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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Sabri Suby
Read between
June 12 - September 28, 2019
As the founder of a business that you’re looking to scale, your focus needs to move from doing the everyday work to producing revenue for your business and steering the ship.
the money in business isn’t in your product or service, it’s in the selling of your product or service. What I mean is, no matter what industry you’re in, once you’ve got a few team members, and you’re looking to scale your business, you’re no longer a builder, baker, or business consultant. You’re a marketer.
The market doesn’t pay you to have the best products or service. It rewards you for solving problems.
Your focus should be on intimately understanding your market and your prospects’ deepest desires, pains, fears, hopes, and dreams. You need to know them better than any of your competitors, and then craft marketing messages that effectively communicate how you can solve these problems.
Only 4% of your activities each day drive your business forward and move the money needle. The other 96% of the things still have to get done, but they shouldn’t get done by you.
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In any given market at any given time, 3% of people are in ‘buying mode’. If you pick up the newspaper, watch TV, or do a Google search, you’ll see ads shouting, ‘We have the biggest range and the best prices!’ These ads are directed at that 3%,
The real money is in the 37% of people who are saying, ‘I’m kinda thirsty – what should I drink?’ They are either gathering information (17%) or ‘problem aware’ (20%). Or how about those who don’t even know they’re thirsty to begin with – because this market is a whopping 60% of all people!
To reach the 97% who aren’t ready to buy now (but could be very soon), you have to educate them. When a prospect isn’t informed or knowledgeable on a subject, they’re in a state of uncertainty and people don’t buy in this state. But the more they know, the more likely they are to buy. The bonus here is, if you are the one educating them, you’re also making sure that when they hit the ‘buy now’ stage, they’ll be likely to buy from you. To do this, your message must be powerful, insightful, and education-based, and not simply a promotional piece about your company.
The key is to install a system that: Attracts Educates Nurtures Gets prospects to act!
when you have a system that takes cold traffic from Google, Facebook, or any other channel and ‘warms it up’, you’re only talking to interested prospects, not time-wasters. You’re no longer spending hours trying to educate a customer that your solution is the best; you’re just closing and collecting the cash. Your systems – not you – are doing the grunt work in educating prospects, following them up, and delivering content that educates. And when they reach out to you, you’ll know they are predisposed, pre-qualified, ready, willing, and able to do business with you. They’re virtually 99% ready
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Here’s what you need to do: Educate your prospects so they know more about the process of solving their problem, and they’re empowered to make a better buying decision. (Do this using a High-Value Content Offer, i.e. free reports, videos, cheat sheets, or other value-based materials.
Take your best sales pitch or frequently asked questions and turn them into assets that nurture prospects on autopilot. At the same time as giving them information, you’re also moving them up the pyramid.
The best way to do this is through what’s called a sales funnel. This technique shifts a prospect up each stage of the pyramid over a period of a few weeks. Done right, you’ll easily see your sales double without having to spend more on your advertising.
You need to uncover your customer’s deepest and most primal desires. You must delve into their fears, hopes, wishes, and dreams. This is the stuff they’re thinking but don’t tell anyone. You need to move beyond the obvious and work out how your audience thinks, feels, and acts.
Think about the one or two major keywords and search terms people use to search for your products or services.
Search on Google for popular blogs, LinkedIn forums, YouTube comment sections, Amazon reviews, Reddit, Quora, and social media platforms. Go wherever your audience hangs out and congregates. Look at what your audience is saying and feeling. What are they happy with? What are they unhappy with? Look at their concerns and questions. Notice any themes? Are they banging their head against the wall on the same issue over and over? Pay close attention to the language they’re using when it comes to the existing products and services already on the market. Once you’ve collected all your information,
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To read the mind of your prospects and know exactly the questions they’re asking during the research and buying cycle, the auto-suggest results provided by Google and Bing are a goldmine of insights. As you type into the search bar, you’re presented with an aggregated view of the questions and therefore a hint of the motivations and emotions of the people behind each search query. It’s perhaps one of the best but most underutilised sources of research for content ideas.
At AnswerThePublic, you type in your keyword or search phrase and the tool generates a diagram of related searches.
Another incredible source for market intel is to look at threads on Reddit and question platform website, Quora.
1. Where does your dream buyer hang out and congregate? Name both online and offline places where your dream buyers hang out and congregate. The more detailed and specific, the better.
‘Hangs out on Facebook’ is too general. ‘Hangs out in the Mothers of Melbourne Facebook group’ is more precise and actionable.
2. Where does your dream buyer get their information? When your dream buyer is in research mode, where do they go to find the answers they seek? Is it Google? A particular blog? Books? Magazines? YouTube?
3. What are their biggest frustrations and challenges?
When your dream buyer sees a testimonial from a customer who solved their biggest frustrations and challenges with your product or service, then they are more likely to buy from you. They can see this positive transformation take place in someone else.
4. What are their hopes, dreams, and desires? Knowing your dream buyer’s hopes, dreams and desires helps you paint a vivid picture of what life could be like after using your products and services.
5. What are their biggest fears? What are your dream buyer’s deepest fears? What keeps them up at night, tossing and turning, unable to sleep? What do they worry about in their mind but never tell anyone?
6. What is their preferred form of communication? Email? Text? Chat? Facebook Live? Or do they prefer physical mail? This is a matter of where your audience wants you to communicate with them. The fundamental lesson here is to communicate with your customers where they already are.
7. What phrases, exact language, and vernacular do they use? As previously mentioned, Robert Collier has this fantastic quote: ‘Enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind’. You see, there is already language and niche-specific terms being used in your customer’s mind for their hopes, dreams, pain, fears, and desires. Your job is to listen and write them down. What industry terminology are they using, what specific vernacular and niche-specific terms?
8. What does a day in your dream buyer’s life look like?
Your dream buyer is a completely different person at 8am on a Monday morning than at 6:30pm on a Friday.
9. What makes them happy?
Where are the touch points in your dream buyer’s journey where you can insert surprises, do the unexpected, be remarkable, and bring a smile to their face? Maybe it’s a handwritten thank-you note after signing up for your service, a personalised email sent on their birthday, or a free box full of company swag and cookies (who doesn’t love cookies?).
‘Sally loves spending time reading stories and getting tips from other mums, and learning about parenthood in the Mothers of Melbourne Facebook group. It’s a much cherished pastime of hers. Her biggest frustration being a mother of two is simply that there is not enough hours in the day to do everything. When she’s in research mode, the first place she goes is Google on her iPad in the kitchen. She’s a frequent (kinda obsessive) visitor of mummy blogs like Rockin Mama and Mamavation. Her life-long dream is to start her own interior design business, so she can have a creative outlet and more
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If you present information that reads like a public service announcement, you’re guaranteed to stand out from the crowd in a huge way.
The valuable information you’re offering here is called a High-Value Content Offer (HVCO), and it draws leads to you like moths to a flame. HVCOs come in multiple forms – free reports, ebooks, videos, cheat sheets – but the goal is always the same: to offer your prospects incredible value, typically in the form of the solution to a problem they’re struggling with, without asking them to purchase anything in return.
IMPORTANT: It’s called a High-Value Content Offer for a reason! There not only needs to be perceived high value, but it must deliver on that promise. When you offer information as an incentive, make sure it’s substantive rather than the cheap gibberish that clogs the Internet.
Built on the simple premise of ‘giving before asking’, value-based marketing is about offering value to your customers without asking for a sale in return.
fast selling doesn’t work with cold traffic. These people have no idea who you are – it’s like asking someone to marry you on a first date!
It begins with a brilliantly-written headline that you could model for your own business, beginning with ‘What everybody ought to know about’.
Naturally, anyone reading anything these days is sceptical, especially online. That box first addresses the deafening scepticism in the reader’s mind that asks why they are publishing this information.
It also addresses the pre-established stigma of the stock and bond business being confusing by saying, ‘Some plain talk about…’ It then goes onto address well-organised questions the reader already has.
You might think that no one in today’s day and age reads long-form copy. But the truth is, when it comes to making sales, long-form copy will beat short-form copy every single time. I’ve spent $30 million dollars on generating traffic and running thousands of scientific split tests, and I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that long-form copy works. With one caveat: The copy must be entertaining and engaging. You can’t simply write long copy and think that it’s going to make your prospect buy. With that said, when your copy is entertaining, people won’t care how long it is.
Remember, it must be geared towards mass market appeal, answering the most prominent burning question, and offering the single most valuable and immediate solution to that problem. All while drawing into the top of your funnel as many targeted people as possible.
HVCO Rule #1: Create an Attention-Grabbing Headline HVCO Rule #2: Make sure every point touches a burning issue. HVCO Rule #3: Keep it simple.
HEADLINE ESSENTIAL #1 – YOU NEED A HEADLINE THAT GRABS THEM AND PRACTICALLY FORCES THEM TO READ YOUR MATERIAL “On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent eighty cents out of your dollar”.
HEADLINE ESSENTIAL #2: NUMBERS Numbers give your prospects a tangible object or logical idea to wrap their head around. They also lay out a structure the reader instantly knows will be easy to follow (not forgetting it makes it easier for you to write). Would you rather read ‘5 things you must know before hiring a wedding planner’ or ‘Some helpful information about hiring a wedding planner’? The answer should be obvious.
HEADLINE ESSENTIAL #3: CREATE IRRESISTIBLE INTRIGUE It’s not enough just to get their attention and sell the benefits of your offer. You also need to pique your reader’s interest and have them burning with curiosity. The best way to do that is to dial up the intrigue.
HEADLINE ESSENTIAL #4: SHOW THEM WHAT’S IN IT FOR THEM Your HVCO should ultimately be about them and their desired outcome. Your prospect needs (and wants) an immediate benefit and the key is to write about them – not you.
Timeless Formula #1 X ways to achieve [Desirable Thing] without doing [Undesirable Thing] Example: 6 Ways to Get Washboard Abs Without Doing a Single Sit -Up Timeless Formula #2 [Do Difficult Thing] in [Specific Period of Time] Even if [Shortcomings] Example: Pay Off Your Mortgage in 7 Years Even if You Have a Modest Income Timeless Formula #3 Achieve [Desirable Thing] like [An Expert] Even Without [Something Expected] Example: Paint Masterpieces Like Picasso Without Ever Having a Single Lesson! Timeless Formula #4 How to Eliminate [Biggest Problem] without doing [The Thing They Hate] Within
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HCVO Tip #2: Make Sure Every Point Touches A Burning Issue
