Marketing & Sales Partnerships – Orren Prunckun

Orren Prunckun’s Marketing & Sales Q&A – Episode 5: How to sell your product in a competitive market

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 20 May 2019 05:16:35 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear me answer a question about how to sell your product in a competitive market.

So, listen here as I discuss this!

To be featured, first go to http://speakpipe.com/orren and record your number #1 marketing or sales question as an audio file.

Then click send and I will answer it for you for FREE!

Transcript:

Question

Hi my name is Deb and I’m a self producing musician on the fringe circuit as each year the festivals get bigger it’s becoming harder for the smaller independent acts to cut through and compete with the big budget corporate acts in addition to this I’m aware of the massive eco footprint festivals creates so I’m trying to do my bit for the environment by cutting down on flyers and posters without the budget for a publicist aside from Facebook advertising what are some other best value for money unique ways you would use to sell your show in a competitive market.

Answer

Hello Debra this is an awesome question I really like this because I have spent a lot of time in bands and DJing emceeing and Club promoting over the years and I love this stuff so it’s really um what I’m gonna give you is hopefully super relevant to you so if I was in your shoes I’d do all of the following right so I commend you for jumping out there and doing paid Facebook ads think about Facebook Ads anything you spend I want you to be breaking even I want you to be self liquidating that so any dollar you put in I want you to be getting $1 out I don’t want you to be spending money without actually covering your cost of that ad you may be thinking or why would you want to do that you’re not making any profit all of your profits should be made on back-end for through multiple performances and getting people to come along again and again to what you’re doing and bringing their friends so if you’re gonna be doing Facebook ads make sure every dollar you put in you’re getting at least one dollar back even if you’re just covering the costs of your ads you’ll make all of your profit elsewhere and through performances because people go and see bands over and over and over again and musicians time and time again because they just love what they do in terms of getting cut through I totally agree with you the number one thing is you have to be polarizing there are going to be people that love you and if there are people that love you there are also gonna be people that hate you the only way you want to get cut through is by putting a stake in the ground and saying this is who I am and this is what I stand for and this is the type of thing that I produce now on that if you’re being polarizing it’s a really good qualifier you’re getting people to raise their hand and say yes I’m in and I mean about your music and also by default you’re disqualifying people and getting them to say they’re not a fan of what you’re doing and that is totally okay the more polarizing you can be the better agree with you with the being eco-friendly for sure and you know just beyond the environmental factors that come into that I think flies are really dumb you know we’re coming into a federal election here in Australia and I sealed the core flutes and all the core flutes are the same thing huge waste in terms of hobbies but they don’t actually do anything like no one makes a buying decision by looking at someone’s mug on a quad flute on a light pole no one makes a buying decision based on that yeah it’s a good memory reminder but that’s you know a whole other branding issue around memory reminders and why you have branding to start with so I’m not going to go into that but what I would be doing what a sir let me just go back a step with pliers most people at you know you mentioned the fringe in other festivals most people with flyers they’re just going around and everyone’s saying that they’re just handing out flyers to people in hopes that they’ll come to their show and there’s you know a little bit of a conversation that happens but not too much but people take the flour away and the users throw them out and that’s the concern that you’ve got right what with flyers what they’re trying to do is the same thing as politicians with the core foods they’re just trying to go from you know frozen or cold all the way there like boiling him you know they’re just trying to take a bit of ice and get it to 100 degrees Celsius second you try and sell someone on a bit of paper that’s a five like you have to be the best sales person in the world to be able to do that and you just don’t have the capacity through that modality or medium to do it so what I would be doing and the main concern people have is when you know you’re offering something to them is de-risk it it’s like I don’t know you I don’t like you I don’t trust you how can you do risk this buying decision for me so if I go to your show and it doesn’t pan out to be what you promised I’ve lost with this money and time and all these other opportunity costs so what I would be doing is flipping it on its head instead of giving something like a flyer to someone I would be getting something from them that I could follow up follow up with them so this is like the same thing with business cards right but I don’t carry around business cards because if I give a business card to someone it’s just going to go into the drawer into the bin and they’re just gonna totally forget about it if I take a business card from someone that means I am in control of the conversation I can follow up with that person so what I’m getting going at getting at is you to do the same thing is collect something from them cut their business card not literally collect their business card but collect their contact details in some way and I would be doing that as an incentive okay give me your contact details so I can follow up with you but in exchange for that what I’m gonna do is give you an mp3 player and some headphones with my music on it so you can go out and listen to me and you can do it in the comfort of your own home there is zero risk the other risk is you’ve given me your contact details and if you like it you will enjoy the you were welcome in the contact that I have inviting you to my show that’s gonna be a paid show or I would do the same thing is I would burn something to a CD give CDs out in exchange for contact details at these festivals same goes I know you’ve got a little bit of recorded video of the performances you do or maybe that’s an assumption but if you do a DVD or put that recorded video on a USB with you know in exchange for those contact days or so that kind of builds into the next thing is now you’ve got their contact details you’ve got their business card right and they’ve already taken zero risk and listen to your music and if you reach out to them and say I’ve got a show coming up we’d like to come along it’s paid so I’m twenty bucks the amount of conversion to get through that is far higher than anything that you’ve done with a flyer and already not you and they’re like probably like you and then it’s the buying decisions made much simpler for them what I would also be doing is looking at you so you mentioned a publicist I’m not sure if you’re doing that currently but anything to do with PR and publicity you really need to get a really strong hook or angle that makes you different and where I’m going with this is there’s a guy and I’m Rob Lee gonna give a whole bunch of examples in the hip hop rap kind of urban speakers I’m sort of into that as well as heavy metal but this guy may be slim Jesus was a kid I don’t remember how old he was about 12 years old but he was a white kid from Southern America and he call himself slim Jesus who’s doing like gangsta rap right so he’s angle and a blow up his song I remember his song was but it was just going everywhere was who’s this white kid young guy doing gangsta rap and he called himself slimming Jesus right so everything about that is unique and really interesting and meaning just jumped on it and really promoted him so I’m back just a memory on my iPhone but what I’ll be doing and I’m gonna get back to angle was just in a second but the other thing I would be doing would be turning competitors in to partners so there’s a lot of other people within festivals competing for the same attention the same sorts of people so I’ve gone back to that angle and seeing what you do as being seeing what you do that is unique or different and using that to differentiate yourselves yourself from others so yep there are other people doing you know similar musical acts then as you go how can you differentiate yourself rather than competing with other performers but turn them into partners to me that you compliment them or compliment you with and as soon as you are complimenting each other you’re not by definition competing and those partners sir those competitors them turn into partners especially promotional partners to help you get your message out to similar different cohorts like you just look at the need of theirs look at something like cooking right there people that are into cooking and they buy lots of different cooking books like I’m into books right you can see behind me like I don’t just have one book on one topic I have multiple books on multiple topics so just because someone is competing in the same sphere as you as long as you’ve got something different a different book that has different content different music it has different content people are going to go buy it they’re not actually in competition and your competition can see that you’re not directly doing the same thing as them or the same genre as then I’m providing something similar they’ll be more than happy to go out and promote for you the other thing is doing collaborations with different with different genres so we’re not even talking about competition to Ana competition to partners but different musical acts that are doing different genres and how can you actually go out and compliment each other they have access to a different certain cohort you have access to another cohort that’s quite different how can you combine what you both through into one thing and cross-promote each other that way so the example I’m thinking of is t-pain did a collaboration with tell us with like you know you’ve got that hip-hop with you know pot and they’ve got two different audiences they did a collaboration together and they opened each other’s music to different cohorts and helped promote each other in terms of that what else I would be giving away in my own music to anyone and everyone that needs music look at podcast like this right I have some intro music as mattre music I would be going to every different podcast or youtuber that has a very similar demographic of who you want to target and I’d just be giving my music away for free at the front and start or in the middle of their podcast to get your name out there same thing with tick tock if you’re not familiar with the app tick-tock this thing is blowing up and it’s super addictive it’s all music based so people are doing things to a back of backing of music so I just should be trying to get your music out there now in terms of other distribution firehoses in terms of meaning there are there are technologies out there that just already have cohorts people I would be just submitting all of my music to our YouTube SoundCloud BitTorrent who else Spotify has people I’d be submitting all of my music to those platforms I’m just getting everything out there the other thing with that is just stopping precious about how much you produce I’ve been British pretty true sorry producing so many different things that you can get out into the marketplace the thing is if no one sees sorry no one to see here’s it doesn’t really matter it’s only the big wings that matter if you are putting out a whole lot of music they example I’m trying to give here is people another urban and rap artist hey years put out he was prolific he’s put out so much stuff and a lot of the stuff wasn’t good but a lot of the stuff people didn’t hear but was only the stuff that was really good that got picked up by the mainstream and got promoted that way and he got quite a few picked up that way because it was just producing so much stuff but that quite a lot of the mainstream population don’t actually know all of the stuff that produce because not all of it was hits and just went under the radar and got kind of lost into obscurity the other thing just on this is with all this distribution firehoses those talking about like Spotify and YouTube and BitTorrent and SoundCloud is that they’re already artists out there that are producing on those platforms not sure if you really want to try this out but a guy named Soulja Boy you may have remembered him from maybe about 10 years ago so he what he used to do was um who would upload his music but with the names of other artists in his genre so he would just say whoever he knows a big ass at the time he would just you know rename his tracks the same tracks as them and then people were just going searching for those tracks and then they would come across this other track that was a soldier boy track another are this is not what I was listening for but some of them found it was a good thing others and probably the majority of them didn’t think it was a good thing and just like exited out and got all mad and so on but the ones that did like what listened to the ends and they’d be like oh this is cool and then at the very end you’d have you’d have information to go and find out more about you so even though I said a lot of people get annoyed with that Soulja Boy actually attributes a lot his initial success to that strategy so I’m not sure if you want to try that out but that’s another thing that might be um might be useful so I think that’s all I’ve got off the top of my head that you’d be worth you going out and at least considering if not trying to get your word out without having to rely on flyers not having to rely on a publicist although I did mention some of that and also not relying on Facebook but I did mention what I think you should be doing around those three things if you want to follow up with the Flyers publicists and/or Facebook but I gave you a whole bunch of other stuff that I think will help you a lot but the main thing is don’t try to sell people that don’t want to be sold take them through it my customer journey make sure they grab their contact details you can follow up because of what if your revenue will come from later purchases down the track so I’d love you to go try all of this stuff out love you too let me know how you go with it and I’m really excited to hear from you.

Orren Prunckun’s Marketing & Sales Q&A – Episode 4: How to get a product out to partners & consumers

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 20 May 2019 05:16:26 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear me answer a question about creative ways to get a product out to partners and consumers.

So, listen here as I discuss this!

To be featured, first go to http://speakpipe.com/orren and record your number #1 marketing or sales question as an audio file.

Then click send and I will answer it for you for FREE!

Transcript:

Hey Orren it’s Dragos, best of luck with a podcast it sounds really exciting and I’ve got a marketing question that I’m hoping you can help with we’ve recently started signature board games and we’ve pretty much finished that first game called flip and fish well we’ve decided to do is do a small print run instead of doing a Kickstarter or something like that because we’ve got really good feedback from people who are basically saying we want to buy this right now we want to take advantage of that and sell a few a few copies and then reinvest that that back in the business and possibly later on Kickstarter etc later on so the question is once we print out press batch which will be about 500 what’s the most creative or what are some ideas for us to marketers either to shops or to clients in a creative way to try and get them out there considering it’s a very crowded market and new designers with one game usually have a hard time getting noticed yeah any thoughts comments feedback would be much appreciated it was thought about things like partnering up that side of the industry but yeah any anything else yeah?

Answer

Hello that is a great question and I just want to congratulate you and applaud you have been following your journey I think what you’ve done and how to take an action on this is phenomenal and also in that you go in a small print run especially for a physical product is an amazing strategy without you know going out and spending thousands of dollars and tons of your time and betting the farm in case this thing does or does not work so doing a really small one rania is a really fantastic strategy so big Pats on back for that so I’m gonna tell you a question with two different ways I’m going to talk about what you’re selling and then how you are selling it so I really want you to think about what it is that you are selling now you’re going to a market where there are plenty of players and plenty of competing products now that’s not a bad thing because consumers love what you’re doing and you know the industry has been around for a really long time but which also which means that people are interested in purchasing what you have to offer but because there’s so much noise out there I really want you to think about how you’re going to position yourself amongst all of the competitors what is it that you do or what is it that your product does that stands out from everyone else now in the PR and the publicity game this is called a news anchor or certainly another news anchor a publicity angle or a PR angle so what is that that’s going to jump out and hook people’s attention because you are unique or different or better or faster than all of the other things that are on the market now yeah the product will solve that but you have to break through all of the noise that’s out there so what is it that you’re yes it is a board game but what is that that people are going to get out of it but also what is the thing that is going to grab their attention now in terms of how you’re selling I want you to go back to the cause I recorded about the fair value line and also how McDonald’s acquires customers and makes a profit and I want you to apply those two different ideas to what you’re currently doing now cards against humanity’ does this in an interesting way and that’s the only thing that’s coming to my mind on the spot is that they do expansion packs for all of their cards so you come in and buy the game and you have a fantastic time and you know usually board games are just a once-off purchase whereas cards against humanity’ they go out and do an expansion pack and I think and I understand this multiple expansion packs so they’re making a little bit more money from the beyond the initial product they’re also providing value for that now I look at all the board games that you know I’ve played as kids and played as kids and currently play we’ve got quite a few board games at the big check that I go to and these things have been you know made back in the 70s so it was a once-off purchase and we’re just getting a ton of value out of that however you know you can go along and create more value than just the once off purchase by creating the equivalent of what might be an expansion pack the cards for cards gates I’m Jana humanity so I really want to think about that in terms of what you’re selling now in terms sorry in terms of how you’re selling it so you’ve had a look at like the fair value line and how McDonald’s acquires their customers we’ve got that kind of framework of strategy of different products of different price points at different times through that customer journey I also want you to think about what the sales message of communication or the language that you’re using for each of those stages now they should come or be distilled or cascaded down from what you are talking about in terms of how differentiating yourself and how you positioning yourself in the market so all that communication of each of those different stages within that product during come from how you are different and then finally once you’ve got the stages and then you’ve got what the messaging is think about how you can go about acquiring customers now I did speak to that briefly in one of the other calls around paid earned in own media so on the paid and earn side I want you to think about all of the different ways you can pay for attention and also have all of the different ways that you can go and earn attention but not just spend all of your time doing that seeing how you convert can convert that into owned media waste you capture all of that payout all of that money you spend them all that time you spent you’ve capture that into an asset that you can communicate that sales message to all of those prospects and customers as they go through that customer journey and thereby something you know a small price point that they get a small amount of value and then you know the equivalent of the expansion packs as they go on so now in terms of partners and how you can go about creating partnerships the first stage is actually going out and finding as many partners as you can that I related to you but not direct competitors now these are going to be distributors for you so this shouldn’t be a really difficult task that was going out and finding that out about who all those distributors are both online and offline and then once you’ve done that once you’ve found those distributors what is it that they want or what is it that they are motivated by and really finding out that and doing some exploration to what they want and then being able to go out and then provide that for them so going on helping them get whatever they want just before you go out and ask them to promote your game so those four stages are really, really important to go out and find partners that are going to be behind your course and be able to go out and promote what you’re doing so I really hope that helps try it out let me know what happens and thanks your question.

Case Study: Nike Brand Alignment

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 01:30:07 +0000

In 2016, Colin Kaepernic the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers sat down during the playing of the American nation anthem.

People were pissed.

Kaepernic, later explained his reason why: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Fair argument!

And just now, Nike has used Kaepernick in their ad campaign that says “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything” and is also donating to Kaepernick’s “Know Your Rights” campaign as well.

Obviously the slogan is congruent with Kaepernic’s 2016 statement and actions.

Yet, this ad campaign got a lot of people butt hurt.

People (angry, white, racists) are burning their Nike shoes in protest.

Was this a risky move for Nike to align with something so controversial?

Nope.

Nike has made a smart brand decision, despite their stocks dropping 3.2% to US$79.62 from US$82.18 as a result.

Nike understands fashion and culture.

They understand how both of these influence marketing…

All people need shoes.

Yet, only some can afford shoes.

And an even smaller amount can afford high end shoes like Nike.

Nike knows this and bet it all on black (pun and no offence intended).

Who helps sell high end products?

Tastemakers do.

Just look at who the tastemakers currently are…

Putting aside brands, tastemakers who are people of colour make up more than 70% of the top followed people on Instagram.

Artists who are people of colour makes up 90% of the current Top 10 music Billboards.

People who buy high end shoes look up to these people.

People who buy high end shoes don’t look up to angry, white, racists.

And angry, white, racists burning Nike shoes don’t influence culture, period.

And if Nike can win over those tastemakers by showing their support to a cause that is deep to their heart, then those tastemakers, wear Nike products and do the taste making for Nike.

Perfectly executed social proof.

And what better way to win over tastemakers who are people of colour, than back a person of colour who is congruent with your brand.

Yes, Nike will lose customers (angry, white, racists), but they’ll gain a whole lot more with this campaign.

It has been estimated the ad has created $43 million in free PR within 24 hour of launch and that figure will continue to climb as people like me comment on it.

And I’m betting their stock price will rise above that pre-campaign price of US$82.18 soon enough.

How To Market and Sell Commodity Products, Services and Solutions

Orren Prunckun — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 03:04:37 +0000

I see this all the time in commodity-type industries.

I call it a commodity-type industry because those businesses provide products, services or solutions that do not have a value-add, above-and-beyond the core products, services or solutions.

The customer is simply paying for a non-creative output.

A commodity could be defined as:

“A basic products, service or solution that is undifferentiated that it is and can be interchangeable with other products, service or solution of the same type.”

Emotional value as opposed to function value is what separates a brand from a commodity.

If you expand the emotional value, you can broaden the price.

I have discussed this in depth here.

Other examples of commodity-type industries could be:

Tradies;
Chippies;
Labourers;
Painters;
Etc.

The commodity issue that affects their marketing and sales is the exact same issue with promotion between affiliates – it’s really hard to differentiate one affiliate to another.

In other words if a company has 10 affiliate to sell the product, those 10 affiliates are all selling the same product for the same price and if they overlap in prospects, it’s really hard for them to be better than the other competing affiliate.

I have written about affiliates in depth here.

A great example is Uber’s refer a friend incentive, in what they call “Free Rides”.

Uber offers users a $5 discount if they refer a friend.

The friend also gets a $5 discount.

The problem is this offer is available to all current users and all prospective users.

Any prospective user can take advantage of the $5 discount from any number of users they know.

Which one do they choose?

Usually it’s the one that is front of mind when making a purchasing decision.

This is the reason why advertising or constant marketing and sales communication works.

You, as a brand, have no idea where a prospect is at metaphorically or when a need arises, so using advertising or constant marketing and sales communication helps you catch prospects and customers at the right time for them.

You, as a brand need to be different.

Customers want your product, service or solution to work.

The product, service or solution working alone is not a differentiator, it’s a bare minimum.

It needs to work!

That’s why customers purchase.

In the case of a Sparkie, the product, service or solution has to adhere to the electrical code etc.

Again, it’s a bare minimum.

Any one qualified (and there are lots of them,) could deliver the product, service or solution.

There is not real value add in-and-of-itself.

Most of these commodity-type industries market and sell the same product, service or solution.

They pitch their services the same.

But there is nothing different about them compared to their competition.

So, how do commodity-type industry businesses compete?

AKA generate leads and prospect.

They compete on price.

When businesses compete on price and discounting, they drive the market down.

Customer gets accustomed to lower prices and the process is irreversible.

It eats away at your margins meaning you need to sell more to make the same revenue.

And competing on price is a race to the bottom.

NO!

Don’t compete on price.

Don’t compete for new business based on your commodity product, service or solution alone.

Beyond these two, here are some market-proven ideas (not an exhaustive list) to help your commodity business compete:

Brand: Create a premium brand;
Free and Offers: What can you offer prospects for free or $1 that will qualify them as a prospect or customer to push them into your marketing and sales pipeline and marketing and sales communication sequence?;
Have a pipeline and communication schedule and content. This allows you to communicate with new prospects on an ongoing basis to sell them at the time of need;
Bonuses: This is related to Free and Low Priced Offers. I always suggest affiliates (as discussed previously in this guide), to differentiate themselves by creating a value add by way of a bonus above-and-beyond the core product, service or solution. A great bonus is something cheap, high perceived value to the prospect and scalable in its delivery. Usually digital products are great for this. The product is the commodity, but the bonus is the differentiator;
Partnerships: Customers with the same pains or same wanted gains actually buy more than one product, service or solution (even competing products, services or solutions) to bring them closer to that gain or away from that pain. Customers were going to buy those products, services and solutions anyway, with or without prompting from symbiotic marketing. How many books of the same genre do you own? I’m willing to guess that it’s more than one. So, case in point Another example may be hair shampoo and conditioner. A better example may be hair shampoo and a hair straightener. In the latter example, the products, services or solutions are either upstream or downstream from each other. Upstream is better than downstream because your products, services and solutions are the next logical progression for the customer who has purchased a competing product, service or solution. Products, services or solutions that are alternative or competing can also be complimentary to your product, service or solution (in the case of hair shampoo and conditioner). Embracing this dynamic puts you in a position of leverage – partners invest money, time and effort in generating leads and partners both leverage each other’s investment. Put this way, if a partner has a qualified contact list that has purchased $1,000,000 of products, services or solutions and you can leverage this to build your contact list, you have in effect gained access to $1,000,000 of qualified customers. Pretty powerful;
Advertisements: search engine ads not social medial ads, for the reasons outline previously in this guide;
Search Engine Optimization: where do most people go when looking for a commodity product without having a referral? Google. The search for the suburb and service. You want to make sure your business is in the first position; and
Use and incentivise referrals with evangelists: You have already made a promise, delivered on that promise and created trust (especially important in industries where there are charlatans and swindlers), so you now have a great basis for word-of-mouth.

Once you have differentiated yourself on the front end in how you market and sell, you also need to differentiate yourself on the back end in how you increase customer loyalty.

Competition Hacking: How To Hijack Your Competitors To Save Time, Money And Effort And Increase Profits

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 14:00:05 +0000

Facebook wasn’t the first social networking site, Myspace was.

Google wasn’t the first search engine, Yahoo! was.

It’s much harder to invent something new; then it is to copy something existing.

And it’s usually better to be a fast follower than a leader in this instance.

This method works as the competition has tested for you as you don’t need to re-create the wheel.

You can do the same for your business and grow.

Sorry to say this, but that you are not Steve Jobs.

The likelihood of your creating a million dollar invention is slim.

To prove my point, if you were Steve Jobs, you wouldn’t need this guide.

But no all is doom-and-gloom!

It’s possible to be a fast follower and be really successful, and that is what this guide is about.

Specifically, you will be a fast follower of a wildly successful:

Product, service or solution; or
Marketing campaign.

Depending on where your brand is currently.

You are going to do this by hacking your competitors.

This guide is for two types of people:

Those with a new product, service or solution; or
Existing product, service or solution.

Why Competition Hacking Is Important

So, why would you want to hack your competitors?

Simply because it will save you time, money, effort and increase profits.

Sounds great, right?

Sure does!

What Competition Hacking Is

In broad terms, you are doing competitor intelligence.

Or put another way, you will be doing a marketing hack.

A Hack could be defined as:

“Using something to make it do what you want.”

Or:

“To obtain unauthorized access for gain.”

We will be doing both.

A marketing hack is therefore:

“Using your competition to save you time, money, effort and increase profits by obtaining unauthorized access.”

Sound fun?

Let’s get started.

How To Hack Your Competition

To give you a board picture, we will find what your competitors are doing that is currently working well for them, that is, making them money.

We will then redirect existing traffic that is already there, from the internet firehose to you, instead of going to your competitors.

This works because, if there is competition, especially if the competition is purchasing advertisements, then that competitor is making money.

The existence of advertisements means a brand is making or has an advertisement spend.

If they are spending money, they, by default need to be making money.

Not to be consumed with profit, as the sales may be loss leaders.

But nonetheless, this still means it’s a proven market with proven sales.

Where there is competition , there are customers.

Of course, there are acceptations to this, but this is a rule of thumb for this guide.

With that in mind let’s explore the step-by-step method…

The first step we come across our first decision tree.

We want to know who you are.

We need to determine if you are a startup business or an existing business.

If you are an existing business (with a product, service or solution, then skip this first step and move on to step 2 Hack Competitors.

If you are a startup business (without a product, service or solution yet), you need to Find Products, Services or Solutions.

This process follows:

Find Passion;
Find Advertisements;
Find Products; and
Profit decision.

Let’s start with…

1) Find Products, Services or Solutions

1a) What is Your Passion

The first part of Find Products, Services Or Solutions, is to find your passion.

1b) Find Ads

The second part of Find Products, Services Or Solutions, is to find advertisements.

Not just any ad, ads for products, services or solutions that you are passionate about (Step 1a.)

Here is how to find ads.

You can:

Search Google for keywords related to your passion;
Scroll through your Facebook feed;
Etc.

Then you need to click on the ad and find the retail price.

1c) Find Products

The third part of Find Products, Services Or Solutions is finding products and suppliers.

You need to determine what type of product it is.

Here is the next decision tree:

Is it Physical or digital?

Depending on your answer you need to find the product in the original advertisement.

Once you have found the products retail price, if it is a physical product, you need to then go to search Google for the following:

site:http://aliexpress.com + any keyword that explains the product.

Or:

Save the product image and Google reverse image search for it.

If it is a digital products or service, go to fiverr.com and search for the products keywords.

Find a service provider who offers the same service or multiple services providers that you can bundle to be the whole service.

If you can’t find suppliers you need to abandon that product, abandon it as it will be too hard and start again at 1b.

If you can find a supplier, then you need to find the wholesale price from the supplier or manufacturer from these sites.

1d) Profit Decision

The fourth part of Find Products, Services Or Solutions is a decision if you should pursue this product, service or solution.

There is a market, but you need to know if it is profitable.

Margin is revenue take costs.

Margin is the difference between the retail price and wholesale price.

Mark up is cost multiplied by a factor to give revenue.

Mark up is the wholesale price as expressed as a multiplier or percentage.

Don’t worry about margin, so aim for a 10x mark up to be profitable.

Based on this, you need to decide if you want to pursue that product, service or solution.

If it is not at least 10x markup, then abandon it as it will be too hard.

If it is unprofitable, then you need to repeat this step until you find a product, service or solution that is profitable.

If it is profitable, then move on to step 2, Hack Competitors.

2) Hack Competitors

The most important factors for Hacking Competitors is knowing the following:

Pipeline;
- Landing pages
Brand and Marketing and Sales Communication;
- Ads
Content;
Traffic sources; and
Engagement.

Without that, it will be very hard to hack them.

Well find these out by the following:

Market Research;
Collect Swipe;
Find Market Trends;
Out Do Competition;
Implement Changes;
Measure Changes; and
Repeat.

Let’s start with…

2a) Market Research

The first part of Hack Competitors is Market Research.

Once you have a product, service or solution, you need to hack your competitors.

You need to search Google for your product, service or solution or industry keywords to find your competitors, both direct and indirect – those up or downstream from your product, service or solution.

Upstream means a product, service or solution that is used before your product, service or solution.

Downstream means a product, service or solution that is used after your product, service or solution, usually a next sell or affiliate offer.

You need to list all in a spreadsheet including:

Name of website;
URL of website;
Product, service or solution offered;
Direct, up or downstream from you; and
Contact details.

Each URL will, of course, give you following Hacking Competitors factors from before:

Landing pages (via URL).

Next, load each competitor’s URL into Similarweb (https://www.similarweb.com.)

Similarweb finds and collects intelligence about websites.

Similarweb will show you:

Traffic quantity and quality (useful for partnerships);
Traffic Sources (Top Referring sites);
Amongst many other things…

This ticks off the following Hacking Competitors factors from before:

Parts of Marketing and Sales Communication; and
Traffic Sources.

Of the Traffic Sources (Top Referring sites) listed on Similarweb, copy those URLs into separate browsers to find ads that run on those sites that lead back to your competitor’s site.

For example, a competitors site, abc.com, may have a traffic source from xyz.com, so you would go to xyz.com and find ads on that site that direct to abc.com.

You also want to know the answers to:

How much traffic does each competitor get?
Where do they get traffic from? Referrals? Search? Display – Ads/publishers? What search Terms? What Social?

2b) Collect Swipe

Swiping is the marketing term for collecting competitors marketing materials.

The second part of Hack Competitors is swiping all their Hacking Competitors factors from before:

Pipeline;
- Landing pages;
Brand and Marketing and Sales Communication;
- Ads; and
Content.

This means you need to start swiping and collecting data on everything via screenshots.

You will start by going to publishers/referrals site, clicking on a competitor ad, then follow their entire marketing and sales pipeline:

A pipeline usually goes like this:

Ad with offer;
Landing page with offer (such as an opt-in or purchase);
Upsell/email follow-up offers;
Purchase Thank You page; and
Remarketing on other sites, you visit.

Basically, you are following their entire marketing and sales sequence, including purchasing, to see exactly what your competitors are doing to get, keep and grow prospects and customers, so you can reverse engineer and copy (without breaching copyright) to save you time , effort and money testing to see what works the best for your business.

Purchasing is important because after the purchase there are many things that occur for customers only and aren’t available to the public (AKA prospects).

The purchasing ticks off the final Hacking Competitors factors from before and allow you to go behind closed doors and see what else they do for:

Engagement.

Finally, you want to ask to join their affiliate program, again there are many things that occur for affiliate only and aren’t available to the public (AKA prospects).

Once you have done this, you need to repeat this for the rest of your competitors.

2c) Find Market Trends

The third part of Hack Competitors is to find trends in the Market.

Once you have completed your market research, you then need to start looking for trends and common denominators among all your competitors:

Pipeline;
- Landing pages including Upsells;
Brand and Marketing and Sales Communication;
- Ads including Retail Price;
Content;
Traffic sources; and
Engagement.

Capture all of these trend insights into a document with the same headers.

2d) Out Do Competitor’s

The fourth part of Hack Competitors is out doing your competitors.

Once you have found market trends, you then need to work out how your business can be better than all of these.

This comes down to a better value proposition, but also specifically:

A more premium brand ;
More persuasive Landing pages;
More compelling Brand and Marketing and Sales Communication;
More persuasive Ads;
More valuable Content; and
More valuable Engagement.

But it shouldn’t be on price.

2e) Implement Changes

The fifth part of Hack Competitors is implementing these changes you identified to outdo your competitors.

Once you have outdone your competitors, you then need to implement the changes.

This includes setting up:

Ads, paid content, affiliate or referral offers on the same referral and display site they do;
Setting up the same SEO keywords and backlinks on your pages they do;
Insert the same SEO keywords into your internal content;
Setting up same social media platforms and distributing content they have;
Setting up similar landing pages;
Setting up similar pipeline sequences for Engagement and Marketing and Sales Communication;
Etc.

2f) Measure Changes

The sixth part of Hack Competitors is measuring your implemented changes.

After you have implemented changes, you need to measure that your new changes are actually working.

You do this through split testing.

2g) Repeat

Now that you have finished this, it is a never-ending process of split testing, so you will repeat by going back to 2a).

The Sponsorship Recruitment Process: How To Get Sponsorship

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 06:41:48 +0000

I have been involved with an event that has attracted significant business sponsorship and had support from Microsoft Australia, Google Australia, Adelaide City Council, ANZ Bank, Piper Alderman Lawyers and BDO.

An “A” tier sponsor is any sponsor you think could provide more sponsorship than any other.

The best method for recruiting “A” tier sponsor is what I called “Leveraging Up.”

Leveraging Up is where you start recruiting lower tier sponsor (that is any sponsor you think could provide sponsorship) to build a foundation and sponsor “portfolio”.

Once you have this foundation and sponsor “portfolio” in place, then you can begin to recruit “A” tier sponsor.

How you get sponsorship is very similar to The Partner Recruitment Process:

Sponsor Identification;
Suspect For Sponsors;
Find Contact Information;
Sponsor Preparation;
Initiating Outreach;
Sponsor Recruitment; and
Sponsor On-boarding.

Beyond that same process, it’s worth bearing in mind the following rules:

Different sponsors want different things. Google came on board because Microsoft They wanted brand association more than anything. Whereas smaller sponsors wanted business development opportunistic.
No one wants to be your first (social proof is key). Sponsors want to see that other partners have de-risked you and your offer before they do;
Start with lower-tier sponsors and ask for in-kind not cash to solve issue #1. This means you should not try and recruit “A” tier partners in the first instance. So to begin with, start recruiting “Z” tier partners. These could be friends or people who know, like and trust you already. You don’t need to use these as partners in the long term, but they do provide social proof that you can leverage up to higher partners; and
Once you have some sponsors who have put their hand up and made you “credible” for other sponsors, use the principle of “Levering Up” and show higher tier sponsors you have lower tier sponsors on board – they don’t need to know it was in-kind only as each sponsorship deal is different. Once “Z” tier partners are recruited, then move on to recruit “Y” tier partners, then again when they are recruited, use that social proof to recruit “X” tier partners (and so on) all the way up to recruiting “A” tier partners. By the time you get to “A” tier partners, they are more likely to say yes to your partnership offer as many other partners have said yes to your partnership offer first. The fact that they are lower tier partner, in most instances, does not matter to the higher tier partners. This is why this method is given the name of “Leveraging Up.”

In addition, incentive-based fundraising, such as crowdfunding (that provides a reward in exchange for sponsorship) is probably at the cutting edge for what is best practice for motivating people to donate money, but you need to have scalable (digital) incentives (bonuses) build you contact database first.

$1 Offers: How To Create An Effective Trip Wire

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 03:10:59 +0000

Every time I drive past Hungry Jacks I see similar ads and offers to the following:

$1 Small Coffee; or
$1 Medium Thick Cut Chips;
And so on…

At first sight, you may wonder why Hungry Jacks offer this?

$1 Coffee?!

$1 Fires?!

How on earth could they make any profit off these?!

They don’t.

And Hungry Jacks knows this and that’s the point.

But you may be asking why would Hungry Jacks not want to make profit…

…Isn’t that the purpose of being in business?

Yes it is, but it’s the ultimate purpose.

Not the purpose of these offers.

Or any offer at the start of a pipeline.

The purpose of these offers is to convert a prospects (a prospect is someone who hasn’t purchased yet) into customers (someone who has purchased already.)

This offer is called a Tripwire Offer.

Or a Low Priced Offer.

A Tripwire is a wire stretched close to the ground that work as a trap, explosion, or alarm when it is disturbed and is aimed at detecting or preventing people or animals entering an area.

Used in a marketing and sales context, it is an offer (like the examples) that work as a trigger when purchased, to detect when a person moves from a prospect to a customer.

This is about sales and converting leads to paying customers.

At this point, prospects have now become customers.

This is a very powerful buying psychological decision.

If you recall back to the “few ways to market and sell” I mentioned at the start of the guide, this means they are more likely to buy higher-priced offers (such as Main Offers and Profit Offers), more often.

This is also called a Loss Leader.

A Loss Leader is defined as a product sold at a loss to attract customers.

Smart marketers will also price their low priced offer at the same price it costs them to acquire traffic in the first place.

I refer this strategy as a “Self-Paying Offer.”

For example, if it costs you $10 to acquire traffic and convert that traffic to customers via a low priced offer, then you should aim to price your low priced offer at $10 as well, to make it cost neutral.

This means you can buy as many customers as you can find dollars to pay for them, without being at a loss.

The Low Priced Offer then becomes a Loss Leader, and you build up a list of customers for free, even if you have made no profit at this stage.

This is much more beneficial than just having a list of prospects.

The Tripwire acts both as an incentive to come into the shop, but also to buy.

Hungry Jacks could have just used a Gated or free offer which would have just got a prospect to come in and redeem it and be less likely to buy and up sell.

So Hungry Jacks uses a Tripwire to do both things in one offer.

Hungry Jacks actually makes all their profit on the drinks and the upselling of drinks.

When you think about it, what is Coke made up of?

Sugar;
Water;
Flavouring; and
A shit-load of profit!

The first three all being very cheap to produce.

So here are some other examples of Tripwires:

In person – Apple;
B2B – article;
B2C – physical digital product;
Free plus shipping;
And so on…

So you may be asking, “how do you create an effective Tripwire?”

It’s simple…

You take your full featured product in your Main Offer.

In Hungry Jacks’ case a Large Meal of burger, drink and fries.

Then you take one of those item, which is ideally:

Low cost;
Low profit margin/mark-up;
Scaleable delivery; and
High perceived value.

And offer it for a nominal, yet really attractive price, like $1.

For example you’d offer the burger or fries for $1, as they did in the example before.

The price need to be relative, as you probably wouldn’t offer a $10,000 Main Offer’s tripwire for a $1, but you may.

It’s all contextual and specific examples are beyond the scope of this guide.

Incidentally, this is a very similar process of how you create an effective Free Offer too.

The Brand Sharing Process: How To Get High Value Referrals From Prospects & Customers For Your Product, Service Or Solution

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:46:50 +0000

Approximate read time: 21 minutes

We have recently seen a flood of new products, services, solutions and subsequent marketing messages (even the human body can be used as a billboard now).

But, attention is scarce and limited – prospects and customers can’t digest it all, and they distrust a lot of it.

They see on average 362 marketing messages per day.

That is approximately 100,000 marketing messages per year!

It’s impossible to take all of that information in and process it.

“Ad blockers” are on the rise to combat this situation to filter out irrelevant messages, particularly those that are marketing messages.

Cognitive psychologist George A. Miller said the human mind can only hold on average seven individual units of information in working memory at once.

99% of these messages will be missed by prospects and customers.

So, unless your marketing message stands out, as you can probably guess, it will be lost forever.

This means referrals are important for your brand for many reasons.

Ultimately, the purpose of referrals is to get new customers, or at least new prospects.

Referrals allow your brand to get more leads (prospects, AKA opt-ins) and sales (customers) for free from a trusted third party without having to acquire them through other sources.

This social proof from the referring party makes the connection to your brand stronger.

Social Proof is powerful.

Robert Caidini wrote about it in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. “People will do things that they see other people doing.”

In this case, it is followed and engaged on social media, if others are doing the same.

This trusted third party most likely knows and likes your brand and, therefore, is potentially more honest about the brand than the brand itself, as the third party has no self-interested motive.

If fact, the referring party has a lot at stake – they are putting their personal reputation with their friend on the line, so they need to be very confident about the referral which makes it even more powerful as an acquisition tool for your brand.

Prospects are more open to hear what their friends say about a brand.

Referrals allow your customers to feel good about their purchase and valuable in the eyes of the referring friend.

Referrals help your brand get its message out by educating new prospects and customers through pre-framing and pre-selling.

These trusted third parties are usually, happy, satisfied clients who already know, understand, and appreciate what you offer.

According to a study by the Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Pennsylvania, referred customers are “more profitable and loyal than normal customers” and contribute to high retention and profit margins, both short and long-term.

So, let’s define some terms.

Sharing is giving something to another.

Sharing an experience is enjoying an experience with or giving an experience to someone.

A referral is when a person, not necessarily a current prospect or customer, makes a recommendation to someone they know, possibly without the third party’s knowledge.

A referral is a specific type of sharing.

A marketing or sales referral is a way of promoting products, services, or solutions to new prospects and customers through a third party.

This is usually done through word of mouth.

Word-of-mouth is the communication of information through spoken or written language, either live or recorded.

A non-commercial communicator (i.e. someone who is not rewarded) and a receiver concerning a brand, a product, or a service.

This is also known as buzz, blog, viral, grass roots, brand advocates, cause influencers, social media marketing, ambassador programs, Grapevine, bush telegraph, lecture circuit, preaching and so on.

A partnership or joint venture is where two or more parties take part in an undertaking, association, or arrangement to work together to share risk and profit.

A partnership or joint venture in marketing, amongst other things, is about working together to promote each other’s products, services, or solutions for increased mutual profit and reduced risk.

An affiliate or sub-promoter is a party that is officially attached to a vendor.

An affiliate or sub-promoter in marketing is where the affiliate gets paid for making referrals, leads or sales for a vendor’s product, service, or solution.

A vendor, merchant, retailer, advertiser or seller is a provider that offers products, services or solutions for sale.

Sharing Types

There are various types of sharing.

One-way and two-way sharing.

We’ll only concentrate on one-way sharing for this guide, as two-way sharing relates to partnerships.

Organic & Proactive (Intentional & Unintentional)

One-way promotions could be organic or proactive (encouraged or spontaneous—referrals, respectively, could be intentional or unintentional).

In the first instance, you hope new prospects and customers will refer more new prospects and customers.

In other words, they are unintentional.

In the second instance, you put in place a system that is effective, predictable, and consistent so that new customers can refer new prospects.

In other words, they are intentional.

You can’t affect the organic referrals, so we will concentrate on the latter in this guide, which you can affect.

Non-incentivised & Incentivised

One-way promotions could also be non-incentivised or incentivised.

In the first instance, you ask customers just after they have purchased to refer new prospects.

In other words, there is no incentive to share.

In the second instance, you set up the equivalent of an affiliate program where you offer your customers just after they have purchased (and, in some instances, current prospects) an incentive to refer new prospects.

In other words, there is an incentive to share.

Even if you don’t offer an affiliate program to customers just after they purchase, you can still offer it later on.

These are very valuable…

According to the same study by the Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Pennsylvania on referral customers, even when taking into account a referral cost, the related retention time and profit margins are outweighed.

We will concentrate on both types in this guide.

You & They Contact

One-way promotions could also be where your brand does the referral contact or your prospects and customers do the referral contact.

In the first instance, you ask prospects and customers for contact details for new prospects and customers so you can contact as the referral.

In other words, your brand is the contact point.

In the second instance, you ask your prospects and customers to contact new prospects and customers as the referral.

In other words, your prospects and customers are the contact point.

We will concentrate on both in this guide.

Linear & Viral

One-way promotions could also be linear or viral.

In the first instance, linear sharing is sharing that spreads proportionally.

In other words, one customer refers another new customer only.

In the second instance, viral sharing is sharing that spreads disproportionally.

In other words, one customer refers more than one new customer.

Here is how it works…

A virus is an infectious agent that replicates itself in the cells of a host organism.

Viruses are not cellular so they do not grow through cell division, sexually or asexually.

Viral replication.

Viral sharing occurs when.

Virus invests more than one.

Viral growth requires the viral coefficient to be greater than 1.

K>1

Anything below that is linear growth.

The viral coefficient is the average number of referrals (invitation rate) invitations multiplied by the conversion (acceptance rate) of the new user.

The equation would look like this:

Viral coefficient = invitation rate * acceptance rate

Or:

K=1*conversion%

The Invitation rate is the number of referral current customers sent.

The acceptance rate is the number of new customers per number of referral current customers sent.

Let’s look at example:

You have 100 customers.

And each customer sends 2 invites each or 200 total invites.

The Invitation Rate is 2 (total invites divided by customers).

Now let’s say out of the 200 total invites sent, 110 new prospects or customers are created.

This means the Acceptance Rate of the invitations is 0.55 (new prospects or customers are created divided by total invites sent).

The viral coefficient is 1.1 (Acceptance Rate multiplied by Invitation Rate).

As 1.1 is greater than 1, you have achieved viral referrals.

Congrats.

That’s a hard thing to do!

This guide will concentrate on both linear and viral sharing.

Sharing Motivation

So, why do people share?

There are 11 main reasons people share:

To look good (brag) in front of friends and improve their standing;
To help and add value to friends;
To inform, inspire, entertain, change opinions or encourage action;
To maintain, reconnect with friends, and grow relationships;
To connect with people they normally would not;
To self-fulfil and get involved with the world;
To help learn and process new information;
To define their identity to themselves and others;
To feel connected;
To support your brand;
To support issues and causes they are passionate about;
And many others…

Although incentivised referrals are great, when money is involved as the incentive, it can make the referral transactionary, and it appeals to a different motivation, that is #13—financial gain!

This means when you want a referral to your brand, you need to appeal to one of more of these reasons.

Number 2 and 3 are deposits.

Stephen Covey explained a concept called the Emotional Bank Account in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

The concept describes how building trust works in human interactions.

It is analogous to a bank account where deposits and withdrawals of money can be given and taken.

If a bank account gets filled, it can lead to more trust, and likewise, if it gets overdrawn, it can lead to a diminishing of trust.

The same principle applies to marketing and sales.

And we know marketing and sales only happen when prospects and customers know, like, and trust your business.

Selling is about relationships, even if you don’t know prospects and customers personally.

Relationships here are defined as the way in which a market and a business are connected.

And relationships should be mutually beneficial so that the sum is bigger than the individual parts.

This is about delivering value.

Relationships are like bank accounts that contain currencies, in this case money and having their problem solved, and has deposits and withdrawals of either of those currencies.

As a referrer, your customers may want to build a reserve of credit with their friends to draw upon in the future.

They don’t want to overdraw their account.

Some people know this instinctually.

Old deposits evaporate, so keep making deposits.

In other words, referrals can fill the “value account” with deposits of value before they make a withdrawal.

This is what I mean by giving and take – deposits and withdraws.

But there is no need to micro-manage this process and keep tallies on who has done what.

This is about the overall balance and sense of deposit and withdraw ratio.

It’s always best to err on the side of giving too many deposits.

When we support a friend or “like” what they do, we maintain that relationship and reinforce closeness.

Shared Content Types

Therefore based on why people share, here is a list of what types of things get shared:

Insider or superior content, knowledge, results or outcomes
Insider or superior content, knowledge, results or outcomes
Informational, inspiring or entertaining content, knowledge, results or outcomes
Content, knowledge, results or outcomes that give a customer a reason to contact a friend
Content, knowledge, results or outcomes that give a customer a reason to contact someone new
Content, knowledge, results or outcomes that aligns with a customer’s world view or help them be more social
Content, knowledge, results or outcomes that are informational, inspiring or entertaining
Content, knowledge, results or outcomes that aligns with a customer’s world view
Content, knowledge, results or outcomes that helps a customer be more social
Content, knowledge, results or outcomes that allows customers to show gratitude towards your brand
Content, knowledge, results or outcomes that aligns with a customer’s world view
And many others…

The Elements

So, what are the steps for getting proactive, liner, or viral, incentivised or non-incentivised, you-contact or they-contact referrals?

Here they are:

STEP 1: Referral Timing;
STEP 2: Referral Location; and
STEP 3: Referral Request.

Let’s begin with…

1) Referral Timing

…This step is about the timing of asking for a referral.

So, when do you ask for a referral?

There is a sales saying that goes like this: “When the emotion is high, ask to buy.”

High emotions are the best time to ask to buy, and after they have bought their emotions are still high, so the ideal time to share is at purchase.

They are excited for results and pleased with their purchase.

The excitement actually comes from dopamine.

There is a gap between the time of purchase and when they get the result.

This gap in time can also increase dopamine, one of the most addictive, naturally occurring human hormones!

Dopamine can be created by the expectation of new experiences (in this case, the outcome from the new purchase.)

The gap between the time of purchase and when they get the result comes from the following:

Customers purchase products, services or solutions when they want to move away from their current situation or, towards a new situation – away from pain or towards pleasure, ideally in the fastest way possible.

Your product, service or solution is actually a barrier to moving customers away from pain or towards pleasure.

Think about it this way, the most direct path for a customer would be a short two-step path:

Current situation (pain); then
New situation (pleasure).

With your product, service or solution, the path for a customer is actually a longer three-step path:

Current situation;
Your product, service or solution; then
New situation.

This is the reason humans want magic-pills or silver-bullet products, services or solutions, and they want results yesterday!

Magic-pills or silver-bullets rarely exist, so you need to sell people what they want (two-step path), but you also have to give them what they need (three-step path).

The more you can speed up or automate your product, service or solution, the better.

You want to reduce the time and effort it takes to move from Step 1 to Step 3 to a minimum.

The faster or simpler you can move a customer away from pain or towards pleasure, the more value you add to them, and the more you can charge for doing so via your product, service or solution.

Directly after a purchase is one of the best times to ask for a referral because it reassures the purchaser it was a good purchase (choice), so they don’t have buyer’s remorse.

In fact, asking for a referral at this time reduces buyer’s remorse because they have now justified the purchase to another.

This is called Confabulation.

Confabulation is where we create a story and rationalize with logic after the fact.

It also the “Commitment and Consistency” principle of influence from Robert Caidini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

The Commitment and Consistency principle says “we feel we must always align our outer actions and promises with our inner choices and systems, such as our beliefs and values.”

Buyer’s remorse is the feeling of regret in a buyer after they have made purchases.

It usually occurs with a core purchase rather than an impulse purchase, such as low-priced offers.

The feeling of regret could be associated with the fear of making the wrong choice, guilt over extravagance, or a suspicion of having being overtly influenced by the seller, and so on.

It is also okay to ask for referrals any time a customer is in a mood to give one.

But having said that, it varies wildly and is unpredictable so stick with time of purchase as buyer’s remorse will not have set in.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This step is about Referral Timing.

This leads us to the Referral Location step…

Might be good better adjusted further

2) Referral Location

…This step is about the location to ask for a referral.

Once you know when to ask for a referral, now you need to know where to ask for the referral.

So, where do you ask for a referral?

At any touch point, which could be everything from:

Website;
Advertising;
Publicity;
Content;
Messages;
Storytelling;
Marketing Communication;
Sales Communication;
Product, Service Or Solution Delivery;
User Experience;
After Sales Customer Service;
And so on…

And it can be any sense your prospects and customers use to interface with and perceive your brand.

The way they:

Hear your brand;
See your brand;
Smell your brand;
Touch your brand; and
Taste your brand…

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This step is about Referral Location.

This leads us to the Referral Request step…

3) Referral Request

…This step is about requesting the referral.

Once you know where to ask for a referral, now you need to ask for the referral.

So, what do you ask when requesting a referral?

There are two main things you want your customers to share or refer:

Any content communication; and
Any sales communication.

Now that you know what you want your customers to share, here is what you should be asking them to do.

Organic & Proactive (Intentional & Unintentional)

If you are aiming for organic shares, the main thing you want to do is appeal to each motivation described previously.

Remember, you hope new prospects and customers refer more new prospects and customers.

Again, 11 main reasons people share are:

To look good (brag) in front of friends and improve their standing;
To help and add value to friends;
To inform, inspire, entertain, change opinions or encourage action;
To maintain, reconnect with friends, and grow relationships;
To connect with people they normally would not;
To self-fulfil and get involved with the world;
To help learn and process new information;
To define their identity to themselves and others;
To feel connected;
To support your brand;
To support issues and causes they are passionate about;
And many others…

Now if you are aiming for proactive shares, you want to appeal to certain motivations described previously.

These are helping your prospects and customers share something useful or an incentive

Non-incentivised & Incentivised

If you are looking for incentivised sharing, you want to:

Allow both the referrer and referee to both get gifts or value from the referral; and
Make them in voucher or coupon form so they are encouraged to spend to redeem.

If you are looking for non-incentivised sharing there is not a whole lot you can do.

You & They Contact

If you want to contact new referral prospects and customers on behalf of current prospects and customer, you want to:

Ask current prospects and customers for names and contact details of new prospects and customers and share something about your brand.

Make this information easy to give you, but be wary of spam.

You can read the Spam Act 2003 here: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Series/C2004A01214.

NOTE: What follows is not legal advice.

In essence, you need:

Gained consent for commercial communication;
Clear identification of who sent the communication; and
The ability to stop any further the communication.

Here are some guidelines that may help you comply:

All links, phone numbers or contact information in the message should be intended to identify you by being placed in the signature and do not lead to content with a commercial purpose;
Only find email addresses that are publicly published. Don’t guess email addresses or harvest them. Don’t contact emails that say they don’t want to be contacted publicly;
Publish your business name, address, website, phone number and email in the email signature for the sole purpose of identifying the sender of the message, and make sure they do not lead to content with a commercial purpose. Staff should use their name both in the body and field;
Your email address should stay active for 30 days after ceasing contact;
Have unsubscribed information in the P.S. of email. Do this because the P.S. section is the one of the most read parts of an email;
Remove unsubscribes immediately; and
Unsubscribing needs to be free for the recipient.

Your electronic communication is about contacting the decision-maker with free value to open up a conversation and relationship with them, and offering to compensate them, not advertising a product, service or solution for sale.

If you want your current prospects and customers to contact new referral prospects and customers on your behalf, you want to:

Ask current prospects and customers to contact new prospects and customers and share something about your brand.

Linear & Viral

If you are looking for linear sharing, ask prospects and customers to share with one friend and you want to appeal to:

Anything practical or useful;
The positive, rather than the negative.

Now if you are looking for viral sharing, you want to ask prospects and customers to share with at least one friend and appeal to topics such as:

Interest;
Newness;
Uniqueness and difference;
Humour; and
Speculation.
To name a select few…

Or the more negative topics:

Controversy;
Conflict;
Rumour;
Scandal; and
Sensationalism.
To name a select few…

This content generally evokes strong emotions in people because it challenges or offends people’s behaviour, beliefs or belongings according to author Tim Ferriss.

These emotions may include:

Shock;
Affinity;
Intrigue;
Enjoyment;
Titillation;
Arousal;
Confusion;
Excitement;
Interest; and
Remarkable.
To name a select few…

Or the more negative emotions:

Hate;
Disgust;
Outrage; and
Anger.
To name a select few…

It’s unfortunate that these topics of content and related emotions appeal to humans, but they are what people generally want to consume, as they are primal, deeply embedded emotions in the human psyche.

They are “valuable” content.

All of this means your brands stands out in its content.

I suggest you steer clear of the negative topics and emotions and focus on the positive.

These emotions usually evoke and pique interest, and compel an urge to engage, spread and pass the content along through social networks through the various mechanisms as discussed previously:

To click on content sales scripts;
To view or download content;
To like content;
To vote (a form of liking) on content;
To comment on content;
To review content;
To react or respond to content;
To share content;
And so on…

These actions could be achieved by the following types of content that are easy to consume:

Lists
Best-of’s;
Demonstrations;
How-to’s;
Quizzes;
Quotes;
Memes;
Slideshows;
Images;
Infographics;
Animated Gifs;
Exclusives;
And so on…

And the more negative types:

Leaks;
Risqué advertisements;
Misleading headlines;
Making things up;
And so on…

This content could be communicated through a range of content modalities:

Text;
Image;
Video;
Audio;
And so on…

The content needs to be related to your brand but not necessarily your products, services or solutions specifically.

This step is about Referral Requests.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

Take Action

You made it…

You now have a solid plan for getting high value referrals for your product, service or solution.

That’s the full Brand Sharing Process, and it will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

You can get the printed illustrated Process Map of this and 20 others for free, here

And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This maybe the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.

Now let’s learn about The Sales Script Process.

Or do you simply want more like this?

Join below to be notified immediately about new content and more. No annoying daily emails and no spam – just good content when it’s posted.

The Partner Co-Enrolment Process: How To Generate Cheaper Yet More Targeted And Qualified Leads

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:41:56 +0000

Approximate read time: 6 minutes

It goes without saying that most brands with products, services or solutions are looking for cheaper yet more targeted and qualified leads for their brand.

Think about it, if you can get more targeted and qualified leads but for cheaper than normal, your cost of the sale goes down and your profit margin goes up.

Brands, of course, pursue the most obvious and reliable channels to generate their leads.

The problem with this is that they are obvious and reliable to other brands.

And being obvious and reliable means are expensive and saturated marketing channels.

This leads to less targeted and qualified leads and the price gets driven up.

Not ideal.

When brands look to uncommon lead generation strategies they benefit, as very few are playing in the same sandbox.

The concepts of “Symbiotic Marketing” and “Co-Enrolment” are two examples of effective yet uncommon lead generation marketing strategies.

Not only do they generate leads but they also generate leads that are targeted and qualified.

They are also considerably cheaper than other marketing channels.

Sounds pretty powerful, right?

So who is Co-Enrolment via Symbiotic Marketing for?

Any brand that wants to generate more leads;
Any brand that wants to generate more targeted and qualified leads; and
Any brand that wants to generate cheaper yet more targeting and qualified leads.

Best of all, it’s probably for you!

So what is “Symbiotic Marketing” and “Co-Enrolment”?

“Symbiotic Marketing” is a marketing strategy where two or more complimentary but non-competing brands combine their marketing effort to generate leads and sales for all parties involved.

In other words, they cooperate with their marketing efforts off one another to get greater reach, awareness, conversion and return on investment.

This could be anything from co-branded advertisements to product, service or solution scavenger hunts and everything in between.

You may be wondering why brands would do this.

“Aren’t they competing against each other?”

The answer is no…

…Customers with the same pains or same wanted gains actually buy more than one product, service or solution (even competing products, services or solutions) to bring them closer to that gain or away from that pain.

Customers were going to buy those products, services and solutions anyway, with or without prompting from symbiotic marketing.

How many books of the same genre do you own?

I’m willing to guess that it’s more than one.

Another example may be hair shampoo and conditioner.

A better example may be hair shampoo and a hair straightener.

In the latter example, the products, services or solutions are either upstream or downstream from each other.

Upstream is better than downstream because your products, services and solutions are the next logical progression for the customer who has purchased a competing product, service or solution.

Products, services or solutions that are alternative or competing can also be complimentary to your product, service or solution in the case of hair shampoo and conditioner.

Embracing this dynamic puts you in a position of leverage – partners invest money, time and effort in generating leads and partners both leverage each other’s investment.

Put this way, if a partner has a qualified contact list that has purchased $1,000,000 of products, services or solutions and you can leverage this to build your contact list, you have in effect gained access to $1,000,000 of qualified customers.

Pretty powerful.

“Co-Enrolment” is another marketing strategy where prospects opt-in once to receive an offer and share their contact details (with permission and consent) with the parties involved, thus becoming co-enrolled.

When the two marketing strategies are combined, the participant brands gather leads for the purpose of marketing and selling their complimentary and non-competitive products, services or solutions in a reciprocal arrangement for mutual benefit.

So how does this work practically?

A giveaway!

Here are the steps in a Co-Enrolment marketing campaign:

STEP 1: Pre-launch;
STEP 2: Launch; and
STEP 3: Post-launch.

Let’s begin with…

1) Pre-Launch

…The first step is Pre-Launch.

During the Pre-Launch, the Promoter recruits two or more participating partners.

Partners donate a discounted or free offer related to their products, services and solutions that are not ordinarily available (such as a coupon code).

These donated offers are added to a giveaway prize pool that each individual prospect has access to if they opt-in to the giveaway and share their contact details.

This individual giveaway is unlike a winner-takes-all giveaway.

The giveaway is hosted on limited access (via opt-in) membership website, where access is granted by an opt-in enrolment page.

All Partners get to nominate what segmentation information they want to capture from prospects on enrolment.

Just before the Launch, Partners send an email communication to their respective contact databases outlining the Launch, prize pool, terms and dates.

This is the “Symbiotic” part of the campaign.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads us to the Launch Step…

2) Launch

…The next step is Launch.

On the Launch date, each Partner sends two email communications to their respective contact databases explaining that the Launch and prize pool are open for enrolment.

Those prospects, from each Partners’ contact databases who are interested in the individual prize pool on, will enrol into the new Giveaway contact database.

And those prospects who are not interested in the Launch will not enrol into the new contact database and will remain solely on the original Partner contact database.

In other words, each contact database is cross-pollinated (with permission and consent), and each participating partner generates targeted and qualified leads from the complimentary brand.

This is the “Co-Enrolment” part of the campaign.

After opt-in and enrolment, prospects have admission to the password protected member’s area where they can access and redeem all Partners offers.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads us to the Post Launch Step…

3) Post-Launch

…The final step is Post-Launch.

Once the Giveaway is over, the Promoter distributes the contact details on the new Giveaway contact database to all Partners.

All Partners and the Promoter upload these contact details to their respective email communication platform for the purpose of marketing and selling their products, services or solutions.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

Take Action

You made it…

You now have a solid plan for generating cheaper yet more targeting and qualified leads.

That’s the full Partner Co-Enrolment Process, and it will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

You can get the printed illustrated Process Map of this and 20 others for free, here

And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This maybe the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.

Now let’s learn about The B2C Lead Generation Process.

Or do you simply want more like this?

Join below to be notified immediately about new content and more. No annoying daily emails and no spam – just good content when it’s posted.

The Partner Recruitment Process: How To Get Joint Ventures And Affiliates Who Can Generate Leads For Your Brand

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:40:00 +0000

Approximate read time: 18 minutes

Here are three vital marketing questions for you:

Do you want to generate more leads?;
Do you want to generate more targeted and qualified leads?; and
Do you want to generate cheaper yet more targeting and qualified leads?.

Most people say yes to all three.

Of course, they would – it’s human nature.

And I’m assuming you said the same.

I’m going to show you how powerful saying yes can be…

In 2012, I brought an event called Startup Weekend to Adelaide.

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour weekend event that groups of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more pitch ideas for new startup companies, form teams around those ideas, and work to develop a working prototype, demo, or presentation by Sunday evening, having started on Friday evening.

At the time I had:

Zero startup industry contacts;
Zero startup industry credibility; and
Zero startup industry influence.

Based on this, someone challenged me to a bet that I wouldn’t be able to get more than 20 people in the room.

$100 was on the line.

That event sold out at the capacity of 80 people.

And every event since then (five in total) have done the same.

How did this happen?

As the saying goes, “The first time you are lucky, but second time you are good.”

The answer is partnerships.

And by the way, they still have not come good on their bet

If it’s not clear already, partnerships are an important way to generate leads and sales.

This guide will show you how to recruit partners so that you can generate cheaper yet more targeting and qualified leads from them.

Here are some of the partner lead generation campaigns you can use:

Reciprocal cross-promotion, including;
- Co-Enrolment;
- Co-Branding;
- Contests; and
- Giveaways;
One way promotions (from them to you and from you to them), including;
- Product, service or solution launches;
- Affiliate promotion;
- Website awards and trust insignia;
- Communication promotion; and
- Touch point promotion.

Leads generated through these campaigns can then be used for:

New product, service or solution launches;
Existing and ongoing product, service and solution sales; and
Sponsorships.
To name a select few…

These all start with the Partner Recruitment Process.

Before we move on, let’s define some terms.

A partnership or joint venture is where two or more parties take part in an undertaking, association or arrangement to work together to share risk and profit.

A partnership or joint venture, in marketing, amongst other things, is about working together to promote each other’s products, services or solutions for increased mutual profit and reduced risk.

An Affiliate or sub-promoter is a party that is officially attached to a vendor.

An Affiliate or sub-promoter, in marketing, is a form a marketing in which the affiliate gets paid for making referrals, leads or sales for a vendor’s product, service or solution.

A Vendor, merchant, retailer, advertiser or seller is a provider that offers products, services or solutions for sale.

In combination, they could be referred to as “Symbiotic Marketing”.

“Symbiotic Marketing” is a marketing strategy where two or more complimentary but non-competing brands combine their marketing effort to generate leads and sales for all parties involved.

In other words, they cooperate with their marketing efforts of one another to get greater reach, awareness, conversion and return on investment.

This could be anything from co-branded advertisements to product, service or solution scavenger hunts and everything in between.

You may be wondering why brands would do this: “Aren’t they competing against each other?”

The answer is no.

Customers with the same pains or same wanted gains, actually buy more than one product, service or solution (even competing products, services or solutions) to bring them closer to that gain or away from that pain.

Customers were going to buy those products, services and solutions anyway, with or without prompting from symbiotic marketing.

How many books of the same genre do you own?

I’m willing to guess that it’s more than one.

Another example may be hair shampoo and conditioner.

A better example may be hair shampoo and a hair straightener.

In the latter example, the products, services or solutions are either upstream or downstream from each other.

Upstream is better than downstream because your products, services and solutions are the next logical progression for the customer that has purchased a competing product, service or solution.

Products, services or solutions that are alternative or competing can also be complimentary to your product, service or solution in the case of hair shampoo and conditioner.

Embracing this dynamic puts you in a position of leverage, as partners invest money, time and effort in generating leads, and both partners leverage each other’s investment.

Put this way, if a partner has a qualified contact list that has purchased $1,000,000 of products, service or solution and you can leverage this to build your contact list, you have in effect got access to $1,000,000 of qualified customers.

Pretty powerful.

So, what are the steps for recruiting partners?

Here they are:

STEP 1: Partner Identification;
STEP 2: Suspect For Partners;
STEP 3: Find Contact Information;
STEP 4: Partner Preparation;
STEP 5: Initiating Outreach;
STEP 6: Partner Recruitment; and
STEP 7: Partner On-boarding.

Let’s begin with…

1) Partner Identification

Step one is about your ideal partners.

The more time you spend on this step, the better your partner recruitment will be.

Identify reputable competitors or complimentary vendors in your market who:

Have related products, services and solutions, preferably “upstream” from your offer;
Have a prospect and customer contact database (could be email, phone or social media); and
Gives away free content to this contact database.

Without these criteria, they won’t be useful promotional partners.

Next, find their:

Website URL;
Decision maker’s name; and
Decision maker’s contact email (better still, a snail mail postal address).

Then, prioritize your list into a contact order by (in order of importance).

If you know the decision maker already;
If you have built goodwill with the decision maker already;
If you have an incentive you can offer this decision maker to partner with you; and
If you have you know your Earnings-Per-Click (EPC) conversion rates.

Without these, recruiting partners are going to be hard, and you should drop everything right now and start establishing these.

It is worth noting that the geographic area you service and the industry or vertical your ideal customer is in has an influence on how many partners you can recruit.

If your brand has few competitors and services global customers, you’ll be able to generate far more partners than if your brand has a lot of competitors and services a small geographic niche.

That’s a given.

This is because your potential customers are getting far more pitches in the latter example.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads us to suspect for partners…

2) Suspect For Partners

…Step Two is about suspecting for partners.

After you have defined your ideal partners, you need a list of prospects.

A list of prospects could be built, rented or bought.

The last two can be quite expensive.

Purchased lists can also be outdated.

This leaves us with the former – building a customized updated prospect list that has the ability to give you permission for follow-up and reflects your ideal customer.

So, you need to create a large, unfiltered list of your ideal customers.

The more the better.

This can be a very time consuming task, as you can imagine.

The best place to start is building using Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheets combined with Google searching.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

Use your ideal partner’s segmentation information and the geographic area you service to find relevant companies.

Better still is if you know the company names already of those that are a good fit.

This will save you a lot of time.

So how do you find potential partners?

They could be:

Current prospects;
Current customers;
Friends;
Referrals;
Business associates;
Social media followers;
Networking contacts;
Competitors;
Competitors partners
Industry influencers;
Advertisers; and
LinkedIn;
To name a select few…

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads us to find contact information…

3) Find Contact Information

…Step Three is about finding contact information.

Once you have a large list of your ideal partners, you need to find email addresses or contact information.

How do you find the contact information for the owner of a website?

The way to do this is to copy and paste the companies’ web URL into a browser, and navigate to their contact page or the:

Terms of Service page;
Privacy Policy page;
Social media profiles;
WHOIS information; or
Just ask them…

By the way, I have systems and processes that streamline Steps 2 and 3.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads us to partner preparation…

4) Partner Preparation

…Step Four is about partner preparation.

Once you have found the contact information of the decision maker, you then need to decide on the following, depending on how you want to engage them:

The opt-in message for partners prospects;
The message types you want to display to partners prospects;
The message distribution locations;
Your partnership request and offer; and
The partnership incentives.

Let’s tackle opt-in messages first for partner’s prospects…

This is usually a gated offer.

A gated offer is a free offer that has a “gate”, or entrance, attached to it.

In order to get the free offer, you must pass the entrance.

The cost of passing through the entrance is the prospects contact information, usually in the form of an email address, but it could be a phone number, too.

Partners will send you traffic, and you will try to capture their contact details in exchange for an incentive, or gated offer.

The promotional message type’s partners will display on your behalf to their contact database prospects could be:

Graphic or link based advertisement; or
Electronic communication.

These message types could be distributed and integrated at any contact or communication point with prospects and customers, such as (listed in priority order):

Any fulfilment step;
The opt-in fulfilment step;
Any communication;
Any sales step; and
The pre opt-in step (welcome page).

The first two being the most powerful, as leads are already qualified and segmented by the partner.

Fulfilment steps occur right after a prospects opts-in or a customer purchases.

The sales steps and pre opt-in steps occur right before a prospects opts-in or a customer purchases, thus unqualified and unsegmented.

Any communication contact or communication point that has a higher degree of trust and permission from the sender is harder to secure such as email communication.

The following types outline possible partnership requests (listed in priority order):

Reciprocal cross promotional message swap;
One way promotional message – from them to you; and
One way promotional message – from you to them.

Finally, let’s talk about incentives…

Law 13 in Robert Greene’s book The 48 Laws of Power states, “When asking for help appeal to people’s self-interest never to their mercy or gratitude.”

Determine what the partner may be interested in.

Obviously, this is done through market research, but from my experience, it could be financial or an in-kind incentive.

Reciprocal promotional message swaps are mutually beneficial, and no extra incentive is needed.

For one-way promotional message, from them to you, you need to need to pay them, usually in the form of commission or prizes for reaching certain thresholds.

Commission rates can vary from 25% to 100% for digital products, services or solutions and 1% – 25% for physical products, services or solutions.

The higher percentages are if it’s a self-paying offer.

Commissions can be structured as follows:

PPS (Pay Per Sale) – this means payment is made for a sale;
CPA (Cost Per action/Acquisition) – this means payment is made for referred leads;
CPC (Cost Per Click) – this means payment is made each click;
CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) – this means payment is made for every 1,000 views; and
Revenue share – this means a share of the total sales volume for a time period.

Cash is king, but so are money-can’t-buy things and experiences, so think about a combination of both.

You could also provide bonuses or free gifts to their contact database that help their prospects.

For one way promotional message, from you to them, no incentive is needed.

You would provide your partners leads for free to build goodwill with them so they are more likely to help you later, say with a product, service or solution launch, or reciprocal promotion.

Remember that you should be getting to know partners and building goodwill before you make a request.

Calculate these incentives and build them into your business model.

These incentives and partner requests make up the offer you will pitch to partners.

It’s worth noting that with recruiting partners, no partner wants to be your first.

They want to see that other partners have de-risked you and your offer, before they do.

This means you should not try and recruit “A” tier partners in the first instance.

An “A” tier partner is any partner you think could market and sell your products, services and solutions better than any other due to their market credibility or reach and so on.

The best method for recruiting “A” tier partners is what I called “Leveraging Up.”

Leveraging Up is where you start recruiting lower tier partners (that is any partner you think could market and sell your products, services and solutions regardless of their market credibility or reach) to build a foundation and partner “portfolio”.

Once you have this foundation and partner “portfolio” in place, then you can begin to recruit “A” tier partners.

So to begin with, start recruiting “Z” tier partners.

These could be friends or people who know, like and trust you already.

You don’t need to use these as partners in the long term, but they do provide social proof that you can leverage up to higher partners.

Once “Z” tier partners are recruited, then move on to recruit “Y” tier partners, then again when they are recruited, use that social proof to recruit “X” tier partners (and so on) all the way up to recruiting “A” tier partners.

By the time you get to “A” tier partners, they are more likely to say yes to your partnership offer as many other partners have said yes to your partnership offer first.

The fact that they are lower tier partner, in most instances, does not matter to the higher tier partners.

This is why this method is given the name of “Leveraging Up.”

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

Finally, create the incentives, ready to initiate outreach…

5) Initiating Outreach

…The next step is initiating outreach.

The first step is to make contact with the purpose of building goodwill.

This is about building goodwill with the partner to use later, say for a product, service or solution launch, reciprocal promotion or a one-way promotion (from them to you).

At this step, you will do a one-way promotion (from you to them), with no expectation of reciprocation from the partner (in the first instance).

Specifically, you will promote them through your brand’s marketing channels. Then you will contact the partner and tell you have promoted for them with an expectation of reciprocation.

In some cases, you may need to request promotional swipe, dates and instructions.

Marketing swipe or swipe file is actual a collection of tested and proven promotion.

They act as templates where you literally can swipe, or “steal,” or copy and paste saving you time.

Particulars and word-for-word scripts, of course, are outside the scope of this guide.

Contact is best done in the following priority order (Remember from Step 1):

In person;
Snail mail;
Phone; then finally
Email.

Most people stick to email because practically it’s the only option.

So it’s best to touch on cold email best practice.

In the process, it is likely that you will get hard bounces, so don’t upload them to an automated email marketing platform.

You could get banned for spam.

You have been warned!

I have seen this multiple times.

The wording of your email is crucial, and good copywriting is a fine art and worth its weight in gold.

Gary Halbert and Joseph Sugarman are great copywriters to learn from as a start.

Whatever you do, don’t write your emails in “corporate speak.”

Write them like you were writing to a friend.

This also helps with spam compliance.

I’ll get to that shortly…

Make sure your emails are text based and short.

HTML emails look corporate and appear like you are selling something.

Emails should be easy to read on smartphones, show your credibility and have a single call to action.

Send communication before 9 and after 5, and avoid Monday or Fridays.

These times are particularly busy for business inboxes.

Send no more than 100 emails a day so that you do not overwhelm your team.

If you get an “Out of Office” autoresponder, you may be offered an alternative email address to reach your ideal customer.

Log all responses.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

I don’t publish scripts for this because it won’t reflect your business’s voice, and scripts can become overused, and thus ineffective, if a lot of people are contacting the same companies with the same scripts.

It looks too canned.

This step involves broadly qualifying the decision maker as a potential partner.

This is not a sales communication.

Let me repeat!

This is not a sales communication.

That is spam.

This is about them, not you.

You want them to “raise their hand” and tell you they’re interested in partnering.

In this communication, you are looking for a high level fit.

Ask them if they have a traffic need and if they want to solve it.

Or any other qualifying characteristic…

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

You should be aiming for a 10% response rate (my average response rate is 32%).

If they reply that they are not interested, explain that they will not hear from you again.

If they reply that they are may be interested but not now, ask for permission to ask again in one month.

If they don’t reply, follow up with them in a week asking if they had time to consider your email, as it could have gotten lost.

You don’t want to harass them if they are not a decision maker or don’t have a need.

So let’s talk about the elephant in the building:

Spam.

You can read the Spam Act 2003 here: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Series/C2004A01214.

NOTE: What follows is not legal advice.

In essence, you need:

Gained consent for commercial communication;
Clear identification of who sent the communication; and
The ability to stop any further the communication.

Here are some guidelines that may help you comply:

All links, phone numbers or contact information in the message should be intended to identify you by being placed in the signature and do not lead to content with a commercial purpose;
Only find email addresses that are publicly published. Don’t guess email addresses or harvest them. Don’t contact emails that say they don’t want to be contacted publicly;
Publish your business name, address, website, phone number and email in the email signature for the sole purpose of identifying the sender of the message, and make sure they do not lead to content with a commercial purpose. Staff should use their name both in the body and field;
Your email address should stay active for 30 days after ceasing contact;
Have unsubscribed information in the P.S. of email. Do this because the P.S. section is the one of the most read parts of an email;
Remove unsubscribes immediately; and
Unsubscribing need to be free for the recipient.

Your electronic communication is about contacting the decision maker with free value to open up a conversation and relationship with them, and offering to compensate them, not advertising a product, service or solution for sale.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads us to partner recruitment…

6) Partner Recruitment

…With contact made and goodwill built with the partners, you then want to recruit the same partners with your request for a:

Reciprocal cross promotional message swap; or
One way promotional message, from them to you.

This recruitment communication should also cover the following:

Their incentive;
Campaign date;
Campaign instructions and how it works;
Stats including EPC;
Your product, service or solution and name;
The benefits of your product, service or solution, what it does and what they get;
Who your product, service or solution is for and not for;
What this partnership a good opportunity for them;
What you will do in the campaign (including full management); and
Any associated costs.

Particulars and word-for-word scripts are outside the scope of this guide.

This step is usually done by a Partnership Broker.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads us to partner on-boarding…

7) Partner On-boarding

…Step Seven is about partner on-boarding.

Once partners agree to promote in a joint venture or as an affiliate, it’s time to sign them up.

NOTE: This not legal advice, but formal contracts are generally not needed, as most of the terms and conditions are covered by Steps 6 and 7 communication.

Set up partners by including tools that make their job easy:

Distribute vital partner information;
Distribute sales communication sequence and swipe (email, banners, ads, posts, tweets, and social media posts);
Other resources and information; and
Next actions.

Do this with a “Get Started” email, and have each partner on a communication database, where they do not get any general promotion communication intended for prospects and customers.

Particulars and word-for-word scripts are, of course, outside the scope of this guide.

This step is usually done by an Affiliate Manager.

Consider hiring an affiliate manager with the following qualifications:

Track record success;
Clear communication;
Knowledgeable of internet traffic; and
Proficient web coding skills.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

Take Action

You made it…

You now have a solid plan for recruiting partners to create joint ventures and affiliates deals that will generate you leads.

That’s the full Partner Recruitment Process, and it will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

You can get the printed illustrated Process Map of this and 20 others for free, here

And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This maybe the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.

Now let’s learn about The Partner Co-Enrolment Process.

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