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You probably shouldn’t try to boil down everything in life to a checklist. But checklists are comforting. They answer the question, “what are the essential things I must do?”.  Last week at an event in New York City, I gave a talk that ended up, ultimately, being a checklist – a checklist for how to answer the question, “what do you do?”, in your marketing materials. You might call it a brand messaging formula and it encompasses positioning and unique value proposition.

I have talked about brand messaging elsewhere, where it was interesting to probe the branding of colonial-era Mexican cattle-ranching. I think it’s a useful concept because compresses a mid-sized idea into two words; the compression of your positioning and unique story into the smallest, most accurate, and most galvanizing words possible. 

If you do this with accuracy, you will always learn something new about what you actually do – and be able to express it better.

Words are events. They do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer.
– Ursula Le Guin

Speaking of positioning, our brand messaging checklist reads like a positioning statement – by design. So imagine someone comes to your company website and asks, “What do you do?”. Try telling them this:

1. I solve a particular kind of expensive problem
2. For a particular target market
3. By leveraging a particular kind of expertise
4. All with a particular, unique difference
5. Because of our relevant, human backstory
6. And because we have strong points of view
7. (Mirroring language/ideas of your audience)

The funny thing about the first two items on this checklist is that they are things you do, not things you say you do. I mean, you should say you do them, but first, you have to do them.

And this is one of my core beliefs in marketing – what you actually do, as in results gained for your clients, is always step one. Put less politely, if your product sucks, brand messaging and marketing is pointless. 

But let’s assume you do these things – that you solve a particular problem or kind of problem, that you solve that problem not for anyone, but for a target market.

If you do so in a way that creates value, then you really should trouble yourself to put that into words with accuracy. Because now you have the foundation of the answer to the What Do You Do question. I don’t mean at cocktail parties, or to relatives who basically reduce the entire modern digital economy to, “Oh, so you do computers”. I mean your customers or people who know them.

So on your website, business card, marketing emails, and other materials – even within your product – it’s vitally important to express what you do as a problem solution for a certain type of person likely to suffer from that problem remaining unsolved.

Of course, we are used to describing what we do with #3 – our expertise, hopefully. If you’re not good at it yet, it may be less an expertise and more of a skill or just an ability. 

Again, step one here is actually doing – cultivating expertise, that is. Then once you cultivate it, you can talk about why and how you cultivate it – and why it’s useful for solving a particular kind of problem.

At part four of the checklist, we come to a convenient delineation point, where we have described what Jonathan Stark calls the “Laser-Focused Positioning Statement” or LFPS. The last piece of the LFPS is about having and articulating a unique difference is a way of setting yourself apart from other who solve the same problem, for the same industry or audience, and with the same area of expertise.

Making Uniqueness a Part of Your Brand Messaging Formula

Unique differences are rare, especially in positioning. Most businesses claim a unique difference that is commonplace. For example, “We are different from other SaaS messaging apps because we use an Agile development process and are 100% mobile-first”. Neither Agile development nor mobile-first comprises a unique difference.

So you have to dig deeper and look at who your team is, who you are. And you also have to look outside of yourself. That work gives you true distinction: a relevant, human backstory that explains why you do what you do. And strong points of view. I think these last two pieces are necessary additions to the LFPS, if you are truly interested in understanding for yourself how you are different.

“What is your overarching point of view? What conventions will you challenge or dragons will you slay?
– Blair Enns, Win Without Pitching

Finally, mirroring. Mirroring is the behavior in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. I suggest you cultivate this behavior as you examine the people you are trying to help so that you can be better understood.

Checklists and formulas have limited value, but this one might help you find the right words. 

Let me know if you have other ideas.

 

The process for describing what you do is as definite a process as the production of Fords. 

I ripped that quote off from James Webb Young, who wrote an excellent book called A Technique for Getting Ideas, which codifies “the” ideation process, which is based on leveraging the subconscious mind in combination with doing an absurd amount of research. 

As Gary Bencivenga said about copywriting, “You should know 7x more than you think you need to know.” This applies to all kinds of problem-solving undertakings in business, not just finding the right messaging. 

But it’s indispensable advice when it comes to finding messaging. If you want to describe what you do well, you should know 7 times more about what you do than you think you need to know.

Here’s a caveat or three, though: I don’t know much about how to describe what you do if you are an employee; I was never any good at that, maybe because I didn’t know what the question was: what do I myself do, or what does my company do? 

So if you are a full-time employee listening to this talk, YMMV. I am speaking to people who have some kind of stake in their business, whether it’s a few points or 100% ownership. 

Those of us who literally own what we do should be able to say what we do, who we do it for, the problem it solves, and what’s different or unique about our approach.

Johnathan Stark, the author of hourly billing is nuts and host of the Pricing Seminar, calls this the LFPS: the laser-focused positioning statement. Here’s the LFPS with handy merge tags.

We’re a [DISCIPLINE] who helps [TARGET MARKET] with [EXPENSIVE PROBLEM]. Unlike my competitors, [UNIQUE DIFFERENCE].

A simpler way to describe this is, “X for Y”: We’re a [DISCPLINE] who helps [TARGET MARKET]. 

What’s the problem? I don’t like this very much because it doesn’t specify the expensive problem.

Most SaaS providers and tech consultancies have this in common: they skip the middle parts, the target market, and the expensive problem. And they don’t even propose a unique a difference; instead, they propose a non-unique difference.

Or they propose a unique difference that is emotionally stale. If you can

I’m a messaging expert who helps B2B tech firms balance short and long term lead generation. Unlike most of my competitors, I use a unique ideation process that combines intensive research and subconscious contemplation.

Extend your unique difference with strong points of view

Going beyond describing what you do: hold distinct points of view. There’s a coach named Alberto Rhiel who does a fabulous job in describing what he does. Alberto is a coach and course teacher who helps life insurance agents create lead generation through by (a) developing professional talent and (B) instituting a specific kind of digital marketing funnel

That’s not a bad positioning statement. Actually, it’s a great one. But he doesn’t stop there; he has a story to tell that comes with a strong point of view.

Alberto grew up in a middle-class home attending a local private school in Houston, Texas, where he was an A student and the oldest of four children. He had stability and security. Until he was 9. When he was 9, his father died in a tragic accident. And unfortunately, Alberto’s father was the sole breadwinner.

But he had life insurance, so no problem – right? Wrong. The policy was badly written. Sloppily written. Negligently written.

And the life insurance company did what life insurance companies do – denied all the benefits to Alberto’s family based on a technicality. After a failed legal battle, and with infant children to raise, Alberto’s mom had to sell their home and move into a challenging, dangerous Houston neighborhood; private school and college tuition were out of the question.

So what is Alberto’s strong point of view? That no child should ever be denied a future because of a badly written life insurance policy.

And he’s making sure that happens, one life insurance agent at a time.

And if that doesn’t make you choke up a little, then you maybe you aren’t a very emotive person, which is OK. I know some of my readers are engineers (sorry couldn’t resist).

He has another point of view that might provide some comic relief: no life insurance agent should ever sell a policy over Thanksgiving dinner. Funny, but foundational to his definition of what he does: generate leads from outside the friends and family Rolodex. As it should be. By the way, part of how he does that is through leveraging paid digital advertising, which Max Bidna talks about.

So take Alberto’s example for your business. Reinforce your unique difference with strong, even emotional, points of view.

I’ll give you a few of my own. I believe that:

• I believe the messaging in your marketing should be a reflection of the messaging in your product or services, and vice versa. And I mean the actual words baked into the UI. Chris talks about this in his presentation.
• I view messaging and strategy as inseparable because a strategy is always expressed in words. I don’t believe that it’s possible to define a strategy without being able to write it into words that inspire action
• In the B2B tech space, I view the differentiation between product as services as semantics, ultimately. You use software to solve business problems; who cares how it’s delivered and priced? That’s not the point; the point is how it solves problems for specific targets.
• Independent entrepreneurs and experts have the ability to change the world by liberating global revenue from the global Fortune 5000, which takes 80% of worldwide GDP, with per-employee revenue of $400,000/year. 
• I view the act of helping entrepreneurs and experts tap into that almost limitless source of wealth by solving the dual problems of short term and long term lead generation.

Of course, when I say “of my own”, you have to laugh at me. There is no such thing as an idea of my own, ultimately. All of our ideas are ultimately combinations of pre-existing ideas. 

How to apply this with a real-life example. I have been talking to a SaaS startup who solves a seemingly age-old problem: CRM UI’s suck.

Has anyone else been in a services, sales, support, or marketing role – and been forced to use a CRM? Raise your hand? And did the word “forced” come to mind all too often? Raise your hand.

The number one obstacle to CRM adoption is not training or motivation, but usability. HubSpot sort of solves this problem. Ironically, even Salesforce 

What does it mean to describe what you do? If you could boil it down to its very essence, it’s the problem you solve. That’s the one piece you can’t leave out.

The scope of your definition is dictated by the context. Sometimes the context is quite literal, as in the case of LinkedIn, or Twitter, constraining character count. 

Other ways to talk about what your business does. 

I’ve been using the principle of positioning as a foundation for describing what you do; specifically “cross-hair positioning”, or what LFPS. Philip Morgan talks about 

 

 

Have you ever wondered while reading something, “Who wrote this, anyway”?

Well, Google is wondering the same thing. And they want an answer.

So, while the battle between literate, well-written web copy and SEO rages on, just a word of advice: associate yourself with your content as its author.

Writing compelling, detailed content without cultivating equally compelling authorship is leaving money on the table. 

Gone (or at least, going) are the days of “content writers”. And kind of but not entirely gone are the days of ghostwriters.

Side-note: do you have any idea how many entrepreneurs and agency owners have asked me to write in their name?

Those days are ending; time to practice writing.

Here’s why: just a couple of months ago, Google quietly released one of the highest-impact algorithm updates in more than 5 years.

I don’t know it has an official name, but you might call it the EAT update, an acronym Google uses to describes its core rating methodology. (If you know the name, hit reply and let me know!) in its internal materials, such as its Search Quality Rater Guidelines (SQRG)

Google’s SQRG (a 165-page PDF document you can download here) was heavily updated in conjunction with the algorithm update. 

This document repeatedly asks quality raters to consider not just the content but the content’s “creator”, with the acronym EAT standing for the creator’s Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (hmm, reminds me of Photofeeler.com’s rating guidelines on business profile photos, but I digress).

Let’s take a look right into Google guidelines – as we speak, actual humans are busily evaluating the effectiveness of Google’s most recent update against these very guidelines; they are asked to consider:

● The expertise of the creator of the main content.

● The authoritativeness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself, and the website.

● The trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself, and the website.

This makes me so happy. 

As you may know, I’m not “an SEO” (When you you hear “an SEO”, that refers to someone exclusively focused on cultivating SEO expertise; someone who bases her professional services on the practice). I am however, a full-stack digital marketing consultant; SEO is a fundamental part of the stack.

It’s definitely not dead, either, as has been routinely claimed over the past 15 years.

And by its nature it’s still the one of the wild frontiers of online marketing; as I wrote in the Cannabis SEO Principle, it is the de facto least-regulated form of marketing available to us (because it relies so much more heavily on automation than other mediums).

Anway, back to being happy. What makes me happy is when Google makes it easier to reconcile search engine optimization with copywriting, conversion rate optimisation, even good UX design. This is one of those moments.

Why?

Because once again, it pushes back on mindless content. Just like the famous Penguin update (actually a series of updates released between 2012 and 2016). Penguin started rolling out in 2012, though most of us didn’t start notice, let alone start to capitalize on it until 2 or 3 years later.

Penguin instantly made frequent, short “fluff posts” as worthless as they truly are – “search spam”. Seth Godin and a few others wrote valuable, 300 to 500 word blog posts. Short, frequent, and very sweet.

But most posts of that length are pure garbage.

What displaced short-form search spam was longer and much more detailed content.

A study of search results on 1 million keywords by Brian Dean in 2016 showed the top results tended to average nearly 2,000 words. And any cursory examination of “competitive” content on BuzzSumo will reveal that 3,000+ word content items tend to get the highest engagement.

In fact, Brian Dean and other SEOs codified approaches (e.g. Skyscraper) to writing high-ranking content by, basically, writing long, detailed, useful content and promoting the hell out of it. This was directly related to his extensive research.

Interestingly, Brian recently revised his “formula” in what he’s calling Skyscraper 2.0. That’s not a direct reflection of Google’s authorship EAT update, but it’s related.

Because here’s what the Penguin update accomplished – or set out to accomplish:

1. Favor expertise over frequency
2. Encourage content authors to do – and present – more research
3. Expose poor literacy
4. Encourage authors to take a stand on subject matter

And while it accomplished all of those goals to some extent, people have found ways to game it by hacking the Skyscraper technique; hiring content creators to pump out long form content. 

I don’t want to read that crap. Do you?

They found ways to give Google the impression of expertise, and research, and to entice users to read further by making bold claims and promises. 

In response Google has steadily released micro-updates designed to reflect user engagement – and user intent. Is the content what the reader expected? How far down the page did they scroll? How much time did they spend on the page.

Deep user engagement metrics like those are telling. In fact, Brian Dean’s Skyscraper 2.0 approach revolves entirely around user intent – ensuring tight synchronicity between what the article promises (SEO Title + Meta description) and what she gets.

I believe this is part of why I’ve been able to rank well-researched, long-form articles such as the Cannabis SEO Principle for very competitive keywords (e.g. Cannabis SEO Consultant)  without doing any time-consuming backlinking.

But the EAT update actually takes it a step further than user engagement and user intent, let alone depth – it makes us answer that question, “who wrote this, anyway?”. And answer it in spades.

And hopefully after writing this, the author this content will himself update his WordPress installation to neatly open and close each piece of content with information about the author. (I’m sure FB graph, semantic markup, blah blah, applies too).

But I don’t endorse this purely for SEO reasons; I ignore SEO best practices all the time. The title of this post, for example, (“Who wrote this, anyway? Not an SEO”) is far from SEO optimized because it doesn’t target a specific and relevant keyword that I have any chance of ranking for. But that’s OK,  because it attempts to summarize what this article is about.

And I’m fine with that compromise; I will side with readable, useful, and well-written everytime when faced with a choice between that and SEO optimization. 

Answering the “Who wrote that” question, in detail, is a great way to be useful. Nice one, GOOG.

So will you take action, or just me?

Yours,
– Rowan

p.s. I’d recommend something like the below for every piece of content 👇🏻

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About the Author

Rowan H. Price is a digital business development consultant with lots of practice in digital marketing and technology consulting. As the former co-founder of a marketing integration agency, he’s worked for large organizations like IBM, the United Nations, the Smithsonian, and Tiffany & Co. Rowan now helps digital experts and entrepreneurs, many of whom have B2B agencies or tech startups. More about Rowan’s professional background on LinkedIn, spy on his pathetic Medium account here, and read other articles by Rowan here.

Concretely, a person who has some interest in your person (employee, investor, customer, partner, affiliate, etc.)

In abstract terms, a quantifiable unit of demand for your business

Is it normal to automate the words you choose? For humans, I mean.  I saw these robots pictured above many years ago at the 2002 Whitney Biennial and never thought I’d be writing a blog post about them 16 years later.

I guess artists (Ken Feingold) have a funny way of predicting the future, because nowadays I feel like I am not only talking to robots, I am letting robots talk for me.

I had a LinkedIn conversation recently which was initiated by my automated outreach message (via DuxSoup), but which got an equally automated response. I thought this was hilarious and commented on it. The response to that comment was, you guessed it, another automated response.

So the entire thread, minus my one real remark, resembled the conversation depicted above.

What is normal communication

Now is that normal? Normal is a funny word because it makes the bizarre acceptable.

For example, it used to be that it was normal to pick up the phone whenever it rung, but that’s far from normal behavior now. Just because someone calls you, doesn’t obligate you to answer.

It used to be normal to send a carrier pidgeon with a note written on a scroll. Or a raven, if you’re a GoT enthusiast. But that’s asychronous communication, which is becoming the preferred method.

Smartphones have predicting your messaging intention for a long time, but based on what you write, not based on someone else thinks you write.

What’s normal changes every day, even if only a little bit. So let’s look at what’s becoming normal today, little by little, and make sure we’re OK with it.

Gmail completing your sentences

I’ll admit, sometimes Gmail gets it right. And yes, I have let Gmail complete some sentences on my behalf. I’ve let a computer program probably written by an engineering consultant in San Bruno, CA, speak for me.

The faster emails are written, the faster Google can run against them, so maybe there a financial incentive for them. But that’s not why Google introduced the feature; it introduce the feature because it thinks it’s becoming normal to let software speak for you.

You’re probably thinking, “no problem, I determine what gets sent out. It’s saving typing and if it’s wrong, I’ll just fix it.”.

But that’s now how language works. You are forever influenced by what you see.

The collective result is we’re all communicating a little bit more like the Silicon Valley brogrammers, or just normal nerds. And not just because of Gmail.

LinkedIn speaks for you too

 

LinkedIn’s communication automation is less subtle than gmail (and always seems to include an 👍  emoji). Nothing wrong with thumbs up – or any of these choices. The problem starts, though, when you stop thinking about what you say.

Each of these options seem to close the loop on this conversational thread. Do you want to close the loop? Nothing else to add?

And if you do want to close the loop, do you want to sound and feel like everyone else on LinkedIn?

As with the Gmail example, maybe this just saves typing; gets you through your day faster. Lke letting a car drive for you, so you can take a work call. But your unique expression is at stake here in a way that isn’t part of letting a software program take over driving your vehicle.

A more intelligent example of communication AI: Crystal

Cystal App takes the automation of your self-expression one step further and suggests customizations to the way you write based on the DiSC personality profile of your recipient.

In the example pictured, the recipient has type “I”, one of sixteen major personalityarchetypes that the DiSC system slots humanity into: “I”, for Influencer.

Apart from being very interesting reading, knowing someone’s personality profile is meant to help you organize your communication in the most effective possible way. This person, for example, prefers greetings like:

Hey Dani!

Not, to take an extreme example:

Dani:

By the way, I was had an employee who communicated with everyone this way, Name:

“Rowan: thanks for the download.” “Rowan: what are your long terms plans for the company?”

Efficient maybe, but certainly not personalized to either personality or context.

I’m all for personalization.

Crystal uses DiSC to advise you on every aspect of communication. Though as I allude to up above, you must strike a balance between your personality and that of your recipient. I would never use the sign-off, “Cheers”, with or without an exclamation point.

To thine own self be true.

If you Google DiSC Personality assessments, you will find all kinds of stuff, including many tests.

And some businesses coaches administer the test. I personally have taken it in 4 different context, including through a business coaching program and through Crystal app, and the results are surprisingly consistent; not always the same type, but in a close range.

What sets Crystal apart is that instead of giving a test, it analyzes your digital presence (social media) to derive its DiSC profile assessment. Is it accurate? I think it’s about 80% accurate based on my personal ability to assess personality profiles and on my read of digital presence content that I know Crystal can’t access.

So as with LinkedIn and Gmail, Cystal might help. And it might actually be much more helpful.

But you can’t let it write for you. The problem with automating language is that it’s not a mechanical function; it’s an expression of who we are.

As an aside, that’s why it’s impossible to separate out good identity copywriting (ie brand messaging) from strategy. Describing who you are as a business,=, the problem you solve, whom you solve it for – there’s one, single most accurate way to do that. And it’s going to read the same whether it’s in a vaulted internal document or on the homepage of your website.

The idea of automating brand messaging then, is ridiculous. Thinking about the DiSC profiles of the average prospect might help. But if are humans and not robots, then we must be careful to think and speak for ourselves.

How about you, are you happy to let a robot speak for you?

 

 

A while back, I wrote that copywriting is 20% UX design. (By the way, UX design is a fancy way of saying “layout for digital interfaces.)”

Benjamin Franklin knew this and co-wrote and designed a Declaration of Independence with – for his day – ample whitespace. His declaration was not just a transactional document; it was meant to  be read all the way through and inspire action.

Fast-forward 250 years and UX/layout is still pivotal to inspiring action, or as we now call it: conversion rate optimization.

In this post, I touch on UX design patterns for homepages. These patterns can be grouped into a technique that has amusingly been referred to by email marketer Bryan Harris as “upside down homepage”, where he looks at every business homepage as a “squeeze page”, a page meant to win email list subscriptions.

Sometimes the goal is not email subscriptions, but appointments for sales calls. Same principles, either way.

Why turn your website upside down? 

Quite simply: to remove distraction from the (one) call to action. The one, single call-to-action that lives above the fold on the homepage of your website. 

Here’s why it’s called “upside down”: the footer becomes the header and vice-versa.

What is a header usually comprised of? A logo, a menu, sometimes a utility menu, usually at least 2 or 3 calls to action. Throw in the ubiquitous homepage slideshow, and your visitor is suddenly swamped and overwhelmed by choices. Here are some examples of how:

(A) not to do it

(B) heading in the right direction

(C, D ) excellent use of lead generation UX

(E) UX lead generation perfection.

Each of these examples takes a screen shot at the world’s most common browser window size (1366px x 768px for you UX geeks out there). As such it focuses on what is most likely to be seen, read and remembered when visiting these websites without scrolling.

In the 5 examples below, the likelihood of the page to convert is increasingly better optimized using the upside down homepage pattern.

 

Example A, Accenture: Not an upside home page, not at all conversion-optimized

Accenture making the classic mistake of not asking the homepage visitor to take action. What’s worse, they use a visual call-to-action convention, the arrow, without actually providing a link. Apparently, you find out about the “new” that Accenture is “applying” by scrolling down the page and choosing what to click on.

But careful, you might try to click on featured content but end up with either a category listing (Accenture Research, Consulting) or a share button.

 

Example B, IDEO: Moving in the right direction

 

IDEO very original approach to leadgen UX is much better than most design agencies, to be fair. The arrangement of the main menu is quite inventive and makes you think, “these people are bold; these people think differently”. But from a conversion optimization standpoint, this isn’t good work. There is a lone, weak call-to-action. (Their actual contact page gets an A+ from me, on the other hand; go have a look).

And yes, they are a well-known firm. But so is Apple, Microsoft, and Walmart – all of whom advertise. So IDEO has some work to do.

Each of the next three examples, in contrast, is a lead generation masterpiece. Let’s look at them all together.

 

Example C, Philip Morgan: No distractions, 1 clear call-to-action, powerful lead magnet

Example D, Backlinko: Show your face

Example E, Neil Patel: Perfection – no distractions and no form to fill out; just click the button.

Let’s also take a look at the footer of Neil Patel’s site so you can see the full scope of the upside down approach:

There is so much that is so well done in these last three examples. Each is an excellent illustration of the upside down homepage concept.

As you can see in the last one, the footer becomes the navigation area.

To be fair, this has long been a UX convention (large, replete footer sections); what makes it a true upside down UX approach is that the header no longer takes becomes the places where the visitor looks for navigational elements and utilities.

Philip Morgan’s site (C) is also a prime example of the upside down UX approach.

Of course, in Neil Patel’s, even the footer is hyper-optimized for conversion, with a dominant call-to-action repeating the call-to-action presented in the header area.

Both Neil Patel and Philip Morgan offer powerful and masterfully worded lead magnets, acting on a variety of buying triggers, with Philip’s offer very clearly spelling out free value.

Neil’s offer does less work to spell out value but that’s because he’s relatively famous in the world of digital marketing: to re-establish that credibility and implied value would be a waste of space.

Some other lead generation UX patterns

• There are a couple of other interesting trends at play in the three optimal examples, philipmorgan.com, backlinko.com and neilpatel.com.
• One is the presence of a high-quality photograph of a person (at least in the last two). And not just any person – the consultant providing services.
• Another is copywriting layout best practices: First a headline appeal, then details, then a call-to-action; and everything evenly and generously supported by whitespace.
• That copy is supported by a non-busy, monocolor background and plenty of whitespace.

I’ll caveat this by pointing out that lead generation may not be a strategic priority for some businesses. If your website is less a marketing tool than it is a product, you might not want to focus on lead generation at all. But in all of these examples, whether it’s a product or a service being offered, the website is most definitely a marketing tool.

Social Proof

Speaking of which, one more UX design pattern that support lead generation is the “proof bar” – the logos displayed just below the call-to-action. You’ll notice the same effect on NeilPatel.com and Backlinko.com, too. Either logos or (better choice, I think) testimonials accompanied by real people. Or both!

Brian Dean does this well. Neil Patel doesn’t do this (any longer at least; he used to) but I don’t honestly think he needs to because of his personal name brand recognition.

Solo consultants have it easier than agencies

For for most agencies, I think Neil Patel’s site is a little “too perfect” in terms of conversion optimization. That’s because business customers want and need to perform due diligence before hiring a consultant, or even a freelancer. NeilPatel.com represents the ideal UX design for an information marketer’s homepage. Let’s take a look at the home page of his marketing consultancy, Neil Patel Digital:

As you can see, the agency takes a more balanced approach to lead generation UX on the homepage. There are no social links, share links, utilities, and the link, but the standard main menu is still there – for now, at least. I expect the “home” and “contact” links to be removed at some point when the site is optimized. And that is about the right ratio for a digital agency’s above the fold UX: less than 5 links and 1 strong call-to-action.

One more note: IF your agency is “owner-based”, then an approach like Neil Patel’s makes perfect sense. If on the other hand you’re a partnership or rely heavily on employees as senior consultants or business development professionals, then you should present a staged group photo. Below are two perfect examples (with respect to the photo, the rest of the UX and copy have massive problems in both cases):

Agency Example A, Fannit

 

 

Agency Example B, CannaBrand

Both of these photos are comically posed but the latter has the advantage of being so costume-ish and ambient that it’s almost as if the agency is poking fun at itself and laughing along with you. At the same time, it’s a very high quality photo and shows seriousness of purpose. It also shows the real faces of actual people. I can’t recommend this approach highly enough to services or products agencies (and really, what’s the difference?)..

But your mileage may vary.

Which brings us to closing thoughts. First: to what extent should your company embrace the upside down homepage approach and the related UX approaches described in this article?

And here’s maybe a tougher question: if you only get to keep 2 links in your header, what are they?

 

 

fin

 

 

 

 

 

When you enter a group of people unknown to you, do you introduce yourself, or wait to be approached? Unless one of you is Barack Obama is subscribed to my email list under a pseudonym, you probably introduce yourself. 

Because who are you – in your professional world?

If you’re not the Seth Godin of Marketing, the Jason Fried of SaaS software, or the Ariana Huffington of Online Media, then you might need to introduce yourself to the world. But what world? More on that in a second.

For now, there may be no queue of people in line to introduce themselves to you, to maybe purchase your professional expertise from you. Or at least not a long queue.

And I’m not just talking about introducing yourself  at cocktail parties (although as reader J.A. once remarked to me, the whole world is a networking event if you have the right mindset!).

That reminds me – I’ll tell you a story about a networking event. Last month, I was in the global HQ of Upwork (a freelancing website which is also not a bad place to practice introducing your business). 

By the way, if you’re a freelancer, then you’re a business – if you introduce and think of yourself that way. Otherwise, you’re not; it’s up to you.

Anyway, it was for a meetup of “Top Rated” Upwork freelancers in the SF Bay Area and coincided with an internal congregation of Upwork’s global marketing team. There were about 120 people between Upwork freelancers and staff.

There were two men there who weren’t introducing themselves. 

One was Danny Marguiles, a Ramit Sethi course graduate who runs an online course specializing in helping freelancers succeed financially using Upwork. Wherever he went during the evening, a line of 3 or 4 trailed.

I was standing next to the other, a quiet, shy-seeming guy wearing very nice clothes. He seemed interesting and important, because like Danny Marguiles, he had been been invited to address the entire group.

I had been in conversation during his speech, so I hadn’t caught who he was and introduced myself.

French accent. Extremely pleasant.  His name was Stephane.

“What kind of work do you do, Stephane?”

“I am the CEO of Upwork.”

A-ha! He wasn’t shy; on the contrary, he possessed quiet confidence, the truest kind. Which isn’t surprising given that investors (Benchmark, T. Rowe Price, FirstMark, etc) trust him enough to lead a large Silicon Valley through an IPO.

In retrospect, both of these people, Stephane Kasriel and Danny Marguiles, had introduced themselves: to all 120 people at the gathering, by speaking to it.

So one of the tasks in front of us is to figure out how to introduce ourselves to large groups of people at once. The beauty of it is that it will force you to have something worthwhile to say.

But it’s hard work to develop something worthwhile to say, to several people at once. How do you figure out what to say?

There are only two methods I know of: running a successful business for an extended period of time, and writing (or some other kind of self-expression), also for an extensive period of time. If you do both, well, sooner or later there will be a line of people waiting to talk to you.

But in the meantime we need to reach out, one person at a time. Bird by Bird, as Annie LaMott says.

But who to introduce yourself to?

Unfortunately, there are 7 billion people in the world.  To interact with about 10 of them per month would take 6 million years. 

Fortunately, you don’t need to introduce yourself to everyone of them. Because only a few thousand of them are your ideal customers, apparently.

… when your testing your positioning with the numbers, aim for 10–200 competitors and 2,000–10,000 prospects 
– David C. Baker, The Business of Expertise

This is probably the third time I have mentioned this somewhere. And I see it all over the place nowadays, so it deserves an explanation.

These numbers (2,000–10,000 prospects) are based, as far as I can tell, on a pattern recognized by David C Baker while working with independent, professional, B2b firms.

In other words, it’s not based in Economics, capital E, as far as I know (I could be wrong about this).  Therefore it’s actually not provable or scientific.

But when David C Baker wrote the Business of Expertise, which is where I believe he first published those numbers, he’d been a consultant to nearly 1,000 independently owned high-end services firms over a 24-year period. So he’d identified a pattern.

In addition, he did extensive research on the subject in 2014.

I haven’t had the opportunity to ask David C. Baker about this research but as far as I can tell from pieces of information he’s disclosed in podcasts, articles, and his book, the evaluation process was simplify to identify successful businesses, then research and tabulate the numbers of competitors and prospects. So I’m guess some had 8 competitors and some 220, but most had between 10 and 200. Likewise for prospects.

Wait. What constitutes a competitor and a prospect? Mostly like he defined competitor as having the same or very similar crosshair (horizontal + vertical) positioning. And he identified prospects as being businesses of the right size (not too big, not too large) in the industry (or industries) served.

By the way, if you’re interested in learning more about this, I’d also recommend reading the “Business of Expertise” yourself (and let me know what you think!). And if you want to really dive deep, I’d suggest Philip Morgan’s body of online courses, which he describes as “specialization school”.

It’s a good thing smart people like David C. Baker and Philip Morgan have figured this stuff out for us.

Because for many small businesses, the number is hundreds of thousands if not millions  because they have no vertical marketing positioning. So they are a branding agency for anyone, a Drupal shop for anyone, or an accountant for anyone – without an audience, an industry, whom they specialize in solving problems for.

That’s because small businesses make the mistake of emulating their larger peers, without realizing that the latter have an invisible positioning clause: they only work with profitable medium and large businesses, or startups with equivalent marketing budgets.

So a huge agency like Interbrand can say we do branding but mean, “We do branding for big business”.

So careful who you emulate or you’ll end up with millions of prospective customers – and maybe millions of competitors too. The ones on the job boards charging minimum wage or, if they are slightly more enterprising, sending spam to your email.

So we’re in a middle place and one way to get to that place is with positioning; an effective first step for lead generation. Another is confidence, of course.

I can’t think of a better method and I’m so grateful to David C. Baker for sharing those guide posts with the rest of us.

Because we don’t have time to meet all 7 billion humans on earth. All we can do is “wish them well, wish them happy, and wish them safe” (Andy Hobson will show you how).

From 7 Billion to 100

Now let me give you an even smaller number: 100. 100 is the number of new business conversations your business will have each year with prospects in your market. That breaks down to about 10 a month, if you take a month or two off. That’s the low end of the range; the high end is about 20.

No, that won’t let you talk to all 10,000 prospects, probably ever, but that’s OK (be merciful and leave some opportunities for your poor competition).

So to get to 10 or 20 new conversations a month, unless you’re Barack Obama, this is where introducing yourself becomes important. At the same time, becoming Barack Obama, in your own world, is also a worthy goal, because the conversations will come to you.

This is also called inbound marketing. Which is not easy when 2 million blog posts a day are being published.

So our challenge is to balance the new business opportunities that come with inbound marketing with those that come with outbound marketing: introducing yourself.

I help services firm with both tasks and encourage finding a balance between the two. 

So I’m curious: how are you introducing yourself to your world?

 

fin

Five things on my mind this week:

1. Book I’m reading

Principles, by Ray Dalio, which I touched on briefly the other day. His approach to life and business, which has led to the creation of the world’s largest hedge fund, is “a game”. The game consists of failing repeatedly, then being presented with a puzzle: an explanation for the failure. These puzzles yield “gems”, which he calls principals. Principals are extracted from his explanations for failures.

Here’s how he describes the key parts of the behavior that uncovers principles:

1. Be radically open-minded. Especially useful in determining your own flaws.
2. Find the root cause. By this, Ray means finding the root cause in yourself for a given business failure. 
3. Write your principles down. As Einstein said, if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t adequately understand it. Ray gets at this by writing down the principles he learns, because he knows that gives him the surest chance of being able to explain them later.

To be principled means to consistently operate with principles that can be clearly explained
– Ray Dalio

This has a lot to do with content marketing; it’s the hidden benefit I’ve discussed earlier: clarifying your thinking so that it becomes much easier to summon in conversation,

As you can see, the process and methodology is not just a lifehack; it’s a system for living a principled life. Did it ever occur to you that if you can’t explain your principles clearly, you may not be able to live or do good work by them? 

 

 

2. Words I’m thinking about

• Here’s a term offered by advice-givers to those of us who are self-employed: lifestyle business. I’ve heard this plenty of times over the past 10 years of being in business for myself and I know what people mean when they use it: a business meant not to create wealth or impact but to sustain a comfortable style of life with relative freedom. Sounds pretty good actually, sounds like a  good lifestyle business. But it’s used semi-pejoratively. And that’s SO strange. What’s the alternative, a bad-lifestyle business? No thanks.
• Another term on my mind: namesake agency (or namesake brand). For example, Ford. Or Price, Waterhouse, Coopers. Or just a one-person name, such as Seth Godin.

  Some advise freelancers or solo consultants, on the other hand: work under an invented business name to encourage you to make business decisions. Not bad advice, especially if you’re new to the game.

  But another approach: start a namesake agency and talk about it in the 3rd-person.

3. Marketing campaign I’m impressed with

• Kai Davis is doing some good work lately. Go check out his series on improving your business as a consultant in a broad and comprehensive way.
• And as was the case last week, Drayton Bird is midway through the best email marketing campaign I’ve ever witnessed, promoting his “Final Appearance” 1-day seminar (he is 82 and has said this will be his last in-person seminar) on October 25, in Bristol.

 

4. Thought leader I’m impressed with

At this point, I’m not new to the concept of Progressive Pricing, but it is rare that someone speaks about the subject as eloquently as Tim Williams. In this video, he gives wonderful examples of the theory of progressive pricing from multiple industries. He then explains how they can be used by high-end technical and creative services businesses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=717&v=LZQb56VRZgQ

By the way, what’s interesting is not just how B2B services businesses can use this for their own pricing, but how they can help their clients do the same.

 

5. A business I’m impressed with

Insight Timer, the meditation app, and low-key social network launched “Courses” recently. Smashing success.

By the way, Insight is by far the best meditation app on the market that I have yet experienced, partly because it’s fiercely stuck to its spiritual empowerment missions. That means it has maintained the value of its product to those who can’t or won’t pay. It’s a beautifully designed app all the way around.

Meanwhile, it perfectly nailed its difficult freemium ambitions by launching paid courses this Summer. In doing so, it has dramatically expanded the scope of its impact on listeners, on its teachers (the thousands of meditation teachers who record guided meditations – and now courses), and on its own bottom line.

It’s one of those extremely rare cases of brilliant strategy and brilliant execution at massive scale.

we’re introducing three ideas that will create revenue for our teachers and our company. These new features have been designed to preserve the spiritual nature of your community without removing any of the features you already have.

I don’t know if your ideas will work. But we’re going to give it our best shot. And I hope our community understands the rationale behind our decisions.

– Christopher Plowman, CEO of Insight Timer

Your ideas will work, Insight Timer. You’re offering courses for between $5 and $20 that are invaluable (and a fraction of what they’d cost elsewhere), from some of the most remarkable meditation teachers – while providing free guided meditations, and many other features, from those same teachers.

I doubt there are many for-profit businesses changing the world like Insight Timer.

When does “at first sight” happen in business? Sometimes it happens we “do” outbound lead generation. Sometimes it happens naturally in the context of inbound marketing.

But there’s lead generation and there’s lead generation.

In fact, there are dozens of methods of lead generation for thousands of business models.

I don’t know about all of them. I can’t even list them all for you.

But what I can tell you that lead generation is should match:

• your audience
• the problem solved you specialize in solving
• how you deliver that problem (coaching, long-term consulting, monthly campaigns, teaching & training, etc.)

What do you convey about these subjects on first sight?

If you consult for a living, we have something common.

I co-owned and helped grow from scratch a 23-person boutique consulting firm for 8 years, specializing in data-related expertise to the higher education and charity verticals. Data-science, CRM implementation, Business Intelligence. Data integration between websites, CRM, and other marketing assets. We did well, too, but could have done so much better.

The list of thing I wish I knew when I started that business is longer than  Here’s one thing: development begins at very first sight. In the digital context, of course.

Let’s unpackage “first sight”; more often that we realize, it consists of one of two things:

• The homepage of your website, above the fold
• The appearance of your brand, and a half dozen other key factors, on page one of Google

Google your business name. What kind of business are you in, at first sight?