little products.

Tim: It’s a marketing show, mate. Okay. So, all right, you want to hear more. Listeners, for God’s sake, help Lukey. We’ll start a foundation, the help Luke Moulton feel loved.org foundation.

Luke: Not at all. Not at all, Timbo.

Tim: All right.

Luke: It’s all …

Tim: So is that all … is that all that’s on your mind? Pregnant wife and want more feedback.

Luke: There are some other things, we’ll probably discuss them in the next show. There’s been some major changes to Facebook which I think is going to impact significantly …

Tim: Oh, Lukey, Facebook does my head in.

Luke: It’s going to make some significant impacts to Pay Per Click advertising and we might try and get on a Facebook expert in the next couple of shows.

Tim: Well if you can find one, good luck. Because everyone I speak to about Facebook loves it but loathes it. It’s hard work.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: It’s not intuitive. I sent a Tweet out only a couple of days ago saying I wished Apple owned Facebook because it would make for a much more intuitive beautifully designed system that knew exactly what you wanted.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: I just don’t get Facebook. But anyway, that said, our Facebook page for the show has been successful and continues to be successful. If you haven’t seen the video that we’ve uploaded, have a look at it. Because Luke’s cheeks are a rather bright shade of red, would you say?

Luke: Fairly (6:28).

Tim: Fairly (6:29). Hey, Lukey, I want to launch the Small Business Big Marketing Intensive.

Luke: Du, du, du, du.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, correct, correct.

Luke: Or is that … or is that applause?

Tim: No, no, no, no, this is exciting stuff.

Luke: Tim …

Tim: Despite the fact that we don’t sound, we don’t want to build this up to be bigger than it is, I think we should under promise and …

Luke: And over …

Tim: … under deliver.

Luke: No, come on, Timbo, you’ve been …

Tim: Okay. Okay.

Luke: You’ve been working long and hard on this. Tell us about the Intensive.

Tim: Mate, I have been working my proverbial ring off to bring this Intensive to life, excuse me iTunes, please don’t make that explicit. But the Small Business Big Marketing Intensive is happening in August, it’s happening at the Caulfield Racecourse in Melbourne, it’s a two day event, led … hosted by myself. Luke’s going to make a guest appearance. He wanted it to be sort of a bit more celebrity like where, you know, he walks into the room at some point and everyone goes, “Oh, that’s Luke,” whereas I’m there for the whole two days.

Luke: Have you booked me that limo yet, Timbo?

Tim: No, but you do have the green room with the white roses so …

Luke: Sweet.

Tim: … everything should be good. And the red … what did you want, the red M&Ms?

Luke: M&Ms, yep.

Tim: But, mate, Small Business Big Marketing Intensive, two days, it’s a Friday and a Saturday. The date will be on the website by the time you listen to this. It’s in August. It’s Caulfield Racecourse. We are going to share seven marketing communications concepts that the big brand marketers don’t want you to know, Lukey. We are going to share how to get your message right, we’re going to cover the brand character process that we tell every small business owner to do. What else have we got, mate?

Luke: how to build a strong healthy brand, the secret to making advertising work.

Tim: How funny, given who we’re about to interview.

Luke: Yeah, indeed.

Tim: Love this one, seven productivity tools.

Luke: Yeah, fantastic.

Tim: To make you do … or help you do more marketing with less. We’re going to cover every social media channel that you must be on, well not must be on. But like these are the ones you should be on and why.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And how to do it.

Luke: And probably not as many as you think.

Tim: No, correct, correct.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Copywriting, we are going to go through a no brainer copywriting process that gets you writing.

Luke: Brilliant. I think it’s …

Tim: Selling copy.

Luke: … one of the hardest things to do well.

Tim: Agreed. Agreed. What have you got? What else have you got?

Luke: What else have we got? We’ve got …

Tim: What are you going to cover?

Luke: How to get to the top of Google.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, well … that … what it means to be online is what you’re going to cover, Luke.

Luke: Correct.

Tim: And it’s not just about having a website but all the things that lead to people getting to your website and acting on your offers.

Luke: Anyway, listeners, there are …

Tim: There is …

Luke: … lots lots more.

Tim: Mate.

Luke: And how do they find out about …

Tim: Lukey.

Luke: … the Intensive, Timbo?

Tim: They go to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and click on the Intensive button. There are none less than … actually there’s only 50 seats. First and foremost, here’s two numbers to keep in mind. There are 50 seats available and, God willing, they will sell very fast. The other number to keep in mind is that you will receive 11 bonuses …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … by signing up as a member for the two days of the academy. And these aren’t just silly little bonuses, Lukey, there’s some really good stuff there. Some genuinely … put it this way, if you applied some of the marketing ideas that are in the free bonuses alone, I would say you’d get your money back for attending the two day Intensive.

Luke: I’ve seen the …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … bonuses, Timbo, and I’d certainly agree with that.

Tim: Good on you, mate. Well, listen, enough of that. Listeners, don’t delay, go to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com, click on the academy … not the academy button, we’ll call it the Intensive button, because it is called the Intensive, and sign up. Because there’s a really good early bird discount, a significant early bird discount.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Enough, Lukey. Who are we interviewing?

Luke: We’re actually interviewing a mate of yours, Timbo.

Tim: Well that sounds a bit (10:14) doesn’t it?

Luke: Russel Howcroft.

Tim: Russel Howcroft. Mr Advertising of Australia.

Luke: Yes, indeed.

Tim: Panel member of …

Luke: Gruen Transfer.

Tim: … The Gruen Transfer on the ABC.

Luke: Been a very very popular series here in Australia.

Tim: Russ has got a fairly, what would you say, opinionated voice on advertising?

Luke: Yeah, he’s fairly confident about … about advertising and what it can do for business.

Tim: Basically Russ is …

Luke: Which is …

Tim: Russ would say advertise even if you don’t have a business. You know, just …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: If you’re a stay at home mum, advertise. If you’re unemployed, advertise.

Luke: Which certainly makes this interview interesting because it’s certainly poles apart from your view on advertising, Timbo.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, I had a bit of a different view on advertising. I see too many business owners bleed as a result of spending money hand over fist.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because they feel as though, you know, their competitor will take their position in the Yellow Pages or because some sales rep has done the job on them. But the fact is advertising is a … is a very very … it contains a larger portion … large portion of the marketing pie. I would argue it’s shrinking. But then again advertising is quite broad. I mean, we’re talking online, offline.

Luke: Yeah. I think it’s … it’s moving and changing but …

Tim: Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: But it is, I reckon it’s a sore point when you talk about it to a small business owner as a marketing tool. I think there are … the opportunity cost that relates to advertising is high. The things that you could do with the money but you are spending it on advertising are significant.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So we started off by asking Russ.

Luke: For a little bit of background.

Tim: Little bit of where’d your career take you from the early days.

Luke: Where’s he come …

Tim: Where’s he come from.

Luke: Yeah, where’s he come from.

Tim: Which side of the street? Which side of the river?

Luke: So let’s get over to Russel.

Tim: Over to Russ.

Russel: I actually had a job whilst I was at university, Tim.

Tim: Oh, here we go.

Russel: Yes.

Tim: Here we go.

Russel: I was working at McCann-Erickson.

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: And …

Tim: Running it?

Russel: Not yet. And I finished my degree whilst at McCann-Erickson and I went overseas, went to London, worked there until sort of 93, 94, came back, went to a big agency called George Patterson, decided I knew more than they did, started my own agency, that became Brand House. And had some wins actually.

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: Had some good wins.

Tim: So that was really your … that was your entree into small business. Because as you know this show is called Small Business Big Marketing and …

Russel: That’s right.

Tim: And Brand House as your entree into small business wasn’t it?

Russel: That’s right. And I both … I both loved it and hated it too, Tim.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: I … I loved it because it was all down to us.

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: And hated it because it was difficult without the resource that, you know, you were used to, having been trained at big agencies. And it … but it also made you understand the importance of a dollar.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: And, you know, they’re hard to get and they’re hard to keep.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: And working on that was a really important part I reckon of learning more about being in business.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: And, yeah, I reckon we did punch above our weight because I think that those of us that … those of us that decided that was what we were going to do, we … we like the challenge, you know, we like the …

Tim: And how did you do that? I mean, I’ve got a view on that because I worked there with you but how did you … punching above your weight is a great strategy for a small business.

Russel: Yep.

Tim: How to actually do it is another thing. What do you think led to Brand House punching above their weight?

Russel: Just a blind self belief.

Tim: You don’t lack that, Russ.

Russel: I think that that might be really … I think that had a huge part of it. I think there was, you know, if a pitch came up in the market for a, you know, a blue chip mainstream big agency piece of business I saw no reason in the world why we shouldn’t try and … and why we shouldn’t win it.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: And I actually do now think that that was more blind than strategic.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: And more passion than planning. But, but we did win a few, you know, and we did take them on. And I think the clients saw that we were genuine. I think the clients saw that we genuinely wanted to help them.

Tim: Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: You’re a very considered person, correct?

Luke: I consider myself considered.

Tim: Very good. Well hearing Russel speak, how did that sit with you?

Luke: I think … I think passion …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … is a very important part of small … of being a small business, Timbo.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: You’ve got to be passionate about what you do.

Tim: But? Where’s the but?

Luke: No but.

Tim: Oh, come on. You … because that’s quite emotional stuff. I know Russel for a fact he’s an emotional marketer, a bit like me.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You know, loves the big idea and loves getting in there and engaging the customer, the client. Do you like that? Because there are two types of people in that kind of … in the marketing field, there’s the emotional and the rational and I just think you’re a more considered person and I was interested in your view on what Russel was saying or the feeling that you had when Russel was talking about running business that way.

Luke: Well contrary to your belief, Timbo, I … certainly took me back to the days when I was running my own web development agency.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And going to meet a client and sincerely believing that we were one of the best in the business …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … at that particular stage.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So I can certainly relate to it.

Tim: Okay, well that’s good. Because I thought it would have been … I thought it would have jarred more with you because you’re kind of … you are more rational. But I do remember you back in those days and it is, it’s like as a small business owner, this is the thing, you know, I think many companies don’t … many of the big companies don’t employ enough of the smaller companies to do their work. And I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s because like we’ve got to employ a company that matches the size that we are, you know.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: But the fact is that surely the smaller guys like you and I and the small businesses are going to be much more passionate.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Much more skin in the game.

Luke: Yeah, indeed.

Tim: You know, you’re going to deal with the owner and you’re going to … the owner is going to … all the owner wants to do is see your business grow. Because if your business grows, his business, or her business, grows.

Luke: Correct.

Tim: Fascinating.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Back to Russ.

Luke: What was it about you, Russel, that won you the business, do you think?

Tim: Oh, geez, de you mean you as in Russel or you as in his business?

Luke: A bit of both.

Tim: Yeah. Russ?

Russel: Well I think that we wanted to help them be more successful. I … and I sincerely think that’s the case.

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: And whether that’s a big or a small agency I think those that succeed are believed … the client believes that you want them to do better and … and I’m, I think, honestly, I think I’ve always been like that. I think that sometimes I might get it wrong because I get frustrated when they don’t listen and I think that I’m right.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: And that can cause problems. But it’s coming from an honest point of view. I don’t bullshit, I really don’t believe I bullshit them. They might even think I’m trying to but I really don’t believe I do. I suppose I just believe my own bullshit, I don’t know.

Tim: I’m glad you said that, Russ. Hey, listen, mate, you are here on Small Business Big Marketing today to defend …

Russel: Right.

Tim: … your industry.

Russel: How exciting.

Tim: Isn’t it?

Russel: That’s good news.

Tim: Isn’t it? Can you do it?

Russel: Thank you. Of course I fucking can.

Luke: Geez, we … we’re going to get that explicit rating on iTunes again, Timbo.

Tim: Love it.

Russel: No, I thank you for the invitation.

Tim: Well our pleasure. I’ve spoken to you previously and indicated that our listening audience globally are small business owners …

Russel: Yep.

Tim: … who are working their rings off to generate a buck …

Russel: Yep.

Tim: … to generate awareness and it’s not uncommon to hear them say that advertising is one of those things that they begrudgingly feel they have to do.

Russel: Yeah.

Tim: They can’t measure it, it costs them a bomb.

Russel: Yeah.

Tim: They feel as though they have to do it often or not at all. I, and I know Luke does as well to a lesser extent, pretty much say don’t advertise unless you get a whole lot of variables right. What have you got to say?

Russel: Well I always … when I think about advertising and should you bother, I actually always think about selling my bicycle when I was about 12. And … and, you know, my old man said, “Do an ad in the classifieds,” and it was obviously the Trading Post at the time.

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: Which is a bit like The Castle.

Tim: How old are you?

Russel: Forty-four. Yeah. Anyway, so I put an ad in the Trading Post and I sold my bicycle. And when I was 19, 20, I needed to fund going overseas and I put an ad in The Age and I sold my car. And we all know that, you know, when you want … when you need to sell something you’ve got to tell people that it’s up for sale. And the way you do that is via advertising. I mean, all advertising is is matching buyers with sellers or sellers with buyers, that’s all it is. And at its purest form it was the classifieds but as its purest form it’s now eBay and Google AdWords. That’s really absolute pure advertising with very little wastage, especially these days with the online world, very little wastage, very very low cost method to get you a sale. Because if you’ve got something to sell how else do you tell people that it’s available? And one of the things which I reckon is completely underestimated is just how cheap advertising is.

Tim: Oh, Russ, come on, mate. Come on, mate. Really?

Russel: Yeah, absolutely.

Luke: Which medium are we talking about?

Russel: All. All mediums. All mediums.

Tim: You mean like buying a piece of … buying a piece of chalk and scribbling on the footpath?

Russel: That’s cheap, yes. Or sticking …

Luke: Or are we talking Super Bowl?

Russel: … getting … getting an A4 … getting an A4 piece of paper, writing, “For sale,” and sticking it in your car window and putting it beside the road.

Tim: Right.

Russel: That’s just nice … that’s just a good bit of outdoor advertising.

Tim: Russ, give us … our listeners are just about to switch off, you’d better just bring them back a little bit. Just give us the …

Russel: It is cheap.

Tim: Give us the cheap advertising spiel.

Russel: Well one of the things that isn’t used as much as it used to be, so if we all think TV when we think about advertising, right? Now, when we started in the business, Tim …

Tim: Or newspapers.

Russel: Yeah, okay, but let’s do … TV is probably the example I can use best.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: We always used to talk about cost per thousand. Cost per thousand has actually lost its meaning. That is, the cost, i.e. how much it costs you to get 1000 people to see your piece of advertising. And the cost per thousand was always in the, you know, from a per person perspective in the cents, it’s cheaper to advertise than it is to send them a personal letter. It’s always … like your cost per thousand to be on TV is like five cents or even less, you know?

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: So you can get enormous efficiency. That’s if you’re a mass marketer which is something which requires mass numbers.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: Yeah. And as I was saying, it just matches buyers and sellers on a mass scale. You know, the fact is advertising does work and as you know …

Tim: Hey …

Russel: … full well …

Tim: Hey Russ?

Russel: … it works extremely well.

Tim: Russ?

Russel: Timothy.

Tim: Thank you, Russel. Russel, one word, wastage.

Russel: There is huge wastage.

Tim: Massive.

Russel: But that’s … that’s 100% true. But ultimately the … ultimately it’s all about return on investment. So you do … you will run advertising that is seen by people who have got no interest in what your product is.

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: You just hope that there is enough people seeing it who have got interest who go and buy it that means that you get a return on your investment.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: So …

Russel: Now, one of the big problems that we’ve got in the … the industry has …

Tim: Yep.

Russel: … is that … is that people are advised that their advertising budget needs to be a percentage of their sales. This is … this is absolute horseshit.

Tim: Right. Just …

Russel: Your …

Tim: Hang on. iTunes just add an explicit, don’t even listen to it. Keep going, Russ.

Russel: Your advertising needs to be a variable expense. It shouldn’t be a fixed expense. It’s fixed according to the sales line. You should … you need to find a level which is right and you need to go and go and go and go harder and go harder and go harder. Because it works and it grows your top line. So why wouldn’t you keep doing it? It’s one of the most extraordinary decisions is that advertising … like …

Tim: You’re almost … hey, Russ, you’re almost convincing me I should be advertising.

Russel: Yeah, so if advertising … if advertising works …

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: … why am I spending less?

Tim: I don’t know. Why are you? Luke. Luke, what you got, Lukey?

Luke: Russel, so how do you measure the success of a campaign?

Russel: Sales. It’s the only thing that matters. Yeah, you’ve got to treat the … you’ve got to treat the advertising expenditure the same as you would treat your distribution expenditure or your … or the price of your ingredients. An ad is just another ingredient in your product that you’re trying to sell. Yeah. And it’s all about getting sales. And if you don’t get sales, don’t believe advertising people that say, “Oh, it’s about brand awareness.” Or it’s about making your brand more liked or more loved or it’s about changing these perceptions. That really … that is I think having your hand on it a little. It’s more … it is ultimately about making your business more successful. Why would you spend money otherwise?

Tim: Correct. Correct. And I think that’s one of the things which our listeners struggle with is that, yeah, sure, sales is everything, that’s the bottom line. Russ, in your world of advertising at the very high end, your clients, the advertisers, have people to write their copy, to decide who takes the pictures, where the pictures go, where the … who buys the media, what media, every single variable that our listeners have to control when they advertise, your clients have controlled for them.

Russel: Yep.

Tim: So what do you say to the small bloke who’s being badgered by the sales rep from the local newspaper or from the local radio station or whatever it is, who I would say to him, “Mate, just don’t do it. There’s easier ways to get a sale” …

Russel: Yep.

Tim: … what would you say to him or her?

Russel: Well I think unless you’re going to commit to it forever, don’t commit to it. There’s a great … there’s a really wonderful … the Cadbury Schweppes marketing director said to me, his definition of a brand … or in effect his definition of a successful business is it’s about eternity … sorry, it’s about certainty of cash flow into eternity. And the reason why you look after a business via advertising it is to ensure you’ve got cash flow into eternity. So the big, yeah, the big sophisticated advertisers, they know that it’s a never ending thing that they do, yeah. That’s why they employ advertising agencies. It’s not like a spasmodic, “Oh, let’s just give it a crack and see how we go.” It is, “I’m doing this forever and I’m never going to stop because this is part of the price of being in business.” So I would apply the same thinking to small business and medium enterprises. You only do it if you are fair dinkum about doing it forever. You don’t do it if you think, “Right, I’ll just whack it out there and see how I go,” because you are bound to be disappointed.

Luke: And where would you suggest that they start?

Tim: Start what?

Russel: Well I mean it depends on the …

Luke: Start advertising.

Tim: Oh.

Russel: Well it depends on the size of the business and what you’re trying to sell. But the great thing these days is of course is online and what you can do online. You know, I have been involved with two small businesses which we’ve in effect created just doing AdWords on Google. I mean …

Tim: What are the businesses, Russ?

Russel: One’s a carbon trading business.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: And we’ve got … we’ve got a global client base purely on the basis of putting ads on Google. And the other one is a business called Allergy Station which is providing primary schools, in the main, with the spot that … the place within the primary school that is branded where the kids’ drugs go who’ve got …

Tim: Oh, yeah.

Russel: … you know, high allergies, yeah.

Tim: Is this something you, you Russel started or George Patterson?

Russel: No, Kate. Kate did that one. No …

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: No, my wife did that one.

Tim: Wife Kate.

Russel: Yep. And …

Tim: Mrs H?

Russel: Mrs H. And I …

Tim: How is Mrs H?

Russel: She’s extremely well, Tim.

Tim: Is she? Is she?

Russel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great.

Tim: She sounds like she’s busy.

Russel: She’s doing Allergy Station. And the amazing thing about that is when you go … you go through the exercise …

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: … of selling your … I’m sure you’ve done this yourself, Tim, but do an ad on Facebook …

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: … to describe the marketplace that you’re after, right before your eyes it actually tells you how many people in the Facebook world are interested in that subject.

Tim: Correct, yeah, yeah.

Russel: And it, you know, and it tells you by country. In the USA there are 35,000 people on Facebook that are interested in peanut allergies.

Tim: Yeah, it’s brilliant, isn’t it?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: That’s …

Russel: Yeah.

Tim: That’s targeted stuff. Now you’re talking about, you know, advertising of the future. Do you think advertising in its … in the form as we talk about advertising, your above the line stuff, Russ, your press, your TV, your print, your outdoor, is it dead? Is it dying?

Russel: No. No. Because you need to … you do need to create mass demand. I think interestingly outdoor … outdoor more and more is going to become a mass medium, a mass demand medium. It was … it has been traditionally treated as almost third tier. I think it’s going to increasingly become first tier and take … I think it will take a bigger share of advertising spend. Other people don’t have that same forecast but I do believe that’s the case. I still think … I mean, TV is still the most powerful medium in the market. You know, TV …

Tim: What are stations doing to attract small businesses, if anything? I think channel … wasn’t the Nine Network at some point offering very reasonable packages for small businesses?

Russel: Yes. Yeah, they do. And as all that fragments, so as there’s more and more channels …

Tim: Yep.

Russel: … and each of those channels become more and more discreet with regard to their audience, then there’ll be more and more opportunities for small business to use TV. And they should use TV. If they can find a cheaper way to make the ad they should … they should do that. I mean, and again, look, radio has always been a brilliant brilliant brilliant medium for medium … for medium size businesses. I mean, Peter the Possum Man, for Christ sake.

Tim: Isn’t he, yeah, yeah.

Russel: You know?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And Terry the Tree Topper.

Luke: Chris and Marie.

Russel: You know …

Tim: Chris and Marie.

Russel: Chris and Marie.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: You know, I mean, these are amazing businesses that have …

Tim: Russ, the average creative person would cringe at having to generate a script for Peter the Possum Man or if someone …

Russel: I’m Peter the Possum Man.

Tim: You have got a lovely old note, you’re right on note, Russ. But wouldn’t they? I mean, really, I mean, anyone who … any … any creative who writes the kinds of scripts that are being generated for the bigger agencies are going to laugh …

Russel: Yep.

Tim: … at an idea like Chris and Marie or Peter the Possum Man. And for our overseas listeners, just Google them, because we can’t even explain them.

Russel: Well they … yeah, well that’s right. But it’s just different tiers of advertising. There’s different … I mean, part of the promise of Peter the Possum Man is the fact that it’s cheap advertising and therefore they’ll know that they’ll get a good price for, you know, when they do the transaction.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So what … Peter the Possum Man, for example, what is he looking at for a TV advertising campaign? How many …

Russel: Well he wouldn’t do the telly. He does radio.

Tim: He does radio.

Russel: And we would … look, I don’t know, he probably invests, shit, he’d invest a few thousand a week maybe.

Tim: Oh, Lukey, just a lazy few thousand a week.

Luke: Mmm, it’s a fair bit, isn’t it, Timbo?

Tim: Well it’s where we take issue, my friend, with advertising.

Luke: Here is where we take issue with advertising. Now, look, for this kind of service, Peter the Possum Man, for example, he is basically … it’s when you’ve got a possum stuck in your roof …

Tim: In the roof.

Luke: … that you want Peter the Possum Man. Not when you …

Tim: Time to act.

Luke: Not when you’re listening to the radio and driving in the car. Now, if you’ve got a possum stuck in your roof …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … what’ the first thing you do?

Tim: I’d get the broom and bang on the ceiling. And then from …

Luke: And just for our international listeners, US, for example, picture a racoon.

Tim: A racoon.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Rocky racoon.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Squirrel.

Luke: Squirrel.

Tim: Squirrel.

Luke: Yeah. So I would … I would go …

Tim: Go to Google.

Luke: Go to Google and go …

Tim: You would go to Google.

Luke: I would go possum catcher in …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: In my case, our case, Mornington Peninsula.

Tim: I think the … where we take … where we get a bit cross with the whole advertising thing is that this mass thing can just be full of wastage.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: If an advertiser, if a small business owner is willing to really roll up their sleeves and identify advertising opportunities that are very … so very close to the purchase decision, and I don’t just mean geographically but when the need arises, you know, where are you when the need arises and what advertising is close by? So, for example, the possum thing is about, you know, you’d go straight to Google.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You would hope, and we haven’t looked, but you’d hope that Peter the Possum Man was spending bucket loads on Google, yeah.

Luke: Yep. He may well do.

Tim: You’d hope he was spending bucket loads in the local paper.

Luke: Yep, indeed.

Tim: But … but the idea of mass media, I call it lazy media.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because what you do is you create a message and then you just pay heaps of money to get it out.

Luke: Spread it.

Tim: To spread the word.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And hope, hope, that someone will listen and buy from you. Whereas I think if you’re willing to roll up the sleeves, a bit of sweat and tears and blood and all that stuff and you will get a better result.

Luke: Yeah. I don’t think it’s even that hard, Timbo.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Make it sound harder than it is.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Back to Russo.

Russel: But, you know, he’s getting … he would be getting big audience numbers. And here’s an example of just that consistency, you know, week in week out there he is.

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: So, I mean, you know, whenever you have a …

Tim: But that’s thing isn’t it, you’ve got to be there.

Russel: I think so. I genuinely believe you commit to it and you commit to it forever or you just find another model, you know. Like advertising may not be the appropriate model for your business, there may be something else that you do. Public relations plays more and more an important role.

Tim: Yep.

Russel: But we shouldn’t forget the public relations only exists because the media exists and the only reason media exists is because people spend money on it in advertising.

Tim: Hey, Russ?

Russel: So you’ve … yes?

Tim: You’ve won the award for talking the most on our show. I have had that award every episode to date.

Luke: Indeed, yep.

Tim: I’m a little bit upset about it. I expected it but you’ve given us some gold, mate. We didn’t finish on actually who you were. Right now you’re running George Patterson Y&R around Australia, or are you now running the world?

Russel: No, well I’m running this part of the world. I’ve got …

Tim: This part of the world.

Russel: … New Zealand.

Tim: Well how far ..

Russel: New Zealand and Australia.

Tim: How far off till you run the world? Or can’t you say?

Russel: It’s very … no, no, no. I love being here, it’s great business, it’s a good brand and I …

Tim: And …

Russel: I don’t know. Can you run the world from Melbourne?

Tim: You can run it from anywhere, mate.

Luke: Yeah, of course you can.

Tim: You could run it from your home, I have no doubt. Russ, Gruen Transfer, what’s … is Gruen Transfer coming back on this year?

Russel: It’ll be back on in June, Tim. Thank you for asking. And there’s going to be a few more shows this year as well. It’s going to be … well hopefully as successful. Because it was a bloody surprise to all of us how successful it’s been.

Luke: Oh, it was absolutely brilliant.

Russel: Yeah.

Tim: What was the … what … once again, overseas listeners, you’ll have to Google it, The Gruen Transfer in a sentence, Russ, is what?

Russel: It is a critical … a critical TV show on the world of advertising.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: Yeah. And it’s brilliant.

Russel: Maybe with a bit of humour thrown in.

Tim: Are you the good guy or the bad guy?

Russel: It depends on your point of view, doesn’t it?

Tim: Correct. Correct.

Russel: I think I … I defend advertising.

Tim: All right, mate, you’ve done it beautifully. I’m nearly … I may well go home and buy an ad just for the sake of it, having listened to you. Russel, you’re a gem as always.

Russel: Thanks.

Tim: And I look forward to seeing you at the football at some time this year.

Luke: Thanks Russel.

Russel: Oh, go …

Tim: Go Hawks.

Russel: Thank you very much for thinking of me. Seeya boys.

Tim: Bye, mate.

Luke: Cheers, bye.

Russel: Bye bye.

Tim: Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: That is an interview I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

Luke: Yeah, it was good.

Tim: Not only talk to Russ but get the whole advertising thing out on the table for all to see and it is done. So, listeners …

Luke: There it is.

Tim: … I hope you got a bit of gold from that. Because hopefully it puts it into perspective. Hey, Lukey, we’ve been having a … we’re about to have a bit of fun with this website called fiverr.com.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Where people from all over the world list things that they would do for five bucks.

Luke: For a fiver.

Tim: For a fiver. However, it’s actually not five bucks because the website takes a dollar. So it’s four bucks.

Luke: Four.

Tim: So we are over the course of the next week identifying people to do things that will help us promote Small Business Big Marketing.

Luke: Now, Timbo, I know I’ve done something. What have you done so far?

Tim: Have you really?

Luke: Yeah, I have, yep.

Tim: I got this guy Idiosyncratic, I don’t know what his real name is, but he’s written a song and sung it to a guitar solo all about Small Business Big Marketing.

Luke: All for five dollars. Anyway, we’re going to drop that in at the end of the show.

Tim: Yep, correct.

Luke: So you’re going to listen to that later.

Tim: So instead of the normal outro to the show, listeners, just hang on and have a listen to this, one of the lines is, “Luke is small and Tim is a giant.” So …

Luke: Well, you know, can’t argue with that really, can you?

Tim: Love it. No, that’s true.

Luke: Well actually I had someone Tweet about Small Business Big Marketing to his 20,000 followers in the States.

Tim: Wow.

Luke: And strangely enough, and I didn’t know this before I …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … I employed him for $5.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: He’s a marketer. So I’m hoping that he had …

Tim: Sweet.

Luke: … fairly relevant listeners.

Tim: I’m happy with that.

Luke: Yeah, I was pretty happy with that. And he didn’t just do it once either, and, Will, if you’re listening, thanks very much. He actually tweeted it three times.

Tim: Oh, God bless him. Well how do we know it worked?

Luke: Yeah, well that’s … that’s probably the tricky part. I probably should have setup some sort of tracking …

Tim: Oh, well.

Luke: … link. But anyway.

Tim: Actually the other thing I have done is I got a guy to list Small Business Big Marketing on about 150 directories.

Luke: Nice one.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. Which I guess from a search engine optimisation may direct us … may generate a bit of traffic back to us.

Luke: Now, next one, Timbo, is questions.

Tim: Lukey, we have a listener question. I know that we are running at the moment, 36 minutes. We’ll make it a 40 minute show because we have a listener question from Martin Leow who, this question brings a tear to my eye, Luke.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Martin’s in a bit of strife here with his business and he’s looking for a bit of marketing guidance. So I really hope we can bring it to him. First he says, “I love your show and blah blah. I was wondering I’ve … if I could have your thoughts on this. I’m running a small creative design studio in Sydney and recently sales have gone down, way down in fact, and I think I have only a couple of months left before I decide to shut down.” I don’t like that.

Luke: A tough one, isn’t it?

Tim: Yeah, it is. “One of my major clients is slowly slipping away and I feel the relationship I have with them since they hired a new marketing manager is getting weaker.” I have seen this before.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: This is all about relationships.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Martin could be doing the best work in the world, Lukey, I don’t know, because he hasn’t given us his website.

Luke: Nah.

Tim: If he had of, we would have plugged it.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Martin, mistake number one. However, this is a … it is a tough one. He has a couple of questions specifically. “What can I do to get the relationship back from the major client? I’ve tried ringing, meeting him for coffee, still no improvement.” Gee, that’s a hard one, you know.

Luke: It is.

Tim: It’s almost down to personalities, you know?

Luke: Yeah. And also when a marketing manager comes into a business they want to mark … they want to stamp their authority and quite often …

Tim: Which is wrong.

Luke: Which is wrong. And quite often they’ll try and get in people that they’ve dealt with before.

Tim: Yep. Who they feel comfortable with, confident with.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: It’s wrong and it’s right. I can understand why they do it. But I think they should first and foremost, the new marketing managers, have the business in the mind as opposed to …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … relationships that they want to bring across from old … old business that they’ve worked in.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: So it is a tough one. It’s about, you know, you can only do so much, Martin, and don’t take it personally that he’s not returning calls or doing that because clearly he’s got his own agendas and … and now, his second question is, “How can I get more new clients in without spending a fortune on marketing?” I had a bit of a chuckle at this one, Lukey, and I know you did too. He has little or no budgeting for marketing. You’re doing it, Martin, you’re listening to Small Business Big Marketing, mate.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Apply some of the stuff that our interviewees share. You’ve bought our book, you’re enjoying that. Start applying ideas. Every small business needs to have so many marketing initiatives in the air at one time.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You know. It’s just like that.

Luke: Indeed. And he also goes on to mention about joining a …

Tim: BNI.

Luke: B …

Tim: BNI he says.

Luke: BNI.

Tim: Business Networking International.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Eight hundred bucks a year. I wouldn’t.

Luke: No.

Tim: Not right now.

Luke: There’s plenty of other networking opportunities …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … I’m sure you can find in your local area where you’ll be able to meet other small businesses.

Tim: You know what he’ll do, he’ll put the 800 bucks into BNI and then put the pressure on BNI to deliver.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And it won’t.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because he’s kind of forcing it. What I reckon he should do is get out there, go to the Chamber of Commerce … the old Chamber of Commerce meetings, identify the good ones, add value at them, don’t just go to swap business cards, but maybe add value to them by giving a talk or giving … sharing some ideas.

Luke: Giving a talk on branding, for example.

Tim: Branding, absolutely.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But really, Martin, social media. I don’t know what social media you’re in, mate, but if you’ve got no budget, social media is the cheapest form of marketing around.

Luke: Yeah. Another one on networking as well, check … check out meetup.com.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: meetup.com …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … is another good one to find …

Tim: Why did you say that twice?

Luke: Just to enunciate.

Tim: It’s not meetup.com.meetup.com, just enunciation. Okay. There is a lot you can do. Listen to … Luke just stuck his finger at me, listeners. There’s a lot you can do, Martin. Don’t despair. Just work hard, mate. Make those two months the best two months of your business career in terms of marketing and making things work for you because, you know, it’s the small business owner who does roll up the sleeve and really have a crack …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … that will win in the end, I do believe.

Luke: And if there’s anyone in the Sydney region.

Tim: Sydney region.

Luke: That needs a designer.

Tim: Oh, that’s nice.

Luke: We’ll …

Tim: Email us.

Luke: Yep, we’ll hook you up.

Tim: And we’ll hook you up.

Luke: questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com. Now, Timbo, finally, last thing, reminder on?

Tim: Mate, that is it, listeners, please go to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and register for our very very first Intensive. It’s going to be fantastic. And if you want to get more of what you listen to then these two days will be the best two days you’ll ever ever spend in terms of your marketing.

Luke: Indeed. Thanks, guys, you’ve been listening to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and we’re going to take it away with the Science, I think they’re called.

Tim: And we are, Lukey. Well, no, it’s not the Science. That was another band that we …

Luke: Oh, okay.

Tim: … that we tried to get. But, hey, Lukey, next time …

Luke: Yes?

Tim: … you might be a father.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Love that. You forgot again. Here’s the little song that we had done on fiverr. Seeya.

Luke: Seeya.

(Song playing.)

End of Podcast.

Lovingly transcribed by The Transcription People

SBBM #21: Finding Balance and Passion in Your Small Business

Luke — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:06:35 +0000

Let’s see..Australian Ski team Olympic Coach…turned feature film script writer…turned highly balanced individual who now shares his secrets to living your passion and maintaining a work / life balance with the world. Our guest, Chip Richards, may just be Australia’s answer to Depak Chopra meets Tony Robbins. He certainly leaves Lukeee and I speechless at one point…wait until you hear the silence! A silence that’s never been heard before on SBBM! So, if one of the major problems in your small business is deciding which 80-hours to work, then Chip may just have the answer you’ve been looking for. Now get comfortable, breathe nice and deeply and …….

Duration: 28 minutes

Congratulations to the following listeners who left a written review of the show on iTunes and subsequently won Kody Bateman’s book (episode 18) ‘Promptings’. They are:

Michael R
Damo86
Adam Degiorgio
Ljjl69
Mining Man

Just send us an email to questions@smallbusinessbigmarketing.com identifying yourself with a postal address and we’ll send it on.

Show notes

Chip Richards is a personal, professional and creative coach and speaker, specialising in helping individuals and organisations see new possibilities and strike the balance between high achievement and true fulfillment in work and life. He can be reached at chiprichards@mac.com or +61 405 442 144.

SBBM #20 – How to get your small business on national TV…For free

Tim — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:43:52 +0000

Oh yeahhhh…this interview with Steve Sammartino from Rentoid is marketing G O L D . This guy’s a freak…not only has he founded a great little idea and brought it to life all by himself…he’s managed to get national TV coverage to boot….for F R E E . Who wouldn’t want a bit of that action. Steve’s got lots of other great marketing tips and tricks…all of which require a bit of marketing elbow grease than they do large wads of cash. You’ll also be privy to Lukee’s new marketing term…the PR rabbit burrow….Marketing gold? Or marketing comedy? You decide.

Duration : 37:30

Links we share:

Rentoid (Steve’s business)

Fiverr (The place where people share what they’re willing to do for $5)

The Transcription People (They transcribe all our shows for your consumption)

Help A Reporter (Free global publicity opportunities)

Source Bottle (Free national publicity opportunities)

Our Facebook (Check out Tim and a couple famous fellas in their undies!)

SBBM #19 – Guerrilla Marketing, Blogging & Building Credibility

Luke — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:05:51 +0000

In Episode 19 of Small Business Big Marketing, Tim and Luke catch up for a chat about Guerrilla marketing, blogging and creating credibility. Tim tells us about his couple of days at the Tedx talks, a Selling from Stage seminar and networking success, while Luke shares his recent blogging strategies and Guerrilla marketing techniques.

Duration: 30 minutes

Show Notes

Shift Speaker Training (Jo’s website)
TED Talks
SourceBottle.com.au (Tim suggested this was .com but it is actually an Australian websites)

Podcast Transcription

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey.

Luke: How are you, Timbo?

Tim: Mate, isn’t it great to be back?

Luke: It sure is. It feels like it’s been a while.

Tim: It has. Welcome back, listeners, to Small Business Big Marketing where we simplify marketing, I think, Luke.

Luke: Yes, we do.

Tim: We used to say demystify. I like simplify.

Luke: Yeah, definitely.

Tim: Because we’re simple blokes.

Luke: We are. Simple blokes, simple needs.

Tim: One simpler than the other.

Luke: Let’s not say who. Timbo, what have you been up to?

Tim: Mate, lots, lots. This is a show, listeners, before we get stuck in, today’s show is all about a bit of a rambling between Lukey and myself as opposed to listening to someone who’s actually got something really intelligent to say about small business marketing.

Luke: Yeah. We’re not in the studio today but we do have some exciting guests coming up in a couple of weeks’ time.

Tim: Correct. Can we say where we are?

Luke: We can, yeah. We’re just at my …

Tim: Luke …

Luke: My home.

Tim: Your kitchen.

Luke: My kitchen, that’s right.

Tim: Which is kind of cool, you know, because … I mean, we are lucky enough to do this show normally in a studio.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But I was presenting at a conference yesterday and was talking … telling people about podcasting as a marketing tool and the fact is, you know, like here we are, we are in a kitchen, on the bench, being able to …

Luke: Got a laptop and a microphone.

Tim: A lappy and a mic.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You know, and a stopwatch to stop me from rattling on too much.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: But that’s the thing, you know, like small business owners, listeners around the world, you can do it.

Luke: That’s right.

Tim: You can have your own show.

Luke: It’s all … it’s just all about consistency and getting something out there.

Tim: Hey, Lukey?

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: Went to TED last week.

Luke: TED in Sydney, how did it go?

Tim: TEDx they call it.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Which is not the pornographic version of TED, it’s just the light version of TED. So for listeners who don’t know what TED is, I think TED stands for, and I’m going to get this wrong, something like Technology, Environment and Design.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: If you haven’t been to ted.com, listeners, go. It’s just full of great interviews from people around the world. Their tagline is ideas worth sharing.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And basically each listener gets 20 minutes on the TED stage, which is apparently an absolute privilege to be on the TED stage. They only happen in Oxford and Cupertino, or somewhere like that. They did a live version in Darling Harbour last week. But you basically hear people talk about an idea.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And they get you thinking. It was very good.

Luke: Favourite speaker?

Tim: Gee, that’s on the spot. I like … there’s a guy upfront, can’t remember his name, spoke about creativity …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … in business, which I really enjoyed. It was a real range of speakers from all sorts of stuff. There was a homeless lady who spoke with nine children.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: There was a lady who spoke about … from Red Balloon Days.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: About building a business from scratch and about the concept of gifting.

Luke: Yes, very successful online business.

Tim: It is, it is. And Luke Harvey-Palmer.

Luke: Yes, one of our …

Tim: Previous guest of ours.

Luke: One of our guests.

Tim: Yes. Maybe it was his interview on here that got him on there.

Luke: Shot him to stardom.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: I doubt it.

Tim: Yeah. But it was good, mate, lots of good stuff there. And, you know, it was, even just from a networking point of view I’m finding, I’ve been reminded in the last 12 months, Lukey, of how important it is to actually get out there as a small business owner and in my case a one man show.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: To get out there and just do some training.

Luke: Oh, yeah. It is so worthwhile because in doing the training you also, yeah, get to network as well which is …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And you develop some pretty valuable relationships.

Tim: Yeah, just, you know, like when I was in corporate, you know, you get sent to stuff. You go this, you go here.

Luke: (3:57).

Tim: Yeah. You do this, you do that. But, you know, like when you are, you know, back to being your own boss, which has so many … so much upside to it, but I personally forgot to go out and train up and kind of … so, yeah, I’ve been doing that a bit lately. TED was part of that kind of thing.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You’ve been to something?

Luke: I went to Social Media Club Melbourne a couple of weeks ago and heard, also one of our ex guests, Scott Kilmartin from Haul …

Tim: Oh, Scotty.

Luke: … speak about essentially getting their brand out there with another two speakers. Sahill and … oh, damn.

Tim: Who’s Hill?

Luke: Sahill.

Tim: Sahill?

Luke: Yeah, from … oh, geez.

Tim: You don’t know.

Luke: I’ve had a complete blank. Anyway it was …

Tim: While you’re thinking …

Luke: Yes.

Tim: … just so, listeners, who haven’t listened to the Scott Kilmartin interview, worth listening to.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Scotty does … he recycles billboards out of street posters … out of billboards.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: Sorry, start again. He recycles billboards and turns them into laptop covers.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You said wow and I got it completely wrong, which clearly means you’re not listening to anything I’m saying.

Luke: I’ve been trying to think of the other speakers.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Anyway I actually noticed that I was the only person at this Social Media …

Tim: This soiree?

Luke: Yeah. That was wearing a branded t-shirt. Now …

Tim: As in, not like Ralph Lauren branded, as in …

Luke: No, no. No, as in it had the business that I worked for on it called …

Tim: Oh, who’s that, Luke?

Luke: Flippa, flippa.com.

Tim: Oh, Flippa, yeah.

Luke: Anyway I sort of thought about that and thought, you know, people are going along to find out how to market themselves online using these new, you know, fandangled social media, you know, it’s all a buzzword.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: But sometimes they forget to do the simple things.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, true.

Luke: You know, a t-shirt will cost you 20 bucks.

Tim: Very true.

Luke: When you start out on Twitter you might have 20, 30, 40 followers in the first month or two, if that.

Tim: It is, it’s a good tool. And, you know, the thing is I was talking at this conference yesterday which Bambi Gordon put on and she is @thewoo, thewoo on Twitter, @thewoo.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And, you know, people were taking photos and they were Twittering all throughout the day. You know, the conference had a hash tag and everyone was Tweeting and, you know, if you had of had a branded t-shirt on you probably would have found yourself on the Twitter feed …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … with your logo and your website …

Luke: Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Tim: … or whatever it is on.

Luke: And that sort of takes me across to one of the other things that we were doing to do today, Timbo, a bit of thank you and also another little guerrilla marketing tactic.

Tim: Ooh, guerrilla marketing.

Luke: I actually had one of our listeners, Vic from lap-rap.com, lap-rap.com, approach me and ask … first of all thanked me for the show and also told me about his product which is basically a sticker that goes on the front of your laptop.

Tim: A lap rap.

Luke: And you can … a lap rap. So you can actually customise your sticker and stick it on the front of your laptop. Anyway I was just about to head off to a conference so I thought, wow, what a fantastic opportunity, thanks, Vic, I’ll take you up on the very generous offer and ordered a couple of …

Tim: Sweet.

Luke: … of his lap raps. Anyway at the conference had my laptop in front of me most of the time, had the big Flippa branding on it.

Tim: Yeah, right.

Luke: Had at least half a dozen people come up and ask me where I got that from. So apart from it being a good little bit of marketing it was also good marketing on Vic’s behalf to …

Tim: And what did was, what do we call that, Luke?

Luke: We call that seeding.

Tim: Seeding. One of our previous guests talked about seeding.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: But we never got seeded by him. He’s listening hopefully and will know who we’re talking about.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: We keep checking our mailbox but it doesn’t seem to appear. But it is, it’s a good strategy, seeding. So, listeners, the concept behind seeding by way of reminder is that if you think … if you can identify the people in your group that you think can add value by talking about your business then give them something, give them a part of your business. I don’t mean a share of your business but like give them your product or your service to sample and share with others.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And that’s …

Luke: Give them a review copy.

Tim: A review copy?

Luke: Yes.

Tim: What’s that mean?

Luke: It happens a lot in online marketing, you give someone access to your product, a mover and shaker access to your product, they go and check it out …

Tim: Right.

Luke: … for free.

Tim: Yeah, okay.

Luke: And then hopefully give you a good testimonial.

Tim: So someone in the media, like it might be a blogger, a podcaster, someone who’s got a show somewhere …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … in the ether, yeah.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Good idea. Good idea.

Luke: Someone who has the top marketing podcast in Australia perhaps.

Tim: Hey, who would that be? Stop it. Stop it. Come on. Hey, what about this email I got, Lukey?

Luke: Yes.

Tim: This is from, I like this, this is from Jamie Ross who is the general manager and chief blogger at miningman.com. And he happened to be listening to Hamish and Andy, which for our overseas listeners is one of the more popular radio shows in Australia.

Luke: Drive time, that’s right.

Tim: Drive time. Anyway one of the guys on the show rang … I’m reading the email now, he rang his local takeaway store to try and order takeaway to pick up later. They told him, “We don’t do phone orders because we’re too busy and the food often sits around waiting too long. But we can give you the password and if you say that password when you ring us up we’ll take your phone order.” Creating a bit of scarcity.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: “Now, the chances are this is probably true in that there is this kind of password thing happening and they don’t want phone orders. But could it be possible that they don’t mind taking phone orders at all? If so, how much more likely are you to ring and order from a place where you are in the secret password club?”

Luke: Very very clever.

Tim: It is clever, isn’t it?

Luke: Yep.

Tim: He goes on to say, “I’m sure many businesses out there could somehow provide the extra benefit to customers of feeling important giving value without cost.” And then he says he’s a big fan of our show. But I love that idea. It’s about scarcity.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And about making your prospects and customers feel a little bit special.

Luke: Yeah, you feel like part of the inner circle, part of the club.

Tim: Yeah, even just calling it a club, you know.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You know, we’ve talked about packaging before but actually creating something, an offer to customers and then giving it a kind of, an emotional name, kind of works in a way that, you know, just maybe just stating the offer rationally wouldn’t. Like that.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Like that.

Luke: Very good indeed.

Tim: What else have you got, Lukey?

Luke: I’ve been doing a bit of blogging, Timbo.

Tim: You love your blog.

Luke: Well I never used to. I always never used to be a fan of writing. But certainly in my new role at Flippa I blog a lot. And it’s also led me to blog more for myself.

Tim: You found your blogging mojo?

Luke: Yeah. Yeah, well it’s, you know, I guess things I think of on my long drive during the week.

Tim: Yeah, yes.

Luke: My commute.

Tim: Yes.

Luke: You know, I just take a quick note and then …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … of a weekend I’ll at least try and bang out one post a week.

Tim: It’s one of the ongoing blockages to blogging, I find. For a lot of small business owners I speak to is, first, what am I going to blog about. You can quickly overcome that, because I think people underestimate what they can talk about. But then just doing it day in day out or week in week out.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And there is … just look up blogging ideas on Google or something like that. In fact we’ll put a show note if we can find one. Because there’s lots of kind of whitepapers that people have written on that subject of like little stimulus headlines or subjects.

Luke: Yep. See I used to subscribe to the theory of always blog around a brief and always blog around your business. But, you know, sometimes I think it’s good to step outside of that.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And … because it adds character and people get to know you. If you’re blogging about how you went on a trip and you had fantastic service.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Well it relates to customer service.

Tim: Yep, yep.

Luke: I actually just recently did a quick little blog post on … around the iPad. Obviously the iPad is very topical at the moment, it’s about to come out in Australia. It has already come out in the US. So I did a little blog post around how you would actually get an iPad if you were in another country apart from Australia.

Tim: And let me guess, it got picked up?

Luke: Yeah, it got picked up by a couple of …

Tim: Notables.

Luke: A couple of notables that have Twitter lists of 20,000 plus.

Tim: Lukey, if our listeners are going, you know what, I’m going to give blogging a go, what’s the quickest, easiest, free way to do it?

Luke: Yep. WordPress.com.

Tim: You reckon?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: What about Blogger?

Luke: Yeah, either.

Tim: Isn’t Blogger a quicker start up? Isn’t WordPress kind of … it’s better but isn’t there a little bit more involved in getting a WordPress blog up?

Luke: No. See Word … you might be thinking of the self install version …

Tim: Correct.

Luke: … of WordPress, Timbo.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: There is one that basically is already installed and it’s WordPress.com. You’ll end up with a domain name that is something like …

Tim: WordPress.com your business name.

Luke: Or your business name .WordPress.com.

Tim: Right.

Luke: But you’d have the same thing with Blogger.

Tim: So you could literally have a blog up and running in five minutes, would that be fair?

Luke: Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah.

Tim: Cool.

Luke: Ten minutes.

Tim: Ten?

Luke: Ten.

Tim: Okay. Let’s not …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You know, I mean, five, ten, mate, there’s not a lot in that. Hey, that’s a good one.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: That’s a good one. I’d give that a go. I’d say to any small business owner just give it a go.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: There’s not a lot of downside and, you know, you can always get guest bloggers to come along and contribute content. You know, you can do interviews with people to create content. You don’t always have to be thinking up your own stuff so.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: That’s a good one. Hey, Lukey?

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: Back to things that we’ve been doing, I went to a three day seminar, workshop, whatever you want to call it, a couple of weeks ago.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Joanna Martin shift speaker training. Freak. She is a freak. And I said that to her at the end so, Jo, if you are listening, chances are you’re not, because I think she’s one of the busiest chicks going around in the world of marketing, but the three day workshop I went to was all about selling from stage. And, you know, without going into a lot of detail because in fact, yeah, no, I won’t because there was just so much to learn. She spoke from nine in the morning until seven or eight at night for three days.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: And she shared the stage only twice …

Luke: Wow.

Tim: … in that time. Not only that, she made, and I won’t put an exact number on it because it would be unfair, I was just counting from the audience, but she made a six figure income from those three days by selling product from stage.

Luke: Low six figure or medium or high?

Tim: Oh, Luke, I don’t like to … lots.

Luke: Yep, okay.

Tim: Lots. Hey, you know, three things I got from it, like there was just so much, (a) listeners, write these down because … well at least kind of bookmark them or something. Speaking is a great form of marketing. It is cheap and it is effective and it sets you up as an expert. And Jo talks about this imaginary line which she calls the credibility line which is that line between the end of the stage and the audience. And once you step over that line onto the stage or, you know, the whatever, it doesn’t have to be a stage but in front of an audience, credibility goes up which is either right or, you know, it just seems to be a perceived credibility line. It doesn’t necessarily …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … mean it’s true every time but it did remind me what a great form of marketing speaking is. So, listeners, if you can get a speaking gig at your local chamber of commerce, if you can put on an information evening for your prospects, if you can, you know, find someone to talk to and sell to, I mean, it is, it’s really good. And it’s a great practice. Yeah, we’re all scared of public speaking but try and get over that.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Maybe find a shared speaking gig where, you know, like yesterday I spoke at a small business marketing conference, a full day, and there were copywriters, publicists, Internet gurus, all sorts of people, and then me. But, you know, it’s just sharing the stage so that was great. Jo talked about a concept around creating a niche. And that’s a whole conversation in itself not dedicated just to speaking but I do like the way she described finding your niche. And she talks about getting a niche that is an inch wide and a mile deep. Right.

Luke: Nice one.

Tim: Yeah, it is nice, isn’t it? So it means like don’t be everything to everyone, just find that one niche that is really really particular to your business and drill down and really offer great value to that audience as opposed to trying to be everything to everyone.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Third thing, Lukey, don’t talk in front of a group of people without making an offer at the end. Not because you want to sell, although that is clearly what one of your objectives is, but the other part of that is you cannot expect to give everything you know in a 30 or 60 minute, what she calls a presentation unit, you know, the opportunity to share some information. At the end, and at the beginning, ask for permission and then at the end say, “Look, I’ve given you as much as I can in this short time. If you’d like to learn more then,” and it might be that you offer coaching or it might be that you offer a longer course, it might be that you offer your book to buy, whatever it is.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Great stuff.

Luke: Fantastic.

Tim: We’ll put a link.

Luke: Yeah, good advice.

Tim: Thank you. Well it’s Jo’s advice.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: So, you know.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: We’ll thank Jo. So we’ll put a link in our show notes to her … she’s got an online course that you can do. Well it’s not a course, it’s just an online membership site where she really does offer some great value. So that was a ripper.

Luke: And you’ll be able to find the show notes at SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and it will be Episode 19 this one, folks.

Tim: Mmm, 19.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Thank you for that update, Lukey. What else have you got, mate?

Luke: That’s about all I’ve got today.

Tim: Really?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Can I keep going?

Luke: Actually, no, no there is one thing I’ve got.

Tim: You do the dishes and I’ll keep …

Luke: I’ve actually started doing a little bit of mentoring.

Tim: Oh, nice.

Luke: With … with a guy who … well with two blokes who have set up a web development business and it also is an ex-employee of mine, an old employee of mine. And I guess you never really realise how much you know until you actually impart it to someone who’s …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … been in the … you know, these guys have only been doing it for about a year. I had my own web development business for seven years. I’ve been working online for ten. You sort of don’t realise how much …

Tim: Very true.

Luke: … you know until you start …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … imparting that knowledge. So I’m actually enjoying that a lot. Getting a lot out of it.

Tim: Good thing to have. I would suggest every small business owner, in fact every businessperson really …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … should have a mentor. It’s kind of a very very old concept that would probably predate … I can’t say predate man, that wouldn’t make sense. But, you know, like it’s … surely …

Luke: It’s good just to have … I think it’s great to have someone who’s objective.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: You know, you get caught up in your business and you don’t always …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … think outside the square and think of other opportunities and other things that you can be doing and, you know, hopefully these guys are getting a little bit of value from some outside input.

Tim: Yeah. I remember hearing … I was listening to a previous podcast of someone else’s once and he was talking about mentoring and the fact that you really have to wait until someone comes and offers to mentor you. But I think you might be waiting a long time so you kind of …

Luke: Yeah, look, I think there’s certainly plenty of opportunities now to find a mentor online. You might have to pay. However, those opportunities are certainly available and certainly in the online marketing space there’s always plenty.

Tim: Yep, no, good one. Good on you for doing that. They’re lucky guys.

Luke: Thank you, Timbo.

Tim: Lukey, a couple of wonderful products that I’ve come across online …

Luke: Yes.

Tim: … that I’d love to share with our listeners.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: One is called Source Bottle. S-O-U-R-C-E. Is that right? S-O-U-R-C-E Bottle.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Sourcebottle.com.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Just a bloody ripper tool for small business owners looking for publicity. Free to register and I think what you do is then indicate your areas of interest and when a journalist is looking for someone to contribute to an article that they may be writing for radio or press or blog or TV or whatever it may be, then they have the opportunity to put that out onto Source Bottle and ask for input. So you might get an email one day saying looking for, you know, maybe you’re into selling baby clothes and there’s a journo who’s putting out something on Source Bottle saying, “Has anyone got a point of view on baby clothes made of hemp?” I don’t know why I thought of that but, you know, and so you go, oh, yeah, that’s me. So you send an email directly to the journo saying, “Yep, I have an interest in that area in fact it’s what my business does,” blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the journo may contact you for your opinion, maybe write a whole article about you. Great way to get free publicity.

Luke: Great service. And you don’t … it means you’re not basically pounding the pavement looking for PR opportunities, they come to you.

Tim: Correct, yeah. So sourcebottle.com, guys, sign up for that one. Lukey, we have a listener question which you forgot about.

Luke: Oh, did I?

Tim: Because you said that was all that you had.

Luke: Oh. Yes.

Tim: So the listener question basically says …

Luke: Oh, yeah, sorry, yep.

Tim: Boyley, David Boyle. I like that, Boyley. We have a tendency to either shorten or lengthen names, don’t we? Dave is from Melbourne. Good on you, Dave. And Dave has been getting a whole lot of LinkedIn questions … not … what do you call them, LinkedIn invitations.

Luke: Invitations, yes.

Tim: You know, oh, link in with me and he’s saying, you know, “Why should I do that, to what benefit?”

Luke: Now, Timbo, you are a big fan of LinkedIn.

Tim: I do like LinkedIn.

Luke: More so than me so probably more a question for you.

Tim: Okay. Well I think LinkedIn like all social media channels needs you to provide a bit of love and attention to it.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: It ain’t going to happen itself. But I’ve found LinkedIn a great way of building your network. I mean, that’s the whole idea of LinkedIn, it’s to create a network. They talk about in the profile, in the overview of LinkedIn I think they talk about the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, which is the six degrees of separation.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But basically says, you know, between you and someone else there can be no more than six people. And so basically it’s a great way of reconnecting, it’s kind of like a Facebook for business and I think that’s probably been said before but …

Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim: It’s a bit like that.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You put your CV there. You connect with people, you look for people who, you know, you may have gone to school with or gone … previously worked with or met somewhere, you link in with them. But then the linking in is just the start. And, you know, you can then, you know, develop up a bit of a list on LinkedIn. You can post questions. You can create events so you can put in … post an event and say, “Hey, I’ve got this kind of talk coming up, feel free to come along.”

Luke: I’ve got a mate of mine who uses it really effectively for business development. So he, you know, obviously you connect with someone on LinkedIn but then you can actually connect with the people that they’re connected with if you ask for an introduction. So if you’re, you know, if you’re trying to get your product into, let’s say, a hardware store, a hardware chain. Well, you know, with these, you know, two degrees of separation or six degrees of separation …

Tim: You’ll find someone.

Luke: … you’ll find someone who is a sales rep …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: … that goes around and puts products in a hardware business.

Tim: Yep, yep.

Luke: So it’s a great way of finding people in your extended network that can help you out in business.

Tim: And there’s groups, the LinkedIn groups are fantastic too. They’re a … it’s a way of, you know, if you have a particular interest, once again, you know, hardware marketers, I bet there’s a group in LinkedIn for hardware marketers. You know, for everything that you could imagine. And you join that group, you can ask questions of that group, you can respond to questions of that group. You can just find out what’s going on in that area. So, look, Dave, Boyley, it’s free.

Luke: Yep, we like that.

Tim: Yeah, we do like that. Anything free for small business marketing is good. It’s free, it’s effective. It means you’re getting a whole lot of information up there. I use it a lot. When people enquire about using my services I actually send them a link to my LinkedIn profile which, you know, I send them a link to my website, LinkedIn profile, I send them a link to a number of things now but it’s a great …

Luke: Great way of gathering testimonials too.

Tim: Oh, isn’t that a good one?

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So tell us more.

Luke: Well so you can actually ask people that you’ve connected with and worked with on LinkedIn to give you a recommendation.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Which … so it’s great if you’re a business owner, you can ask people that you’ve done business with to recommend you. But even as an employee you can ask, you know …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: .. an old boss instead of …

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Instead of accumulating, you know, letters of reference or referrals you can ask them to leave something on your LinkedIn as well.

Tim: And those recommendations are great. I got a job partly because I’d … I sent my … I got a job, I got an opportunity to do some work for an organisation last week. I sent them my LinkedIn recommendations, which was great. So there’s … I think I’ve got about 20, 25 people who have written something about me. And I’ve reciprocated and done that for them as well. I also when I was going for this little contract last week I sent them the 50 or so written reviews that we’ve got on iTunes for our … for this show.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: So it all adds up …

Luke: Fantastic.

Tim: … to kind of building your credentials, you know. And kind of, you know, you can, you know, this is … we should do a show on testimonials, in fact we will one day.

Luke: Yeah, definitely.

Tim: Because it’s … once again you can talk all you like about how much you know but until you hear … someone hears it from someone else that’s where the power is so …

Luke: Definitely.

Tim: Lukey, we’ll do that.

Luke: And if you want to connect with us on LinkedIn please feel free.

Tim: Nice work.

Luke: Go to www.SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and you’ll see that you can connect to Timbo and I. You’ll be able to see our LinkedIn profiles.

Tim: Very nice.

Luke: There’s a button there for both of us.

Tim: Okay, done. Two more things, Lukey. We have been getting a number of emails lately about do we do speaking engagements.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Yes. Yes, we do, we love them. It’s part of what we do and we get … we’re honoured when we do get asked.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: We’re doing them more and more. So, listeners, once again please feel free to email us at …

Luke: Questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim: And say, you know what, I wouldn’t mind one of you blokes to come and speak at our annual conference or …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: … to our sales team or whatever it is. Bring us in, we would love to do it. We do charge but we are very fair, Luke. Is that fair to say?

Luke: It is indeed, Tim.

Tim: Yeah, so contact us. Last one, we ran a competition in our last show. We interviewed Kody Bateman who was the creator and founder of Send Out Cards. That competition is still running and still live. All you need to do is go to iTunes and write a written review. Write a written review.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: And then email us.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And tell us that that is what you’ve done and you’ll go into the running to win one of five of Kody’s hardcover books called “Promptings”.

Luke: That’s right.

Tim: And it’s a ripper book, very inspiring for the small business owner in all of us. So you just need to do that and that competition will be … the winners of that competition will be announced in the next episode.

Luke: When we’re back in the studio.

Tim: Back in the studio. Hey, we’ll talk about guests. Let’s do this, we never do this. How’s this for guests, guys, we have got coming up in the next, well what are we going to say, Lukey, like six weeks?

Luke: Yep.

Tim: We have got Russell Howcroft from … who’s the head of Australia’s largest advertising agency in George Patterson Young & Rubicum Bates or some very long name. Russell also happens to be one of the presenters on the ABC on the show The Gruen Transfer.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: So we’re talking to Russ about advertising and what a waste of money it is for small businesses. Or he’ll have another opinion on that. Russ is a very strongly opinionated fellow and he’s a good bloke. I went to uni with Russell.

Luke: Really?

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: How many years ago was that?

Tim: And the next guest is … I can’t remember this, Ying … Ye Ying and she designed all the Twitter branding.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: How cool is that. So we’re going to be talking to her about creativity.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: And what it means the power of it in small business. We’ve got the fellow coming up from Rentoid.

Luke: Yes, that’s right.

Tim: Steve.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: That’s going to be a good one. Rentoid is a wonderful start up business. We won’t go into any more detail about that. But how’s that, listeners, we have got some quality stuff coming up. And if you’re good, Lukey will be there too.

Luke: Fantastic. So stay tuned, folks. Make sure you come back to www.SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and …

Tim: And buy the book, buy our book, buy the book Cha-Ching! That is a good thing to do. That’s a very cheap thing. That’s a way of getting a lot of marketing ideas, isn’t it?

Luke: Yeah, heaps, 50-odd, Timbo.

Tim: Fifty-odd or more. Actually I think it’s closer to 70.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: So you can do that, visit the website. Other than that, Lukey, there’s too much goodness coming up so we’d better go for now.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Thank you for the lend of your kitchen.

Luke: No worries.

Tim: And goodbye, listeners.

Luke: We’ll see you next time.

Tim: Seeya.

Lovingly transcribed by The Transcription People

SBBM #18 – How Send Out Cards is Taking Over the Greeting Card Industry

Luke — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:00:29 +0000

In our first episode of 2010 we chat with Kody Bateman, founder and director of Send Out Cards. Founded six years ago, Send Out Cards gives members the ability to send a physical greeting card, written in their own hand writing, from an online application. Kody tells us his motivation behind starting his $50 million per annum business and why the big greeting card companies are worried.

This episode includes great tips for leveraging network marketing and will show you how to effectively cut through to your customers with direct marketing.

Duration: 40 minutes

Show Notes:

Find out more about Send Out Cards
Leave a review on iTunes to win one of Kody’s books

Podcast Transcription

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey, what a great day it is today.

Luke: How are you, Timbo?

Tim: Couldn’t be finer, mate. Welcome back.

Luke: Welcome back. It’s been … it feels like it’s been a while.

Tim: You look gorgeous as usual.

Luke: So do you, radiant.

Tim: Stop it. Stop it. We said we wouldn’t do that this year.

Luke: Yes, come on.

Tim: I got an email from one bloke saying we talk too much.

Luke: Yes, well let’s get right stuck into it. We’ve got a very special guest.

Tim: But on that … but on that, how can I talk too much, like it’s a podcast, you know.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Like, what do I do, limit it? I suppose I could limit it.

Luke: And we can’t mime.

Tim: Nah. Welcome back, listeners, anyway to Small Business Big Marketing and we have got a really good guest today, haven’t we? However, little story which you told me.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Well, you know, you did text me saying you’ve been to a conference and you were very happy with the fact that someone had come up to you and said, go on, you say it. You say … say it and blush.

Luke: Are you the guy from Small Business Big Marketing?

Tim: Wow.

Luke: Yeah, there you go.

Tim: What did you say?

Luke: I said it’s a radio medium, how did you know?

Tim: That’s right.

Luke: Anyway that was … that was nice to see that there’s people out there that come up and say g’day and know what the show’s about so.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. How did they know? Because it is a radio medium, isn’t it.

Luke: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess they’d seen one of my profile pictures on the website or …

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: Or on my Twitter account perhaps.

Tim: Any signatures exchanged, you know …

Luke: No, didn’t sign autographs, Timmy.

Tim: No. Wouldn’t that be cool? You said at the start you wanted to do that.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You said this podcast wouldn’t be a success, because you know like having a measurement criteria in marketing is everything, to make sure that it’s working, and you said the success of this podcast would be …

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: … the day you signed an autograph and that was …

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: And I still think it’s probably a fair way off but anyway.

Tim: Yeah, I do too.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Nothing against you.

Luke: No.

Tim: I mean for both of us. Hey, mate, today, or today’s guest …

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Mr Kody Bateman.

Luke: That’s right, Timbo.

Tim: I was going to do that in a Texan drawl but nah we’ll just leave that to Kody.

Luke: Now, you’re a massive massive fan of this guy.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, need to declare upfront that I am a distributor of a fantastic product called Send Out Cards, which you are about to hear why and how this is going to be the way a lot of cards are going to be sent in five years’ time.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: If not most cards.

Luke: Now, I am playing the cynic …

Tim: Oh, here we go.

Luke: … in this particular podcast, Timbo.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And, you know, having listened to Kody and also having listened to you bang on about it for a while it is actually a pretty good product and I’ve also heard numerous other people who actually use it with great success. So stayed tuned and have a listen to Kody and we’ll be popping in our comments throughout the podcast as we usually do.

Tim: Yes, correct. There may be the odd little interruption, as we do.

Luke: As we’re inclined to do.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: And the first question we ask Kody?

Tim: Was, tell us a little bit about Send Out Cards is.

Kody: Well we are an online greeting card company with real greeting cards. And that’s important to make sure people understand you can go online and choose … we have 13,000 greeting cards in about 100 different categories you can choose from and you can type a message, you can even type it in your own handwriting. It goes over the Internet and we actually print your cards, physical greeting card, we print it, we stuff it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and send it out for you. The whole idea behind Send Out Cards is we make it very convenient for you to follow up with people and reach out in kindness to others. You can even add pictures. We do anything we can to personalise the greeting card we do. So, you know, you can add pictures from your camera. You know, everybody … it’s kind of funny, everybody takes these digital pictures with a camera and then they wonder what the heck to do with their pictures.

Luke: Yeah.

Kody: We’ve got something for you to do with your pictures because you can load them on the front of a card, inside of a greeting card or choose one of the greeting cards we have and send them off to loved ones, friends, clients, people like that. So it’s a great service. You can add gifts. So you can add selected gifts to your greeting card as well and …

Tim: The actual using of digital photos is huge. Because my wife criticises me forever and a day for having ever bought a digital camera because … and she’s right, because I’ve got about four or five … we have got about four or five thousand photos in our iPhoto library which very rarely get stuck on a stick …

Kody: That’s right.

Tim: … and then go to develop.

Luke: Yeah.

Kody: Yep.

Tim: This has actually given her an opportunity … given us an opportunity to use them. Kody, we spoke over lunch. And, listeners, Kody’s tired, by the way. How tired, on a scale of one …

Kody: Thanks.

Tim: On a scale of one to ten, how tired are you?

Kody: On one to ten? It’s probably about an eight.

Tim: An eight, okay.

Kody: About an eight, yeah.

Tim: Okay. And it’s jetlag tired.

Kody: Yeah.

Tim: It’s not like, gee, I wish I wasn’t in Australia tired. It’s just pure jetlag. So we talked over lunch, Kody, and I think it’s an interesting story of at what point did this idea come to you?

Kody: Yeah, that’s a very interesting question, you know. I tell a story and the listeners may not have heard this before but the whole thing started, I had an experience that happened back in 1989. I was doing an internship in New York City. I’m from the United States of America and live in Utah which is on the western part of the United States and … is that okay to say that? Is this an Australian …

Tim: Totally, yeah.

Kody: … show.

Tim: Totally.

Kody: Yeah, so …

Tim: Yeah, we’re geographically challenged over here.

Luke: Indeed.

Kody: But anyways it was a big deal for me when I got out of college to move all the way across the country and work for a big ad agency in New York City and it was a lot of fun and … so I did the internship and they offered me a job and I accepted. And so I came back home all the way across the country, came back home and proceeded to move back to New York City. I was newly married at the time, had a little baby girl. And we got all of our belongings together and went over to my Mum and Dad’s house to say goodbye to the family and as we were leaving, I went to get in the car and I saw my older brother a couple of hundred feet away and I saw him over there and I had this thought, I call it a prompting, I had this prompting and it was really really strong that I needed to slow down, stop what I was doing and go over and give my brother a hug goodbye and tell him I love him.

Now, at the time we weren’t the huggy kind of family so it was a strange prompting that said you’ve got to give your brother a hug and tell him that you love him and say goodbye. And it was really strong but I ignored it. And we got in the car and honked and waved and he waved and we drove away. About two months go by and we’re living in New York having a great time and three o’clock in the morning the phone rings and my Mum tearfully let me know me that my brother Chris had been killed and when I got that news the only thing I could think of was this prompting. I ignored this prompting to say bye to my brother Chris and I never had the chance to do it again. Now I understood why the prompting was so strong. You know, something, somebody was telling me I needed to do this and I ignored it.

So I made a promise to my brother who has now died, is now dead, I made a promise to him that I would act on my promptings every single day of my life to reach out in kindness to others. A prompting is a thought that comes into your mind to do something in kindness to somebody. And we all get them. I don’t care who you are, you get these thoughts all the time. Saying thank you to somebody, tell somebody you appreciate them, things like that. So I made a promise to him that I would act on my promptings and try to help as many people as I could do the same. That’s where the dream of Send Out Cards was born. That’s what it’s all about. It’s helping people to act on their promptings to reach out in kindness. We’re going to give you a mechanism to help you do that. We’re going to make it convenient. We’re going to make it easy. We’re going to make it fun. And that’s what Send Out Cards is all about.

Tim: Now that’s a sad story that Kody tells.

Luke: It sure is indeed.

Tim: But one of the things I’ve noticed about all the guys at Send Out Cards is that one of their key marketing sort of strategies is storytelling.

Luke: Yes, yes, I think Kody might have mentioned it actually towards the end of this interview.

Tim: Does he? Touches on it?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And we’ve talked about stories before. Where, you know, a story is a marketing tactic and sort of explaining what you do via telling a story is very powerful.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Very powerful.

Luke: It’s actually quite tribal too, I believe.

Tim: Yes, very true. Around the campfire.

Luke: You know, going back to the, you know, back to … well thousands of years ago where the chief would sit around and tell stories so.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. And, you know, one of the great ways of coming up with your story is just to ask yourself as a small business owner why am I doing what I’m doing, you know.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And out of that, I mean, we have a story for everything, you know. And so it’s a great little tactic. If you haven’t done it, listeners, I’d suggest go away and write your story. It’s even great copy for the front of your website if you’re happy to kind of share it publicly. It gives people a real reason, you know, to buy into what it is you have to sell.

Luke: Yeah, indeed.

Tim: The other thing, Lukey, before you push pause is that Send Out Cards have actually got it down to one word, do you know what that word is?

Luke: I can guess, Timbo.

Tim: Go go.

Luke: Prompting.

Tim: Prompting. You know, and that’s another really interesting thing. To get … to associate your business with one keyword. And, you know, if you spend enough time in the whole Send Out Cards world this notion of acting on a prompting is really powerful. And as Kody has just explained, the whole business is built on this.

Luke: Mmm, yeah.

Tim: We’ll talk a bit more about that later. Back to Kody. How big is it? How do you quantify what Send Out Cards is?

Kody: Well we’re … we, last year, as an example, we sent out 14 million greeting cards.

Luke: Wow.

Kody: We did about $50M in sales. And we just launched in Australia about a year ago and are actually really just getting going right now. So, yeah, it’s … and we’re still in our infancy. I mean, we’re brand new, we’re a baby. We’re still a baby. We’ve been in business for five years. Two of those … excuse me, six years now. Two of those six years was a research and development mode and four of those years we’ve been open in the marketplace now distributing through a network marketing model. And we’re beginning to grow very very rapidly as a company. We have always believed that we were a billion dollar company that would become a household name.

Tim: Still do?

Kody: Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact it’s funny, people say to me all the time, they come and say to me, because you’ve got to remember we’re a network marketing company so we partner with thousands and thousands of independent distributors that represent Send Out Cards and it’s a lot of fun because it brings groups of people together to do this great noble thing and it provides an income opportunity for people as well. But it’s funny because people come up to me all the time and say, “Kody, you know, what are you going to do when Hallmark or American Greetings, you know, the big greeting card companies, what are you going to do when they want to come and buy your company?” And what I always say in return is, “What you need to ask yourself is what is Hallmark going to say when we go to buy them?” That’s how we think. We literally believe that we will be the largest greeting card and gift company in the world. And there’s good reason for that. The way that we market our products. The passion behind it, the story behind it. Make no mistake about it, we’re … we are changing the world by helping millions of people acting on their promptings every day. Let me tell you something, when I made a promise to my brother I meant it. And I meant it when I said I’m going to help as many people as I can act on their promptings. And it became a passion of mind and what makes it really cool is as other people join, it becomes their passion too.

Tim: How do you maintain a smallness … sorry, Lukey, I know you’re dying to ask a couple of questions. I always interrupt Luke by the way in our interviews, so just bear with us.

Luke: I don’t get my hand up quick enough.

Tim: Sorry. Sorry.

Luke: No, go on.

Tim: (12:15) hand away then.

Luke: Go on, Tim.

Tim: How do you maintain, because it is a small company, what’s your current annual turnover?

Kody: We’re about, like I said, $50M.

Tim: Fifty million.

Kody: Yeah.

Tim: Okay. So and you want to be a billion dollar company. So it is, it’s still a small … it’s a gem of an idea that’s yet to bloom. How do you main … but when you look at the brand, and I’m involved in the brand, it feels very big. You’re very good marketers. And all our listeners are small business owners who are trying to build a brand who are trying to get what we talk about as being an emotional attachment to their customers. You guys do that very well. How?

Kody: Well, like I said, there’s a lot … you’ve got to … first of all we kind of take it back to the basic. You’ve got to have a compelling why behind what you do, no matter what it is that you do. Now, I just told you my compelling why. I made a promise to my brother and I’m keeping that promise. That’s a compelling why. In fact I’ll tell you something, that’s the why that makes you cry. And any of the listeners right now, it doesn’t matter what business you’re doing or what you’re in, you’ve got to get to the why in your life that’s going to make you cry. In other words, something that’s going to be very emotional for you. Why is it that you’re in business? Why is it that you’re doing what you’re doing, that you get up and beat your head against the wall every day to do whatever it is you’re doing? Why? You know, you really need to define that and get to that why that becomes emotional for you. If you have that you’re 90% there. I’m telling you right now you are 90% there. Because every small business owner, big business owner, it doesn’t matter, the key, the absolute key, to success in any business is persistence.

Tim: I love that.

Luke: Yeah.

Kody: Persistence, yeah.

Tim: The why that makes you cry.

Kody: Yep.

Tim: What’s your why that makes you cry, Lukey? Because you cry a bit, you get a bit teary. What is it?

Luke: It’s looking after my family, Timbo. I’m sure yours is the same.

Tim: It is. It is.

Luke: I’d just perhaps like to go back a step, Kody, and wonder why when you were first doing your marketing strategy for Send Out Cards, why did you decide network marketing?

Kody: That’s a great question. You know, first of all, it’s interesting how things happen. Prior to this whole thing starting, like I said in the story, I was working for an ad agency and then I moved back to Utah and my background was marketing and advertising and I went and worked for a company. And this was back in like 1991 I had a friend of mine ask me to go to a luncheon with him. So I went to this luncheon and I was young at the time and I go to this meeting and was introduced for the first time to this concept called network marketing. A guy got up in the front of the room and he started drawing Xs and Os on this big whiteboard and shared the process of duplication. And in network marketing they talk about that, how if you bring in five people and they bring in five people and they bring in five people, next thing you know you’ve got 55,000 people because it’s that process of exponential growth or duplication.

When I saw that I was hooked instantly. I was like, okay, this is a cool concept. And I was thinking in mind, it was like, you know, this is the key. I remember that meeting like it was yesterday. I mean, I’m sitting there at that whiteboard and I said, this is the key to get my message to the world. Because my message has a huge emotional impact. It’s got an emotional story behind it. And I realise in order to get people to send greeting cards and gifts every day, to get them to act on their promptings every day, there had to be a way to educate people on how to do that. And when I was in that meeting in 91 I saw it. It was like, okay, this will work.

Because I need an army of people to be able to sit down a computer one at a time with a person and show them how to send a card, tell them a story about how sending cards has changed their life and why they should be sending cards every single day. And if I don’t have that interaction this thing is not going to grow. And people say, “Well how do you know that?” I say, “Well I’ve done my studying.” You know, Hallmark and American Greetings, but particularly American Greetings, they tried to do this and they spent millions and millions and millions of dollars trying to do an online greeting card version. They shut it down about 27 months ago. Because they didn’t have that one on one interaction with people they had a very difficult time on educating people on how this thing works. Why in the world do people need to send a card a day for crying out loud, you know? And we show you why you need to send a card a day.

Luke: Is it also about the power of word of mouth marketing?

Kody: No question.

Luke: Referrals?

Kody: No question. And so, like I said, number one is you’ve got to have a … network marketing provides a way for you to create a captive audience. Hallmark or American Greetings cannot put 500 people in a room and spend the whole day talking about card sending stories and how you can be a partner in the business and make profits in it. They can’t do that. We can do that because we’re a network marketing company. The other thing is too, and I tell this story quite a bit as well, I have a real passion not only for helping people act on their promptings but also to provide a way for people to create financial independence in their life. And if you don’t mind I’d like to tell you where that came from.

Tim: Go for it.

Kody: When … is that okay?

Tim: Sure.

Kody: I can do that? All right, good. So when my brother died I … we came home to go to the funeral. We flew across the country, came home to go to the funeral. And at the time he was struggling financially and he was newly married. His wife was 27 years old. They had three kids. Financially struggling. And he worked … my brother worked for my Dad and my Dad was struggling financially at the time which, you know, I grew up in a very prosperous home. My Dad did very very well over the years. He owned his own business, electrical contractor. But when my brother died, his business was going into bankruptcy and he was really really struggling.

So we go to the funeral and I knew that my Dad was stressed because they were trying to figure out how they’re going to pay for the funeral. I mean, that’s how bad things were. So I go to the funeral and prior to the funeral they had this viewing and people were coming in and paying tribute and shaking my Dad’s hand and my brother’s wife’s hand and everything else. So I’m watching this. This guy walks up to my Dad, he’s standing right next to my brother’s casket, walks up to my Dad and he hands him an envelope and I hear him say, “Don’t open that until you get home tonight,” shook his hand, they hugged, he walked away. So I thought, wow, that’s interesting.

So that night my Dad came home and I was … we were all together and he takes his jacket off and sees the envelope. So he pulls out the envelope and he opens it up and there was cash in it. Enough cash to pay for the entire funeral expense. There was over $10,000 in cash in this envelope. I will never forget that moment. You know, when I saw the tears well up with my Dad and, you know, that was his friend for life kind of thing. But again at that moment I vowed I want to be the guy with the envelope. And to do that, folks, it takes money. You’ve got to have money to be able to reach out like that. You want to talk about acting on a prompting, that guy acted on a prompting. You know, you might have a prompting to say thank you to somebody and it costs you a dollar to send a greeting card. Well three years from now you might have a prompting to pay for somebody’s funeral which might cost $20,000. I need the ability to do that. I want to be the guy with the envelope and I want to help others be the people with the envelope as well. And so that’s kind of where that …

Tim: That’s a great story. And one of the things that … I don’t know whether Australians are a little bit different to the rest of the world. I’m not sure we’re the most educated country in terms of network marketing. I know that when I talk about it to people who I think would benefit from using Send Out Cards as a marketing tool for their business, invariably there’s an elephant in the room and that elephant is the word pyramid. And I’ve gone and dug deep and thought about what, yeah, what if it is? I’m not sure we even know what that means, you know.

Kody: Right.

Tim: But the only thing I could think of historically, and I was talking to Luke about this, like what if it is a pyramid scheme, and it’s not, it’s referral marketing where you go out and tell others and bring them along for the ride. The worst thing I could think of, I’ve not known anyone to get burnt from such a system or scheme. I know Amway people, which is a very successful company, used to, you know, you’d get invited around to someone’s house not knowing that they were going to give you a beer and a presentation, which seemed a little bit dishonest.

Kody: Yeah.

Tim: But it’s funny, you know, like it’s such a … from my experience it’s been such a great system and way of building a business yet there’s always this elephant in the room. Is that something you’ve noticed?

Kody: You know, I really haven’t. When you talk about elephant in the room I think that that stems from what fears you may have in your own mind.

Luke: We are pausing Kody because you have something that you wanted to revisit, Timbo.

Tim: Oh, look, I just think in one fell swoop Kody has made a really good point. Which is this notion of, you know, we’re all out there selling our business. We’re all out there, you know, flaunting our wares. And it’s the mindset much more than it is what you’ve got to sell that’s so important. So if you’re going into a business opportunity with the mindset of negativity, then it is going to show.

Luke: So if you go in with the mindset of …

Tim: Abundance.

Luke: … having … someone having preconceived conceptions about network marketing, for example …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: … then you should get rid of them.

Tim: Absolutely. And if you go in with the mindset of, you know, if you’re selling your own business, you know, oh, I’m too expensive or, you know, whatever negativity you might have around something you’re selling, clearly the idea is to lose it and have a mindset of abundance or whatever positive kind of energy that you want to give out. It’s a really good point. Let’s hear a bit more about it.

Kody: So as people join the business, if they have a fear that this is network marketing and I’m afraid of what people might think, you’re vibrating that message. So you will get that objection if you have that fear. Our number one income earner is a guy by the name of Jordan Adler. He’s done about 1100 gift account (22:48). What that is it’s our process of sampling our product to a prospect. He’s done it 1100 times, 1100 times he has sampled our product in a gift account. How many times do you suppose he got the objection that this was network marketing? Just guess.

Tim: I’m assuming zero.

Kody: Zero. Why is that? Because Jordan Adler loves network marketing. He believes in it with is whole heart and strength and he’s had zero objections with it. In fact people are excited about, hey, what is it you’re doing? I want to do it.

Tim: What are you on?

Kody: And that all comes from his attitude.

Tim: Yeah.

Kody: And that’s really really key.

Tim: Yeah.

Kody: And while we’re on the subject of network marketing, man, I can go on for days about network marketing and why it’s such a viable …

Tim: Yep.

Kody: … business model in the world today. And let me tell you something, folks, if you have your reservations on network marketing, it is time to wake up. And, listen, I’m not going to apologise for how bold I’m going to be here, it is time for you to wake up and see what this network marketing concept is. Because we live in a day and age where you need, you need to have a business model like this. You absolutely do. Because we have technology today that allows you to be able to work right in your own home, on your own computer, over the Internet, and literally act like a multimillion dollar company by yourself. It’s the first time in history you’ve been able to do that. If you can get into a network marketing opportunity for four or five hundred dollars and have the opportunity to make millions of dollars a year, think about that for a minute. You know, a McDonald’s franchise … they have McDonald’s here, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Kody: So a McDonald’s franchise is $1.7M.

Tim: See that switch over there?

Kody: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: Light switch. Electricity. Crazy place, but I promise you.

Kody: Yeah. But think about it $1.7M is the base price to buy a franchise for a McDonald’s. And let me tell you something, you are not going to create the kind of profitability in that franchise that you have the potential to do in a Send Out Cards business or any network marketing company if you build the business the right way. Wake up, guys, I’m telling you.

Tim: Yeah. Luke, what do you say to that? Because I have mainly woken up.

Luke: Yeah, look, I actually …

Tim: You’re the sceptic?

Luke: Yes and no. But I can certainly draw the analogy between network marketing in the real world and affiliate marketing online. And affiliate marketing online is very similar. It’s basically other people marketing your products.

Kody: Right.

Luke: And taking a percentage. And that’s extremely successful.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: So … but, you know, I still think there is, perhaps it’s an Australian thing …

Tim: I reckon it is.

Luke: … there are people that shy away from MLM …

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: .. if I can call it.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And, you know, as you say, Kody, maybe people need to get over that.

Tim: I am interested, Lukey, in marketing applications for our listeners who are small business owners. And the reason I got into Send Out Cards was because I just saw this and for once I’ve gone, you know what, you know the poor old small business owner who’s trying to get enquiry, who’s trying to connect with prospects and past clients and current clients and is, you know, spending money advertising. Here’s a story, so I had the glazier come round because a cricket ball goes through my window, one of my boys hits a cricket ball through. The bloke comes around, replaces the glass, and I said thank you. He said, “What do you do, by the way?” and I said, “I’m a marketing guy. I help small businesses get more customers,” this is a couple of years ago. He said, “Oh,” he goes, “I’ve got to go home right now and renew my Yellow Pages ad,” 20 grand.

Kody: Wow.

Tim: Twenty thousand dollars, full page ad in the Yellow Pages. I said, “Really?”

Kody: Wow.

Tim: “How about you pocket ten, give me ten, and we’re all happy. Because I tell you what,” I said, “Why do you do that?” and he said, “Because if I cancel it my competitor will take it.” Now, what a way to go about determining your marketing strategy. I saw Send Out Cards 12 months ago and I said, you know what, it’s a $400 in, it’s between $1 and $1.75 to send a card in the post and what a way to connect with your database, what a way to get referrals. That’s what enticed me. You’ve obviously seen a whole lot of businesses around the world, Kody, use Send Out Cards as a marketing tool. What are your sort of … any stories or applications that you have seen?

Kody: Absolutely. And I love … I could talk for hours about this. You know, a lot of you out there have heard of a term called relationship marketing. And I think what’s real important and when you come to our seminars we teach these philosophies, if you really want to use greeting cards to help you in your business there’s a philosophy to learn. We believe in giving to give, not giving to get. So any time you send a greeting card or anything out to somebody, a client, a prospect, whatever, are you sending out to get something or are you sending out to give something to them. And we really talk a lot about this. Relationship marketing is about giving. Relationship marketing, there’s two words. The first word is relationship and the second word is marketing. Most people when they hear relationship marketing they focus on the second word not the first word. Big mistake. Relationship marketing is about creating relationship with a customer base. Those customers out there and prospects out there, folks, they don’t care what you’re offering, they don’t care what kind of offer you’re giving, they only care that you care, period. I can … we live in the Google age today. I can Google any … they have Google here, right? I’m just kidding.

Tim: You beat me to it.

Kody: Yeah, I knew you were going to say that so I just had to. But you can Google any product or service you want, you all know this, you can do any …

Tim: We just haven’t got computers yet but they’re coming.

Kody: But you can Google any product or service you want. In a matter of seconds you can get any information, any deal, any offering on any product you want and it’s just like that, we live in that kind of an information age. So today the advertising mechanisms and the campaigning and all the stuff that people do, it’s getting less and less and less effective. We live in a day and age where people want to work and do business with people they have relationship with. So Send Out Cards is the perfect product to help businesses do that if you will buy into the philosophy of sending out to give. Let me give you an example. A lot of people in the real estate business use our product.

Tim: Lots.

Kody: People in real estate go to their big seminars and one of the things they teach you in those seminars is, say, when you sell a home to somebody, you need to send them something and ask the person you sold the home to, ask them for a referral. Big big thing in real estate. I come along teaching this relationship market thing with a whole bunch of real estate people in the room, including the trainers and I literally boldly say, “Listen, what I’m going to tell you is you do not ask for the referral, deserve it. Deserve it.” How do you deserve it? You sell that home to somebody and you take a picture of that person in front of their new home and send them a genuine thank you. Hey, thank you for doing business with us. You look beautiful in front of your new home. I hope you have years and years of prosperity and building memories with your family. Your friend, Kody, and you sign it. You don’t ask for nothing. You show that person that you really care. Capture their birthdays. Send them birthday cards and just say happy birthday. Do you think you have to ask for a referral? If you keep campaigning like that with those greeting cards you won’t have to ask for nothing. Man, they’ll be referring people like crazy to you. That’s what relationship marketing is and that’s what Send Out Cards offers.

Tim: And do you think the relationship marketing thing is less about sell and more about care? It’s just, you know, like sending that card. I sent a series of cards a couple of months ago and said … it was a really funny card, you know, even I thought it was funny. And it just made people smile. And that’s all I wanted to do. There was no sell. There was no, like, hey, come to my next workshop or, you know.

Kody: That’s the absolute key. It’s building that relationship and humour is a big thing. And that’s what’s cool about.

Tim: Yeah.

Kody: Send Out Cards you can, I mean, just imagine the photos that you have on your digital camera right now.

Tim: Yeah.

Kody: And just use your imagination what you could do in a greeting card.

Tim: Yeah.

Kody: Humour is a big big thing.

Tim: Big thing.

Kody: Yeah.

Tim: The ability to put voice balloons and thought bubbles …

Kody: Yeah.

Tim: … and captions is addictive.

Kody: It is.

Tim: It is addictive.

Kody: Yep.

Tim: Lukey?

Luke: I was actually at a conference over the weekend and it was basically an online marketing conference. However, on day two a young Melbourne entrepreneur by the name of Pete Williams got up and he talked a bit about Send Out Cards. And he said something interesting about the comparison between email marketing and essentially Send Out Cards/direct marketing/relationship building, an email … an open rate of an email might be at best 15% and I think with a direct Send Out Card it’s something like …

Tim: A hundred.

Luke: Ninety, 90 to 100%.

Tim: Well, yeah, if it’s got your name on it.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And it hasn’t got a … and it hasn’t got a plastic window on the envelope which means it’s a bill, all Send Out Cards come in just a plain envelope with your name on it, you’re going to open it.

Kody: There are some stats on this. American Greetings actually did a big huge study about six or seven years ago. A greeting card sent in the mail, a physical greeting card sent in the mail that has the appearance of a greeting card, that different envelope size and everything else, is 11 times more likely to be opened than any other piece of mail that you have. In other words, it gets opened. So when you see these cards show up, you instantly think, oh my goodness, who’s sending this? This could be cool. And you open up. In fact today I … because I send a lot of greeting cards out, I receive a lot of greeting cards. And it’s really funny because, you know, I’ll pick up my mail and I’ve got stacks and stacks of mail and a bunch of them is greeting cards. All the bills and the number ten envelopes and stuff, I’m just chucking those and I go straight to the greeting cards, go over in a corner and open up and have a great time.

Tim: Yep.

Kody: Yeah.

Tim: Yep, that is a lot of fun. There’s a certain feeling … you can sell the concept all you like, you can’t sell the feeling you get when you hit the send button and someone receives it and calls you and says thank you. Or you go into a client’s office and the card is there that you sent them three months ago. And that’s happened to me on a number of occasions.

Kody: Yep.

Tim: Which is kind of cool.

Kody: Yep.

Tim: Yeah.

Kody: Absolutely.

Luke: So, Kody, are there any other forms of marketing that Send Out Cards uses apart from network marketing?

Kody: Well network marketing is our … it’s our model. And everything we do as a company is to support that model. We are in business with thousands and thousands of independent distributors and our job as a company is to support them, period. Everything we do is to support the rep. A lot of people, you know, we may end up doing some Internet applications or I might be on a big huge talk show that brings in thousands and thousands of leads, you know, people want to know more about it. We, as a company, don’t do anything with those leads other than send them out to our active distributors and allow them to work them. Our job is to support that model, period.

Luke: Interesting.

Tim: Brilliant. What else have you got, Lukey? Kody, he’s got to go and have a shower, shave and shoeshine prior to going on stage tonight.

Luke: One … yeah, one more question. Are there any other people, perhaps in a similar space, perhaps not, doing some good marketing things that you admire or appreciate?

Kody: In network marketing or?

Luke: Either network marketing or standard marketing.

Kody: You know, yeah, man, I’ll tell you, there’s just … you mentioned Netflix, and Netflix is brilliant. It’s just a brilliant brilliant concept. There’s a lot of application out there. I really pay a lot of attention to the network marketing model. And, you know, that’s one thing about Send Out Cards that’s kind of unique is that we really advocate and applaud all companies, all legitimate companies, that are in the network marketing industry. You’re never ever going to hear us say a bad thing about a network marketing competitor, we’re only going to say good things about them because it’s a great industry and we love what businesses are doing out there.

The only thing I would caution people on is that when you hear about a network marketing opportunity, there’s some very simple things to make sure that you know it’s a legitimate opportunity. Number one is there is an actual product that is sold, a product or service that is sold. That is key. And also a good indicator is would I buy this product if there was not a money opportunity attached to it? If you can answer yes to those two questions, take a look at whatever it is you’re doing. And Send Out Cards, you know, people buy it all the time without any interest in the money side. In fact they buy the most expensive package we have because they love all the little things that it offers and a lot of people don’t have any intention of making money out of that upfront. So we know we have a legitimate opportunity because people will buy our product whether we attach money to it or not so.

Tim: You’re an inspiring guy. I wasn’t sure about … I watched you, your videos and I listened to your telly seminars and your webinars, or whatever it is you do, your walkthroughs and you are what you see. And I like that. I think, you know, when you’ve got a vision of someone … I feel very connected to you and I really appreciate you coming on the show.

Kody: Thank you.

Tim: And I really appreciate you giving what you have today. I hope our listeners kind of take onboard.

Kody: Thank you.

Tim: Because it is a new form of marketing. It’s appreciation marketing. It’s actually putting some heart back into marketing. It’s not the lazy marketing of advertising, you know, where you run an ad and cross your fingers, you know.

Kody: Right.

Tim: And hope it works. And I think you’ve created something really special that the world needs at a time when there’s a lot of bad stuff going on.

Kody: Yep.

Tim: You know, go and send a card.

Kody: That’s right.

Tim: That’s what I reckon.

Luke: And for once I actually agree with you, Timbo, so …

Tim: Oh, listeners.

Luke: Kody, thanks very much for joining us and giving us some time.

Tim: Yeah.

Kody: Thanks for having me on.

Tim: Good on you, mate.

Kody: I appreciate it.

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey, you accused me then of that being a bit of an infomercial for Send Out Cards, which in a sense it was. But Send Out Cards is a medium, is a marketing medium, so it’s hard not to talk about it a lot. But … do you want to say anything to that?

Luke: Yeah, as I said to you behind the scenes, Timbo, usually we get a business on to talk about their marketing methods.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Whereas this … whereas Kody is talking about his product. And my argument to you was that, you know, if we’re talking about someone’s marketing methods we would have got a real estate agent that’s using Send Out Cards.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. Good. Well we might do that.

Luke: Yeah, we might do that. Yeah, that was my only …

Tim: No, fair enough too. But at the same time I don’t think we make any excuses for the fact that, hey, you know what, this is a new way of marketing your business.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Well it’s not new to write a greeting card but the way it’s done it is amazing. Go and check it out yourself. We’re going to leave a link on our show notes for you to go and try it for free. So click on that link and go and send a couple of cards on us and see what you think of it.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: It is a great form of marketing. Send a card to a client thanking them for their business. Don’t sell anything.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Send a card to us.

Luke: Yeah. Hey, great idea.

Tim: PO Box 989, Mount Eliza 3930.

Luke: Australia.

Tim: Australia. Correct, correct. Lukey, Kody’s left us some books to give away. Listeners, leave a … Kody’s written a book called “Promptings”. There you go …

Luke: Fantastic, yeah.

Tim: … using that word again. But he has. It’s a great book, it’s an inspiring book. And, listeners, leave a review on iTunes of our show, good, bad or otherwise and tell us that you’ve left it and we will have five books to give away in, what will we say, two shows’ time?

Luke: Yeah. And make sure you send us an email once you have with your address, otherwise we won’t be able to send you the book.

Tim: Correct.

Luke: Questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim: Ripper. Lukey, this is the start of a new year, year two for Small Business Big Marketing.

Luke: Very exciting.

Tim: We’re going to ramp it up. It is exciting. We’ve got some great guests coming. Listeners, send us your questions, we will answer them. And stay tuned for the next episode, a couple of weeks’ time.

Luke: Catch you then.

Tim: Bye.

Lovingly transcribed by The Transcription People.

SBBM #17 – How to Name Your Business & Listener Questions

Luke — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:33:41 +0000

The final Small Business Big Marketing episode for 2009, episode 17 covers listener questions including how to name a business and where to find marketing inspiration. We recommend some holiday reading and wrap up the year that was.

We thank you all for your support throughout 2009 and look forward to you joining us for our next season in 2010. Our next episode is due out in mid February 2010, so we’ll catch you then.

Duration: 28:00

Podcast Transcription

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey, welcome back, part two.
Luke: Part two. How are you, Timbo?

Tim: Good, mate. Last episode was jam packed full of marketing goodness and we just couldn’t do it to our listeners to create a show that was going to go for about, what do you reckon, we were heading for about an hour and a half?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: So we thought we’ll go part two.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: And just split it up a bit, share the love. It’s that time of the year, Christmas, summer. Well probably, in fact just before we came on air we got a Tweet from Rebecca from (0:52) in Holland.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Saying how powdery snowy…

Luke: Snow.

Tim: …and cold it was. So hello to all our listeners in Holland.

Luke: Yes. And indeed the northern hemisphere.

Tim: The northern hemisphere. Because we are not there.

Luke: No.

Tim: Mind you, looking out here, it’s pretty cold. Hey, mate, we’re going to do three listener questions.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: We’ve got our holiday booklist…

Luke: Yes.

Tim: …that’s going to turbo charge our marketing knowledge. Did I tell you we’re number 12 podcast on iTunes?

Luke: You might have mentioned that.

Tim: I think I might have mentioned it in the last show, but it’s worth just reconsidering what that means.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: But we won’t do that now because I mean we’ll talk about it later. Hey, listener questions, thank you by the way to all the listeners over the course of the year who have…

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Where have they sent those questions to?

Luke: Questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim: Questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com. And so thank you, I know we haven’t got to actually, we haven’t actually got to that many over the course of the first year because we seem to just…we leave it til the end…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …which is probably a bit rude.

Luke: And then we run out of time.

Tim: We run out of time but…

Luke: So we’re dedicating this episode mainly to…

Tim: Yep.

Luke: …listener questions.

Tim: Listener love, we call it. So, Lukey, first question, Justin, Fremantle, Western Australia.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: I’m having…oh, g’day guys, love your show, blah, blah, blah. Thank you, Justin. I’m having trouble naming my new business. What’s the best way to go about it? Can you do it? No. I gather…I assume he means can we do it for him.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: The answer is no, Justin. We’d love to…

Luke: However.

Tim: However. And he said, do I need a tag line?

Luke: Okay.

Tim: So best way to go about naming your business. Okay, I’ve got a really easy solution. Because it’s kind of something I do, I’ve done a…

Luke: You’ve done a few of these.

Tim: I have, yeah.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: In fact I’ve just renamed a mental health organisation. Which I thoroughly enjoyed doing because it…

Luke: It took a while though, didn’t it?

Tim: It did. It did. But that’s the nature of not for profit organisations too.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Because the approval times and…

Luke: A lot of stakeholders too.

Tim: A lot of stakeholders.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: But we’ve ended up with a great name which I’ll share with you next year when we relaunch the brand because I reckon it’s one of the better names, certainly I’ve come up with, and that’s going around.

Luke: You actually tried some crowd sourcing…

Tim: I did.

Luke: …for the naming of that, Timbo.

Tim: I did but…

Luke: How’d you go with that?

Tim: Well can I tell you first, because that is a good tool for outsourcing, but the first thing when you are naming your business, I reckon a great question to ask, and we’ve talked about this before, you’ve got to understand what your business stands for, what your brand stands for. Because there’s no use just putting your finger in the sky and saying what should I call it. Have a criteria. Write yourself a brief in order to then go away and start naming based on what your brief, the direction your brief has set. The number one question in your brief is what do I do.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Four very important words. So in terms of my business I say, you know, I make…I show businesses how to be irresistible, okay, so that’s what I do. We’ve talked about other examples of…there’s a brewer in Australia who says they make the world more social. These aren’t tag lines. These are like, it’s almost positioning statements, you know.

Luke: Part of your brand character, Timbo.

Tim: Part of your brand character, correct.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Go to my website TheIdeasGuy.com.au and have a look at the brand character process that I take people through. But if you know the emotional answer to the question, what is it you do; it’s a very very good lead in to then being able to develop a name. On top of that, you need to know what your personality traits of the business are, okay.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: So are you a fun loving kind of excitable, colourful, or are you more kind of conservative and quiet and all that type of stuff. So if you know what you do, the answer to what you do, and you know the kind of personality you want to create around your business, then it’s a damn good start to coming up with a name.

Luke: And if you are asking other people to name your business, it’s a great brief.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you wouldn’t ask an architect to go and design you a house without a direction from you.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And it’s the same with naming your business. Online tools, Lukey, what have you got? There are…because you can crowd source it, you know.

Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim: You can put it out on Twitter, you can write a brief on Google Docs and share the link, you know. There’s a great website called WordLab.com.

Luke: You’ve used WordLab before, Timbo.

Tim: I’ve been using WordLab for years. WordLab I use instead of…you know, sometimes I do crosswords just to keep the old brain active, but I’ve been…I often just go to WordLab.com.

Luke: And name businesses.

Tim: Name businesses, yeah. It’s a free online forum.

Luke: So instead of Sudoku you name businesses.

Tim: I never got Sudoku, no, I just do crosswords, mate. Just basic crosswords, not even the cryptic stuff.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: But, you know, like WordLab has got…you can name services, products, promotions, businesses, bands.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And it’s just a free online resource.

Luke: Babies?

Tim: I don’t know. But that is something very close to your heart right now, isn’t it, Lukey?

Luke: Yeah, indeed. A website that SitePoint has just launched, namemythingy.com.

Tim: Namemythingy.

Luke: Namemythingy. You can actually put up a brief and ask…ask…basically crowd source the naming of, you know, as you said, Timbo, just about anything.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So that’s another resource that you can use.

Tim: Lastly, Justin, and thanks for this question, because clearly it’s a good one, have courage, you know, just have courage when naming something. I think we can often fallback on fairly conservative names. I think it’s important the domain name is available.

Luke: Yeah, definitely.

Tim: It doesn’t necessarily need to be exactly, it’s nice if is exactly the business name in the domain name, but around about is pretty good. And Justin also asks, Luke, do you need a tagline. My answer, my simple answer to that is if your business name does not describe what you do very clearly…

Luke: Yep.

Tim: …then you need a tagline to qualify it.

Luke: Yep. I agree.

Tim: Do you?

Luke: Absolutely.

Tim: Do you want to challenge me on that?

Luke: No, I think some people like to choose a name that…when they start their business it basically means nothing. It’s, you know, like…I’m trying to think of one now and I can’t.

Tim: The Ideas Guy.

Luke: No, no, see that says what it does.

Tim: It sort of does and it doesn’t.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: The Ideas Guy, I did need a tagline, which was making businesses irresistible. Because I just felt I knew what it did and it’s developed a kind of a life of its own which is kind of nice but…

Luke: I’ve got an example.

Tim: Go.

Luke: iPod.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: A thousand songs in your pocket.

Tim: Yeah. How good is that tagline?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And that’s not even an emotional tagline, it’s just such a good product that…

Luke: Yep.

Tim: …to be able to say that.

Luke: But when iPods first came out way back when…

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: You know, what is it? A thousand songs in your pocket.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Or 2000 songs or…

Tim: Yeah, well now it’s…one bloke showed me the other day he had forty-two thousand three hundred and something songs on his iPod. It’s like, and how many do you listen to. Anyway, hey, Justin, thank you very much for your question.

Luke: Thanks, Justin.

Tim: And thank you for listening. Lukey, who’s next?

Luke: We’ve got Kim from New York.

Tim: New York. I love it. Last question from Fremantle, now we’re heading off to New York, where to next?

Luke: Yeah. Okay, Kim from New York, you guys seem to know a lot about marketing. Thanks, Kim.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Where’s it all come from? What books would you recommend?

Tim: Where’s it all come from. Don’t even go there.

Luke: Yeah, no.

Tim: Where’s it all come from? Look…

Luke: That’s why…that’s sort of why we…that’s really why we interview people.

Tim: Yeah, it is.

Luke: You know, it’s a continual process of learning and getting inspiration from…

Tim: Yep.

Luke: …others that are doing some weird and wonderful things.

Tim: You know, my experience, and I’ve been marketing for 20 years now, is that I found a whole lot of marketing stuff is BS.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And we all know what that stands for. I just think it’s a whole lot of, you know, people trying to make use of their eight hours in a day really.

Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim: Getting research done and writing mission statements and vision statements and…oh, that’s interesting. Did I mention this the other…in a previous episode, but the guy who came…mission statements do my head in, I don’t get them, they sit on a wall and gather dust, right…

Luke: Yep.

Tim: …if you go into big corporates. The guy…I don’t know whether I shared this, I might be doubling up, but anyway doesn’t matter, if you’re listening for the first time then here we go, the guy who invented mission statements is a guy called Tom Peters.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And he invented them however long ago. He has retracted the idea of a mission statement about five years ago because he found that arms companies, companies that develop, you know, bombs…

Luke: Yep.

Tim: …and bullets, have similar mission statements to hospitals, right, caring for customers, good corporate citizens, all the motherhood statements.

Luke: Doesn’t it make you sick?

Tim: Yeah, yeah, it does. How did we get onto that? But, look, that’s why, because I thought all marketing over the course of the years…I just see a lot of stuff that does my head in and a lot of money wasted so…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …kind of trying to get it down to the good stuff and that’s why we interview people.

Luke: Yeah. What books, Timbo?

Tim: Righto, mate. This is kind of…we’re kind of integrating the answer to this question with our summer reading list.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Which I have sitting here. You’ve just finished one and you put me onto it and I’ve now finished it. Talk about it.

Luke: Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk. Timbo…

Tim: A bloody ripper.

Luke: It’s a really easy read.

Tim: Yes.

Luke: And I don’t mean that…I don’t say that because it’s, you know…

Tim: Are you saying I’m an easy read?

Luke: No. And, look, Crush It! is all about…a lot of it is about personal branding, I found, that’s what I got out of it.

Tim: Yep, yeah.

Luke: And developing your personal brand. And I think that’s something that everyone should do. Whether you have a small business or whether you’re professional, whether you’re a tradesperson.

Tim: Whether you like it or not, in the coming years and decades people will be going online to find out about other people, if they’re not already.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Okay.

Luke: Also from an employment point of view.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: I…when an employer, when a prospective employer, is looking at candidates, I believe they’re also going to be looking at that candidate’s network as well.

Tim: Ooh, yeah.

Luke: They’re not just employing the person. You know, if, say, someone has a couple of thousand followers on Twitter, they might have thousands of friends on Facebook, they might be hooked into a network of people that that particular business wants to get in touch with.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: It makes them a lot more employable than if…

Tim: Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: That was a good book. Thank you for putting me onto that because Crush It! I just cut you off then but. Hey, next book.

Luke: Next one.

Tim: Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. I did an Amazon order a few weeks ago and the box arrived and these were all books that I chose.

Luke: It must have been just like Christmas.

Tim: I love getting that Amazon box, I love it. So this is a book that’s been around for a while now, Freakonomics, and it is very well talked about. On the back, which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How much do parents really matter? Okay, so what has that got to do with marketing, I’ll tell you next year. Lukey, another one is What the Dog Saw. And I bought this for two reasons. One, it’s written by Malcolm Gladwell.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Who wrote Tipping Point?

Luke: Tipping Point.

Tim: And Blink.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And second reason is I love the art direction on the cover. Yes, I am a very simple person but I do love the art direction. But this is Malcolm Gladwell who is a very insightful young man, and look at him there, there’s a picture of him in the inside sleeve. He looks like sort of Andy Warhol meets Keith Richards, I would say.

Luke: Meets Harry Potter.

Tim: Meets Harry Potter. But this is…so he’s written a couple of really good insightful books in Blink and Tipping Point.

Luke: Yeah, Blink and Tipping Point definitely recommend…

Tim: Yeah, put those on the list as well if you haven’t read them.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: This is…Malcolm Gladwell for a number of years has written for The New Yorker and this is a collection of the stuff that he’s written for The New Yorker so…do you know what I also love about buying from Amazon?

Luke: The smell of the box.

Tim: I do like the smell of the box but I wouldn’t tell anyone that.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: I just did. I love the fact that you get hardcover books.

Luke: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Tim: Us folk in Australia, well that’s an American…why did I do an American accent when…

Luke: You mean us folks here in Australia?

Tim: Yeah, us folks down…

Luke: Down under.

Tim: Oh, look, there goes a kangaroo down the street.

Luke: Yeah, mate.

Tim: Look, we don’t get hardcover books and if we do they’re just really expensive.

Luke: Yeah, yep.

Tim: Hey, next one, Trust Agents. Are we going to put all these on the show notes, guys, so stop scribbling, I can hear you scribbling madly and you don’t need to. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and someone Smith, I’ve taken off the sleeve so I can’t see the names. But this is a fairly intellectual book but it is a book about how to gain trust using online resources. And a pretty important, Chris Brogan is prolific online, particularly in Twitter and with his blog, chrisbrogan.com you can check out. Do you want to add one, Lukey, while I go through my list or shall I keep going?

Luke: 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

Tim: Oh, come on, mate, that’s not a Christmas read. Hey?

Luke: It’s another easy read, it’s another good book.

Tim: It is. I’d rather set fire to my own leg than read that over Christmas but…no, that is a good book. You do have to put that on your…

Luke: No, where…this is answering what books would you recommend for Kim from New York about marketing.

Tim: I know, I know.

Luke: That’s a good one.

Tim: All right, all right, let’s take this outside. This one, I don’t know much about, it’s called Connected by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. Both…one’s MD PhD and the other one is PhD, intellectual stuff. The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. When I did this Amazon order for summer holidays I did kind of want to pump up my knowledge for the coming year, because I’ve got some big plans, so that’s why I haven’t got…the next book is fictional.

Luke: Right.

Tim: Okay. The only one of the list.

Luke: Have you got a picture book there for me?

Tim: You want a picture book, go and get a Larson, you know, like Gary Larson Far Side.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Go and get one of them, that’ll make you laugh. Sit round the pool and laugh madly. My last book is for our reading list, which is nothing to do with marketing, Kim from New York, is Matthew Reilly’s the Five Greatest Warriors.

Luke: Nice.

Tim: Yeah. It’s kind of everywhere, it’s all over bookshops at the moment and it’s the Five Great Warriors. Look at it, Moses, Jesus Christ, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan and Unknown. It is fictional.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And it is about the end of the world and it is probably a pretty interesting read. A bit of a rollercoaster read, I’d say. So, look, I’ve started that and kind of cool, kind of sci?fi, no, not really sci-fi but fantasy and whacko stuff.

Luke: Look forward to hearing about that.

Tim: Gee, that was a big list.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: But…and if you were going to read one of them, I would actually say Crush It!

Luke: Yeah, definitely.

Tim: It’s simple, easy and…

Luke: Inspirational.

Tim: And will get you…it’s actually really practical.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: I love practical marketing stuff that you can use.

Luke: Stop crying and start hustling.

Tim: What?

Luke: That’s one of Gary’s sayings.

Tim: Stop crying?

Luke: And start hustling.

Tim: Is that right?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: He’s a fairly charismatic…you know what?

Luke: What?

Tim: Okay, I’m going to set myself up here; we’ll get him on the show next year.

Luke: Ooh, big call, Timbo.

Tim: It is a big call. But I’ve got a list; I’ve started creating a list of things…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …for next year.

Luke: Good one.

Tim: And because we only became the number 12 podcast for the year in 2009, did I mention that?

Luke: Come on, Timbo.

Tim: Sorry, sorry. I always say to my wife, you know, never tell a joke more than once.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And I’ve probably told that joke about six times.

Luke: Yeah, it’s…

Tim: So it’s clearly wearing thin. But we do have a list of guests that we’re building up for next year.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: Which are really going to, I reckon, challenge us and take the show to a bit more, I don’t know, a bit provocative in terms…is that the right word? Challenging.

Luke: Challenging, yeah.

Tim: Provocative was a bit…

Luke: Yeah, we wouldn’t make…

Tim: …on the erotic side.

Luke: We wouldn’t make it onto iTunes at all if we…

Tim: Yeah, that’s right.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Okay.

Luke: And also, listeners, if there is someone that you want to hear from, send us an email questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim: Yeah. Someone like really…who you think is doing just really really great marketing, or on the reverse side, thinks marketing is a load of.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: Because we’d like to be challenged.

Luke: Yep. Now, Timbo, the final question?

Tim: Yep, we have, here we go, Jess from Auckland. Lukey, we’ve gone from Western Australia to New York and we’re back into the southern hemisphere, Auckland, New Zealand, and Jess asks…do you reckon Jess is a boy or a girl or a dog? Because there’s a lot of dogs called Jess, aren’t they?

Luke: Yes.

Tim: I am finding it difficult to find a designer who I can work with for the next few years on my business, Jess says. I will require logo, stationery, brochures, website and ads. Good shopping list. But they all seem either too expensive, non responsive or too busy. Do you have any tips for solving this problem? Jess, great question.

Luke: Timbo, you’ve got a pretty good story about this.

Tim: Look, I do and I too have for many years looked for designers who kind of fit the criteria of what I’m looking for, and I have a number of designers that I use, depending on the brief, but I have found through 99designs initially he…this fellow.

Luke: Dot com.

Tim: Dot com. This fellow is…he won the competition that I posted on 99designs. And when I saw it…

Luke: Quickly what is 99designs?

Tim: Post a brief, get a logo.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Or get stationery.

Luke: It’s a design competition.

Tim: It is, design competition. Where, if you need something designed, post the brief, you’ll get responses from all around the world, finished designs, you choose one, award them the nominated amount of prize money that you decide to give out.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Thank you for that, Luke. Do you work for the company or something that…yeah, exactly, exactly. Go to TheIdeasGuy.com.au.

Luke: Full disclosure, yes…

Tim: Yes.

Luke: …I work with 99designs.

Tim: Guys…

Luke: And…

Tim: Go on.

Luke: Yep, so you basically put up a brief.

Tim: Look, the guy who I ended up picking, I then went and had a look at his website, his work just astounded me in its simplicity and its beauty.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because I do love a good logo. I have subsequently contracted him. His name is Nikola.

Luke: Where? Where is he?

Tim: Nikola is in…I don’t even know where this place is, this is how bad my geography is, Serbia.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: I love that. I love going to people, oh yeah, I’ve got a great designer, he’s in Serbia. But, you know, oh gee he’s good.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: He is so…he’s just a brilliant designer. He is cost effective, he is quick, he is flexible, he challenges me. He just fits so many of the criteria that I need for a good designer. And I love working with him. And so that’s not really answering the question but what it does say, the question being how do you find a good designer. Look, go to 99designs, find a design you like and then find out who did it.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: And see whether they’re in your price range or whether they’re the kind of people you want to work with. That’s not hard to do, you know, if you go around a website and see a nice design, contact the web designer who may be able to put you in touch with the graphic designer. By the way, guys, web designers aren’t graphic designers all the time, so I think that’s an important…

Luke: Or vice versa.

Tim: Or vice versa.

Luke: Yeah. I’ve, in my former web development business; I’ve employed graphic designers and web designers before. Once you find a good one, hang onto them…

Tim: Hang on.

Luke: …as hard as you can.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke: Good designers are undervalued.

Tim: I’d agree. I agree.

Luke: And once you find one that you can work with, like Tim has, pay them well and hang onto them.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke: I had one of my best designers poached from me and…

Tim: You did. You did. And I’ve subsequently used him, haven’t I?

Luke: You have.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And I was…I rue the day that…

Tim: Don’t mention names.

Luke: No.

Tim: Hey, and guys, the other thing is, elance.com. That’s a good place to go and find designers, maybe, maybe not. Certainly you’ll save money, but you get to see their portfolios.

Luke: Yeah, that’s true.

Tim: So, you know, you can choose there. Ask around. And don’t be afraid to just, you know, I think one of the things that designers love and will be willing to work with you more, even if your budget is not as big as they’d like it to be, have a good brief and I think we do…we will do…spend some time in one episode next year about how to write a good creative brief. Because once you’ve written a creative brief, and in fact I’ll be covering this in my Bali marketing and wellbeing retreat in June, how to write a good creative brief.

Luke: Could be good for you to put up some templates, Timbo.

Tim: That would be giving away a hell of a lot of intellectual property but…

Luke: Maybe just for our listeners.

Tim: Oh, yeah, yeah, because no one else would know. So, no, it is, I mean once you’ve got a good creative brief written for your business…

Luke: Yep.

Tim: …the job’s done. And that brief can form the basis of so many marketing materials that you require.

Luke: Yeah, and look, you can find some great examples on 99designs and on elance.com.

Tim: Yeah, yep.

Luke: Particularly elance finds…you can actually find people that are regularly requesting.

Tim: Yep, yep.

Luke: And you’ll find some good briefs on there.

Tim: And, look, the other thing is, last idea for Kim from Auckland, if you are on Twitter…

Luke: Kim was from New York. This is Jess from Auckland.

Tim: Oh, this is Jess from Auckland. Sorry. So what I would do is Tweet about it if you’ve got a bit of a following on Twitter.

Luke: Yeah, get people to refer you one.

Tim: There is a lot of designers on Twitter, let me tell you.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: In fact there are lists of designers on Twitter that you could follow. So, hey, thank you, listeners, for your questions. Now, Lukey, well this is not a sad time, it’s not sad at all.

Luke: No.

Tim: It’s just kind of the end of the first season of Small Business Big Marketing.

Luke: Yeah, and we’ll look forward to starting back in the New Year.

Tim: I am looking forward to it. We are going to have…I’m really looking forward to it. If we can get some of the guests on that we have on our list, we are going to rock the free world, the free marketing world, you know, it’s going to be great. So, listeners, first of all, a big big shout out to…this is where the credits start rolling, guys, so bear with us and do listen because there’s some people…and in fact, listeners, first and foremost this show is nothing without listeners.

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: We would not be number 12. As much as we joked about it, being number 12 on iTunes for 2009 was…is only because we have a whole lot of beautiful listeners from all around the world.

Luke: Yeah. And people that leave some fantastic reviews on iTunes.

Tim: Yep. So…

Luke: If you haven’t.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke: Drop one on.

Tim: If you haven’t, that would be great. I mean, please go and rate the show and please leave some written feedback on iTunes for us.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: It doesn’t have to be glowing, but just if you could give us feedback, that would be a wonderful thing. Email us a question for the New Year.

Luke: Questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim: Say g’day to us on Twitter which we will be linked on our website but…

Luke: Yep.

Tim: What’s your Twitter?

Luke: Luke Moulton, that’s M-O-U-L-T-O-N.

Tim: And mine is Timbo Reid, T-I-M-B-O R-E-I-D. Come and follow us and say g’day.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And tell us what you’d like to hear more about next year. And get linked in with us.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: We’ll have all these links on the show notes, guys, but we’d love you to come over and get linked into us, build the community. We’re going to kind of use…going to get even a bit more intelligent in the New Year, Lukey, with the way…we talk so much about social media but it’s all been about time obviously. We’ve got full-time jobs that we’re doing and the podcast is kind of…

Luke: Indeed.

Tim: I wouldn’t say secondary but it’s one of those things, I mean, we do need to spend some time on getting the website right and a few other things. And that will be the New Year’s challenge.

Luke: Yep. And getting to number one in business podcasts.

Tim: Oh, stop it. I think we are, we actually are. If you go to marketing on iTunes, we are number one.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Which is kind of nice, brings a tear to a glass eye. Tell everyone. And shout outs, shout outs, shout outs, listeners, thank you. Sammy Cavanaugh.

Luke: Yes, thank you, Sam.

Tim: Who has been our producer and our…

Luke: Given generously of his time.

Tim: Mate, has he ever. Time, studio, love, patience, and all he wants is a Subway or a Nando’s chicken…vegetable burger or…

Luke: Vegetarian.

Tim: You know, God bless you, Sammy. Thank you so much. And…

Luke: Jack.

Tim: Post.

Luke: Jack Post, a lovely young fellow who’s been doing the edits for us and post production.

Tim: Yeah, great guy, Jack. Thanks, mate, for all the work you have done. And who else? Mum, do you want to thank your mum?

Luke: Yeah, thanks, mum.

Tim: Thanks, mum.

Luke: Thanks, Tim.

Tim: Thank you, Luke. Stop it.

Luke: It’s been great working with you.

Tim: Yep, virtual hug. Virtual hug. It has been good.

Luke: You’d crush me.

Tim: Yeah, we’d crush it. Hey, what are you doing, are you going away?

Luke: No, I’ve basically got a week off and I’m just going to…

Tim: Oh, yeah.

Luke: …potter around here at home.

Tim: Yep, lovely.

Luke: And yourself, Timbo?

Tim: Going up to the Whitsundays to a tropical island.

Luke: Queensland.

Tim: Queensland, yeah. And going up with the family, going to a Club Med actually and going to do a bit of water aerobics and…that will be a sight, wouldn’t it? No, but we’re going to have…

Luke: Speedos or board shorts?

Tim: I think I’ll go the budgie smugglers.

Luke: I’m glad I’m not going to be there.

Tim: Okay, but, look…

Luke: Don’t take any photos.

Tim: I will. Hey, we are going to have a good time because this has been a big year and I’m just going to kind of relax, read those books that we mentioned. Guys, visit out show notes. Have a lovely lovely Christmas time.

Luke: Yeah, check out the website SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim: I was going to…you shrug…you are the marketer from…you’re the marketer’s marketer. I was just about to wish everyone a merry Christmas and you’re just like, bang, straight into it. Okay, merry Christmas, guys.

Luke: Merry Christmas, guys.

Tim: Have a great holiday. I was going to say summer holiday, but if you’re in the northern hemisphere have a lovely winter holiday…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …or time with your family. And thanks for listening. Love you, love your work. Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: See you in the New Year.

Luke: See you, guys.

Tim: Bye.

Lovingly transcribed by The Transcription People

SBBM #16 – Pay Per Click Advertising and Google AdWords Strategies

Luke — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:30:16 +0000

Ahhhh…the end of the year is nigh! We can smell the brandy cream and hear the presents being opened already. Welcome to the second last episode of SBBM for our 2010 season. And today we have a very, very sepcial guest in Luke Moulton…that’s right Lukeee, Lukeeee, Lukee! He’ going to share with us the good, the bad and the ugly of PAY-PER-CLICK (PPC) advertising. Specifically a bit of Google Adwords and Facebook advertising action. We also touch on the fact that our humble little marketing show has been voted by Apple iTunes as the 12th best new podcast for 2009. *Blush*. So sit back, grab a Pina Colada or some other 80’s type cocktail and get ready to have one more part of your marketing demystified.

Google Adwords

Facebook advertising

Market Samurai – Keyword Research Tool

Google Keyword Tool

Perry Marshall

Duration: 30:26

Podcast Transcription

Tim: Lukey, Lukey, Lukey.

Luke: How are you, Timbo?

Tim: Lukey, you are looking exceptionally ravishing today because you are growing your hair, aren’t you?

Luke: Let’s be honest, time for a trim.

Tim: Is it really?

Luke: It is, yeah.

Tim: You’re not going for that…you kind of look like Keith Urban.

Luke: Thanks.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, you’ve got that middle part.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And in fact what I’m going to do during this show is…

Luke: Take a video.

Tim: Yeah, I’m going to get the flip out.

Luke: Great.

Tim: And show the viewers what I’m having to look at…

Luke: Could have warned me for that one.

Tim: I could have, mate, you could have done your hair.

Luke: Anyway, we’re trying to keep this show down to 20 minutes so…

Tim: Good luck, good luck. Welcome back, listeners.

Luke: Welcome back.

Tim: To Small Business Big Marketing, the show that…

Luke: Came number 12 on iTunes in Australia.

Tim: It didn’t, did it?

Luke: For podcasts.

Tim: Let me get that right, Luke, you’re saying…you’re telling me that our little marketing show…

Luke: Our humble little marketing show.

Tim: Our humble little marketing show was voted by the secret people at iTunes as being number 12, best new podcast in Australia for 2009. Is that what you’re saying?

Luke: That’s what I’m saying, Timbo.

Tim: My goodness.

Luke: And I think you’re pretty used to saying it yourself.

Tim: Yes, look, I have told…I have shared it with the odd person via Twitter and various other social networking sites and also just told family and friends.

Luke: Generally.

Tim: And just blokes in the street, I walked past a bloke the other day and said…

Luke: I actually meant to get you a t-shirt for Christmas.

Tim: Should just say guess what and people could go what.

Luke: What.

Tim: And I’d go just call me number 12. That’s pretty cool. So, yeah, welcome everyone back to Small Business…last show for the year, Lukey.

Luke: Yes, indeed, Timbo.

Tim: Last show. Is it number 15, 16, whatever.

Luke: It’s around about that, yep.

Tim: Around about that but what a year, what a year in marketing it’s been.

Luke: Yeah. I can’t…it’s gone so quickly.

Tim: It has. Been a dream, it was a dream for many years to do this show.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And we are doing it.

Luke: And enjoying it, loving it.

Tim: Rocking it. Hey, a bit of news before we get stuck in.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Because it’s going to be a really interesting show today. We don’t…well our guest actually is you.

Luke: Me?

Tim: Yeah, you.

Luke: Not you.

Tim: Not me, no. But…so a bit of news, in our last show I just overtly promoted A Health Approach To Marketing, my Bali wellness and marketing retreat which was going to be in April and I made a mistake.

Luke: Really, why?

Tim: In the spirit of honesty and transparency it was just the wrong time to launch.

Luke: A bit premature, Tim?

Tim: No, it wasn’t premature it was just the wrong time. It was just like…I’m not a premature kind of guy. I know you are, we bring that out later.

Luke: Please.

Tim: No, no, look, it was just…it was pre Christmas and, you know, it was like I launched early December or late November whatever it was.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: It was just the wrong time. And it’s a good lesson, you know. Whilst you think I know everything about marketing…or do you?

Luke: Me?

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Or are you talking to the listeners?

Tim: Yeah, well…

Luke: Please.

Tim: Nah, look, I made a…it was, it was like…it should…I’ve postponed it til June.

Luke: It’s also been a very busy time of year, Timbo.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah, it has. But that’s no excuse. You know, I put all the effort into getting all the marketing materials ready, just the date was wrong. Got a lot of enquiry, but people…it was hard for people to convert at the most expensive time of the year…

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: …with their business, you know, Christmas shopping and doing all that.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Anyway, it’s going to happen two months later. It’s going to happen in June and we’ll relaunch it in Jan, early Feb. There’s only ten spots. They’re going to go quick this time and we’ll worry about that in the New Year.

Luke: I’m sure we’ll be plugging it again sometime.

Tim: No doubt, no doubt. Lukey?

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: How is the marketing manager at flippa.com?

Luke: Flippa is going great, certainly been an interesting first three weeks. And one of the most interesting things I’ve found is the immediate feedback you get in an online business. You know, if you do…if you do something wrong or something that the users don’t like, you find out immediately.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Which is kind of interesting, you know, you probably don’t always find that out in a bricks and mortar business. People are less inclined to be open and honest to your face.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Whereas in…

Tim: I’ve got a story about that, you finish yours and I’ll share mine.

Luke: But, yeah, so it’s…you develop a bit of a thick skin but also it’s just great being that hooked into your user base. And you get immediate feedback through blog posts or forums.

Tim: So what do you do with the feedback, do you actually act on it or…

Luke: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Tim: And then do you tell them you’ve acted on it or?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: Yeah. And, you know, just communicating even in comments on a blog post. There’s a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and, you know, you find out what people want or if they feel that you’ve done something wrong or they want to see something implemented on the site. So it can be quite instant.

Tim: And is it the squeaky wheel that gets oiled? So is it the bloke or the person who yells the loudest, you go and fix that problem or do you…

Luke: Yeah, we don’t just immediately jump if someone’s screaming the loudest.

Tim: No.

Luke: You make sure that you go back and ask the general user base. And there’s certainly a core group of users on flippa.com that…

Tim: Hey, you’d better be careful what you say because some of them might be listening.

Luke: Yeah. I’m not going to name names.

Tim: No, no, no, no. All Flippa users we love you, or you love…

Luke: No, no, there’s…and we have a great following, a great loyal user base that we refer to and ask their opinion on stuff instead of just going, oh, you know, bang, let’s do this or that so.

Tim: Fellow geese.

Luke: Correct.

Tim: Fellow geese.

Luke: Yeah. No, actually there’s a lot of work from home mums.

Tim: Is there?

Luke: Yeah, yeah. We actually met with one a couple of weeks ago, a Melbourne lady and, yeah, so there’s quite a bit of…certainly people that are building sites, start up sites, so they’ll find a niche, they’ll build a site, they put it on Flippa and literally flip it. And that’s certainly the lower end of the market so it’s quite…

Tim: Can we not promote them anymore?

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: I’ve just decided that my business is much more important. No, look, that’s interesting. Good on you, good luck for the New Year. And tell me…I’ll tell you my story, a quick story.

Luke: Okay.

Tim: Because I was the marketing manager at a bricks and mortars business which was a large travel agency in Australia and I was responsible for about 200 stores, travel agencies.

Luke: Wow.

Tim: Yeah, and they didn’t hold back in letting me know how I was going as their marketing manager.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And there were times when I just didn’t want to turn on my phone in the morning because I knew, and there were times when I’d have 20, 30 voicemails from irate store managers, not because I’d done something wrong but actually because I’d got the phone ringing too much. Which is kind of interesting. Because obviously there’s a level where you’ve got to generate enquiry as a marketing person, but not so much enquiry that it actually annoys the customer and the staff and…

Luke: So you did your job too well.

Tim: I did my job too well, yeah, yeah. Well I got paid, yeah, here’s the thing, my KPI was enquiry.

Luke: Right.

Tim: Okay. So as a result all I had to do was get the phones ringing and I got paid well. You know, so the problem in getting the phones ringing was it wasn’t a KPI that the stores really enjoyed. Because they were about, you know, building long term relationships, which is absolutely fair. So that was an interesting one. We might do a show on that in the New Year about kind of matching performance indicators with, you know, everyone else in your business.

Luke: Yep, yep.

Tim: Okay. So that’s pretty cool. Business planning for 2010 is kind of on my agenda at the moment.

Luke: Yep, yep.

Tim: And it probably is for all small business owners out there in the small business world. And I just think a really interesting thing is to sort of figure out what question should you be asking yourself in order to get the ducks in a row for the New Year.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: You know.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: My question is kind of around, you know, what am I really going to enjoy doing in the next 12 months and where am I going to add the most value to my clients. And so I’m spending time going, okay, what fits into that, then that’s what I’m going to do. What doesn’t fit into it, put it aside and kind of make it secondary if the time shows itself.

Luke: Yep, yep.

Tim: So that’s a good kind of little exercise to do, Lukey.

Luke: So start asking yourself the questions.

Tim: Yeah, the hard questions.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Look in the mirror. Don’t you look in the mirror with that hair?

Luke: No, no.

Tim: Keith Urban. All right, mate, now, today’s interview is with you.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And it is all about?

Luke: Pay Per Click advertising.

Tim: Pay Per Click advertising.

Luke: Yeah, which includes…well I’m going to talk about, mainly about, AdWords. But we’ll have a bit of a chat about Facebook as well.

Tim: I’m going to grill you on this.

Luke: Cool. I’m looking forward to it.

Tim: Because you keep telling me you’re Australia’s leading expert in Pay Per Click, is that…

Luke: That is not true, I do not claim that, Timbo, but, you know, I have…

Tim: But you’ve got…

Luke: I spend a bit of time doing it so.

Tim: You do. Well you’ve got the number 12 pod…number 12, was it?

Luke: Podcast.

Tim: On iTunes.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: So number…oh, man.

Luke: Yeah. Anyway we haven’t…

Tim: Oh, sorry.

Luke: Let’s talk about PPC.

Tim: What is it? PPC?

Luke: PPC, Pay Per Click.

Tim: Right, okay.

Luke: So what is Pay Per Click advertising? Basically it’s when you can advertise, put up an ad, for example, on Google or on Facebook, and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. So you might…that ad might be presented 1000 times in front of many users but if you…

Tim: For free?

Luke: For free. But you only pay when someone clicks.

Tim: I think actually there is a disclaimer on that. Because I think Facebook do have…you can pay for impressions.

Luke: You can.

Tim: And…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: It’s much much cheaper.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Or…and then…so when someone clicks through you don’t actually pay but…

Luke: There is an option in AdWords that you can choose to do this by advertising and pay per thousand…

Tim: Is there?

Luke: …CPMs.

Tim: Okay.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And you mentioned Facebook and Google AdWords.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Yahoo?

Luke: Yahoo as well. MSN.

Tim: Where else? YouTube?

Luke: They’re…well YouTube uses Google’s engine.

Tim: Okay. Do you know what someone said to me the other day, don’t know if it’s true or not, this is how rumours start, but someone sort of said to me because I said, you know, 12th biggest marketing…no, no, no. He said like what’s the biggest search engine in the world and I just, you know, immediately said…

Luke: Google.

Tim: And he said, no, YouTube. Could that be right?

Luke: Well it might be for volume of searches. But in terms of volumes of users, I don’t know, I’d have to look at the stats on that. I mean, certainly in Australia Google has got around 80, 85% of the market.

Tim: Wow.

Luke: It’s a little bit less in the US. But in terms of search, Google is still the biggest, I believe.

Tim: Yeah, I would too.

Luke: In terms of volume of users.

Tim: You wonder what could knock Google off its perch, don’t you? Like it’s just so ubiquitous. It’s like…it’s just part of the vernacular now, you know. I’ve got three kids and they talk about, you know, just go and Google something.

Luke: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and Google keep releasing more and more web applications.

Tim: Yeah, they do.

Luke: You know, sort of, they’re heading in the direction of owning the Internet.

Tim: They are, well if they don’t already.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: I mean, I live on Google Documents.

Luke: Yeah, so do I know.

Tim: As a collaborative tool…we’re moving away from Pay Per Click here, but that’s okay, we’ll get back into it. As a collaborative tool, Google Docs is ace. What I’m finding is, you know, if I create a…if I do a creative brief or I want to create some copy for a website or whatever it may be, I’ll create a Google Document out of it and then just share it.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And then they can edit it.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And then just close it. There’s no need to…you never lose touch with which is the most up to date version.

Luke: And also there’s…if you’re an employee and you’re moving from home to work, as long as you’ve got Internet, you’ve got…

Tim: You’re there.

Luke: You know, you can access it anywhere.

Tim: Between Google Docs and Dropbox, which is a kind of online storage thing that we’ve spoken about previously.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You can just live in the cloud.

Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim: You know?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And it’s good by Microsoft, you know.

Luke: Correct. Yeah.

Tim: And, yeah, it’s kind of interesting. And all that is free.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Dropbox and Google Docs, free. And you get spreadsheets, documents.

Luke: At flippa.com we use Google Docs.

Tim: Enough. Enough, okay.

Luke: Anyway, back to Pay Per Click. So…

Tim: Okay, what have you got?

Luke: I’m going to focus on AdWords today. And, Timbo, you asked me to come up with five tips.

Tim: Yeah, how many did you come up with?

Luke: Eleven.

Tim: You are good, aren’t you?

Luke: First thing first is make sure you set up your tracking. One of the best things about Pay Per Click is that it’s all accountable because you can actually track everything. You can track revenue; you can track ROI on a keyword…per keyword basis. So going back to what, once again what is Pay Per Click, when someone types a keyword phrase into Google, you can actually bid on that keyword phrase so that you come up in the sponsored listings, usually on the right hand site.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: Sometimes it can appear at the top in a slightly dimmed orange box.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So what you’re trying to do with Pay Per Click is find keywords that are going to lead people to click on your ad and then hopefully go through to your site and convert into a sale or a lead.

Tim: Yep. Which is, after they’ve clicked, obviously Google’s or Yahoo’s or whoever, their job’s done.

Luke: Their job’s done.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And it’s…

Tim: What do you mean set up tracking? That’s a bit of a bottom term.

Luke: Okay.

Tim: Like, is that…

Luke: Well essentially let’s use Google Analytics which is a tracking application.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: That you can put on your website to find out, you know, how many visitors are coming to your site.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: And when you pair Google Analytics with Google AdWords, the two engines can interact together and you can find out basically you can find out so when someone clicks on a particular ad, a search on a particular keyword, they’ve come to your website, so you can track that as a visit and then you can also track a conversion. So if that person…a conversion is when someone might fill out a contact form, as simple as filling out a contact form, or if you’ve got an ecommerce website, they might buy something.

Tim: Okay. So setup tracking using Google Analytics and AdWords.

Luke: And AdWords, yeah.

Tim: Okay.

Luke: So if I…I’m going to use the analogy of a photographer, because I know that one of our recent listeners is a photographer in (14:37).

Tim: Yes, correct.

Luke: So using as an example, photographer puts up an ad called…he’s bidding on wedding photographers, or wedding photographer, he’s got his little ad there, someone clicks on that, they go to his site, have a look at his folio, like him, and then go through and submit an enquiry form. That would be a conversion.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So he might then, okay, for every ten enquiries I get I get a sale. So he can work out his ROI…

Tim: Okay.

Luke: …based around that so…

Tim: That’s pretty cool.

Luke: So that’s my number one tip, make sure you setup…

Tim: Number two?

Luke: …setup your tracking and get your web developer to help you with that if you don’t know how too. Do your keyword research and do thorough keyword research.

Tim: Here we go, the boys from…where are they?

Luke: Well Market Samurai…

Tim: Market Samurai.

Luke: Market Samurai is a great tool but…

Tim: The last interview.

Luke: Google’s keyword tool is fine.

Tim: It is pretty good.

Luke: Yeah, it is, it’s great. And it’ll give you an idea of basically how many people are searching for a particular keyword, how competitive that keyword is, so how much are you going to expect to pay per click.

Tim: And what I love about it is that, you know, with your keywords, don’t be shy, listeners. List as many, create as many as possible and create, you know, more and more what I find personally, and I know other people have spoken to…are keying into Google sentences, you know…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …what is the best digital camera for a teenager. You know, people would key in that…

Luke: Yep.

Tim: …as opposed to digital cameras. And so if someone is keying in what is best digital camera for a teenager, they’re pretty serious about buying. And I would imagine there’ll be less competition for that phrase, maybe.

Luke: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. So long tail keywords…

Tim: Yep.

Luke: …is basically what you’re talking about.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: I’ll go into that a little way down. You’re stealing my thunder already, Timbo; you can’t help yourself, can you?

Tim: I can’t, mate. But I’m concerned that you’ve got 11 and we’re at number two.

Luke: I know. Look, in terms of keywords, this is actually tip number seven, I’ll jump to that, there’s a bit of an 80/20 rule. So you can go and…go and, yeah, sure, initially go and find as many keywords as you can, split it up into themes. Try and split your…

Tim: Oh, yeah.

Luke: So if you’ve got, let’s say…

Tim: Use digital camera example.

Luke: Yeah. So, yeah, digital camera, digital cameras. If you’re selling a number of different digital cameras, Canon digital cameras.

Tim: Oh, yep, so by brand.

Luke: By brand.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So try to…

Tim: By megapixels, by covers.

Luke: By megapixels.

Tim: Whatever it is.

Luke: If, yeah, like if you’re an online e-tailer selling digital photography products you might have accessories, camera brands, etcetera, so…

Tim: I’m going to steal your thunder and I reckon, you know, we might be able to carve some of the 11 down to maybe five, do you think? What I love about it is, if you do spend the time with your Pay Per Click strategy and actually develop groups of keywords that are all around the same theme.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Then write ads.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And I know this, I know I’m probably stealing your thunder. I haven’t seen Luke’s points, listeners, so he’s sort of looking at me a little bit cross with a little bit of sweat on his brow, but that’s life.

Luke: Who’s the expert, Timbo?

Tim: Yeah, that’s right. Oh, look, I just bumble my way through it but when I do get into it I go, gee, this is powerful stuff.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And so it’s like group your keywords by category or theme, write ads that are 100% relevant to that category or theme…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …so that when the ad appears in that search, it’s like really relevant.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And then when someone clicks on it they go to a page that is relevant to the search. So how many points have I just…

Luke: Three, four and five you’ve stolen.

Tim: That’s good, mate.

Luke: Geez.

Tim: No, that’s good. You can just…

Luke: Timbo is absolutely right. With your ad groups and if you’ve done…if you had a play with AdWords you’ll know what I mean when I say ad groups.

Tim: And you do have to play with it, it can look complicated on the surface.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And if you really want to get stuck into it you can become the boffin of all boffins but…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …at a fairly basic level you can very quickly see after a two or three week campaign what’s working and what’s not.

Luke: Yeah, look, if you want it to be successful you have to manage it closely for a good month depending on the volume of clicks that you’re getting through. Don’t have more than 20 keywords in an ad group. And start off with 20 and actually a good strategy is to actually peel out, it’s called the peel and stick method…

Tim: Here we go.

Luke: Perry Marshall.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: (19:19).

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: Is to peel out the top one or two most popular keywords and put them in their own group…

Tim: Yeah, right.

Luke: …and even more highly target your ad copy around those specific keywords.

Tim: The old direct marketing control kind of theory, isn’t it?

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And then you’ve got your control which is like what’s leading the way, kind of your benchmark.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And then you try and beat it.

Luke: That’s right.

Tim: And beat it and beat it.

Luke: And that’s why I always say the 80/20 rule, 20% of your keywords will account for 80% of your clicks.

Tim: Yep, okay.

Luke: So you’ve jumped all over my points…

Tim: That’s all right.

Luke: But that’s all right.

Tim: That’s all right; we’re making relatively good sense.

Luke: Start with the search network. So there’s…with AdWords you have…basically you have two options.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: You can go with the Google search network and the content network. The difference being Google search network is essentially Google search engine and a few other search partners as well. Content network is basically you’ll essentially be advertising on people’s websites…

Tim: Yep.

Luke: …that have installed AdSense, not to be confused with AdWords.

Tim: Yes.

Luke: I’ve certainly found that the search, Google search network gets you more qualified…

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: …clicks and leads.

Tim: If you tick content network, you’ll get hundreds of thousands of impressions is my…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Well, you know, tens of thousands, if not 100,000 impressions, but you just don’t know where you’re appearing. I know Google kind of monitor the sites that they allow their ads to appear on, but it’s a bit of a raffle.

Luke: It is a bit of a raffle and it takes even more time to manage content network campaigns.

Tim: Yeah. So…

Luke: And I’d suggest if you do want to try it, try it in the future once you’ve got the hang of the search network and then split out campaigns specifically for the content network.

Tim: Yep, okay.

Luke: Very important thing, if you’re a bricks and mortar business or if your product or service is locally focused, only advertise locally.

Tim: Yeah, that’s…that is an ace thing about Google AdWords. Because you can geographically go, you know, I want to be in these suburbs.

Luke: Yeah, yeah. Or you can be as specific…obviously country, state and then Google will even give you a map that you can draw around for the area approximately that you want your ads to appear to.

Tim: Can I just tell you a quick story about that? I came across Google AdWords properly about four years ago where a guy came out to fix my Mac.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: And he was a bit of a character and I got talking to him, I said where do you get all your business from and he said it all comes from AdWords. And that’s how I found him. Initially I keyed in Mac technician. I was living in Melbourne in Malvern at the time and keyed that in and he came up. And he said, he explained to me how when he puts…when he does his campaign in AdWords, he actually nominates roads, you know, it was like…these roads won’t make any sense to you, listeners, but just bear with me, he says like Warrigal Road to Burke Road, not past Dandenong Road and not over Victoria Street.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And in Melbourne that’s a kind of pretty tight geographic area.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: And that was amazing. He said he does not get any business outside of that area.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Because his ad doesn’t appear. And yet he…and he runs his whole business on that.

Luke: And, you know, going back to the photographer example, you know, perfect, if he wants to do wedding photography in, you know, the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, well he can choose to advertise in that space.

Tim: Yeah, it’s cool.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: What else you got?

Luke: What else have I got? Budget.

Tim: Yeah, that does my head in.

Luke: Yeah, it’s going…it depends…basically depends on how competitive the area is that you’re wanting to advertise, how competitive the keywords are. So obviously if you’re wanting to sell loans, finance.

Tim: Right.

Luke: You’re going to be paying about $20 per click.

Tim: Yeah, right, okay.

Luke: But if…once again it sort of goes back to your long tail keyword analogy before, Tim, you know, if you’re bidding on, let’s say, Cannon digital camera model number, you know, DQ112.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: You’re going to be paying a lot less…

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: …for that keyword.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: And also it’s more highly targeted.

Tim: How do you decide at the start when Google says how much do you want to spend a day, it still does my head in about trying to figure out, you know, besides going what you can…obviously affordability is…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …is a key criteria for that. But just how do you know what you’re…what it’s going to cost you per click?

Luke: Google’s keyword tool will tell you approximately.

Tim: Approximately.

Luke: So it will say, okay, so for your…this particular keyword, you can expect to pay 80 cents per click and you’ll be in position three of six in the…

Tim: Right.

Luke: …in the sponsored sites.

Tim: Is it pretty accurate? Have you ever gone back and looked at it?

Luke: Yeah, it’s reasonably accurate. There are other factors though that determine how much you’re going to be paying per click.

Tim: Ah, the Google algorithm.

Luke: Yes.

Tim: The unknown, secret herbs and spices.

Luke: One of them is called quality score…

Tim: Quality score.

Luke: …and quality score is basically, you know, how…

Tim: Me and my mates used to have that. Sorry. Sorry, that was a very teenaged joke.

Luke: So quality score is basically how well does the keyword that you’re bidding on match, firstly, the copy in your ad.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke: And then the content of your landing page.

Tim: Okay.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: One more, Lukey.

Luke: One more.

Tim: Because we are going to just go over time and, you know, I’ve told you, we are the number 12 new podcast in Australia on iTunes and we can’t afford to do this anymore.

Luke: Right, okay, okay, I’ll try and be quick.

Tim: Right.

Luke: Split test your ads.

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: So always have two different ads and then keep improving because you’ll see better click through rates for one than the other. Point to relevant landing pages, I just touched on that before. So don’t just point to your home page. You know, if you’re selling a Cannon digital camera, well point to the Cannon digital camera page…

Tim: Yep.

Luke: …on your site. And optimise your ad position. In certain campaigns I’ve found that position three to five…

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: …gives you a better quality conversion than position one.

Tim: Yeah, it’s interesting because they’ll go, I’ve got to have position one…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …but in actual fact there’s some kind of weird mentality that you go, the ads in the middle, well I think they’re just as valuable as the ad on top.

Luke: And it comes down, I think it comes down to the buying cycle. When people are really looking to buy, they’re looking for relevance and they’re willing to spend a little bit more time searching through the results and they’ll tend to look around a bit more and go, oh, hang on, cool…

Tim: Yeah.

Luke: …that’s more relevant. Whereas some people will be get a bit click happy and just click on the first one that comes up.

Tim: Yep, yep.

Luke: So you tend to get better ROI when you…well I have found…

Tim: And well you’re the leading…you’re Australia’s leading expert.

Luke: …position three to five.

Tim: Hey, you know what?

Luke: Yes, Tim.

Tim: People say, oh, when I talk to them about AdWords, if I talk to a new client about AdWords, they go, oh, no one looks at the ads on the right of the screen.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: They just look at the, you know, the natural search results in the middle. I don’t believe that and clearly Google don’t believe that. Because this is Google’s kind of…it’s the way that Google make money, isn’t it? It’s a…

Luke: Yeah, look…

Tim: It’s a major revenue stream.

Luke: I, you know, once again I can only speak from experiences, some of the more healthy campaigns that I’ve run I can expect…you can expect a click through of around 3%.

Tim: Yep.

Luke: So that means for, you know, for every…

Tim: I would have thought more. That’s like direct marketing kind of percentages.

Luke: Yeah, but just remember you’re only paying for the clicks.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, true, true, true, true.

Luke: And a campaign I’ve done recently is more like the 9.5%.

Tim: Ooh. So nearly 12. Hey, Lukey?

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: That’s interesting. That’s Google AdWords. We said we were going to touch on Facebook. Facebook, guys, is incredibly simple. Google AdWords can be simple, but you’ve got to spend time with it. I ran…I’ve been running some Facebook campaigns recently for clients and myself, and gee it’s easy. It is really easy. And it’s incredibly targeted. And if you go back to an earlier episode of Small Business Big Marketing where we interviewed David Curry who is an iPhone app developer.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: He spent $1000 on Facebook advertising and he…that’s all he did for this little iPhone application and it worked gangbusters. And he used it so targeted, how’s this, he wanted to get opinion leaders. Go back and listen to the show, guys, but it’s a product…an application that tells females in America what the weather is doing so they can decide how to…how it will affect their hair that day.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: He used Facebook to target women 18 to 25 or 18 to 30 year old women in New York who work in the media.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: You know, that is targeted stuff.

Luke: It doesn’t get more targeted than that.

Tim: No. So…and it worked gangbusters for him. And, look, he spent 1000 bucks, he got it back. You know, the ROI on that was massive. But that was a good interview that one.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Might go back and listen to that myself. Hello, Dave, if you’re listening. So, guys, Facebook advertising Google AdWords advertising, highly effective, you know. If you’re running print, radio, TV advertising right now, which I’m sure not many of our listeners are…

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: …because we’re small business guys. They might be running print ads and stuff.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: But I would just really seriously recommend carving off ten, maybe 20% of your above the line advertising spend and just putting it into Google AdWords. That’s what I’d do, you know.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: And the downside is not huge.

Luke: No.

Tim: The upside is massive. All of a sudden you’re going to get very accountable, very effective activity on your website. Because that’s what happens. I mean, just watch the traffic increase to your website.

Luke: Indeed. Yeah.

Tim: Hey, Lukey.

Luke: Timbo.

Tim: Did I cut you off then?

Luke: No, no.

Tim: Okay.

Luke: Go on.

Tim: That’d be a change.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Hey, mate, we’re going for quite a while. We’ve got a bit to go, we’re going to call this part one.

Luke: Yep.

Tim: Of episode whatever number it is and come back and in the next episode, which is going to probably get uploaded shortly thereafter, we have got three listener questions to finish the year off and we have got our Christmas holiday reading list, our summer holiday reading list.

Luke: Yeah.

Tim: Which people have been asking about. And then a little goodbye. So until next time, Lukey.

Luke: Until next time.

Tim: Say hello to your mother.

Luke: Seeya.

Tim: Bye.

Lovingly transcribed by The Transcription People