Marcus Sheridan - How to Become More Customer Centric

And if you see your sales and marketing as teaching, then you can create a culture that's special. For example, no CEO has ever said, I want to be the best content marketer in the world. It's not going to happen. But a CEO could wake up one morning and say, I want to be the best teacher in the world. I want people to see us as the best teachers in our space. I want people, if they have a problem, to think, okay, we've got the answer. And if they come to our website, if they come to our digital platforms, they'll get the answer there. They can count on us. They can depend on us for that. And that's the teacher's mindset. And this is why many companies aren't very good at marketing, because they don't think like a teacher. Great point. So you're already touching upon it, because it's what does marketers already do wrong in some way? What have they misunderstood? What is the common misunderstanding for marketers? Well, okay. Obviously, there's a lot of mistakes. I think the number one mistake that marketers make is, number one, their messaging is very company or product-centric. And it's not customer question-centric. When I say customer question, I'm talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Right? You know, one of the ones I mentioned today when I was a pool guy, again, today I'm just a silent partner with River Pools. One of the most successful pieces of content we ever produced was when we talked about the problems with fiberglass pools. And that's what we sell. But we openly talked about some of the weaknesses, some of the drawbacks, who it's not a good fit for. For example, do you realize it's more important on your website that you have a section that says who you're not a good fit for than who you are? But nobody watching this video right now, not a single company right now that's watching this, has a section on their site that says who we're not a good fit for. But the moment you are willing to say that, a true prospect will read that and say, that's not me, that's not me, that's not me. Looks like this is a great fit for me. And that's what the buyer wants. The buyer wants to self-select. And if we do this, they see immediately, wow, they're so honest. They're willing to guide me. They're willing to admit that they're not the best fit for everybody. That's exactly what I was hoping to hear as a buyer, as a consumer, as a researcher. It's basically honesty. Like really brutal honesty. That's right. It's very attractive. Let's go some years back. I mean, this is not a common thing for people to say in some way. When did you learn this? How did you understand it? Well, I was going to lose my company when the market crashed in 2008, 2009 in the U.S. That was a brutal time for swimming pool companies. I mean, many went out of business and I thought I was going to go out of business. And that's when I realized, okay, I've got to generate more traffic, more leads, more sales, more trust than I've ever done. And I don't have any money to do it. And my only answer was turn to the internet. What can I do there? And so that's when I started to read and study, saw these fancy phrases, inbound marketing, content marketing, blogging, social media, digital. Really in my mind, because I was coming from the simple world of swimming pools, in my mind I said, okay, so what you're telling me is I just need to obsess over these questions that I get every day and then I need to be willing to address them on my website through text and video. And so our core philosophy as a company became four simple words, which of course is they ask, you answer. Good book, by the way, right? And you know, since that time, not only did it save our business and we became the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world, but many thousands of organizations have embraced the philosophy to tremendous results. It makes me really, really, really, really happy. But it just goes back to that willingness to meet the customer where they are, because it's not just answering their questions. It's, for example, the largest retailer of used cars in the United States is a company called CarMax. And they changed the rules in that industry based on what does the customer want? What they wanted is they wanted to stop haggling with the salesperson, negotiating. Most people don't like to negotiate. And so for years, buying a used car was just about negotiating. And so many people hated the experience because of it. And so CarMax said, what are they asking for? Well, they're asking to stop with all the haggling. And so they answered by saying, set prices, no haggle prices. In fact, we're going to have set commissions for our sales team. Whether you sell a $20,000 vehicle or a $40,000 vehicle, you're going to get the same commission. And so they did that to overcome a major fear or desire of the marketplace. The essence of innovation today in 2017 and beyond isn't that you invent something tangible. It's that you innovate and that you change the way it's available, the way that they can learn about it, the way that they can buy it. And so that's the core of innovation today. Wow. So in that mix that you're talking about right now, there's a lot to do with the story and the content that you build up or the rule set that you're setting up for things to be transparent. What would you say are the main tools you would use to amplify or to support those processes? Your favorite tools? Well, I mean, my favorite tool is the one we're doing right now, which is video. I think that so much of the future is going to be built today, the present but the future certainly, on our ability to show it. You have to look at it like this. At this point in 2017 and beyond, if you don't show it, it doesn't exist. You can't just tell it. Telling it is no longer acceptable. We have to show it because if you tell it, chances are your competitors are telling the same thing, but so few show it and so few show it well. And so I think the companies that obsess over showing it better than anybody else in their space, they're going to be so outrageously successful. Successful. When I say obsession, I really mean that. You're thinking about it all the time. How can we show the thing better? For example, everybody says they have great people. It's our people that make us different. Nobody ever says, yeah, we're no good because our people are no good. You don't hear that. But yet, how many companies truly show their people? I'm not talking about an about page that has a photo of the team. That doesn't count because everybody has that. And a photo is the same. It's all the same. And so is there a video on your site right now of every single one of your salespeople talking to the prospect, introducing themselves to the prospect, why they work there, what they're passionate about, maybe some on their personal life, maybe what to expect when you meet with them for the first time. Most companies are going to say, no. And you see, at this point, if the prospect hasn't heard your voice and seen your face and watched you teach them before you physically meet them as the salesperson, you failed. The organization failed and you failed. They've got to know us before we know them. And if that happens, we're going to be really successful. Cool. So that's already pretty kind of basic. That's basic. And not only basic, but that's pretty specific on show your face and show your face. And some people say, well, you know, I don't think I can. No, no, no, no, no. You see, when you asked someone for their money, that's called sales and marketing. When you ask someone for their money, you lose the right to say, I'm not going to allow them to see me. You've lost the right. And that's the path we chose when we decided to be in sales and marketing. If you want to be an engineer and just build things in the corner, okay. But it's different when you're asking somebody for their money. Just like if you're a CEO, you're not allowed to hide because the people want to buy from someone who's not going to buy from you. And that's the path we've all heard it that they know, like, and trust. So yeah, video is my most simple tool, but you know, there's lots of great tools. The tool that changed my life really is HubSpot. That's the tool that had the biggest impact on me. I learned a lot from them in 2009. And to me, the beauty behind HubSpot is I can track whether I'm spoke here at the conference in Norway, I was able to say that one piece of content about how much does a fiberglass will cost made three and a half million dollars in revenue, right? How do I get the number? Well, I get the number directly from HubSpot. And if I hadn't been tracking that, I never would have known. Now HubSpot's not the only tool that does that. But at this point, simply having just Google Analytics is probably not enough because you need to know names of people and what they're doing on your site. And you need to be able to track it all back to where it started so that you can give credit to something when they buy. Is it a social? Is it an organic? Is it a PPC? Like what? Where did they start the relationship? And this way you can justify as a marketer expense, right? People all the time, like I'll ask people, are you doing pay-per-click advertising? And they say yes. And I say how much did you spend last year? And they say $50,000. And then I'll say, well, how much money did you make? They'll say, well, I mean, I know we made a lot. No, no, no, no. How much did you make? Because unless you know, you can't really say whether you're winning or losing. And you don't know where to put your investment next time. That's right. And then you debate, right? Well, maybe we should be putting it here or there. No, no, it's nice to be able to say the numbers don't lie. The numbers don't lie. And because the numbers say this, this is where we're going to put our dollars. How would you then look at, since we're talking about, very often you can look at the data and you can look at, in some way, short-term conversions. And then you have the opposite side where we just saw earlier today also an example of Rand Fischken and how when he started doing Whiteboard Friday, that it was a piece of content that if he was looking at the data, he would probably not continue doing it. They would continue doing it for a while. And it grew on people. And it also was successful over time. And very often content marketing is a long-term thing. How would you be able to basically be comfortable standing in something knowing that you basically have money going out but you don't have the ability to monetize on it straight away? Well, this is the whole reason why so many companies stink at content marketing, right? This is the same reason why most people could never be farmers. Because the farmer, in order to have a harvest, first they've got to prepare the field, then they've got to plant the seed, and then they've got to nourish the crop, and then they've got to protect the crop, and they've got to consistently do that up until the point where they can finally say, hey, we can go out and we can plow, and then they have to do all over again. It's called the law of the harvest. It's been around for thousands of years. And it's one of the most powerful laws in the world. Most marketers, better stated, most business owners don't truly understand the law of the harvest. And they don't realize, wow, this is going to take time. Now, the thing about it is, it's not just straight about traffic leads and sales because that's the stuff that takes time. I mean, think about it for a second, right? So let's say you do videos with your sales team today, right? And in these videos, you pose questions that they get all the time from customers. And tonight, that same salesperson goes on a sales call and gets that question while they're on the sales call from the customer. Do you think their ability to explain it, to tell it is going to be better now than it was before they shot the video? And the answer is, of course, because when we do content the right way, when we produce it the right way, especially with video, it teaches us how to properly communicate the thing. It forces us to be better teachers. That's just one benefit. And so if I knew that nobody was ever going to watch another one of our videos, just knowing the impact it has on our sales team doing said videos, it's worth it. And that's just where it starts. Or how about you produce a piece of content today? Again, we'll call it a video. And let's say that it never takes fire in YouTube, it doesn't get shared, it doesn't have the social element behind it. But whenever your sales team is going to meet with the prospect, they send that video out beforehand. And because they send that video out beforehand, now the average time per first appointment goes down by 50% because so many of those questions that they always ask, which 80% are always the same on the first appointment sales call, now 50% of them are gone. So 50% now, 50% of the time is saved. And if you compound that over the course of the year, how much more time is that salesperson going to have? We're not talking always about traffic leads and sales. And the problem is, we think about just in that light, and we've got to do a better job of helping companies and organizations realize this goes way beyond, did I get another conversion? Did I get another lead? Because our ability to integrate this content has massive benefits in the sales process. Our ability to produce it has massive benefits in how we can explain it and teach it and tell it. And the list literally goes on and on. Amazing. Do you have a secret that you can share, a content marketing technique? You've already in some way shared it, but you can say it out again. Do I have a secret content marketing technique? That you can share, of course. Well, I don't believe in secret sauce. So if I have it, I'm going to share it. Trust me. I think lots of the times we act like things are secret sauce when in reality everybody knows exactly what it is. It's not necessarily special. One of the ones that I've talked about a lot is those big five subjects that businesses are always afraid to talk about that buyers want to know about. Those big five are cost questions. You've got to explain cost well on your website. What drives it up, what drives it down, explain the marketplace. That's one. The next one is problems questions. We addressed that a little bit ago, but basically your product or service isn't for everybody. If you can admit that, you're going to be really strong. And if you can really paint the picture of, okay, so here's the pros, here's the cons of what we sell. Here's the pros, here's the cons of what other people sell. Here's who it's a good fit for, who it's not a good fit for. You're going to be so, so much more successful than the one that just says our product is great because it does this and everybody loves us. Right? Also, the third big five is comparison based questions. Anybody that's listening to this that has a business has been asked before, okay, so if you're me, which would you choose? Should I take that road or should I take that road? I'm looking at this brand. I'm looking at that brand. You propose this method, but they propose that method. And it goes on and on. But yet most companies don't answer those questions on their website, on their digital properties. That's dumb. You have to, because if you don't answer it, this is what happens. Somebody else, probably your competitor, they answer it. Thus, they own the conversation. And if they own the conversation, we lose. So our goal is to be a part of the conversation always. We can't always have the best answer or the best product or the best service, but we can take part in the conversation. So that's the third of the big five. The fourth of the big five is reviews. Everybody's looking for reviews. And so you should write about reviews of your products and other products or services that you sell. And then finally, best. Best is prolific. It's the fifth of the big five and everybody searches for best, right? So for example, I sell swimming pools. So people might say, what is the best kidney-shaped swimming pool for a small backyard? Or they might say, who is the best fiberglass pool manufacturer? Or they might say, who is the best pool installer in Richmond, Virginia? I mean, it goes on and on. This is how we search. This is how we ask. It's so funny to me. People now are talking about, you should create content around questions, queries. I'm like, I've been saying that for seven freaking years. They ask you answer. I've been saying it for seven years. For seven years, I've been saying, don't focus on keywords. Focus on the way people think, search, act, feel. And if you do that, if you're in tune with that, your content marketing plan will just be tremendous. Amazing. Thank you so much.