SPI 606: What Good Marketers REALLY Are

SPI 606: What Good Marketers REALLY Are

Announcer: Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, when he was a kid, he thought SD cards were manufactured in San Diego. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Hey, it’s Pat here, happy Friday or other day of the week. If you’re listening to this a little bit later, I hope you’re doing awesome.

I just thought about something that was shared with me a while back, and I wish I knew who to give credit to because when I got this piece of advice, it’s, it was at a time when I really needed to hear it. Right? That’s all great advice is, and hopefully this is one of those pieces of advice for you, something that you need to hear at the right time.

And it really came into play when I was starting to sell my own products. Right now, I’ve sold my own products since 2008 I’ve, I’m kind of a dinosaur in the world of internet marketing. I’ve had people come up to me and say, “Pat, you’re legend.” And I’m like, that makes me sound old, but I appreciate that.

So, If you think so, I appreciate it, but I still have a lot to learn. And one of the things I learned back then when I was starting to sell my own stuff, was the importance of putting some sense of urgency into your sales process. Right? Some sense of, well, you’re gonna miss out if you don’t take advantage of this.

And I remember feeling kind of slimy when I was introduced to these sort of concepts, right? The idea of a limited number of spots available, but it’s a digital product. And that to me felt like a lie. Right? So what would be the benefit of, you know, limiting the number of spots in your online course or in, in some digital product software?

Well, I’ll tell you the answer in just a sec, but my immediate thought was, that’s dumb. And that’s like, you’re just kind of fooling people, right? The idea of missing out on bonuses, if they don’t act in time or the price goes up, if you don’t buy, buy tomorrow. And it’s, it was just all stuff that I’ve heard before that I’ve never really felt great about.

But then I heard this piece of advice that the advice is not to include urgency, although that is a great piece of advice. Here’s the piece of advice I got. Our jobs as marketers, you know, good marketers, help people make decisions. Our job is to help people make a decision really important, a decision when it comes to a pitch or when buying something.

There’s basically only two things we want people to do. Buy. Or not buy, unfortunately the way we pitch products, the way we set things up, especially online. And especially if you’re a nice person now, I don’t mean that to knock nice people. I’m just saying nice people often avoid without even knowing what we’re trying to do here.

And again, it’s this idea that, well, we have to help people understand whether they need this or they don’t. If a person is. On the receiving end of a pitch or a sales page or an email where you’re asking them to buy something and they’re like, well, maybe, or yeah, I mean, that kind of sounds like a good idea, but I’m not quite sure, you know, I’ll think about that later or, you know, I’ll let future Pat think about that or you, I don’t know.

Well, if that’s a reaction that a person has, you haven’t done your job fully. And this is why urgency is a very powerful marketing tool because it forces that decision to be made. Now you can force that decision and still be authentic that I think is the key and that’s the absolute goal. Unfortunately, many people don’t do that, but you can authentically include urgency so that a decision can be made, right?

It forces a person to. Wow. Okay. I, I have to decide now or else, so I’ll think about it. But again, if you offer that opportunity for people to have some time to think it over and, and you give them forever, well, they’re forever not gonna make that decision. Our job as marketers is to help the decision making process.

And it’s good. If a person says, you know what, this isn’t for me because you know what, you’ve made it clear that it’s not for them. They understand all that’s entailed with what it is that you’re offering so much so that they know it’s not for them. That’s good. You know why? Because there’s other people now with the message being so clear that the product will be a perfect fit for them.

If you nail the positioning and if you get in front of them, obviously this is why the messaging is so important. This is why understanding the objections that your target audience has is so important. That’s where I came up with my Oreo strategy, Right? When you’re selling something you wanna take ’em you wanna give a, an Oreo because most people love Oreos.

Right? And whether they dunk it in milk or not, that’s up to them, but what is the acronym? O R E O actually mean? Objection is the O the first O anybody. Who’s on the receiving end of a pitch has objections. Whether they, they know it or not, they might consciously know it. They might say it out loud or they might not even know they have that objection, but it’s something that is subconsciously telling them that this isn’t the right thing, or it’s not the right thing to do, or it’s not gonna work.

Right? So you need to know what those objections are. The easiest way to know about that. Is to have conversations with people and to run surveys and to experiment and see what works and what doesn’t right? That’s the first O objection. You gotta understand the objections. The R is a rebuttal. So how can you say the, no, that’s not actually true. For example, when selling the podcast course, a lot of people say, you know, Hey pat, you know, I’m afraid of technology. This course is, is probably not gonna work. That is an objection. Do you think that’s stopping people from purchasing, my course, of course. And ultimately what’s the consequence.

Ultimately, they’re not going to start a podcast and benefit from it. So it is my job, my duty, knowing that I have the number one course on the internet. I have to believe that. And whether you agree with that or not, that’s up to you. I think my students would agree with that, but I believe that, and therefore I have to be pronounced about it.

I have to be not aggressive. I have to be forthcoming though about the fact that, okay, well, I’m gonna help you make this decision. So Oreo objection. What’s an objection that people have. Oh, I’m definitely afraid of technology. I don’t think it’s gonna work out. I’m scared of putting things together and editing and microphones and stuff.

Okay. My rebuttal is you don’t need to be a technological wizard to start a podcast. In fact, several kids have started a podcast. There’s a student of mine. Her name is Dr. B she’s over 60 years old and she started a podcast. In fact, that was her number one, objection. And now she’s helping people all across the world who have, and live with people who are dealing with ADHD in their life in some way, shape or form.

She’s serving so many people. Now, can you imagine if she didn’t because she was just afraid of technology, like you. So, what did I give there? I gave examples, right? It’s one thing to say, no, you don’t have to know a lot about technology. Okay. But you need proof. That’s where the example comes in. So objection, you’re rebuttal.

You call it out on the sales page. You do not have to know a lot about technology to have a successful podcast. You just, you just straight up bring it. And many of them are gonna go. Yep. I, I was actually thinking. And others are gonna go, wow. I wasn’t thinking that, but now I am. And tell me more and you’re gonna say, well, Hey, check out these examples of people who were literally afraid of the same thing or who had the same objections as you who are now doing it, which means you can do it too.

And oh, is the outcome? Objection, rebuttal and example. And then the outcome, the outcome’s important because you don’t wanna just share somebody. Like I shared with Dr. B who is over 60 again, I mentioned that because a lot of people who hear that you’ll go, oh wow. Like they can understand that a person who’s, maybe from an older generation would have trouble with technology.

So that’s why I keep honing in on that. Dr. B, if you’re listening to this, I haven’t chatted with you in a while. Please reach out to me. I hope I’ll as well, but your show’s doing awesome and, and great job anyway. The, if I was just like, oh no, Dr. B did it. And she’s over 60. Yeah. She started a podcast, but you want to go to the outcome, the result that your example had, that matches the transformation that your audience wants.

Right? So the objection, the rebuttal, your sort of counter the example. And what was that example’s outcome. If that can match the, or a at least desire that your target audience has. Oh my gosh. Then you’ve just crushed that objection. And people can move on to now making a decision, right? The easiest way to help a person make a decision is to crush all the objections, right?

You counter them. And when you counter them well, and you speak the same language as your audience what’s gonna happen. Well, you’re gonna have what Jay Abraham. He says, if you can define the problem better than your target customer, they’re gonna automatically assume you have the solution. So when you nail not just the problem, the objections, but you nail the language.

And in your example, and in your outcome, you match that of the thoughts and the wants and needs, desires, outcomes that your target audience wants. Of course, they’re gonna come to you. And then using tools like urgency. Or scarcity, there’s only a certain number of spots available helps them make a decision.

It forces that decision. And again, if it’s a no that’s okay too. That’s okay, too. Now I had mentioned earlier that a urgency or scarcity driven approach to software seemed weird to me at first, but it doesn’t. Seem weird to me anymore. And the reason is because I have included scarcity in digital products in the past.

And typically, I mean, not typically, but you should have a reason for doing so it’s a beta version of the software and you’re only gonna let a certain number of people in because it might break because it’s so new. Now there’s gonna be a number of first movers who are in your audience, who are gonna want to get a crack at it.

And if you are upfront about the fact that it is new and that it might break well, that’s great because if it does break, there’s an excuse. And so there’s an excuse, a real legitimate, authentic, excuse for limiting a number of spots inside of a digital course. We often in our first few launches will limit the number of days that we have the course available so that we can close the doors.

You’re like, why would you close the doors? This is like more sales coming in. Again, to have people make a decision by that deadline. If we didn’t have that deadline, people could wait till next week or the week after and likely forget about it or wait forever. This is why I like the open, close launch model, because it’s much easier to include that authentic urgency and scarcity.

But in the digital course, it’s treated very similarly to like one would with a software. It’s a beta, it’s a first cohort. So we wanna make sure that the first group is taken care of. So we’re only gonna let a certain number of people in, or we’re only gonna have the door doors open by a certain time.

We’re gonna close the doors. So we’re not worrying about new people coming in. And if you’re missed the date, well, I’m sorry. You’re gonna have to wait till later. And the price is probably gonna be higher cuz we wanna reward those who are first movers. We wanna reward those who are taking a chance. So, if you wanna take a chance on us, get access to the course before this deadline, you’ll get a little bit of a discount.

And if you don’t, well, you can come back later, but it might be a higher price. And you might miss out on a little bit of special treatment because we’re gonna ensure that that first cohort who comes in is successful. So that’s it. I hope the Oreos tasted good. Anyway, thank you so much. And again, this was just coming to mind because I had a conversation with somebody earlier about this who is a brand new marketer.

Worried about the same exact things I was worried about and he’s jamming on his next launch or his first launch actually. And so good luck to you, you know who you are, and that might be a message for most of you listening too. So anyway. Cheers. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. And I look forward to serving you in the next episode.

We got a great interview coming up on Wednesday. So subscribe, if you haven’t already. And more follow up Fridays from yours, truly coming up soon. Cheers. Thanks everybody.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski. And our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We’ll catch you in the next session.