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#EzRepost @bigbossceoshit with @ezrepostapp Which mentality do...

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#EzRepost @bigbossceoshit with @ezrepostapp

Which mentality do you have?🧠


Follow ➡️ @bigbossceoshit for more‼️


#design #success #marketingonline #webdevelopment #emailmarketing #internetmarketing #ecommerce #digitalmarketingtips #searchengineoptimization #businessowner #socialmediatips #content #onlinebusiness #websitedesign #brand #marketingagency #entrepreneurlife #web #instagrammarketing #socialmediamanager #blogging #sales #inspiration #follow #like #instagood #strategy #bhfyp #technology #searchengine
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6 Email Marketing Myths You Can Ignore

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6 Email Marketing Myths You Can Ignore written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Email marketing has been around for a long time, and consequently, people have developed a lot of opinions about what works and what doesn’t. However, as the digital marketing landscape has changed, some things about email marketing that used to be true are no longer so. And there are some things that have always been myths, but still persist today.

Here, let’s debunk the six biggest email marketing myths out there.

1. Email Marketing is Dead

As more digital channels have emerged through which you can reach clients, there have been whispers going around that email marketing is dead.

In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Marketers still see a great deal of value in email marketing, and are still investing heavily in this tactic. According to surveys from HubSpot, 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content. On the B2C side of things, 59% of consumers report that information in an email has influenced their purchasing decisions. And everyone is on email. Ninety-nine percent of consumers check their email every single day (and most report doing so multiple times a day).

2. Frequent Emails Feel Spammy

Some marketers are hesitant to send regular emails at the risk of annoying their mailing list. And it’s true, for most consumers, their inboxes are crowded places. A survey from Marketing Charts found that the average person receives 416 marketing emails each month.

But just because others are sending emails doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send any (or only send one once in a blue moon). The key to avoiding that spammy feel is ensuring that your content is always valuable. If you send emails that add value, provide information, and are actually helpful to your audience, you’re a lot more likely to see strong open rates and a reduction unsubscribes.

If you’re looking for tips on creating engaging content, check out this post.

3. Unsubscribes Are a Bad Thing

No one enjoys rejection, and an unsubscribe can certainly sting. But the reality is that unsubscribes are not necessarily a bad thing. A clean email list is key to staying on ISPs’ good sides, and that’s what will keep your emails from being barred from inboxes.

You can do things on your end to clean your list—like scanning for typos and giving people an option to re-opt-in if they’ve been unresponsive to your recent email marketing efforts—but unsubscribes are a way for you to get your customers to do some of the heavy lifting for you. An unsubscribe is someone saying they’re no longer interested in your content, and that could be for any number of reasons.

If you see a large number of unsubscribes all at the same time, that might be indicative of a problem with your content, but if you see people leave your list from time to time, that’s simply making space for a higher open rate overall and a better relationship with ISPs.

4. There is a Magic Day and Time to Send Emails

Some marketers swear by sending emails at a very specific time. If it’s not Tuesday at 10am, they won’t send an email!

There has been a lot of research over the years, with marketers trying to find that magic time where open rates will be high and conversions will abound. But these studies have been less than definitive, and so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to timing emails.

It’s certainly true that some audiences will engage with emails at a higher rate at certain times of day, but that will vary from business to business, so trying to stick with some antiquated idea about the one day and time you can send an email won’t serve you.

Instead, do some experimenting, send emails at several days and times throughout the week and see which ones get the highest engagement. Then aim for that time again, and see if you can repeat your results. Be willing to mix things up, and don’t be afraid to send emails out more than once a week (see point 2 above).

5. Long Subject Lines Spell Trouble

For a long time, marketers were told to shy away from subject lines that were too long to be fully displayed in someone’s inbox. That sounds on the surface like a sensible piece of advice, but it turns out that a recent study from Marketing Sherpa busted this long-held belief.

While email subject lines that fall into that “sweet spot” of 41-50 characters performed well, it’s actually longer subject lines with 61-70 characters that did the best. So don’t stress about fitting all of your email subject lines into those narrow parameters. Instead, work to create a subject that is attention-grabbing and really tells readers what they can expect to find inside the email.

6. Avoid Repeat Messages

Super Office reports that the average open rate for emails in 2018 was just shy of 25%. That means that three out of four people on your list are not seeing any given email. Some people won’t read a given email because the subject line doesn’t interest them, but others will miss it for completely innocuous reasons. They may have been busy that day or accidentally deleted the message.

Whatever the case may be, for your most important content, it’s okay to send the same email copy twice in order to get the highest engagement. This isn’t a tactic you should take with every email message, but it can actually be valuable when used sparingly.

There are a few caveats here. First, don’t send the same email on the same day. Instead, wait several days before you resend it. You should also switch up the subject line, so that those who wrote the email off the first time because of its subject line might open it this time, and so that those who opened it the first time around aren’t put off by getting the exact same email twice.

Flex Your Curiosity Muscle to Grow Your Business

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Flex Your Curiosity Muscle to Grow Your Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Diana Kander
Podcast Transcript

Diana Kander headshotOn today’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I speak with Diana Kander. She is a New York Times best-selling author, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and innovation consultant.

As a serial entrepreneur, Kander learned a lot of important business lessons along the way. She shared these in her first book, All In Startup, and then began consulting and speaking to businesses who wanted her to share her secrets.

Her latest book The Curiosity Muscle, which she co-authored with Andy Fromm, is all about identifying four questions that can help businesses unlock tremendous growth. In this episode, we walk through the four questions, and discuss how small business owners can overcome some of the most common hurdles they face in running their companies.

Questions I ask Diana Kander:

  • How do small business owners get over the idea of feeling like they need to have all the answers?
  • How much of prioritizing is about what you should not be doing?
  • How do I get others to hold me accountable when I’m a small business owner?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • The role that vulnerability has in growing professionally.
  • How thinking about your days as offense or defense can help you eliminate busywork.
  • Why failure metrics are just as important as success metrics.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Diana Kander:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

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Transcript of Flex Your Curiosity Muscle to Grow Your Business

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Transcript of Flex Your Curiosity Muscle to Grow Your Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

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John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Gusto: modern, easy payroll, benefits for small businesses across the country. And because you’re a listener, you get three months free when you run your first payroll. Find out at gusto.com/tape.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Diana Kander. She is a keynote speaker, innovation coach, and co-author of the book The Curiosity Muscle: How Four Simple Questions Can Uncover Powerful Insights and Exponential Growth.

John Jantsch: So Diana, thanks for joining me.

Diana Kander: I’m so excited to be here John. Thank you so much.

John Jantsch: So I’ve been doing this show for about 13 years, hundreds and hundreds of episodes, and I do believe you are the first husband and wife team that I have now had on the show [crosstalk 00:01:04]. Your husband Jason was on a few months ago. So it’s a first.

Diana Kander: Well we like setting records. So on behalf of the Kander family, thank you so much for this honor.

John Jantsch: So the book, The Curiosity Muscle is written as a fable, a business fable about institutionalizing curiosity. So maybe set the plot up for us.

Diana Kander: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the plot is what happens to most companies once they experience success, is they get really comfortable, very complacent, and they lose their curiosity. They start thinking that they know their customers better than the customers know themselves.

Diana Kander: And what happens is you quickly lose touch with your customers and start becoming irrelevant. And this happens frequently with large organizations when they find out that it is much harder to stay at the top than it was to get there.

John Jantsch: And you wrap it around a fictional character. That’s-

Diana Kander: Yes. A gym franchise.

John Jantsch: … And so your previous book, I think you did the same thing. Maybe you don’t have a lot of experience to answer this question, but I was once asked to write a fable type of book on referrals. And I started the process, and I found it so much harder than just telling people what to do.

Diana Kander: Well that’s how I feel about non-fiction books John. So I started writing non-fiction books, and I’m like uh, I can’t really talk about my former clients and what they went through because I’ve signed all these non-disclosures. But if I write a fiction book I can talk about everybody and everything as long as it’s a fictional story.

John Jantsch: And wink, wink. The characters in this book do not represent anyone in real life, right?

Diana Kander: No. They’re an amalgam of lots and lots of companies that have gone through very, very similar experiences. In fact, Jim Collins wrote a amazing book called How the Mighty Fall, in which he describes the same process, but in a much more scientific way. And there’s a very similar kind of loop that companies that go out of business, and this is like the fictional version of that.

John Jantsch: A lot of my listeners are small business owners. And I’m going to tell you one of the biggest problems with owning a business is that nobody promotes you to that position. You pretty much decide I’m going to do this thing. And now everybody thinks you should have all the answers.

John Jantsch: And I think a lot of small business owners feel like they have to have all the answers, and that sort of leads to not only shutting off curiosity but a whole heck of a lot of stress. So how, as a small business owner, do I get over that idea of feeling like I have to have all the answers? Everybody’s looking to me.

Diana Kander: Well I feel like it’s no different than most people who get promoted to manager. They feel like they got promoted because they had the right answers, and so they have to keep generating them.

Diana Kander: So in both of those cases I will tell you that the most successful people ask much better questions than they give answers. And they know that curiosity is the secret to unlocking exponentially better answers than whatever their gut initially says.

John Jantsch: Yeah. As one of those small business owners, it took me a lot of years to learn that. I mean people would come to me and ask me, people who worked with me or were trying to do a project for me, would ask me a question. I felt like I had to tell them what to do.

John Jantsch: In fact, I felt like that’s what they wanted. And I later leaned that they actually didn’t want the answer. They wanted me to say what would you do?

Diana Kander: Right. No. I mean you can get so much further just by asking better questions, is one of my sayings, you know. If you’re unsatisfied with the results in any part of your life, what you need to do is ask better questions, and you can significantly change them.

John Jantsch: So let’s unpack the four questions. I’m going to go over them real fast, but I want to ask you questions specific to them.

John Jantsch: So they are: what are my blind spots, am I prioritizing, am I measuring the right thing, and how can you involve others to get what you want? So we’ll tackle each of those.

John Jantsch: The first one, what are my blind spots? It actually takes a degree of vulnerability to even admit that you have those.

Diana Kander: Absolutely. So most people think of their blind spots. They relate them to their weaknesses. And so they’re like well, I know what I don’t do well, and I’m terrible at showing up on time, or whatever.

Diana Kander: But blind spots are not your weaknesses. Blind spots are things that you think you’re doing well, but are actually impacting your work. And so whatever problem it is that you’re trying to solve, or if you’re trying to understand your customers better, you always have blind spots and what you think you know about them.

Diana Kander: So creating some kind of a process or systematizing staying in touch and understanding your customers, even as they evolve and change, that will help you not have blind spots that, if you don’t uncover them, you might get blindsided one day by your customers.

John Jantsch: It’s a terribly practical thing too. I mean how many people have created a product or a service and packaged it all up and went out to the market, and the market went I don’t need that. What were you thinking? And it’s like-

Diana Kander: The majority John.

John Jantsch: You’re right. Right.

Diana Kander: The majority of people.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And so, really great question. Am I prioritizing? Number two. And boy, this one is so hard because people will have that strategy meeting to come up with the 19 things they need to get done this quarter. And I think one of the best things that question probably begs is what should we not be doing?

Diana Kander: Yeah. I mean they never teach you want to not do as a manager, a small business owner. And you cannot be busy and curious at the same time. You cannot be busy and creative at the same time. You cannot be busy and innovate at the same time.

Diana Kander: And we, as a society, are busier than ever before, and we’re producing less than ever before.

John Jantsch:  And I think one of the things about that idea of not focusing on am I prioritizing is you can make yourself busy. It’s really easy to make yourself busy.

Diana Kander: Super easy.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And so if you don’t take… I mean a couple of years ago I started the practice of taking two days a week where I just don’t do any appointments, no of these calls. They’re supposed to be my kind of focus time. And that made all the difference in the world in terms of actually getting real, important stuff done.

Diana Kander: Yeah. I think about my days as offense or defense. And defense is like when I’m answering email, when I’m doing things that other people have asked me to do. And that’s not when I’m creating valuable content, creating work for my clients.

Diana Kander: And that’s offense, right? Offense is what scores points. You’re not going to get to your goals on defense alone, by checking your email.

Diana Kander: So I always think about my days like, am I having the right proportion of offense to defense?

John Jantsch: Yeah, because let’s face it, defense pays less than minimum wage usually.

John Jantsch: So… I’m sorry for all the defensive people out there. It’s just the truth. Defense does not win championships in business.

Diana Kander: It does not score points. No.

John Jantsch: All right. So the third one, and I think people really struggle with this. Am I measuring the right thing? I mean how the hell do I know? There’s so many things I can measure. How do I know I’m figuring out the one that has impact?

Diana Kander: Well I think this is particularly integral to your licensees and people who do Duct Tape Marketing, and even small business owners. It’s so alluring to measure what are called vanity metrics. And these are numbers that make you feel good about the initiatives that you’re taking. Like how many visits to your website, how many people attended a conference, like numbers that can only go up.

Diana Kander: But they are not related to any actual substantive values for your company. So how do you measure numbers that can actually look bad for you? And to know whether or not you’re actually going in the right direction or whether you should change course.

John Jantsch: Well sometimes, though… And here’s what I struggle with: sometimes I find things that are kind of intangible to actually make… I mean they’re more the marker towards the fact that yeah, you’re making progress. And I know that sounds… I mean because it’s intangible. Right?

John Jantsch: You can’t really put a spreadsheet around how many smiles we got today as something goofy like that.

Diana Kander: Well I like to introduce two questions. I call these failure metrics. So everybody has success metrics for their projects. And those usually take a while to figure out, whether you’re going to be successful or not.

Diana Kander: The failure metrics you can figure out much sooner. And that is asking yourself how would I know if it’s not working and when would I know that? And in that case, you can measure the intangible.

Diana Kander: So if you have a speech that you’re giving, and everybody’s on their cell phones, how would you know if it’s not working? Well people aren’t requesting you to give other speeches. Or they’re just not paying attention to you during your speech.

Diana Kander: So failure metrics are those intangible things that you’re talking about. And you can find them much sooner than looking at your business at the end of the year and figuring out if you’ve hit the numbers.

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John Jantsch:  Let’s talk about failure since you keep mentioning it.

Diana Kander: Yes.

John Jantsch: You know, it’s a hot topic right now in the startup world. And I’m sort of over it. I’m sort of sick of it, because I think a lot of people have used it as this fail-fast. Or figure out, don’t be afraid to fail. And I think that that’s sort of a cop-out. I’d like to turn it around and say figure out how to succeed.

John Jantsch: Obviously if something doesn’t work, it’s teaching you something. But I’m sort of tired of the word failure, so there. I think it’s overrated.

Diana Kander:[inaudible] that entrepreneurship and innovation. You know, all these words that get used. Look, I believe in the growth mindset, which has not yet been really corrupted. And that is, no matter where you are today, you could always be better. And you can’t be better without taking missteps.

Diana Kander: You know, if I meet somebody and then we’re talking about ice skating, and I say have you ever fallen while ice skating? And they say no, I’ve never fallen. It’s amazing. I’m really quite good. Then I can definitively say you are not good at ice skating if you’ve never fallen, right? Because you’ve been hanging onto the edge. You’re not really trying anything interesting.

Diana Kander: And that’s how I feel about failure or missteps. You have to have some things that don’t work out, that push you forward to learn better. But with that said, I believe in the concept of deliberate practice, which is not just failing for failure’s sake, but figuring out your blind spots and what you need to improve at in order to increase the results of what you’re working on.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I know it’s become sort of cliché to say, but I mean to me, there is no failure. It’s just a learning moment. For me, at least.

Diana Kander: That’s right.

John Jantsch: That’s just kind of a mindset, that I’m never going to stop doing what I’m doing. Just hopefully I’m taking in the feedback and using it to get better.

Diana Kander: Yeah, but that takes a really long time for people to grasp and feel that way. And I think that they’re never going to feel that way until they experience some success. And once you experience success in your life, you can always point to a pivotal failure in your life that created it or stems from it.

Diana Kander: So my first book was a very successful book, sold a lot of copies, and kicked off my speaking career. But I never would have started writing it if I didn’t have a startup that was going horrible. And I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I started journaling as a way to deal with my feelings around it.

Diana Kander: So I think every big success stems from some kind of failure.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And we’re just talking semantics at this point. It’s really more like what you do with it that really is the only thing that really matters.

John Jantsch: So I think we’re on question number four, we haven’t tackled yet. And this is actually my favorite, because on the surface it seems pretty simple. But I think it’s more complex than that. How can you involve others to get what you want?

John Jantsch: And what I meant by the more complexity, it’d be pretty easy to say yeah, be a team player. Give others credit. But I think where this question gets really hard is how can you get others to hold you accountable as a business owner. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges. I have nobody to hold me accountable, and that would be a great way to get other people involved in helping me get what I want.

Diana Kander: Yeah. So there’s two parts to this question. The first is exactly what you’re talking about. And that is there’s been research done that if you have a goal and you share that goal with somebody you care about, you are 65 percent likely to reach that goal, which is amazing. But if you setup a regular check-in with that person where you just tell them how it’s going and what you’re planning to do next, you are 95 percent likely to reach that goal.

Diana Kander: And that is the power of accountability, on being able to reach whatever crazy dreams you set out for yourself. So that’s kind of the first element.

Diana Kander: And the second element of it is, back to how everybody puts pressure on themselves to come up with the big ideas. Oftentimes when you involve other people in coming up with the ideas, they’re going to have way better ideas than you. And they’re going to feel an ownership stake in those ideas.

Diana Kander: So if you have a small retail location and you’re trying to figure out how to get customers through the door, rather than you yourself thinking about how to do it, have a meeting with your team. And just have them brainstorm. And sometimes they’ll come up with crazy ideas, and then they’ll work on their ideas in their off time, and feel really, that sense of ownership to execute on them, much more than if you had come up with an idea and put it on them.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And I think that over time particularly, people just stop coming up with ideas if they never get asked or they never get involved. And so it’s a vicious cycle. You kind of shut down the innovation that you could have.

Diana Kander: That’s right. And they’re closer to the customer, oftentimes, than you are. So they’re going to have much better insight into opportunities than you will.

John Jantsch: So, in addition to your writing and speaking, you’re a podcaster as well.

Diana Kander: Yes. I’m a brand new podcaster.

John Jantsch: So you were telling me, and again I’m not sure when people are listening to this, if you’ll have new shows that you’re publishing. But tell me the premise for the show. Because I think, in addition to being incredibly useful, I think it’s a rather intriguing idea of what you’re doing.

Diana Kander: So in the course of writing this book, The Curiosity Muscle, I gave myself a crazy, audacious goal. So one of the subplots was a character in the book was trying to a 10 minute plank. And I thought well I’ll try it. I’m not going to get it, but if I try it I can at least write about it in a much more realistic way.

Diana Kander: And at the time, I could do a one minute plank. So 10 minutes seemed completely ridiculous to me. And I started applying these things, these principles that I teach organizations, to myself. And in four and a half months of struggling with it, but sticking with it, I did an 11 and a half minute plank.

Diana Kander: And when I tasted that level of goal achievement, I was like oh my god, what can’t I do?

Diana Kander: So I sat down with a piece of paper and listed… Okay, here are all of the things that I want to fix about myself. I have confidence issues and I have anxiety that I struggle with. 49 different items of… horrible at making eye contact and terrible at taking compliments. Oh, my god, I have insecurities about being a mom. So everything I wanted to improve about myself as a professional.

Diana Kander: And then I use the podcast as a way to hold myself accountable to working on each of these things. So every week I talk to an expert who will help me uncover blind spots in those areas that I would never have guessed on my own, and try things that I never would have thought to try.

Diana Kander: And you know I’ve been having some very significant results.

John Jantsch: So in addition to being a podcast, it’s sort of a self-improvement project that you have somebody holding you accountable in some ways. I mean, because-

Diana Kander:  That’s right.

John Jantsch: … you’re putting it out there to the world. So it’s awesome.

Diana Kander: I have this formula in my life, John, which is the scarier something is, the more people I need to hold me accountable to it, so the more I’ll broadcast it. So working on 49 different things is very scary for me and very vulnerable, so I just try to tell as many people as possible.

John Jantsch: So Diana, where can people find out more about you and your work and hopefully tune into the podcast?

Diana Kander: Yeah, they can find everything at dianakander.com. Links to books, speaking, and the podcast. And the podcast is called Professional AF, which just means really professional.

John Jantsch: So the AF means nothing, huh? Just-

Diana Kander: People ask me what it means, and it means really, really professional.

John Jantsch: … Awesome. And so that’s dianakander, E-R, .com. And we’ll have it in the show notes as well.

John Jantsch: So Diana, great book. The Curiosity Muscle. You have a t-shirt that I tell people all the time that curiosity is my super power. And I guess I need a t-shirt from you. But I’m not sure-

Diana Kander: I wanted to bring you one, but I only have them in women’s cut. So I can offer them to your daughters or your wife John. I don’t have a unisex version yet.

John Jantsch: … So I have a story, that it may or may not be true. I grew up with… I have seven brothers and two sisters. So 10 of us. And my mom used to tell a story, and like I said, I have no idea if it’s true or not. But when they would take us all somewhere, dad would say you watch the other nine and I’ll watch John. And that’s because I have a very strong curiosity muscle.

Diana Kander: Well I think that can only get you into trouble when you’re young, but get you into a lot of opportunities as an adult.

John Jantsch: I agree. I credit it with… The 30 year journey I’ve been on is just bouncing from one thing I’m curious about to another. So that’s why the title of this book intrigued me so.

Diana Kander: Thank you for being curious about the book and for inviting me on the show, and this is the most fast-paced interview I’ve ever done, but also the most exhilarating. So thank you so much.

John Jantsch: And we didn’t mention this, but you’re just down the street in Kansas City, Missouri. So it’s always fun to interview somebody in my home town, which I don’t get to do enough.

Diana Kander: I know. There’s a lot of us authors lurking around.

John Jantsch: I typically end this show, as some listeners will recall, saying I hope I bump into you soon out there on the road. And I’d say it’s probably more likely with you than many others.

John Jantsch: So thanks for joining us Diana, and again, I will end it as I always do. Hopefully I’ll see you somewhere out there on the road.

Diana Kander: Ditto John. Talk to you soon.

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How to Create a Successful Business Event

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How to Create a Successful Business Event written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Rich Brooks
Podcast Transcript

Rich Brooks headshotToday on the podcast, I visit with Rich Brooks. He is the president of flyte new media and the founder of The Agents of Change conference and podcast.

Brooks created the conference in Portland, Maine to build an event for digital marketers and to get flyte’s name out there as an industry leader. Now in its sixth year, Brooks has learned a lot along the way about creating and hosting successful business events.

In this episode, he shares what he’s learned about events. We cover everything from why a business of any size and in any industry might want to start an event, to how to manage sponsorships, to how to create an event that people are excited to return to year after year.

Questions I ask Rich Brooks:

  • Events are hard. Should all business owners be doing them?
  • How do you create an event that really stands out?
  • How do you get people to attend your event, and how do you get them to come back?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why the three Ss of events (seat, speakers, and sponsors) matter, and how they’re interconnected.
  • What is the role of community building in creating a great event.
  • What makes a great sponsorship for your event, podcast, or content.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Rich Brooks:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

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Transcript of How to Create a Successful Business Event

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Transcript of How to Create a Successful Business Event written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Rich Brooks. He is the founder of flyte new media, and creator of The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference. Something we’re going to talk about today.

John Jantsch: So, Rich, thanks for joining us.

Rich Brooks: Hey, it’s a great pleasure to be on your show, John.

John Jantsch: So, you’ve been doing this conference for a few years, and I guess the first question I have is, what’s with the name?

Rich Brooks: That’s a good question. So The Agents of Change came out of a previous conference I put on for a few years called Social Media FTW, with a few friends. But after three years, the band broke up. I was thinking about doing another conference, when I happened to run into Chris Brogan, who said, “Oh, I’d love to do something sometime.” So I’m like, “I know I have to do this conference.”

Rich Brooks: I couldn’t use the same name, and I wanted to bring in search and mobile marketing to the mix, because I feel like social is just one aspect of what we should be doing. I started going through the thesaurus, which is always a tough word for me to say, and I had this idea of, you know, an accelerant. Social media’s an accelerant. So I went on there, looked it up, but I’m like, “Accelerant World, Accelerant Expo, doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

Rich Brooks: That lead me to catalyst, which is a nice hard K sound. So I’m like, “Catalyst …” Still wasn’t working for me. I looked it up one more time, and I saw Agents of Change. If you saw my office right now, John, you’d know I’m a huge superhero nerd, and I could already envision the three Agents of Change for search, social and mobile marketing, and that is where the name came from.

John Jantsch: So, in preparation for this, because you do the conference and have your business in the city of Portland.

Rich Brooks: Yeah. Portland, Maine.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I was going to go there, because I did a little search, I said, “Fun facts about Portland, Maine.” You know how the little search snippet, you know, position zero that Google puts up there? It was five fun facts about Portland, Oregon. So even Google doesn’t know necessarily where Portland, Maine is. So I’m guessing that The Agents of Change Conference is kind of a big deal in Portland, Maine.

Rich Brooks: I like to think it is. I mean, we like to think ourselves as one of the coolest conferences in New England. It is more of a regional thing, although, we do get people from all around the country, and sometimes all around the world to visit. But I would say the majority of people who attend in person are from New England, and then we also have a virtual pass with a live stream. We actually get people literally from all over the world, including, you know, places like Australia. I’m like, “I guess they’re getting up in the middle of the night to watch.”

John Jantsch: So, we’re going to talk about conferences and putting them on, because you’ve got a little experience doing so. But, is that the only conference that you currently put on?

Rich Brooks: Yeah, I mean, we do other workshops, and I just recently started a new brand called Fast Forward Maine, where we’re putting on business workshops around the state. But the big tent pull event is definitely The Agents of Change Conference.

John Jantsch: So, let’s talk specifically about that one. Who should go to your conference?

Rich Brooks: Every human being. No, we really focus on digital marketing. So, especially in Maine, that tends to be people who have social media manager or marketer, or marketer in their title. But of course a lot of small businesses around here, so we get a lot of people who might be owners or entrepreneurs. We get a lot of agency owners who show up too, I think because they listen to my podcast for new ideas. So, in the last few years we’ve gotten a lot more agency owners and consultants.

John Jantsch: So, let’s flip then to events in general. You know, first off, I’m just going to admit, events are hard.

Rich Brooks: You said it. They are hard.

John Jantsch: So, is that something that a lot of businesses should be thinking about getting into?

Rich Brooks: I wouldn’t say a lot of businesses. But people ask me, “Why do you put on a conference? It seems like a lot of work.” I’m like, “It is. That’s the beauty of it.” I mean, how hard it is to put up another Facebook post or an Instagram photo? Anybody can do it, and everybody is doing it. But to put on an event, and I’m not saying that you need to make it as big or as small as our conference, we average between 350-400 people. But I’m saying that it immediately elevates everything that we’re doing in the state to another level.

Rich Brooks: So when people come to The Agents of Change Conference, suddenly Rich Brooks and flyte new media get a lot more visibility. Flyte new media is our digital agency. So because of that, then we get into a lot more conversations around the state, and even outside the state, about, “Oh, we should be talking to Flight about our website, or SEO, or social media.”

Rich Brooks: So if you’re struggling with maybe some of the digital marketing stuff and outreach, especially if you’re new, I strongly recommend taking a look at events, because a lot of your competition just don’t have the stomach to put it on.

John Jantsch: Yes. It sounds, as I heard you describe that, it’s a little bit of the advice where people say, “You should have a book, because it sort of elevates your status as an influencer.” In some ways that’s what you’re saying about the conference.

Rich Brooks: Absolutely. I’ve written a book, and I’ve gotten work directly out of it, so I know that works, and I’ve gotten work directly out of The Agents of Change Conference. Just as a side note, I had, for years, a friend of mine’s business, and I kept on saying, “You really need a new website. Your website was built in 1724, it’s time for an upgrade.” This person wouldn’t spend $5,000 on it. They ended up winning a ticket to the conference, of all things, came to the conference, ended up talking to my creative director, and ended up signing a deal for $21,000 work of design.

Rich Brooks: I’m like, “I couldn’t convince you after five years, and you come and you meet him for 15 minutes.” So again, it elevates you, it puts you at another level, and I think that’s great for business owners who are looking for a competitive edge.

John Jantsch: So, in web terms, 1724 was five years ago, right?

Rich Brooks: Exactly.

John Jantsch: So, what was the huge thing that you learned when you first started doing this?

Rich Brooks: So, what I tell anybody just starting off is, first of all, it’s totally okay to start small. You can start with 12 people in a room, if they’re the right 12 people. That’s one aspect. There’s no size too small, it’s about putting yourself in front of the right audience, or building the right audience.

Rich Brooks: But the other thing that I found over time as people started asking me questions, is there’s three main categories that any successful event should focus on, which I now call the three S’s. It’s speakers, sponsors, and seats, as in putting butts in them. I can speak to any one of them, but it’s about having the right people on stage, and that could just be you. It’s about bringing in some sponsors, especially when you get to a certain size, to help kind of bring down the cost, and then it’s also about making sure that you’ve got a way to make sure that you fill the seats. Because you could have the best speakers and a lot of sponsors, but your event’s going to fail if nobody shows up.

John Jantsch: So let’s talk about balancing those folks a little bit, because sometimes what a sponsor wants out of … you know, what’s a win for them, may not be a win for attendees. I mean, is that a constant struggle?

Rich Brooks: That is a struggle, and I’ve definitely made the mistake overpromising something for a sponsor, and then realizing that maybe I’ve not really treated my attendee they should have been treated. This is something I’ve learned the hard way. Of course, now with GRP, this becomes an even bigger issue. But, you know, one of the things that we say with our sponsors now is we can’t share emails anymore. That’s just not something we do, we’ll share the contact information.

Rich Brooks: But I have had some pushback in years past. With the sponsors, I think it’s just about getting up front with them and having intelligent conversations, “What do you want to get out of this event?” I’ve had people come to me and they’re like, “I just want to be associated with your brand,” other people are like, “I’m just looking for my own personal brand awareness.” Then I’ve got people who are like, “I need 15 leads out of this.”

Rich Brooks: Based on what they’re looking for, then I can help them and create something customized, so that even if I’m not giving them the name, address and blood type of every single attendee, I’m giving them the opportunity for them to succeed. Maybe that means that I’m doing something special from stage for them, or maybe it means that we’re creating some special videos that kind of pump them up, or talking about them on the podcast. But it’s about finding those wins for them, where you’re not selling your soul or the information of your attendees.

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John Jantsch: I mean, what’s been your ability to stand out? I mean, “Yay, another digital marketing conference,” right? I mean, have you found that the secret to success is maybe something bigger that … I mean, a bigger reason for doing it, maybe than, “Yay, another digital marketing conference.”

Rich Brooks: Well, I will say that when I first started, there weren’t a lot of digital marketing conferences, or there were certainly less. I’m definitely seeing that there’s some fatigue out there when it comes to digital marketing, because it seems like every week there’s five events in Portland, Maine, about digital marketing.

Rich Brooks: So, that is a challenge, it’s one that I kind of avoided to a certain degree by getting in early. But I would say that if you are looking to put on an event, my recommendation would be to niche down, and maybe to … you know, one of the challenges we have with Agents of Change is it’s not industry-specific. So if I were starting off, if I’m one of your listeners, I would be thinking about, “How can I go into just one industry and really succeed there? Whether it’s my own industry, or I just choose one of my client groups, and really focus more narrowly on that niche.”

Rich Brooks: Then you’re going to be able to attract, I think, more interested attendees who feel like the content’s been tailored for them, as well as people willing to pay more, because it’s like, “Oh my goodness, there’s a juggling conference in town, you don’t get that every day.” So, you know, they might be more willing to sign up.

John Jantsch: So, 350-400 is still a very manageable number. But as a conference grows, and as yours grew, is there anything that you’ve done to sort of intentionally keep that intimacy? I mean, you go to a lot of conferences, like I do as well, and, you know, those first year, you know, just 100 of us, you know, was really cool, and then it grew to 10,000 people, and it wasn’t the same thing anymore.

John Jantsch: Have you done anything to keep yours intentionally intimate?

Rich Brooks: Yeah, well, I think part of it is, living in Maine, you know, we have one area code. There’s only so many people around us, so that partially keeps it down anyways. But we have it in a space that we absolutely love at the University of Southern Maine, and although it can sit 500 people in the auditorium, you can really only comfortably have 400 people in the atrium during lunch or something like that. So that’s basically been our line in the sand.

Rich Brooks: The virtual pass allows us to grow a little bit bigger, but you still have that intimate feel at the event. I have no desire to be the next Inbound or Social Media Marketing World, two excellent conferences by the way, but just, that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking at this event as a way of raising the profile of what we’re doing here at Flight, and what I’m doing, so this is the right size for us.

Rich Brooks: There’s definitely other conferences that are going to grow, and they may have a reason to grow, but that’s just never been the focus of what we’re doing. I think everybody, as they put on their own events, needs to decide, “Why am I doing this?” Like we talked about, events are a lot of work, and there’s at least three sleepless nights I have where, “Oh my God, my speakers aren’t going to show up, or I’m going to lose money, or nobody’s going to show up for my conference.” That’s stressful.

Rich Brooks: So it’s only that it makes sense at the end, from both an enjoyment standpoint, and a business standpoint, that I keep moving forward. For me, I’ve been told by a lot of people that this is a right-sized conference. Now that means different things to different people, but for us it’s that, you know, yes, we have a Green Room, but the speakers tend to hang out with all the regular people, and they end up talking. It’s just a very intimate, friendly group. That’s the conference I always wanted to go to, so I ended up creating it myself.

John Jantsch: So you talked about the sort of addition benefits to hosting this conference. Does that, in some ways, you know, the business that comes out of it, the sort of raising your profile. Does that in some way suggest that you don’t necessarily need to be a profitable conference?

Rich Brooks: Profitable is a very important part of it, but it depends on how you’re looking at profitability. I’ll be very candid, when we look at, or transparent perhaps, at the end of each year we’re like, “Were we profitable?” Depending on the way you run the numbers, we might have made $10,000 or lost $10,000. We always make money, the question is, do we make money after we charge ourselves at our regular rate, or discounted rate? Or do we just consider that to be marketing work, and we’re not going to charge for our time?

Rich Brooks: So that’s where it’s a little bit blurry. But we usually end up somewhere around break-even, after we’ve paid for our own time. Then, like I said, we almost always get one to two jobs a year out of that, and then there’s also just … some people when they come into our doors, and I’ll be like, “So how did you hear about us?” They’ll be like, “Oh, I went to The Agents of Change a couple years ago, or I’ve gone for the last three years.” So that’s how I know the long-term game is really paying off.

Rich Brooks: For some businesses, the event has to be profitable, because that is a profit center. But for us, if we can get our marketing to pay for ourselves, I’ll sleep well.

John Jantsch: But I think that’s a big consideration, as you’re looking at, you know, the big picture of it. So, you mentioned this that people come back, or go year after year. I mean, how do you, this is a two-part question, how do you get people to attend? Then, how do you get them to come back?

Rich Brooks: So, getting people to attend is actually the trickier part, because of course, if they don’t know you, you’re trying to convince them to part with $50, $100, $500, you know, depending on the price of your conference. So, you know, we’ve had some discussions about, “Well, is it about bringing in the biggest speakers?” Maybe it’s just where I am, but speakers don’t generate sales.

Rich Brooks: We’ve had a few people, because they’ve come from Maine, like John Lee Dumas and Chris Brogan. They’re from Maine, so they pull in a certain audience. But most of the other speakers that we bring in, no matter how awesome or cool or smart they are, they just don’t bring in ticket sales, per se. So, I’m always looking myself more about the content and the delivery, than it is specifically the name. Although, I like to try and mix it up a little bit.

Rich Brooks: So, it’s about finding what people are looking for, and then trying to build a community. So, these days, I think of Agents of Change as a 365 brand, that we’re around every single day of the year, we’re putting on the podcast that kind of helps raise awareness and keep awareness up and running. We’re sending out a weekly newsletter, above and beyond the conference itself.

Rich Brooks: In terms of getting people to come back, we’ll offer incentives both the day of the conference, as well as early bird discounts that first get sent out to what we call alumni as part of it. We’re trying to develop a Facebook Group, which I have to admit is kind of my achilles heel, I’m just not great about Facebook Groups. But that’s something that we’re trying to develop as well.

John Jantsch: That’s like running a conference year round.

Rich Brooks: Exactly.

John Jantsch: So, let’s talk about sponsorships. Even if it’s not for a physical event, you know, a webinar, or, you know, a piece of content. What, in your experience, makes a great sponsorship?

Rich Brooks: I think it’s a combination of somebody who has a product or service that is really in alignment with what you’re trying to accomplish. So, you know, without naming specific names, we’ve had a bank who has been a great sponsor for us for years, and not only do they give us money, which is certainly, obviously, a critical part of it, but they’re in the community and they’re looking to build their business portfolio. So that makes this a really good place for them to be.

Rich Brooks: From a local aspect, that’s really helpful. Like I said, they’ve been a great partner, and they’ve really been part of everything that we’re doing. Then, because we’re a digital marketing conference, we also have email service providers, and CRM companies that are interested in getting in front of our audience too, especially ones that target small businesses.

Rich Brooks: So, I like to bring in those kind of companies, A, because I want people to know about the tools and services they offer, but B, also because it’s good for them to get in front of this type of audience too. My goal is to educate people like me, who might not be spending all their time on digital marketing. So, it’s, I mean, I hate to say it’s about the money, but it is about the money. You know, otherwise I’d have to charge a lot more for ticket sales. But then it’s also about are their goals in alignment with ours?

Rich Brooks: I’ve definitely pushed off a few sponsors over the years, because I just didn’t get the right vibe from them. I felt like they were just there to scape as many names as possible, and they weren’t really going to participate. There have been people who did speaker-sponsor deals in years past, and they barely gave a presentation, and that was the end of that relationship right there.

Rich Brooks: If you are going to do speaker-sponsor deals, which are pretty common, you need to expect that the person’s going to come in and act as if they were a speaker anyways, that they’re going to deliver high quality content, and not some sort of veiled sales pitch.

John Jantsch: I love the idea that you have a, especially because you’ve identified as sort of a regional conference, that you have a regional bank. Because going back to your point about, you know, additional business, well, you know, I’m guessing that there are a lot of bank customers that would be good customers of your agency.

Rich Brooks: Absolutely, and vice versa. I mean, the bottom line is, this bank has been a great supporter of ours for years, and anything I can do to help them out, also just makes me feel good. They believed in me, and I believe in them, and I think they’re a great bank. So I’m trying to do everything I can to also getting people, especially from Southern Maine, where they don’t have as big a footprint, you know, to make sure that people from Southern Maine, business owners, are thinking about them when it comes time for lines of credit, or whatever it may be.

Rich Brooks: The other thing I’ll just say about sponsorships, in terms of if listeners are thinking about this, barters are also excellent sponsors. So, we do a lot of media share, but we also do, at the end of the event, we have a networking event, and we get free beer, free pizza, and free spirits from three local companies for a couple of tickets. So they come in, they give us all this free product, things that would cost us thousands of dollars, are costing me $150. You can get a lot of mileage out of those barters, and really start developing some long-term relationships with some local companies.

Rich Brooks: For me, local is a big part of who we are and what we do. So that, again, just kind of fits in with your question of what’s important in a sponsor.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think that starts to shape maybe a picture for somebody that this doesn’t have to be, you know, a giant conference. I mean, you can do that same sort of model in something that’s going to maybe have 50 people come this year, and still have that same sort of small community feel.

Rich Brooks: Yeah. We put on a version of Agents of Change that was specific to the wedding industry, I did it with a friend of mine, and we found local vendors that were really trying to target those wedding professionals, and we started to develop some really nice relationships with them as well.

Rich Brooks: I love putting on live events, it just feels good, and I love bringing people together, especially because, in my job, I’m behind a computer so much of the time. When you can really, in your local community, start develop these relationships, where you start introducing people, you become much more valuable as well. So again, people are always going to be thinking about you when they need to make that next business decision.

John Jantsch: So, we’re getting close to the end of our time. Let’s start with a real negative. Bring the thing down to a crashing halt here. So, if you’re going to tell somebody, “Here’s the one thing that will doom your conference. Don’t do this, or don’t forget this.” What would it be?

Rich Brooks: One thing that would doom the conference, I would say not enough planning, or trying to go too big, too soon. Because I definitely have talked to people who have asked me to come in at the last minute to help them with their conferences, and it’s three months out, and they’re putting on something on Vegas, and they don’t have a list yet. I’m like, “That’s just not how you’re going to do it.”

Rich Brooks: There are people probably who might have been able to salvage that, but I would say, you know, start small, like you were talking about. If you start with 50 or 100 people, or even 12 people, that’s not a bad starting place. Start to understand what people are looking for. Ultimately, you need to put on an event that are going to track those three audiences of speakers, sponsors and seats. So, you really need to be paying attention to what people want, and sometimes the best way to do that is to start small.

John Jantsch: So, dependent upon when you’re listening to this show, the next Agents of Change event is going to be in the fall of 2019. You want to tell people about that, and I think you even said you might have a special offer for listeners.

Rich Brooks: I do. If people are interested in the whole digital marketing thing, you can find more information out at theagentsofchange.com. We have a physical conference on Friday, September, 28th, we also have pre-conference workshops on the 19th, and a VIP ticket as well. Right now, depending on when you hear this, either tickets will be early bird, or at least heavily discounted.

Rich Brooks: But for Duct Tape listeners, if you enter in DUCTTAPE, all one word, when you go to buy your ticket, whatever the ticket is, whether it’s a physical ticket or the virtual pass, because we have a live feed, people can tune in, you’re going to save $25 off the ticket price. Right now, they’re already pretty low, so it’s a very good deal.

Rich Brooks: Oh, so just go to theagentsofchange.com, and you’ll find all the information there.

John Jantsch: Then we’ll have it, of course, in the show notes, like we always do.

John Jantsch: So, Rich, it was great catching up with you again. Sounds like a great event, and I appreciate you spending the time. Hopefully we’ll run into you out there on the road soon.

Rich Brooks: Sounds good, John. Thank you.

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