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Lifecycle Automation

Small Biz Buzz hosts Crystal Heuft and Derek Harju welcome Scott Martineau, co-founder of Keap, who discusses lifecycle automationand how to educate your customers using three different systems. Tune in to find out more.

Transcript:

Derek Harju (00:00):

Howdy, listeners. As we all know, planet Earth has 7.5 billion people and 7.4 billion of those people have small businesses. Now to be fair, numbers that size can be hard to envision and to be even fairer, most of what I just said is entirely made up. But, I'll tell what isn't made up, Keap. Keap is the all-in-one client management software designed specifically for small businesses. Keap takes the most annoying and laborious parts of running a small business and metaphorically tosses them into the sun.

Take the lifecycle automation quiz

Derek Harju (00:28):

Stop grinding yourself to death with busy work and repetitive tasks. Let Keap integrate your customer followups, messaging automation, next-level appointment setting and so much more. Head over to keap.com and start your free trial of Keap Grow, Keap Pro, or for those looking for something beefier, talk to one of our coaches about Infusionsoft, the product that started it all. More business, less work, that's Keap. Just go to keap.com to start your free trial. That's K-E-A-P.com. One more time, that's K-E-A-P.com.

Crystal Heuft (01:05):

Trumpeter.

Derek Harju (01:06):

No, what am I... Louis Armstrong.

Crystal Heuft (01:10):

Oh, Louis Armstrong.

Derek Harju (01:11):

Not the first man who walked on the moon.

Scott Martineau (01:11):

I think Neil Armstrong had a raspy voice, too.

Crystal Heuft (01:14):

He looked [crosstalk 00:01:15] like he did-

Derek Harju (01:15):

Constantly shouting at the moon.

Crystal Heuft (01:16):

... the space cowboy.

Scott Martineau (01:17):

You shout anything you want and nobody would know.

Derek Harju (01:20):

Have you ever seen that video where, no it's not Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin punches that guy in the face because he says [crosstalk 00:01:26]-

Crystal Heuft (01:25):

He's scary.

Derek Harju (01:26):

... never happened?

Scott Martineau (01:27):

No.

Crystal Heuft (01:28):

And then you go to Buzz on Dancing With the Stars and it's like are you the same person?

Derek Harju (01:33):

He a little interesting in the last 10 years.

Crystal Heuft (01:37):

It was awkward.

Scott Martineau (01:38):

But he actually punched someone?

Derek Harju (01:40):

Yeah, it's on video.

Crystal Heuft (01:41):

And he actually did dance on Dancing With the Stars.

Derek Harju (01:43):

Yeah. It was this guy who was intentionally antagonizing him for a very long time and then-

Scott Martineau (01:47):

Wow.

Derek Harju (01:48):

... it's just on video. He just sucks.

Crystal Heuft (01:53):

That's a lesson in life. People only can be pushed so far. Eventually-

Derek Harju (01:54):

I feel like if you landed on the moon and you're 70, you get to punch one person, you get to punch one public citizen in the face once a year for the rest of your life.

Scott Martineau (02:04):

For the rest of your life and annuity.

Crystal Heuft (02:05):

I don't know all the flat earthers-

Derek Harju (02:06):

They come to a rescue.

Crystal Heuft (02:07):

Also think we went on the moon.

Derek Harju (02:09):

Well that means that's because there isn't a moon. It's just a flat disc that hangs in the sky.

Crystal Heuft (02:14):

Yeah, on both sides of the flatness.

Derek Harju (02:16):

I brought that up to a person I used to work with, and I was like, "Wait, when you look through a telescope and you see other planets." And I just shrugged and he's like, "Well I'm not saying the other planets aren't a sphere. I'm saying that we aren't."

Crystal Heuft (02:32):

That is great.

Derek Harju (02:32):

I was like, "Cool, I'm going to walk away from this conversation as fast as possible."

Crystal Heuft (02:36):

I just had a realization that when they think it's flat, they don't think people are on both sides. They mean the whole world is on one level. Okay, that's very strange.

Scott Martineau (02:48):

That's actually good you could be like a two sider, because you thought they were on both sides of the flat.

Crystal Heuft (02:53):

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:02:54] I literally see both sides. Hi, this is Crystal.

Derek Harju (02:59):

And this is Derek.

Crystal Heuft (03:00):

And this is Small Biz Buzz presented by Keap. Today we are so lucky, we have our co-founder in the house. Thank you Scott Martineau for being here.

Scott Martineau (03:13):

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be back.

Crystal Heuft (03:15):

I know we must remind everyone of the 89 previous episodes we had done before this happy little relaunch, Scott was on almost all of them. I guess 80% Dusey, is that about right?

Scott Martineau (03:27):

I think [crosstalk 00:03:28]-

Crystal Heuft (03:28):

Perfect, Dusey says it's right.

Scott Martineau (03:29):

... I was supposed to be on more of them than I was. Let's just point that out.

Crystal Heuft (03:33):

You really do own it, which I appreciate. That's one of our core values around here and Scott, lovely Scott said he was supposed to be on all 89. But I would say getting to 66 or whatever Dusey was saying, that's pretty solid.

Scott Martineau (03:46):

Yeah. A lot more to come.

Crystal Heuft (03:47):

Yeah. You're a busy guy. I get it. Today we're going to talk about lifecycle automation.

Derek Harju (03:53):

If I could interject something.

Crystal Heuft (03:55):

Yes please.

Derek Harju (03:56):

I'm relatively new to the company and I'm going to leverage that for everything that's worth. Could somebody explain the lifecycle marketing to me because I have no idea what it is.

Crystal Heuft (04:03):

It's such a good interjection.

Scott Martineau (04:06):

Maybe I'll start with a little history where it came from. As many of our listeners know, we sell software that helps businesses grow. If I go all the way back to the beginning.

Crystal Heuft (04:19):

Way back.

Scott Martineau (04:20):

Way back.

Crystal Heuft (04:21):

Kicking it old school.

Scott Martineau (04:24):

At the time we had relationships with people who would put on marketing events and teach different types of small business owners in different industries how to market. Now this is a time when a lot of the advantages we have today from technology did not exist, so this is the old school marketing days. But we came in and we created software that allowed business owners to market in ways they had never been able to market before. The way we would do that is we, we'd go to events usually that had been put on by these marketers and we would stand up and we would sell from the stage.

Scott Martineau (04:56):

I remember what happened is we were trying to figure out how to play that game, and I remember one day, one of the guys who was up selling for us came up and he's like, "I'm having a hard time with people understanding the concept of what it is that what our software does and how it works and all that stuff. But I got this idea." And that was it hatched and he had this concept called the customer lifecycle. Today the concept is very widely known. The time it wasn't even around. And so he said, "Yes, I think if we could help people understand that there's a way to think about your customer lifecycle and we could create the perfect customer lifecycle for them and help the business owner understand what that journey should look like for the first time they capture a lead and how they would educate them and sell them and so forth."

Scott Martineau (05:48):

So really lifecycle marketing started as a concept to help us figure out how can we explain to people the problem that our software is solving for them. And so there were several iterations of that, the perfect customer lifecycle evolved and we wanted a name that would maybe explain more of a movement around an approach to marketing and that's where the name lifecycle marketing came from. But in essence, it's our attempt as a company at helping to explain to small business owners common problems that they face as they're trying to acquire new customers. Then we use it to share the examples of the strategies that businesses who are most successful use to grow their business.

Crystal Heuft (06:34):

Did that sum that up Derek?

Derek Harju (06:35):

Yes, it helped somewhat. I was curious what say like a typical type of lifecycle marketing versus an ideal one?

Crystal Heuft (06:44):

Oh that's a good question.

Scott Martineau (06:45):

Yeah, that's a good question. Well, we're going deep. I love it Derek. I think maybe to keep it fairly high level, most businesses are hemorrhaging. They don't always know this when we start to talk with them but most businesses have three pretty significant areas of waste where if they could just plug the holes in their business, they could actually grow without needing to go out and spend a lot more money or even a lot more time.

Scott Martineau (07:16):

Usually what we find is people have areas, the three areas of waste that are the biggest challenges are one, they have potential leads that either our visitors coming to their website or people that they're communicating with or talking with, who could become leads but because of their lack of a system for collecting those leads and organizing them, they end up just bouncing off the website and not coming back or whatever. The reality is that most consumers are not probably ready to do business today. And so business owners that don't have a system of collecting those people in, and we'll talk a little bit more maybe about how business owners can think about this.

Scott Martineau (07:56):

But if they don't have a system for that, it means they basically skim off the top. They can close up the hot leads but everybody else just, they go their merry way and so, ends up resulting in a lot of lost leads. Then another area of waste is even those leads that a business owner might think are really hot, somebody that's expressing a lot of interest, when the business owner doesn't have a bulletproof system for keeping track of those leads all the way through to the close and following up clockwork, you end up missing out on customers. There's another huge gaping hole of lost customers.

Scott Martineau (08:31):

Then the third big bucket is people who are brought on as a client who could be repeat customers and sending referrals my way and so forth, where business is if they don't handle that relationship in the right way, they end up missing out on having a lot of lost potential referrals and repeat business. Those are the biggest challenge areas that businesses have and lifecycle marketing helps guide them towards strategies to improve.

Crystal Heuft (08:57):

But at the jest of it, it's really about educating.

Scott Martineau (09:00):

Right.

Crystal Heuft (09:01):

Tell us a little bit more about that and why you believe education is so critical to your customers in the lifecycle.

Scott Martineau (09:11):

I think this is probably a great thing for any business owner to think about. I was thinking about this earlier, I remember hearing Joe Polish talk about the... He's a marketer and a salesperson at heart and a good friend of the company. Joe was talking one time about how much education in the world happens through the sales process. It might be good just to pause and think about that. How much have you learned? I was just thinking about things like, my wife and I built a new home.

Scott Martineau (09:42):

We went out to go buy appliances, and there was a mountain of information I learned that I had never even thought about or considered before, but that sales process is really, the gentleman, he probably hates us by now because there were so many questions. Not all for me, maybe somewhere from my wife, I don't know. But the tremendous amount of education that comes. Think the process of buying a car and it's baked into that.

Crystal Heuft (10:08):

It's true because I feel like a good salesperson understands why to tell you that a feature is worth your time. And that education you're talking about comes in the benefits side of why do I want energy saving appliances? What does that mean to me in the long run? Why am I spending $1,000 more when this one over here does everything else except the energy saving? Well, usually they'll come back and tell you how much you'll save in your bills and how much energy you're saving for the planet, and why that all matters. Because a true salesperson understands that education is key. You have to be able to understand why you're paying extra to get something you didn't know you need before you got in there.

Scott Martineau (10:45):

Right.

Crystal Heuft (10:46):

Really.

Scott Martineau (10:46):

And a lot of times you don't know. These are things you're not even thinking about.

Crystal Heuft (10:50):

Totally.

Scott Martineau (10:50):

Like I wasn't thinking about the air filter that pulls out the certain type of chemical that is released when the piece of fruit starts to go bad, and then it-

Derek Harju (11:01):

It makes the other-

Scott Martineau (11:02):

... contaminates the other fruit.

Crystal Heuft (11:05):

I wasn't thinking that either, and now I'm going to go home and have nightmares. Because I'm not going to maybe throw out my fridge this weekend.

Scott Martineau (11:12):

Yeah. You have, I don't remember the name.

Crystal Heuft (11:12):

It's gross to me.

Derek Harju (11:12):

I super want that [crosstalk 00:11:14]. I've thrown away so many blueberries.

Scott Martineau (11:14):

Yes, seriously.

Derek Harju (11:14):

So many blueberries get thrown away at my house.

Crystal Heuft (11:17):

Once that one raspberry touches the other with all those little bulbs-

Scott Martineau (11:20):

You're done.

Crystal Heuft (11:21):

... connected to one, it's over.

Scott Martineau (11:22):

They don't even have to touch it. It's in the air.

Crystal Heuft (11:24):

I know. I heard that-

Scott Martineau (11:25):

Until you have the air filter that-

Crystal Heuft (11:26):

... before about cheese. Cheese, the mold is the last thing you'll see and that is mind shattering, because how much moldy cheese... Blue cheese, I'll eat. I know it's mold, but it's supposed to be moldy. But like the other, it's like if that's the last form, someone help me, how can I be saved? So yes, education's important and now I literally want to buy a new fridge.

Scott Martineau (11:45):

The crazy thing is you should, you really should.

Crystal Heuft (11:48):

I need to because it's going to give me nightmares.

Scott Martineau (11:51):

You could buy blueberries in season and have them for like nine months.

Crystal Heuft (11:54):

[crosstalk 00:11:54] I literally stopped myself from watching 20/20 anymore, because it was to a point where I was like, I can't go into the world. They would talk about the salmonella outbreak and now I'm so obsessive when I cook and I like to cook, but it gets like kitchen sheers. Oh my God, they tested those things, and I get they're made for, for kitchen. They're kitchen sheers. They usually come in your little knife collection thing, your little block, butcher, whatever that is, it comes in there. I have a roommate, my dear friend Morgan, I hide them from her. I don't let her know where any scissors are.

Derek Harju (12:34):

What is she cutting with them?

Crystal Heuft (12:34):

It doesn't matter. They get in the grooves that's got screws in between the two.

Derek Harju (12:39):

Yeah, that's right. They're hard to clean.

Crystal Heuft (12:39):

They tested them, the amount of bacteria found on them. I don't use them in the kitchen. When she moved into my house, she was like, I saw her using them and that's when you start realizing you've lived alone a really long time. And I was like, "Listen, I'm pretty low key about a lot of things but there will not be any kitchen sheers in the kitchen." She didn't get it.

Scott Martineau (12:59):

You're using these to cut the mold off that cheese, no.

Crystal Heuft (13:02):

Anyways, I'm digressing, but you get it. I can't watch 20/20.

Scott Martineau (13:05):

Here's the thing. When I think about the things in that sales process that caused my wife to make the call on the fridge that we paid way too much money for, that was literally one of the top three selling reasons. That's something that she had no concept of. I think as a business owner you have to think, my ability to educate my prospective customers is critical because I get to frame up the buying experience, the way that my prospective customers think about the questions they're asking and the things that they're weighing. In the absence of that, we basically just get to inherit the buyers system of buying, which unfortunately is a lot of time based on what? Price.

Crystal Heuft (13:49):

True.

Scott Martineau (13:49):

I'm going to go find the lowest price. I'm going to go... Not always but-

Derek Harju (13:52):

Because that's the thing that they can control.

Crystal Heuft (13:55):

And it's definitely a factor.

Derek Harju (13:56):

And consumers are afraid of all a lot of the time. And so they need someone that they trust who can shepherd them through the data points of a thing that they're looking to buy. Because I know when I go to buy-

Crystal Heuft (14:07):

Totally.

Derek Harju (14:07):

... like when I got this smartwatch literally yesterday. And I already spent the first half of the day going, I am returning this thing because I can't make it work the way I want it to work. If I hadn't taken the time to go through the settings, I can imagine there's a bunch of people that just send that thing back. Because it can improve their life but they don't know how. They don't know how. They don't know how or why. Or they don't know that I got the fossil four, they don't know if they want the fossil five. They need someone to educate them on the sales side to make them more competent in their final decision when they lay their money down.

Scott Martineau (14:44):

Well, I think it's a good point that it's not even just before, because right now you've laid the money down and there's an opportunity even after the sale to have a similar impact.

Crystal Heuft (14:54):

With all of this great stuff in mind here, I would say, what about people that just clearly don't want to be sold? Consumers can see it coming a mile away nowadays. What's the key to that?

Scott Martineau (15:07):

Well, ironically, I think this is one of the ways that you can approach people who are in that situation. I think consumers have just a very good spidey sense about, as soon as the pitch is coming on. I think small business owners especially have a really unique advantage to show up in the relationship and start to essentially deliver value to your prospective customer in advance of the sale. That really is probably the most powerful form of marketing, right?

Crystal Heuft (15:37):

Right.

Scott Martineau (15:39):

You're entering the conversation they have in their head that's already going on. You're speaking their language, you understand what they're dealing with and you're showing up as somebody who's helping them versus trying to sell them.

Crystal Heuft (15:51):

And also I think there might be some small businesses listening that think I don't have a cycle of anything. I'm just a small business, mom and pop shop. I know what I'm doing. But can we just clarify for them that all businesses no matter what size, have lifecycle marketing happening? What would be your key tip for them to make sure they can hone in on what that education looks like or how to use lifecycle marketing in what they're doing?

Scott Martineau (16:18):

Well, I'll give a general answer to that, which is I think a trade I've seen with the most successful businesses is they actually have an ability to turn off the part of their brain that says, my business is different than everybody else out there and they actually turn on another part of their brain that says, what can I learn from every situation? In fact, that's one of the reasons that, and we'll probably cut very shortly to talk more about and make fun of big businesses which we hate on this podcast. But there's a lot that we can learn and I think that's probably the general advice I would give. There's... look and find in every possible example you can, ways that you can apply it to your own business.

Crystal Heuft (16:59):

But it is tough to conceptualize I think sometimes, even if they want to really dig in and learn from this. I think sometimes it's hard. You're very insightful and you've thought about this a lot. But what would be like a tweetable, just to bring it back home to what I know, social, what would be a tweetable about lifecycle marketing that all small businesses can really take home?

Scott Martineau (17:21):

Well, We're going to give me about 120 seconds to think about that-

Crystal Heuft (17:25):

And 140 characters.

Scott Martineau (17:26):

... while we cut to you. I'm going to come back after this segment with the answer.

Crystal Heuft (17:30):

Okay. So, you heard it from Scott. We're going right now to Derek, do you want to intro?

Derek Harju (17:36):

Sure. In about five seconds you're going to hear my voice again because you're going to be listening to Worst Business Ideas in History and we're going to take short break.

Crystal Heuft (17:44):

Thank you.

Derek Harju (17:54):

Howdy folks, I'm Derek Harju

Dusey Van Dusen (17:55):

And I'm Dusey Van Dusen.

Dusey Van Dusen (17:57):

And this is Worst Business Ideas in History, the show where we look back at some of the most brutal missteps, failures and flops in consumer history.

Derek Harju (18:04):

And make fun of it.

Dusey Van Dusen (18:05):

But also learn something.

Derek Harju (18:06):

Nope, it says in my contract, I don't have to learn.

Dusey Van Dusen (18:09):

Fine, the rest of us will learn something and you can just mock people's misfortune.

Derek Harju (18:13):

Sounds good.

Dusey Van Dusen (18:15):

Welcome to the Worst Business Ideas in History.

Derek Harju (18:20):

All right. Welcome back everybody. It's another episode of Worst Business Ideas in History.

Dusey Van Dusen (18:26):

And what is on the docket today?

Derek Harju (18:28):

Well, so we haven't done a ton of talk about, we talked about Olestra chips a while back but I realized we haven't talked about food products that much. One of the ones that I have been thinking about for a while comes out of our friends at the Coors Company, which if you live in America, it's hard to not know about Coors.

Dusey Van Dusen (18:51):

Just a little aside, I'm hoping we can do lots more food, ones I enjoy those.

Derek Harju (18:54):

Oh yeah, there's so many terrible food ideas out there.

Dusey Van Dusen (18:59):

So yeah, Coors. I feel like as someone who doesn't drink, you might have to walk me through any details here. Because cause I don't know a lot about products that have alcohol at them.

Derek Harju (19:13):

Okay. Well then I have good news for you because Coors has almost no alcohol in it. Some of you who do know, and I apologize if you're a Coors drinker, but people refer to Coors as construction water all the time. Because you can drink it all day and not get drunk, because it's basically just yellow water.

Dusey Van Dusen (19:33):

Okay.

Derek Harju (19:34):

Some people like it, it's fine. I've drank Coors in the past. It's a great beer to drink if you're just hanging out all day, like a picnic in the park kind of beer, because you can't get drunk on it. Coors has been around forever. They had the banquet beer and then the Coors light, the silver bullet that everybody knows. That's a big part of just part of the zeitgeist in America especially around like NFL season. It's Bud Light and Coors, Bud Light and Coors, Bud Light and Coors and occasionally Miller.

Derek Harju (20:11):

In the 1990s, we've talked before about how the '90s was just a ripe time for companies to try and jump on the healthy eating, healthy drinking bandwagon.

Dusey Van Dusen (20:21):

Yes.

Derek Harju (20:23):

Coors for as long as they've been around, has been, has said Coors is made from pure Rocky Mountain spring water.

Dusey Van Dusen (20:30):

Rocky Mountains. Even I know, yeah I've seen the ads enough.

Derek Harju (20:33):

Yeah. I don't know if they still do. They had the cans that actually had the Rocky Mountains that changed color when it got cold.

Dusey Van Dusen (20:40):

Oh yeah. I feel like I had a T-shirt that did that when I was a kid.

Derek Harju (20:46):

Did you have a hyper color shirt?

Dusey Van Dusen (20:48):

Yeah.

Derek Harju (20:48):

I did too. I had a hyper color shirt that turned from gray to pink.

Dusey Van Dusen (20:53):

Nice.

Derek Harju (20:54):

Which as a middle schooler was a bad choice. Because then I was just the kid that had pink pit stains.

Dusey Van Dusen (21:00):

Yeah, that's pink pits.

Derek Harju (21:04):

Coors was not immune to this and they said, hey, people are all into getting healthy now, we need to make money off of this. And they had a brilliant idea. We talk all the time about how our product is made from Rocky Mountain spring water. Let's just take all the other stuff out of the product and just sell people the Rocky Mountain spring water.

Dusey Van Dusen (21:29):

Wait, this is a drink for me.

Derek Harju (21:30):

Sure. Yes, you can 100% drink this product. That's what they did. They had the idea which at a glance, it's a good idea. They're like we can-

Dusey Van Dusen (21:42):

We got access to great water. People are already selling water. Use it for more than one product, right?

Derek Harju (21:48):

Yeah. They already have access to the water supply. They have an established brand that is known for their Rocky Mountain spring water. They have bottling plants, everything's set up. It's just a marketing decision now. Well here's where things go off the rails. If you want to put out a new bottled water, at the time there's Evian and Perrier, and a handful of others. But Evian and Perrier rule the roost.

Derek Harju (22:15):

Well they both have a high falutin, for lack of a better term. Evian has a prestigious name. Perrier has its [inaudible 00:22:24]. I'm relatively certain Perrier is 100% an American company with a French name. It's like Häagen-Dazs. Did you know that Häagen-Dazs is a made up word?

Dusey Van Dusen (22:34):

No, I had no idea.

Derek Harju (22:36):

It is not German, it's not anything. It's a made up word to make people think that it's from a different country. But that's a different show. Next comes this new product to rival the prestige of Evian and Perrier. And what name do they choose for it? Coors.

Dusey Van Dusen (22:55):

Okay.

Derek Harju (22:55):

When you go to the store on a shelf, you see a six pack with six glass bottles in it, and the words Coors across the front.

Dusey Van Dusen (23:07):

I can understand wanting to leverage your brand that is very well known, but I am sensing a problem.

Derek Harju (23:14):

Sure. The problem is what you would imagine. The Coors was the biggest part of the label. A big ribbon that said Coors and then underneath that, Rocky Mountain Water.

Dusey Van Dusen (23:32):

Which the normal Coors with alcohol also said on it, right?

Derek Harju (23:32):

Yes. Also says made from Rocky Mountain spring water. People would go to the store, they're in the water section, which I mentioned at the time it was literally just Perrier, Evian, and then this new weird product, they look at it and they go, "Oh somebody put beer in the water section. Well, I'm not going to drink that. I didn't come to the store for beer."

Dusey Van Dusen (23:51):

That's a funny joke. Because it is like water. Let's get some.

Derek Harju (23:59):

I would love to say there were a bunch of missteps here, that's it. The marketing decision to leverage the existing Coors name on their water instead of creating a new brand, led to so much market confusion that people routinely bought the water thinking it was beer, which made them angry, or they bought the beer not understanding that which one was which. Not to mention the fact that it came in a glass six pack, which people at the time they were drinking water as part of the fitness craze or the health craze. You can't take a glass bottle into a gym. They tend to frown on it.

Dusey Van Dusen (24:37):

And it's not like the glass bottles six pack is probably pretty much only alcohol. Nowadays there's a little soda section but I think in the '90s I don't remember ever seeing anything like that with glass bottles often.

Derek Harju (24:48):

No. That's the thing is that now there's this whole, you have to read a label really close. Because I was buying Kombucha a while back, got it home and realized I had bought adult Kombucha.

Dusey Van Dusen (24:59):

Okay. If I'm ready for Small Biz Buzzed with adult Kombucha.

Derek Harju (25:06):

Listen, if we got carte blanche to actually do that show, I would do it in a heartbeat. If anybody would like to comment in the section as to whether or not you would want to hear a show called Small Biz Buzzed, where maybe we do the show slightly impaired in one way or another, I'm down for that. It was a huge failure. They lost a lot of money. There was a woman in a magazine called Women's Day that was quoted with the only positive review that I could find which was that, "Coors sparkling water was the best sparkling water I've ever bought. It was very wet."

Dusey Van Dusen (25:45):

Wonderful.

Derek Harju (25:47):

Other side of the coin, so the water is a huge failure. It goes out of business within two years, they scrap it. You can find six packs of the stuff on eBay for $150 now.

Dusey Van Dusen (25:56):

Yeah [crosstalk 00:25:57].

Derek Harju (25:57):

If you want to drink that product, go for it, I'm not spending that money for that product. But on the other side of the coin, a man in Florida, not that long ago, sued Coors because he said they were no longer using Rocky Mountain spring water in their beer, which apparently is accurate. Because Coors has expanded over the years. It's gotten huge. If you read up on things like even the World Cup and how much money goes into selling beer through huge sporting events like that. It's more than the GDP of some countries. It's crazy.

Dusey Van Dusen (26:33):

Isn't beer supposed to be credited with... Man, I don't have it on the tip of my tongue but I'm just thinking of very early trade of how beer made the world go round.

Derek Harju (26:43):

[inaudible 00:26:43] because it would probably last longer than clean water at the time.

Dusey Van Dusen (26:49):

So it's a long history beer being a large part of the economy.

Derek Harju (26:54):

Yeah. He sued, I don't believe it actually ever reached a judgment, but he sued because Coors had in fact expanded to the point where they were no longer sourcing most of their water from the Rocky Mountains with the exception of Coors light apparently.

Dusey Van Dusen (27:09):

Okay.

Derek Harju (27:11):

But that's really it. So what can we learn from this debacle?

Dusey Van Dusen (27:17):

Yeah. A few things jump to mind immediately and the first is your brand matters. When people hear Coors, they think beer. And if they see Coors, they think beer, whether or not it is beer. So for our small businesses out there, I would say really stop for a moment and try to find out what your brand means to your customers or to people who know about you and aren't your customers. Because it might mean one thing to you and it might mean something different to them. Does your brand mean competitive prices at the service that you give? Does your brand mean luxury items? What does it mean to these people?

Dusey Van Dusen (27:57):

Quality service or is there, is it tied to just quality service in general or is it really tied to your specific vertical? Because if it's not as tied to your vertical, if people don't think plumbing or accounting or whatever the thing is, but they think, well they just do a really good job at whatever they do, maybe you can expand into something else. The whole point being, take some time to think about your brand, what you want it to mean, but also what it actually does mean to other people.

Derek Harju (28:23):

Sure. If you have spent 70 years, which would have been accurate, teaching people when they hear the name Coors, they think of a refreshing beer on a hot Saturday afternoon. Well then, that's what they're going to think when you put out another product called Coors.

Dusey Van Dusen (28:40):

Exactly.

Derek Harju (28:41):

You did a really good job and now you're trying to untrain all of your customers to think of you as something else. Be very, very careful as a business about trying to shift your perception so quickly.

Dusey Van Dusen (28:55):

Another thing you mentioned at the end of the little coda of the lawsuit about their advertising, keeping that in mind, when you do ads or you put out social posts or whatever, setting the proper expectations. If you're saying in this case it was trying to be a case of, is this false advertising? But setting those expectations throughout your funnel of what your product really is, and not more, not less. Not saying don't say it's great. Obviously you're going to be saying that, hey, this is great and here's why and here's all these reasons to believe that it's great.

Dusey Van Dusen (29:30):

A common mistake might be a small business saying, hey, this is for everybody. This product, no matter who you are, you're going to benefit from this. They want everybody in the world ever to use it. Rather than getting really narrow and saying, hey, this is really for people that are here. This is really for people that are looking for this kind of solution and getting targeted. That targeted advertising is going to be a lot more effective. It's related in terms of, it's not just being honest in your advertising but not setting false expectations.

Derek Harju (30:01):

That's the lesson. If you've worked really hard to be one thing, don't try to be something else overnight maybe. This has been Derek Harju.

Dusey Van Dusen (30:10):

And this is Dusey Van Dusen.

Derek Harju (30:11):

And you've been listening to Worst Business Ideas in History, and we're going to throw it back to Small Biz Buzz in just a second. We hope you guys have enjoyed the show.

Derek Harju (30:19):

Keeping ever expanding client info straight, sending the same emails hundreds of times, scheduling and rescheduling appointments over and over. Who enjoys this nonsense? No one except my cousin Brent, and Brent is the absolute worst. Keap is the premier all in one CRM. Just head over to keap.com, that's K-E-A-P.com, and start your free trial today. Get the busy work out of the way, so you can focus on what's important and make your small business grow with Keap. Start your free trial at keap.com, that's K-E-A-P.com. More business, less work that's Keap.

Crystal Heuft (30:59):

Okay, and we're back. Right before the break, hopefully you guys enjoyed that Worst Business Idea in History. Right before the break, Derek and I were trying to get a tweetable out of Scott, which I'll tell you, I've wrote a couple of tweets for Scott, a couple of responses on Facebook I've tried to help him with that I will tell you, he really writes most of his stuff. When I say I wrote it, I tried to edit it down from a book to something that fits on social. But we're going to give this a go and I want you to give me a tweetable of why is lifecycle marketing important for all size businesses.

Scott Martineau (31:32):

Are you counting characters?

Crystal Heuft (31:34):

I'm going to try really quickly. Actually, I know tweets like the back of my hand and I'm going to know.

Scott Martineau (31:39):

You just feel it. You just sense it.

Crystal Heuft (31:40):

Is this a tweet or not.

Scott Martineau (31:41):

You just sense it.

Crystal Heuft (31:42):

Because I'm not good at brevity, and so that Twitter, man, when I first started in social media, I was like, this thing hates me. I can't put this post out.

Scott Martineau (31:49):

I don't actually care about the limit. I'm just going to speak. I'm going to combine four tweets together, ready?

Crystal Heuft (31:56):

Rebel at heart over here guys.

Scott Martineau (31:59):

The reality is that doesn't count. Don't constrain me Crystal.

Crystal Heuft (32:07):

Okay, give it your best chance to be brief.

Scott Martineau (32:10):

Every small business can find growth when they implement three key systems. One, you need a system for attracting and collecting and organizing prospective customers. Two, you need to have a system for what I would say nurturing or educating and converting those potential customers into customers and clients. And three, you need a system for turning clients into raving fans. Who buy a bunch from you and tell all their friends about it.

Crystal Heuft (32:48):

I'm going to say you succeeded. Not at the tweet level, but you succeeded in really making me grasp the entirety of that. And I think you probably helped anyone listening grasp the importance and you can really see why all three of those buckets or systems are important to grow. I think you made it very clear, so thank you.

Scott Martineau (33:09):

Yeah, and we'll spend a lot more time I think on the podcast talking about specifics, but I'll just say the great news is that in most businesses there's a lot of low hanging fruit. The way we've structured lifecycle marketing, there's simple things every business needs to do that many are not, all the way down to super advanced strategies that can help people. You don't need to be some advanced marketer sales person to start to put these things into play.

Crystal Heuft (33:37):

I love low hanging fruit until it's rotten and touches all the others, and then I'm out.

Derek Harju (33:43):

I had a question about when people are marketing and they're trying to disguise sales as education through their businesses. I know that I've seen attempts at that and it's really, really easy to spot. What advice would you give to people who have small businesses who are like, I want to educate my audience but I got to move units? What advice would you give them? Is it just plow headlong into education and hope that the sales follow or-

Crystal Heuft (34:16):

I love that question.

Scott Martineau (34:17):

I think first thing is I wouldn't recommend disguising. In other words, I think for this to work you actually have to be committed to creating value for your customers in advance of the sale. That's probably the first point. Then you don't have anything to disguise, you just you're genuinely doing that. But I think to your broader point, I got to have sales to actually be able to pay the bills and feed my family and so forth. I think it's important to realize that people are in different stages of the buying process, and there are always going to be some people who are ready to go today. I'm not suggesting that we need to use education to slow down or put a barrier in front of somebody who's just ready to go.

Scott Martineau (35:08):

By the way, most business owners actually do really well with handling businesses who are hot and, oh sorry, prospective customers who are really hot and ready to go. Continue the work that you're doing there, and I would say find ways to leverage education for, especially for people who are maybe not as far along in that buying process. You weren't going to get them anyway with your hardcore sales tactics. Think about it as a balanced approach, we got to do both.

Scott Martineau (35:35):

Then the last thing is I think part of what's going on here in this process as we're trying to get timing right. Unfortunately our leads don't necessarily want to buy just because we have to feed our family. They're caring people but they don't care that much. Because they're worried about feeding their family.

Crystal Heuft (35:57):

Yeah. At first I thought you meant your family is caring people.

Scott Martineau (36:00):

No.

Crystal Heuft (36:00):

But now you're saying, I was like, they do need to eat though, Scott [crosstalk 00:36:04].

Scott Martineau (36:04):

They do need, yes. But my point is timing is a really critical thing. Throughout the experience of delivering education, I think we have opportunities just to be creative about putting in front of people. If you're delivering genuine value, you should feel comfortable putting in front of people just really clear calls to action that cause them to bubble up out of the wood works or out of the... to bubble up his perspective, hot leads that you can then go take on a different path.

Derek Harju (36:36):

Do you think there's a secondary value in putting out that kind of education, empowering people who are either top of say what you would call top of funnel or may not even be near the funnel yet, and being able to make a brand evangelist out of somebody who hasn't actually bought your product yet?

Scott Martineau (36:52):

Yes, totally. I can think of a lot of situations like that where I've taken something that I've received of an educational nature, passed it on to somebody else without ever engaging in a transaction. I think it's a great point. Well, let's take this podcast. I'm sure every listener is going to get off this episode and share it with all of their friends. And some of our listeners are not-

Crystal Heuft (37:15):

And give us a five-star rating.

Scott Martineau (37:17):

Yeah.

Derek Harju (37:17):

Only a five-star rating. I can't stress that enough. Four is not a compliment.

Scott Martineau (37:22):

Four is not.

Crystal Heuft (37:23):

I like you to give us good reviews, which Derek is the producer and he's always telling me, don't say that. But I really do. I want us to keep getting better, but it is hard to come back from a bad review, so maybe just tweet me instead.

Scott Martineau (37:34):

But I think podcasts are, there's a lot of people who are selling products who have podcasts, and I could list off 10 podcasts that I've explicitly shared with somebody else, because I felt like it would deliver value to them because I had felt the value and I hadn't purchased anything from them.

Crystal Heuft (37:50):

I've thought of one, one outside of this world. Well literally, actually. I am dying to go to the Hogwarts at Universal Studios, dying.

Derek Harju (38:02):

You should, it's fantastic.

Crystal Heuft (38:02):

Brand evangelists ready to go, want it to snow on me in the winter, ready to go have a magical experience and I have not even been there. But I'm already hook, line and sinker.

Derek Harju (38:11):

I've been to all of them.

Crystal Heuft (38:12):

Now I'm really jealous.

Derek Harju (38:14):

Even the one in Tokyo.

Crystal Heuft (38:15):

I've already lost track of my example but I hope you all got that before I had FOMO and totally forgot what I was doing. But I do want to get to a point that I think is very important about this topic. Tell us about what we've learned from the moments we've backed away from education, and how we know that's the right way to go now.

Scott Martineau (38:32):

Yeah, great point. I think creating education takes an investment, and I don't think we should shy away from that. It does take an investment and so part of what you're talking about Crystal, is just the resistance to the ad investment.

Crystal Heuft (38:48):

And to [crosstalk 00:38:49]-

Scott Martineau (38:48):

Me coming in and complaining about the podcast and are we going to have to why or no. But it does take an investment and so yeah, you're right. We have had seasons where we've maybe tried to focus more on let's just sell, and this is our business example that you can find application in yours. But I think what we learned is we end up going back to the same situation where the preparedness of our prospects, the value that they've received from us just totally changes.

Scott Martineau (39:19):

And it becomes more of a transactional relationship that results in, like you're saying Derek with your watch. It's like people come in, maybe we could optimize a page for somebody to come in and buy something quickly and so forth. But there's a level of depth in that relationship that just doesn't exist, and you can compare and contrast that with other customers we have that are lifelong fans who understand the problems in their businesses in a brand new way and who in many ways give us credit or appreciate the fact that we help them to educate or-

Crystal Heuft (39:54):

Totally.

Scott Martineau (39:55):

... one of our partners did. For me it's just there's a quality of relationship that just can't get it without that. But we are, for our listeners who are interested, I can't share anything specific today, but we're doing a full relaunch of lifecycle marketing-

Crystal Heuft (40:11):

Exciting.

Scott Martineau (40:11):

... which is going to be the byproduct of our existing lifecycle marketing framework married with our beautiful new Keap brand and so I'm really excited about-

Crystal Heuft (40:19):

So cool.

Scott Martineau (40:20):

... what will come.

Crystal Heuft (40:20):

And they might see more of you.

Scott Martineau (40:21):

And they might see more of me.

Crystal Heuft (40:23):

Maybe on a whiteboard on LinkedIn live-

Scott Martineau (40:24):

That's right.

Crystal Heuft (40:26):

... sharing some of those details.

Scott Martineau (40:27):

That's right.

Crystal Heuft (40:27):

So you guys keep watching for that and more from what we've learned in lifecycle marketing 2.0 from mistakes we've learned, from things we've learned from other small businesses like yourself out there. I think it's going to be really exciting time.

Scott Martineau (40:43):

A few, maybe just some closing thoughts for our listeners to consider how they could maybe take this back and start to think about education in their own sales and marketing. I think, just a few recommendations. One thing is think about, you as the business owner serving your clients, think about one responsibility you have is to be the master of the problems that your target market faces. Now, not all of their problems, thankfully, but especially the problems that fit into this solution space that you're providing.

Scott Martineau (41:15):

You need to master that and if you're selling refrigerators, you've got to understand how people think about their cheeses and their berries and all of the above-

Crystal Heuft (41:23):

It's important.

Scott Martineau (41:23):

... and what it does to a wife who doesn't want to go out shop or a mom who doesn't want to go out shopping for all the stuff again that she just bought last week.

Derek Harju (41:32):

Fun fact about refrigerators. I learned after the fact that if you have a 36-inch space where a refrigerator should go, you should not buy a 36-inch refrigerator.

Crystal Heuft (41:42):

It's such a good lesson.

Derek Harju (41:43):

I then learned how to move a wall.

Crystal Heuft (41:46):

Wow. That's what you do if you get the refrigerator you love. I talk about dual income refrigerator, and sometimes I wonder if I'm looking for the right person now for love or because I want a dual income refrigerator. You really hit a soft spot today, and I'm like really have FOMO about whatever fridge you got and your safe berries. It's like how is this possible?

Scott Martineau (42:09):

One of the ways you can get more clear about those problems and get into some of the [crosstalk 00:42:13]-

Crystal Heuft (42:13):

Thanks for bringing it home.

Scott Martineau (42:15):

Well I'm just saying these are a great example. Whoever sells refrigerators, re-listen to this because you've got a lot of great stuff here. But if you don't sell refrigerators, a few things you can do, interview customers. Sit down and talk to them, talk to them but with a special focus on the problems. If you are out selling, it's likely that you already understand these things. If you have salespeople who are selling for you, sit down and interview them to make sure that you're really extracting from them, what are the biggest problems that people face? Write them down, clearly articulate them so that you're understanding what you're going to go tackle with your education. That's one thought.

Scott Martineau (42:52):

And you just have to be aware that it will always feel a little bit more second nature to you, and you have to be careful then to realize it's actually very unique. Sorry, let be more clear. What is second nature to you is not second nature to the people that you're trying to sell to you necessarily.

Crystal Heuft (43:09):

Sure.

Scott Martineau (43:09):

Then I think there's a lot of opportunities to just be creative in the ways that you then go about educating your customers. Obviously you can use products like Keap or others to send out in a whole variety of formats and video and in email messages or text messages, to educate people and be creative with it, and be fun with it. One of the advantages I think small businesses have is you can bring personality to a relationship-

Crystal Heuft (43:38):

Totally.

Scott Martineau (43:38):

... that these big brands will really, really struggle to do. So be personal and lean into the fact that you are the small business owner. Then another thing is don't be afraid to teach people things that you're wanting them to pay you to do. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but I've seen a lot of fear in business owners trying to say, well, I don't want to teach him that, that's what I'm going to actually come do.

Scott Martineau (44:03):

But it actually ends up being the opposite. You teach them, what ends up happening is they view you as the expert. And when they don't want to be, as Dusey shared yesterday, the one mixing the chemicals, check the water and so forth, that's who are they going to call. They're not going to call any pool maintenance person, they're going to call you. Then last thing is just watch. Once you begin to have this educational content that's available, watch for engagement in that content as a sign for people's interest being higher.

Crystal Heuft (44:37):

Totally.

Scott Martineau (44:37):

If a realtor is following up with me about home valuations which is something you start thinking about when you're about to sell your home, and you can see that I'm engaging with that educational content, it's a great time to reach out. Use engagement in that education as a way to indicate possible interest and then you can move forward to out of your disguise mode, just kidding.

Derek Harju (45:00):

Typically I wasn't suggesting [crosstalk 00:45:02]-

Crystal Heuft (45:01):

You were playing devil's advocate, which is good.

Derek Harju (45:03):

... I was saying that some people might.

Crystal Heuft (45:06):

[crosstalk 00:45:06] And there's so many people that think like that, so I think that was good to come from that-

Derek Harju (45:10):

I've worked for people that-

Crystal Heuft (45:11):

... perspective.

Derek Harju (45:13):

... specifically instructed me to do that, who I won't name on this show.

Crystal Heuft (45:15):

Well before we start naming names, I think we should wrap up the topic for today.

Derek Harju (45:19):

Yeah, we're getting the light.

Crystal Heuft (45:20):

Thank you guys so much for listening today. We hope we've given you some stuff to think about. Educating your customers, using three different systems for your lifecycle marketing. Thanks again for being here. Scott, I have a feeling you'll be here more often.

Scott Martineau (45:33):

I will be. Thanks for having me.

Crystal Heuft (45:35):

Okay, thanks guys. Thanks Derek.

Derek Harju (45:37):

Thank you. Bye.

Scott Martineau (45:38):

Adios.

Derek Harju (45:41):

Thanks for listening to Small Biz Buzz. Please take a second to subscribe to the show and leave a five-star rating. It helps keep the show going. If you need a hand with growing your small business, head over to keap.com. That's K-E-A-P.com, and get started. More business, less work, that's Keap.



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