LISTEN to the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast Ep 43 – Powerful Marketing Requires Great Lists
WATCH The Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast Ep 43 – Powerful Marketing Requires Great Lists
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Mindwhirl Marketing podcast, your source for B2B business building information, where we talk sales and marketing and get managed service providers and IT services companies, the insider secrets you need to know to grow your business. We want to help you attract leads in sales and show you how to align sales and marketing. So you get more sales faster with less cost. I’m Shelly. And he’s Mike. And today we’re talking about lists.
Mike Miller 00:27
Yes, all about lists. And lists really are the foundation of your sales and marketing. Like nothing happens if you don’t have a good list.
Shelly Miller 00:40
It’s the truth. It doesn’t. Yeah, you have nothing to go on. You have nothing to use. You have nothing to fall back on.
Mike Miller 00:47
No,
Shelly Miller 00:48
I’m gonna just
Mike Miller 00:50
listless? Yeah, maybe that’s where that comes from. So basically, let’s, let’s think about the lists. Right? So what is your marketing? in general? Right? What’s the goal of marketing? How do you? What do you do with marketing? Well, essentially, you’re trying to get in front of people that are ideal targets for what you offer. So if you don’t have a list of people to like, okay, so on the marketing side, you have top of funnel, middle of funnel and bottom of funnel, the middle of funnel and bottom of funnel makeup, your house lists, right? We call it a programming sequence, but or programming list, but it makes up your your house list or your drip list. So if, if you don’t have but like 30 people on that list, then what do you what are you doing? Like? So
Shelly Miller 01:56
why are you? Why are you creating content? Right? Is it going to because you only have 30 people on your list?
Mike Miller 02:01
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. So you got blog posts, you got lead magnets, you got all these things, but you have no one to promote them to. And that’s a problem. So the whole goal is to then build your list of prospects or leads from, let’s say, advertising, or from sales. And you got to get them into your house list or your drip list, whatever you want to call it. You got to get them there. So that you can consistently promote to them over and over again. And then that’s what makes marketing affordable. And, and cheap. Right.
Shelly Miller 02:41
And just to go back, you can call it whatever you want. But if you call it a programming sequence, and if you’ve been listening to Mike and I programming like general programming, that’s on TV, that’s what that’s why we named it that. And why if you name it that it helps you remember why you’ve created this list, and that they are always the ones that you market to they’re your they’re the ones you always want to see your programming. Yeah, so if it’s a framing sequence, and we didn’t call it drip on purpose, we didn’t call it programming sequence drip on purpose, because a framing sequence is for each new item that you put out, you want to frame them around this new content that you have, but they always go back into your programming sequence,
Mike Miller 03:23
all the framing sequences drain into the programming sequence, where you program them over time. And it’s your regularly scheduled programming. So but if there’s nobody in the list to receive the programming, then all of your it would be like, you know, CBS making shows that no one watches, although that’s probably what’s happening now. Yeah, that’s another topic. But basically, you’re not going to create a whole bunch of content for no one to see, right. So you want to ensure that you are constantly building your list your programming sequence, right, your programming lists so that you have someone that you can can consistently market to. Now, I don’t think I’ve done a, we’ve done a good enough job explaining why it’s foundational to your marketing to have a great list. So let’s give you some examples. In the top of the funnel, right, you have you you can remark it you can retarget so you actually have a list in the top of the funnel, and that’s all of the people that you are remarketing or retargeting to and you can put so in Facebook, you can put their actual email address in it, and it will retarget those people.
Shelly Miller 04:53
Right and you can rise from your list and you can get those from your website.
Mike Miller 04:57
Right exactly. You can also use it pixel, right to get people who came to your website, you can remarket retarget them with a pixel, although iOS 14 now is like, killed that. So it’s really helpful if you have their email address so that you can continue to market to them. Well, if you don’t have their email address, because they’re not in your programming or your house list, then you’re kind of SSL. Yeah, you are, right. And also, if you’re not getting enough people to your website, so you can think that 50% of the people who come to your website aren’t going to be pixeled, because Apple won’t allow it. Any 2000 people to your website, right?
Shelly Miller 05:46
And if you’re not sure how many people visit your website who use Apple products, it’s very easy to see this in Google Analytics, then you’ll you’ll start to realize, Oh, no, they’re not going to be shown to me anymore. So I got to figure out another way to track this.
Mike Miller 06:01
Right, exactly. That’s why you need great lists. Because if you have great lists, no one can prevent you from marketing to these people. Right? So then you go, Okay, well, then I’ll advertise. So the classic, you know, way to generate leads, especially in b2b right now, is you advertise, you offer them a lead magnet, either middle of the funnel, or bottom of the funnel, lead magnet, they take it up, right, they subscribe, they download whatever, and they exchange their contact information, their email, in order to download the guide or watch the webinar. So that’s how you get leads. But now let’s talk about how much that actually costs. Because all of the examples that you get with Facebook ads, and with good, you know, Google ads and all the advertising that you could do on social media. So if you listen to the experts, if you listen real hard, they’ll finally say that they spent $15,000 this month, and they targeted 6.5 million people, or more, you know, yes.
Shelly Miller 07:23
So you hear about all these ad campaigns, and people getting all making all this money from, I just put some ads out, and all of a sudden, I’m getting all this traffic and all these leads, and they act as though they spent just a couple of dollars a month to do that,
Mike Miller 07:36
right? And it’s you, you’re not gonna spend a couple of dollars, right. So that’s on Facebook side. Basically, you have to spend a lot of money in order to get in front of a lot of people. Because otherwise, if your list isn’t big enough, and we mean 5000 people, if your list isn’t big enough, then you’ll be pounding 70 people every day, with the same ad. Or even if you have five different ad versions, those 70 people are gonna see that your ads over and over and over again, every time they go on Facebook.
Shelly Miller 08:17
And just think about that for a minute. So you know, even if it’s a product that you like, or you’re interested in your hobby, you still don’t want to see it that many times. So if you don’t have a big enough audience, that’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to be serving ads, you know, the same ad, maybe, you know, 1520 times in one, day two, the same person. Yeah. So yeah, it’s another reason it’s, well, that’s way too much. And you will get people who unsubscribe or report you report your ad, you can do that. Yeah. So
Mike Miller 08:46
yeah, cuz people get tired of it. They want to see good information. They, they, you know, they’re not ad shy. But, but you know, good name, I guess. But. But they don’t want. They don’t want you to be Monday calm. They don’t want you to continually pound them over and over again with the same message over and over again. Yeah, like you just want to be in front of them.
Shelly Miller 09:12
Yeah, like you just mentioned money calm. I mean, right now, stop and think for a minute, what ad is driving you nuts on YouTube? Yeah, that ad, that’s the one I’m talking about. That one is driving you nuts. It’s true. I know it is because it is with everyone. So you don’t want to be that person, you want to be in front of them. But you don’t want to be that one you just thought of,
Mike Miller 09:31
right? Because if you have a good offer, like really, they only need to see at one time, like that’s the beauty of a great offer, an irresistible offer is that you don’t have to market to them over and over and over again. But if you don’t have a great offer, then you need to hit him at least eight to 12 times. And, and that’s, that’s, you know, like you can go to 30. But that’s about the limit. Right, yes. So um, so the list is really important for your advertising. Because you need to know who you’re targeting, like as an MSP, you’re not going to have a list of 5 million people that you could target. You’re just not going to your business doesn’t lend itself to that, unless you’re national. But even then, you better have a tight niche. So, you know, think about that. On the marketing side. Now, on the sales side, speaking to sales. Jennifer, blame the cybersecurity Sherpa. On the sales side, you need to think about it see a lot of people tell us why don’t have a list for sales, but I can get a list. You know, or or they say they do have one. Yeah, they do have a list. Yeah, because we sent some postcards three years ago, and I have a list of 5000 names. Well, the thing is, is if you did the due diligence to take out all the Home Depot’s and waffle houses and
Shelly Miller 11:08
give quality in and yeah, and bodies and lows.
Mike Miller 11:11
There you go. If you did that due diligence to take them all out. Your list is three years old. So it’s still it’s it’s junk. Now, again, right, at least 20% of that is going to be junk. So if you sent, let’s say, postcards to 5000 people, and 20% of it was junk, you just wasted a minimum of $600. Which is ridiculous. It is a huge waste money. No, it’s a huge waste. So then you think, Okay, well, I can pull this right, I can pull a list of people. The problem with that is, is that that list has to be vetted and validated, you have to go through it. Because let me give you some math, some sales math. Basically. If you called 20 people a day, you would get through 100 people in a week, over a month, you would make 400 calls. Now, are you going to hit? Are you going to like drive by call these people? You know, you’re going to call them one time? Of course. And that’s going to change your business, right? No, you’ve got to hit them between eight and 12 times in order to get results in order to get contact. Right. So they can tell you yes, we’ll have a meeting or no, I’m not interested. Right? Right. So you’ve so eight to 12 times. So think about that you make 20 calls a day. If you call them once a week, you’re only going to call 100 people all month. And you’re only going to call those people four times. Right? Right? And you need eight or 12. And you need eight or 12 times a year and you’re wanting 4000 leads. Yeah, so how are you gonna do that? If you call 100 people a day, for fourth out for a list of 4000. If you call it 100 people a day, it would take you 40 days to get through the list. And you wouldn’t have achieved anything. Okay, like maybe you might have gotten one or two meetings out of it. But that’s what you could expect one or two.
Shelly Miller 13:24
And who wants to do all that work? And who do you know that does 100 calls a day other than us provider?
Mike Miller 13:30
Yeah, stockbrokers, that’s it.
Shelly Miller 13:33
No one can do that.
Mike Miller 13:34
No, and you’re not going and he shouldn’t be some people have told me Well, we’ll just validate the list, as we call these 4000, you’re not going to call 100 people a day, it’s going to take you like, you’re only going to get like 50. So that means 80 days, it’s gonna take you 80 days to clean that list. When you could have done the due diligence, you know, sharpen the saw, right, because I see a lot of people rowing really hard in the wrong direction. You know, they’re just not going at the thing that they want. And this is why the lists are so important, because all of your strategy on the sales side and on the marketing side depends on the quality of your list, the number of people in your list, and your and the realization that it’s going to take you eight to 12 attempts contact attempts in order to actually make contact where you can find out if they’re already taken care of or if they are not interested, or they just want you to send them some information.
Shelly Miller 14:40
Right. So so let’s back up for a minute. So we know that well first of all, as humans, I don’t know why it’s the human condition. We want to have a ton of leads, like we haven’t sold anything for a while. So we’re like, we need to call 100 people a day. We need to send out all the stuff we need to have. And the truth of the matter is As in any industry, you have to do the maths, that so and think about what you’re asking for. So if you haven’t if you haven’t, don’t have any leads. And it seems like an impossible task, because you’re in your mind, you’re like, I gotta add a new 100 a day, well back up, what you really need to do is add five to 20 really good ones a day, which would you say that numbers accurate? Five to 20?
Mike Miller 15:23
Yeah, depends on how many steps in your sequence? It does. Yeah. But if you’re going to call them once a week, then you need 20, a day that you’re going to add, but you don’t add anybody the second, third and fourth week, except to replace those that that you contact, and they’re like, no, or they’re a bad. Bad lead.
Shelly Miller 15:44
Right. And so it’s steady, steady wins the race. Really, yeah, slow and steady. And so if you just do it this way, you you will find that you will, you will have the sales cadence, you need to continually get those eight to 12 touches. And you will continually clean your lists and add to your list, remove an add or update new contact information. And you will begin to have a list that not only can you do outbound sales with you can mark it to you can use for your ads where you started. Yeah. And that’s what you need to do. everybody’s like, Well, I know, I just need I just give me a list of 5000. Or just give me this or that. No, just start here because I promise you you’ll you’ll get there faster this way. It’s, it’s it looks slow. And it feels slow. At first, it’s fast. But all of a sudden, now you’re making contact with people now people are getting back in touch with you. Now you’re adding to your list. And that’s the goal.
Mike Miller 16:39
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It’s so it’s, it’s, what’s the quote, it’s better to not make a call and not get this the meeting than it is to make the call and screw it up. Yes, you know. And then that’s the truth. So you, don’t you so what you need to do, the slow way that’s faster, that’s more effective is to pinpoint the specifically on the sales side anyway, specifically pinpoint the people that you want to go after. And then develop a message specifically for them. So even if there’s only 60, get that message down, tighten it up, practice it, then go after those 60 and then hit them eight to 12 times. Then when you get people who are like send me more information, whatever, as you work them, get their permission to get their email, so that you can put them into your drip list your house list your programming list, right? And now you have them where you can market to them. Right? So we want to go through 4000. But we don’t want to go through 4000 all at once. Right? We want to we want to do it slow. And sure. And we want to focus on the top people, right? So if you if you rank your list your leads by a B and C CB and crummy. Why would you call C to practice, that’s the only reason that’s the only reason. But the problem is, is if you get anybody who’s interested, then you got to have a meeting with someone who’s not qualified.
Shelly Miller 18:21
Right? But you can practice on that. But you can pray it’s happening happening a lot, you might want to check your message or stop calling the cronies and go right after the ace.
Mike Miller 18:29
Right? Exactly. So you know, hit the A’s narrow the A’s down, hit the A’s and move them into your marketing list. Right? So essentially, what we’re saying is, if you’re small, and small is relative, because you could be $6 million and not have a list list, we’ve seen that Yeah, we’ve seen times seen $6 million msps who don’t have an email list if that’s you, then you got to start with marketing with sales you got to get the sales thing under control you got to build those that list you got to get those leads all that contact information and you got to move it over into the marketing side so that your your content that you’re creating all of the hard work that you’re doing right on the marketing side, cuz like it’s on the marketing side, it’s 24 seven, it’s create content, be thinking about content, create more content, put it out there, what’s it doing? Do we get followers do we get likes, you know, what’s, what are people engaging with? How do we shift our focus all these different things? We’re doing all that work, but not for 30 people
Shelly Miller 19:41
to show 30 people yeah, you know, and and that just seems no wonder why people feel like they are marketing dollars are wasted. I mean, they are they are if you’re if you’re spending all that money and time even if you’re doing it yourself marketing, but your list has 30 people or your your website visitors or less than 1000. And we’ll talk about that more in a different podcast. But you have to, you know, there’s these certain thresholds that you have to cross otherwise, you’re not making the most of your time or money, or marketing, you know, you need to have the you have to, there’s an order to the madness of sales and marketing, and you need to make sure that you’re doing it in the correct order.
Mike Miller 20:23
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that’s really it. I mean, that’s it. The only other thing I’ll say is a popular thing right now that’s going around that people are buying into, is, well, you make a landing page, right? And it’s, you have a really great offer on your landing page. And then you drive traffic to it with advertising. And you get all kinds of leads, like 60 leads a day. Yeah, yeah. 60 leads a day, here’s the thing, you’re going to spend $30,000 to get 60 leads a day. Well, right, and then they’re not gonna be quality. They’re not gonna I was gonna say yes,
Shelly Miller 21:01
well, they’re not not only not going to be quality, they’re not even going to pay people in your target, you’re going to they, you know, they will open the the the guidelines, basically, or the, the audiences up to include people that aren’t even targets for you. Yeah, so so you’re spending all kinds of money for not your target, to drive them to a landing page, so that you can say, I got this many leads today. 60, when maybe maybe two, were actual leads for you. And you’re going to spend a lot of money doing that.
Mike Miller 21:35
Yeah, exactly. And that’s on Facebook, on Google, you can say, Well, let me just cover all the keywords, do it, you’ve got to cover the keywords, here’s what you’re going to find. It’s not a lot of search volume on all those keywords. So in order to spend, you know, like, what you would think that you need to spend like two to $3,000 a month on Google ads, unless you’re on a keyword, let me You know, there’s a lot of gray area there. But unless you’re on a keyword that it costs $80 a click. If you’re on a normal, average keyword, you know, like it support what your city if you spend $3,000, you’re gonna have to cover like, at least 1500 keywords, variations, broad phrase exact matches, you know, you’re gonna have to do all kinds of little tricks just just to get that money spent. Because, because, I mean, you know, we cover 600 keywords, and we get like 21 impressions. So think about that. Right? So think about it is so all this stuff that Frank Kern does, that doesn’t work for msps. Right, right. Like all the stuff that, you know, internet marketer does your does that doesn’t work for msps. You can’t take a affiliate marketing models, yeah. And then apply it to msps just doesn’t work. It doesn’t. So what does work, you’re lit, you got to build your lists. Lists are the foundation of everything, the number of leads in your list, the quality of your list, that’s all going to dictate your strategy. So that’s where we’ll leave you where you say, Yeah, all right. Well, hey, as always, we’ll see you next Thursday.
Shelly Miller 23:27
Thanks again, for listening to the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google podcast, Stitcher, Deezer or Spotify. Plus, check out my role on YouTube and subscribe. You’ll find a lot more marketing tips, insights and resources that will help you get your sales and marketing working together and moving in the same direction.
If you are looking for more information on lists, listen to the new Facebook live stream we did with Jennifer Bleam the Cybersecurity Sherpa here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspsalesrevolution
