Today on the Book More Show we’re talking about your Flagship Broadcast… the way you keep in touch with people after they show up on your radar.
The reality is, more people will be ready to engage with you over the long term, than the short term. Your book is the perfect tool to encourage interested people to raise their hand, but most of your opportunity to work with these people lies in the ‘long-tail’, so today we’re talking about why it’s important to be front of mind, and the simple ways you can create that ‘Flagship Broadcast’ to keep in touch.
With so many demands on your time, it’s important to be efficient with your effort, and there are some great ideas here to stay in front of people interested in the thing you do.
We also mentioned ‘Dial Talk Done’, our podcast service designed to be your flagship broadcast tool. If you've heard us talking about it before & are interested in being part of the first group, just shoot an email to support@90minutebooks.com and we’ll get you all the details.
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Don't forget, you can see how your book idea stacks up against the Book Blueprint by going to BookBlueprintScore.com and, if you want to be a guest on the show to plan your successful book, just head over to 90MinuteBooks.com/guest
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Transcript: Book More Show 081
Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Book More Show. It's Stuart Bell & Betsey Vaughn. Betsey, how you doing?
Betsey: Super-duper. How are you?
Stuart: Very good, thank you. Super-duper. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that as a response to that question before, but it is the name of a backup software on the Mac.
Betsey: We have a lovely team member and that's how she speaks all the time like super-duper, okey-dokey. So sometimes it rubs off on me.
Stuart: It does, and it's the fact that we were talking about that before as well. It's surprising how much you pick up on other people’s accents and their mannerisms as they speak.
Betsey: It's so true.
Stuart: It must be, as we're talking to such a wide group of people on the phones, it's easy to pick up on some of those, particularly when someone else's accent is so strong and it's so different. It can be an easy trap to fall into to start parroting them by mistake and you catch yourself.
Betsey: Oh, yeah. That's what I said earlier, I think you've been in Polk County a long time, now I'm hearing this southern thing, bye, and like oh wow, that made me giggle as we hung up.
Stuart: This is the end of the 10 day stint down in Florida, heading back up to Philly tomorrow. So, this will be my most Polk. I'll go a little bit northern in the next couple of weeks when I get back down again.
Betsey: There you go, that's great. What are we going to talk about today?
Stuart: So today we're going to talk about something that has come up so many times in the last week or two that I think it's definitely worthwhile talking about because it seems to be something that's on everyone's mind. And that is following up with people after their initial opt-in. So a lot of the times where we're talking about books, it's in a Profit Activator #2 type scenario. So we're looking to create an asset that helps people identify leads and gets people to raise their hand. But the reality is that unless you happen to intersect with someone just at the moment that they're ready to take an action, the reality is that it's going to be a long burn, a longer cycle where you've got an opportunity to educate and motivate people over time.
That Profit Activator #3 thing that we talk about or in the book blueprint scorecard we talk about beyond the book and following up with people. So realistically it's in that timeframe, the longer time frame, that you're most likely to engage with people at the time when they're ready to take the next step and begin that kind of business relationship rather than just a receiving and information gathering relationship. So I think that follow-up sequence is going to be a good thing to talk about today because the last 10 days it's really been a question that's come up in almost every conversation that I've had. And I know that we were talking about it as well. You'd had similar.
Betsey: Yeah, we have. Very good. Should be a good show.
Stuart: Yeah, I think it's super valuable as well because the way we talk about it, it's not necessarily a common frame that other people talk about certain things. So we had the last couple of days here been meeting with some of the real estate guys that we work with and there's been a couple of scenarios where they're talking about following up with people and staying in touch with people. But it's still from a broadcast point of view. It's still from a corporate newsletter point of view or releasing a video or releasing a blog post or something that's just broadcasting things out to a wide group. Almost like passively broadcasting if that was such a thing, rather than actively broadcasting or orchestrating that next step, that communication path, which is what we talk about a lot and we position it as conversational conversions.
So rather than talking about conversions as a funnel and as individual building blocks in it, what we're trying to do is engage people in that conversation at every opportunity. So that as a framework has a different way of thinking about it. It makes it a lot more personal. And although we are broadcasting to a large group of people on the list, the position that we're trying to come from is each email is written as if you're writing it to an individual. It's just the you're writing it to a group of individuals that you know are all in a similar position because they all opted in to a similar thing and they've all expressed a similar interest.
But still the language in which we're writing, the language in which we're communicating, we still want to keep it as conversational as possible, as engaging as possible and not just think about this broadcast mentality of someone told me I should write blog posts or someone told me I should send out a newsletter and just kind of blurbing it out in the way that large corporations, or honestly the majority of other people out there do.
So this conversational approach is very much thinking, okay, Betsey signed up to the list last week, last month, last year. It was a list about a particular subject, about writing a book. We know that's the conversation. So as we're sharing information, we want to share it out as much as possible within that framework and keep that conversation going and give people the opportunities to raise their hand then engage again at the point that they're now ready to take the next step. Again rather than just broadcasting things.
With the realtor example, a good friend of ours, Kenny, was down. We were going through some stuff that he's gained from the corporate group and we were looking at individualizing it and personalizing it, and it's surprising how impersonal those broadcasts are, but how easy is to take that next step and make it more personal.
So, and I'm guessing this is quite common because it's not the first time that I've seen it, they're in a situation where each of the individual businesses, each of the franchises or offices, send mailing lists into the corporate headquarters, and then the corporate headquarters broadcast the message out and it's the same message that goes to everyone just with a little bit of individualization, maybe even just as much as the name and address and the photo of the individual agents. They've got access to customize the information by taking it and customizing it to make it more personal, so still using the same information, still using the same work that corporate have done to bring all of these things together to kind of gather the news, gather the interesting pieces, but by heading it with an introductory paragraph that adds some of your own personality. By taking out some of the corporate speak or some of the stuff that just clearly looks like this is a mass marketing newsletter that's going out to everyone, it makes it so much more engaging.
So we were talking about taking the content, imagine a realtor newsletter that talks about some properties that have come on the market and then some information about the local area. By introducing that with, "Hey everyone, it's Kenny. It's newsletter time again. This month we've got some super interesting articles about this organization, this local market that's happening, this local restaurant that's in the area. We've also got something on these properties and they are particularly interesting because of" whatever the reason is. And then taking that and heading that and just putting that above the corporate newsletter that goes out. It's not that any effort is wasted, it's not that there's a huge overhead in recreating the news, it's just you're adding a little bit of personalization and making it more conversational.
Then towards the end of the newsletter, closing it then with a particular call to action. So rather than just sign up and saying thanks, bye, see you next time, ending it with something specific that someone can sink their teeth into. So, by the way, we've got some buyers coming up from New York. We're looking for a four bedroom ocean front property that looks over this particular bay. If you know of anyone that's selling, let me know and that'd be great to make that introduction. We might be able to sell their property without it even going on the market. That gives someone a clear next step.
So you can tell there the difference between a general blurby message that goes out because corporate thinks that something needs to go out, this is something therefore we need to send this, versus this is something but this is also quite interesting and here's a specific reason for me sending you this message because I want to get this next step out. Then it just makes it so much more engaging, so much more interesting, so much more valuable to you as the person sending out that information for a minimum extra overhead. Makes sense so far?
Betsey: It makes total sense. And I think, we get so many emails, most of us do on a regular basis, and to find something that of that corporate thing. I think we all kind of skip over that a lot of the times.
Stuart: It's like the banner ad blindness. It just goes into the background. If you know that there's no personal connection, you just don't, even with the best will in the world on personal emails you genuinely want to read, there's so many of them that you rarely go into all of them. The ones that are just clearly broadcastings definitely get pushed to the bottom of the pile, and there's just not that same level of interest.
I think on balance a lot of people find it an overhead and a difficulty in creating what we talk about this flagship broadcast, the kind of regular way of staying in touch with people and so many people find it difficult to create the stuff that should go in there. So what is the content that can go out there and if it's too much of an overheard, then it doesn't get done because it becomes too difficult.
So by taking something that is being created already, they're then just adding a small amount of effort to personalize it. It increases the value of that by many more times than the amount of effort that it takes to do it. It really kind of leverages and amplifies it away from what everyone else is doing. That kind of disproportionate rate to the amount of effort that goes in.
I’m a bit distracted here because I'm in the office and this last week there's been some huge storms running through town and it's storming again and it's now raining inside the office, not outside the office because this window must be leaking. And it's now leaking on the inside as well as the outside. So I'd just like to quickly find a towel to mop up some of this water.
Betsey: Right. You should do that. So, as you mop up I'll speak a little bit. We've talked about this in the past about how many emails are too many, or there's that comfort level. We were speaking to a gentleman just I think last week and he was concerned with, he's getting ready to do something and, and it's going to be three emails a week and this has been a list that he hasn't done anything with for a while. And he has concerns about sending out all these emails all of a sudden. We have our system where we send out so many emails. Listen, if you're on our email list, you'll get almost an email a day from us around here.
So my question is, is it better to start, start slowly? Like, here we are, it's all new. We're doing it. We'll do one a week or maybe two a week and then and sort of buildup. Because I think that people are hesitating, like I don't want to bother people. Is it too much and they're going to opt out? Even though what they're sending is probably very beneficial and-
Stuart: And that's the thing, I think. That's the key. It's the same question as, "How many pages should my book be?" And the answer is, that's completely wrong, it's irrelevant. If you've got a hundred pages of nonsense and ten pages of quality, then the answer is ten. So it's the same with the frequency of emails. I think if you're sending out stuff that you're just trying to fill a quota, you pick a number and then you're just trying to hit that number and there's no reason for sending it or there's no value that's being sent along with it, then those messages shouldn't go out.
If you're able to send something that is useful, then send out as many as possible. Because the reality, just as you said, is that people rarely open all emails and a lot of emails that go out. This is just talking from personal experience. There are a lot of emails that I open and think, wow I really want to read that. I'll mark it as unread because it's the middle of the day and I'm just about to jump on a call. I'll come back to it and I never ever do. Because another email will come in and another day goes by and it just gets forgotten about.
So when you think about the reason for sending the email, it's like the reason for writing the book. All of these things are Trojan horses for the underlying message that's on the inside. The purpose of the thing is to deliver the message that you really want. So the purpose of a book in the context of, we talk about it most of the time, the purpose of a book is to get someone to raise their hands and express an interest.
The purpose of a message is to send that P.S., that super signature, the call to action, the thing that you want them to do. You see this all the time as well. People will send out broadcast messages and the typical standard newsletter type thing, and it'll have contact details at the bottom and an address and a phone number and there's no activity call. It's just sending out information for the sake of sending out information. And unless your product is the newsletter, unless you're charging people for the newsletter and providing market analysis, then it's the same as the book. The book isn't the product. The product is whatever service you're trying to engage. The email isn't the product. The product, the thing, is the call to action, it's the next step you want them to take.
Now on the flip side of that is you need to be sending something that's interesting enough that makes it still worthwhile because if you've got a call to action in every message but the content is weak and unengaging, or at worst irrelevant, then people are just going to stop opening it or unsubscribe because you've lost that connection with the thing that they'd raised their hand for in the first place.
So there's definitely a case of making the communication worthwhile, but making it worthwhile because you want someone to open it. Because you want them to read the P.S. and the super signature because you don't know when they're going to be ready to take that next step. And you want to be in front of them at as many opportunities as possible so that you do intersect their thought at the time that they're ready to execute on that thought.
So I think how many times, it's as many times as you can practically send something that's valuable. If each of those contains a next step, something that they can do to fulfill the thought that they originally had to opt in in the first place. So I stick with the house buying example. An assumption in all of the models that we've got around house buying is that unless you're dealing with first time buyers then someone's first thought is, I wonder how much my house is worth because then once I know how much my house is worth, I can then start looking around for other houses because I don't want to find a dream home only to find it being completely unaffordable because I misinterpreted what my house was worth.
So that, in the overall buying cycle, is pretty early. Someone might have the thought about how much my house is worth months and months before they're ready to list, or months and months before they're ready to buy. But if you're able to stay in front of them with something that's valuable over that period of time until they are ready, then at the point that they are ready, you're in their mailbox.
Now sending something daily, so that every day you can be there ready and waiting for them to take that step or realize that they're now ready, that's probably too much. Because it's unlikely that there's enough going on in the market, in the world, in the local area to make a daily email valuable. But weekly definitely seems worthwhile and you can even break it down a little bit further so that you could make that two or three times a week and just have it themed in very slightly different ways. So in the different messages you are sending different things.
So on one day of the week it could be a market watch, a property based market watch of what's coming to the market. On another day of the week, it could be based around some local events and the news of the area. And then the third time in the week it could be around market trends or how to show your house, or tips, that type of thing that's delivering value. So there's definitely a way of crafting it. Now the overhead of doing it is the got you for most people. It's if it becomes impractical, you don't want to give yourself a full time job just to send out emails because most of us listening have got full time jobs to do. We're trying to run the business or get the business in or execute on the business, not just send out the emails for the sake of it.
And that actually bridges quite nicely into the dial-talk-done world that we've got, the podcasting world. We've just got a beta group going. Beta group? Beta group? Which is the right way of saying it?
Betsey: Beta. Beta. What did you say? Beta, no.
Stuart: That's one of those words that-
Betsey: That doesn’t translate very well?
Stuart: Almost to the point of completely translating in my head and I can't remember which is the American or the English way of saying it. So the dial-talk-done group, basing exactly what we do for Dean in the More Cheese Less Whiskers and the Listing Agent Lifestyle world, of taking an hour podcast and creating multiple emails from that with individual valuable pieces that regularly go out. And from one hour of recording we're able to stay in front of people three times a week with a P.S. and a super signature so that at the point that people are ready to take the next step, it's only going to be a day or two until they receive another email from us, and that's more likely to intersect with that decision making. Or then being in the right place at the right time.
So when you think about that side of the world, I mean we're a little bit sporadic with the podcast on this side, but the ones that we manage externally for other people, that's regularly going out three times a week, every single week, week in week out with useful information being shared with people. And all you have to do is record the hour's worth of podcast to get the content in the first place and then all of the other steps are done for you.
So that as a mechanism, which again is what we were talking about yesterday with the guys. That as a mechanism for creating useful stuff is really almost like a superpower in the amount that you can leverage. That one seed piece of information into multiple touch points.
I'll actually take a drink if I may because my voice is starting to get to that croaky stage.
Betsey: I was taking a drink when you paused. Oh boy, I'd better say something. Talking about podcasts, and talking about emails, something that you said, and I wrote it down. People sometimes they send out these emails, "Oh I've had so many unsubscribe". Well I think you can't actually take that personally like, oh they don't want to read it. But maybe the service is no longer a need of theirs, so they've moved on. Maybe they've either written a book or they've, whatever, they have a new financial planner or whatever your subject is or whatever your industry is. But I want people to respond right now, and there's a sense of urgency that I've always had. I think it goes back to my first job out of college was working in phone rooms and everything was like right now, you close the deal kind of thing.
And so I've just maintained that sense of urgency. And so coming into this and Dean's like, okay it'll happen. We send them out and they'll eventually come around, and he's very chill about it and because that's Dean's personality. It'll happen. And so, that's something I really had to learn over the past, four years. To just, okay, we're going to send it out and eventually it's gonna happen. And I hear all the time, people will say just with our lists, like it happened to me yesterday. "I've done this list for four years and I read your emails and, but you know what? I need to write a book." And so all of a sudden it all just kind of clicked. And so four years of emails, probably three, four times a week, and now this man, he's coming on board and he's going to finally do his book.
But I hear that all the time, people who've been, "Oh I've received the emails for years and I've opted in or I've followed you all for quite a long time and, and now I need your service."
Stuart: Well we've seen, even with just the book business, the lead times it takes for a number of the leads to come through, we consistently get people who are two, three years past opting-in, and then it's the right time.
The funny one that always strikes me is, as you alluded to then, the ones where we have conversations with people two or three years ago, and they say, "Oh yeah, I definitely need to do this," and then disappear. "And now I really need to do it because two or three years have passed by and what the heck happened."
The funny one that gets me, and it was actually Kenny again came to the Real Estate Academy last year and was telling this story to the room there. They send out the Market Watch newsletters, so that's one of the strategies on the real estate side for staying in touch with people. It's one of those touch points. So the Market Watch just talks about the properties that have come to market over the last week, and something that's happening in the area. Goes out, week in week out.
So there was a guy that phoned Kenny. He'd moved realtors from one organization to another organization. He gets a message on his phone that says, "Oh hey, it's such and such here. I've been receiving your updates for years but then something must've happened about a year ago. It stopped. Anyway, I'm ready now to sell and I actually had to phone two or three other realtors in order to get your number."
So what happened was Kenny had purged his list. He had a list of a couple of thousand people. Some of them had been on there for five years plus. I think he purged at the five year point. Because this guy had been on there for seven years or whatever it was, he just purged his name off. And then this guy, six months later, was now ready to sell because he'd been regularly receiving these useful updates from Kenny for the past seven years. He'd never actually wanted to sell, but obviously it was creating that rapport. And then the guy had to phone three agents, two or three agents, in order to get Kenny's number.
So you can imagine the other agents receiving this phone call saying, "Oh yeah, it's such and such here. I'm looking to list like my ocean front property," and they're thinking, "Oh this is great. I love these phone calls." "Yeah. Can you give me Kenny's number?"
Betsey: That's so great
Stuart: That just goes to show that on the one hand you can never tell. If someone unsubscribes, all that it proves is that they're not ready now and they're not engaged enough to keep receiving that email. So on the flip side though, you can also never tell if someone has been on the list for a long time and will be ready tomorrow because you don't know what's going on.
Betsey: You want to be careful purging that list too far back. You just never know.
Stuart: On the email mastery program that we have, we talk there about some examples of the 9-word emails, and this is a technique for reengaging lists that may have gone cold after a while, or leads that have gone cold and you've had no particular contact with.
So now we're dealing with email length. As you're listening to this you'll have received one from us that says, "Are you ready to start your book this month?" So that email designed to reengage people, Phil, my brother who people have probably heard me talk about before, is a yacht broker in Fort Lauderdale. When he moved houses from brokerages from one to another, the office that he took over because the guy had left, there was actually a box, like a banker's box of leads that were labeled dead leads. So Phil's sent out to those and there's a boat which I mean, talk about a long burn. The yacht broking businesses are a multi, multi-year burn sometimes. But there was negotiation on a project that was in the hundreds of millions of dollars, or $114 million I think it was, but a project which hasn't come to fruition yet. There are still all sorts of conversations going on and whether it does or not, I guess it doesn't really matter for the point of the story.
But that was a box of leads. It was actually labeled dead leads that no one else was working on and it was collecting dust. And that's an extreme example and a funny example just because of the numbers that are involved. But that's the same for everyone. The amount of people that we talk to that have got lists that aren't amalgamated, so there are names on the list that never get spoken to at all. People that opt-in to things or express a preference at trade shows, or drop business cards off, or ask for newsletters or email lists and just nothing happens to them. And I think a lot of the problem is this idea that it's a big overhead in order to stay in touch with people.
And because there's not an immediate return, it's not like you're running at AdWords campaign or Facebook ad campaign where you can immediately see a $1,000 spend adds up to a hundred leads. Because there's not necessarily that one-for-one connection when someone makes a decision to move forward, that people get discouraged by it. And it becomes too much or it's seen then as an overhead rather than investment, or the investment is seemed to be too big in terms of time and overhead.
But being able to create something in a compelling but convenient way really is this thing that enables you to keep in front of them. It's the flagship broadcast that enables you to keep in front of them so that at the point that they are ready, which is information that you cannot know. At the point that they are ready, you are more likely to have been in their world, in their sphere, passed across their eyeballs at a time that marries up. And that's really the difference maker between lists that have gold buried in them but people never discover it, to those people who are consistently tending and farming and kind of mining that list so that they are in the right place at the right time.
Betsey: Yeah. That's great. Some good examples there.
Stuart: Yeah, like you say we've talked about those subjects a few times before. It's definitely come up on the show and as we're talking to people, but it's well worth of as listening to this and thinking, "That makes sense but it's too much trouble to get in front of people regularly," then think about what is the easy way to achieve that because it really is the difference maker. And in terms of what you can create, what you can get out of there, it very much depends on yourself, your own preferences, your own skills, organizationally what you can create internally.
So whether it is email, video or audio or animation or infographics or whatever you can create, to create the most valuable content at the lowest cost in terms of money and effort, then do that. We talked about dial-talk-done, the podcast service that we've got. I really think that for most people that's the easiest solution and whether or not you do it with us, I mean I would always suggest you do it with us because we know it works, and it's done and only takes an hour of your time to create the show and then all of these other assets are created for you.
But even if you do it yourself, creating good audio, just as with the books in the first place, most people know their subject enough in order to be able to talk about it for 60 minutes or 45 minutes or 30 minutes, whatever it turns out to be, in a way that's compelling and shares valuable information and builds a rapport with people, the way that audio is delivered, it allows you to create a rapport with people that just text by itself doesn't. Because people are hearing you. They're regularly getting to know you because there's more of a connection, because you're bringing another sense into the mix. You kind of bring in that much more personal connection when you can hear someone's voice, not just read some words.
Betsey: You really feel like, oh wow I know them, I'm working with them. I don't care if you're listening to a fun podcast or a business specific industry podcast. You do, you feel like, oh yeah, hey, I know them. We have a thing going here. Far more valuable.
Stuart: Yeah, yeah. There's that connection. It really does bridge that gap a little bit. And the other thing is as well is it's easy. Video is great, but there's a lot of technical and time expense to create video because there's many more moving parts and it's more difficult. We're just recording this now over Skype and although today was a bit of a pain in the neck because technology was thwarting us a little bit to get going. I'm blaming the storms outside on a bad connection. But generally speaking, audio is a lot easier to do. Just dial into the conference line. Again, exactly what we do with the books. Dial into a line, get the audio as good as it can possibly be, push out to the people who can then move it onto the next stage and actually get it distributed out there.
But from that audio you can create all of these different assets and elements to really have some tools, or have some things that you can get out there and share with people regularly.
So, if you're worried about what to do, then I would really consider audio as the first way to go because it's straightforward, it's compelling and it's very dynamic. There are many ways that you can use it. And then even if you just feel like once a week is enough, then that at least is a start above what the majority of people are doing, which is nothing to once a year.
Alrighty, so, that being said, I think we should draw a line under it. Probably made enough of a point on that one. Anything that you can think that that we haven't talked about?
Betsey: No, I think we've covered it all. Don't be fearful of sending out the emails. Start with once a week, if nothing else. If you're scared of bombarding people, that would be my takeaway from today. At least once, and then do it again the next week and see how it goes and focus on valuable information. Don't just put a bunch of nonsense in there.
Because people aren't gonna make time. And I think that's where I thought 9-word email really answers a question, engages people. So if you want to start a conversation, find a way to do that using something very simple and not seven paragraphs and then ask the question at the bottom. Just keep it kind of simple in the beginning.
Stuart: Yeah, definitely. We keep it simple even five years down the track. So if anyone was wants to kind of copy exactly what we do, then if you haven't already subscribed to the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, visit MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com and opt-in to get a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book. And then that will put you on the list and then you'll start receiving those messages and you'll really see how straight forward and conversational we keep it and then replicate that.
If you do want us to do it for you, then obviously that's the easiest way to get it done, reach out. We're just beta testing a group through at the moment before we open the doors on it to the public, but anyone that's listening to this who's particularly interested and wants to be in on that, get in on that early, then just send us an email to Support@90MinuteBooks.com. And just put podcast or dial-talk-done in the subject and then we'll get that back to you and share some of the details.
Definitely no need to wait for it to be publicly launched and that will by far be the quickest and easiest way to get this done in a way that allows you to get all of these communication points out there by just recording. All you need to do is record that initial content and then we'll take it from there.
So on that note, let's wrap it up. Show notes as always across at 90MinuteBooks.com/Podcast. And if you've got any questions about what we've talked about today, or you want us to go into more detail or you wanted to jump on board with the dial-talk-done program for you, just shoot a message to Support@90MinuteBooks.com and then we'll get back in touch.
Betsey: Very good.
Stuart: Alrighty, thanks again for your time Betsey and everyone listening. We'll catch you in the next one.
Betsey: Very good. Thanks so much. Take care.
Stuart: Cheers. Bye. Bye.