Latest / Elevate Digital: The Digital Marketing Podcast / Call the Damn Customer: The Underrated Growth Hack in an AI World

Transcript

Call the Damn Customer: The Underrated Growth Hack in an AI World · Elevate Digital: The Digital Marketing Podcast

0:01
Jane. Tom. Welcome back. I'm like welcoming you like this is my,
0:04
this is my home. Like, welcome, welcome. This is,
0:08
I'm really excited about this one because I think there's, we were talking about
0:11
this earlier, right? There's a huge opportunity at
0:15
the moment that I think a lot of businesses don't even realise is like sitting
0:19
right under their nose. And just with,
0:23
you know, all you see anywhere online
0:27
is like AI this, automation that, Claude this, MCP server this.
0:32
And like everyone is like, you know, putting out these tutorial videos
0:35
on how to, you know, connect to this MCP server and how to
0:38
automate this. And I think what a lot of people don't realize,
0:42
and it's funny because I was having this conversation with a client of ours yesterday
0:46
about like, you know, when people zig,
0:50
you zag. Yeah. Right. And this is just like,
0:53
like if you just look everywhere, everybody is doing the
0:57
same thing. It's like automate, AI, streamline,
1:01
like so heavily. And I just think that opens up this huge,
1:05
huge opportunity. And we kind of touched on this last time
1:09
to an extent, right, when we were talking about AI and how, you know,
1:12
like in-person events and in real life events are becoming more of
1:16
a thing. And I think like this is just going to become— people are going
1:19
to crave so much more just
1:23
like genuine human interaction,
1:26
right? And I think that's where there is a massive opportunity. And we were talking
1:30
about one of our old customers, weren't we, yesterday? And You know,
1:33
how, why don't you tell the story about? No, well,
1:38
it's the same conversation you and I just had just now before
1:42
we started recording is about having the live event or live
1:46
webinar instead of a prerecorded ones, the standard
1:49
ones that businesses use out there, you know, actually in
1:54
the world where everything is automated and you just don't know what's real and what's
1:57
not, you know, with the AI morphing, you your image or
2:01
creating an avatar that is not real, having that live event,
2:05
for example, or live recording, live training session,
2:09
you know, it's just such a massive difference.
2:13
People instantly recognize that it's a live human being on
2:18
the other end of the camera. Well, not necessarily.
2:23
But it'd be, yeah. I think the client I'm talking about, you know who I'm
2:26
talking about, right? Yeah. And I think as well, because I
2:30
was actually referring to our good friend Alfred.
2:34
Yep. And, you know, just how—
2:40
He was the first one in his time doing what other
2:44
people weren't doing. Yeah, just like, you know, calling every single
2:48
customer, even like at scale. And I think,
2:52
you know, even that alone, like one from a you know,
2:56
from a,
3:00
well, customer satisfaction for one goes through the roof. Your retention
3:04
is probably going to go up. Those customers are likely to spend way more with
3:07
you. And there's probably also like a built-in
3:12
virality factor there because people are going to share it.
3:15
They're going to be like, oh my God, I bought this thing the other day
3:18
and like the founder just called me. Like they're going to tell the story.
3:21
And if you think about that, if you amplify that, if you're getting, I don't
3:25
know, 50 orders, 100 orders a day, and, you know,
3:28
10% of those people end up telling their friends about that experience,
3:31
which they probably will. That's huge.
3:35
And again, not that— and that's not even to mention,
3:38
like, I would be shocked if you didn't see some form
3:42
of boost in the lifetime value of that customer from
3:46
that small gesture. That's one thing.
3:50
But then the other thing on top of that is then the insights
3:54
that you get from that customer. Yeah, you learn so much more about who
3:58
they are, what's important to them, why they bought service
4:03
or product, you know, and it opens up an idea or
4:06
an opportunity and builds relationship to upsell them something
4:11
else. Totally. Later down the line when they're ready. Exactly.
4:14
And this is, and this is the thing. And again, this comes back to how
4:18
everybody is trying to utilize AI now for market research and things like
4:22
that. And it's amazing, like AI can do incredible things, you know, like crawling
4:25
Reddit forums, which are amazing for, you know, market intel, market research,
4:29
competitor research, groups, um, like this,
4:33
this review mining is another great strategy for getting customer
4:36
insights. All of those, you know, this isn't to discredit
4:41
any of those because they're fantastic, but speaking to customers in real
4:45
time, you are going, and you can just get,
4:48
have so much more depth from those conversations. And people
4:52
say, oh yeah, but a lot of people don't even remember why they bought.
4:55
I don't care. Like even if one person out of the 10 gives
5:00
you something, that will be worth its weight in gold. And this is the thing
5:03
as well. Like people always say this of like, you know,
5:07
things as simple as like user-reported attribution, like just
5:11
asking, how did you hear about us? Whether you're doing that on the phone,
5:14
whether you're doing it in an online form on your website, if it's a checkout
5:16
form or a lead capture form, like people
5:20
just say, oh yeah, most people don't remember. Doesn't matter. Even if most people don't
5:23
remember, if you get the one, and I've seen this before, like you generally will
5:27
see, if you look at like these big exports of like, you know,
5:32
user-reported attribution, it's normally like online,
5:35
Facebook, can't remember. But then you will get one
5:39
where it says, oh, you know, I've been listening to the podcast
5:43
for a while. And then I saw a post online from, you know, John,
5:47
who's the founder or whatever. And they'll go into great detail
5:51
about like all the touchpoints they've had. That like, you cannot tell me
5:56
that is not just like absolute gold intel that you can learn
5:59
from. So it's just, and it's kind
6:03
of like, I don't think businesses can afford not to be getting
6:07
that 1% edge now, you know, to do
6:11
those small things, to get that small information.
6:14
You know, we were talking about another, like this, the client I was having a
6:18
conversation with yesterday and just, he's just got this like attitude.
6:22
He's come from a very like fast growth D2C consumer
6:27
brand. And he has this kind of attitude
6:32
of disruption in like everything. And it's like the way he looks at everything
6:35
is like, why can we not do it differently?
6:39
Right. And he's like, it can be annoying to an extent as
6:43
well, you know, like, because you're just like, Like, but it's
6:48
so— but it's so good. And it's so like, I think, you know,
6:51
one of the things we were talking about yesterday is how if
6:56
you take Meta, for example, and like media buying, this is exactly what we were
7:00
talking about, how all the media buys now, if you go on YouTube, it's Andromeda
7:04
update, and, you know, stop trying to force the algorithm, let the algorithm
7:07
do its thing, you know, the algorithm knows. And, you know, we've,
7:10
we've tested this, we've tried it It's true. Like if you try to
7:14
an extent, but his point here is there
7:17
will be a loophole in the system and someone will find a better way.
7:21
And what will happen is they will then publish a video and then everyone else
7:25
will start making videos on that. There's always like a pioneer
7:29
or a leader in anything, whether it be media buying, whether it be
7:33
conversion rate optimisation, whether it be entrepreneurship,
7:37
business building, there is always somebody who finds this new way or
7:41
this new strategy, or they're at the forefront and they're then
7:45
leading and they then put that video out there. They do that talk at an
7:48
event and everyone else sees it and they're like, oh my God, let's try it.
7:50
Oh my God, it works. And then they're all making videos and you're then the
7:53
laggard. Yeah. Right. And then it becomes less and less and less and less
7:57
effective over time. Well, I guess the question is, how do you
8:01
find that loophole? How do you find that gap?
8:04
Yeah. And one way, like you were mentioning yesterday, is to just maybe
8:09
have a separate budget and just go crazy on it and experiment the wackiest
8:13
ideas. Yeah. The other way is calling your customers and find
8:17
out something that the algorithm can't know,
8:20
can't figure out. And that would be a massive
8:25
revelation for you. And then you take that knowledge, that information, and then experiment
8:30
with that. Which I think a lot of people are missing out.
8:33
And we obviously been doing that, calling customers
8:37
on behalf of our clients and finding out that information. And I think
8:43
The problem with that is that businesses don't see the value in this immediately.
8:48
You know, when you, when you, when you have that as
8:52
a process, you know, and as a marketer,
8:56
you kind of understand that is the thing that nobody's doing anymore.
9:00
You should be doing that. Yeah. But the
9:04
problem right now is a lot of businesses are relying on AI, and so they're
9:07
a little bit skeptical on taking that approach. Yeah. Well,
9:11
yeah, I mean, to your point about not finding it immediately, and that kind of
9:14
comes into the, you know, the bit we were talking about with the separate budget
9:17
as well, because you might be calling customers for, you know,
9:21
6, 7 months and you learn nothing new that you didn't before. But then there
9:25
might be a shift in the market, you know, a shift in sentiment
9:29
of your category, whatever industry you're in,
9:33
that because you are speaking to customers in real time, you pick
9:37
up on that before anyone else does. Everyone else is looking at forums and,
9:40
you know, that's inevitably the lag effect when people start, you know, going on
9:44
online forums and talking about these things. But if you're speaking to customers in real
9:47
time, you get the upper hand there. So that's the thing. It might, it might
9:50
be like 6 months. It might be a year, might be 2 years. You just
9:53
don't know. But if you can be at the forefront, you're going to have that
9:56
advantage, that competitive edge. And this is exactly what we're saying about the,
10:00
you know, the budget as well, because it's funny, like I,
10:03
Um, you know, he was saying like, ah, like people just don't experiment.
10:06
And it's kind of like, well, you know, you have to think like you're
10:10
putting pressure on people to hit goals. Like obviously you have performance goals,
10:13
which you need to have. So it's kind of like, and that's
10:17
the way I see it when it comes to budgets. It's like, I think media
10:21
buyer, CRO specialist,
10:23
anyone in a marketing team, they have to have their
10:27
performance targets and their performance goals. Right? Tightly constrained,
10:31
set targets. But then instead of like trying, just giving
10:36
them a budget and saying, hey, you need to hit these goals, but make sure
10:39
you're experimenting. They're not going to experiment because they're scared because,
10:42
you know, their job's on the line. So what you need to do is you
10:46
need to say, hey, this budget is for performance.
10:50
Optimise the hell out of this. Do what you know works. Use your years of
10:53
experience. This budget, like I'm calling it, I'm coining
10:57
this term. I'm calling it a fuck around budget. Like this budget is for you
11:01
to fuck around with and break shit. Like, just go and break stuff. Yeah,
11:05
you know, like actually just try things. And then people have the freedom
11:09
to try. They, they have like a safe— because they know they're not going to
11:13
be punished. Exactly. Yeah. And, and, you know, out of the main
11:16
budget. Yeah. And it's such a short-sighted thing. And I know there's probably a lot
11:20
of businesses listening to this thinking like, oh, I'm not gonna piss like, you know,
11:23
a couple grand up the wall, or like however much you decide to
11:27
put into this. But a really good reframing— I think this was like, um,
11:31
Chris Walker at Refine Labs who used to talk about this, and actually their whole
11:35
positioning of their agency was like marketing R&D,
11:38
which I really liked. It was really smart framing. I mean, the thing
11:41
I used to love about it, you know, even from like a smart retention
11:45
standpoint, is like even just in the word R&D—
11:50
R&D is a long-term investment, right? Yeah. So it's kind of like, it's quite smart
11:54
positioning it like that because the clients they get— anyway, but that's a bit of
11:57
a tangent. The I just like that framing because
12:02
R&D is an investment in your future. It's research and development
12:06
to find new things. And as most businesses know, if you have an R&D
12:09
budget, you're researching, you're developing, you don't know when
12:13
you're going to find something, but you do it because you know
12:16
you need to stay ahead. So it's kind of like,
12:20
I think, you know, maybe calling it a fuck around budget is probably, you know,
12:24
not very attractive to businesses because— Call it R&D budget.
12:27
Whatever you want. We have that. Want to call it
12:31
to, to, to satiate yourself and make yourself feel better about it,
12:35
do that. But like, I, I really do think it's so important
12:39
to again stay ahead and to find those things. And I just think
12:43
it can be so, so powerful. And yeah,
12:46
again, like with where we are right now, with, with this space
12:50
that we're in, it is probably the biggest
12:54
opportunity to, to to be pushing those boundaries, to be trying
12:58
things that others just aren't trying.
13:01
Yeah, it is scary. And like you say, a lot of businesses
13:04
just don't see how that money
13:09
is going to bring the return, you know,
13:12
in a predictable timeframe. Yeah. And I think when you're planning,
13:17
when you're doing your forecasts or you're planning your budgets at the start of the
13:20
year, I think it is important to set that sum per
13:25
month aside and be like, okay, that is what— no matter what, I'm going to
13:28
be using that money to fuck around, to play around,
13:32
to, to do my R&D, not knowing when
13:36
it's going to 100% return. You can't
13:39
have an expectation of like, cool, we're going to try this for 3 months
13:44
and then turn it off. Like, no. Yeah, no. I mean, like, we didn't
13:47
have it at the start of the year, but we definitely have it now.
13:50
And spending a lot doing the research and development
13:55
for new opportunities and ideas.
14:00
And I'm so glad that you actually forced me to agree
14:06
to this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, 100%. I think
14:10
as well, like one of the other things that is
14:15
kind of dangerous trap that I see people falling into at the
14:19
moment as well is The, especially with MCP
14:25
servers, you know, for AI, like most tools now. And I think we talked about
14:28
this last time we talked about like the Shopify AI Toolkit. And I was like,
14:31
just watch, like, within a couple of weeks, everyone's going to be opening up their
14:34
MCP servers. Now every flipping email we get from like a software vendor or software
14:38
providers, MCP server available, plug into Claude,
14:41
plug into this. And so they're all doing it now. And that
14:45
trend will continue. And I think the The
14:51
dangerous, risky thing there is people are doing that and they're plugging Claude
14:55
into, you know, their Google Ads or their,
14:59
you know, Triple Whale or multi-touch attribution software, whatever it is.
15:04
And they're getting it to read the data. But what you have
15:07
to remember with that is it's effectively reading raw data.
15:11
Raw data. Yeah, it's reading numbers. Numbers. Right.
15:15
AI is great at that. Like it's really good, but you do have to be
15:19
very careful about reading raw numbers alone. And I've seen this so many
15:22
times where what it doesn't have is the context.
15:26
It doesn't understand, like it might see that there's been a drop in,
15:30
you know, conversions or your CPA has increased from a certain
15:33
campaign. And it thinks, oh God, this is, you know,
15:37
fatiguing. What it doesn't realize is you made a change on the website
15:41
that day and this happened, or, you know, like something went out of
15:45
stock or there was an operational issue. In the business. Like,
15:48
it doesn't have all of that context. Um, and, and this is
15:52
the really important thing. This is why we built, um, you know, uh,
15:55
OrbitDeck recently, right? To, to— so people can have— they can add
15:59
in that context on top of all of their existing data,
16:03
MTA platforms, whatever they're using. You know,
16:07
your— all of your revenue data, all of your order data, leads, etc.
16:11
You can add in the context on there as well of all the changes that
16:14
are happening internally and You know, changes to the website, change any
16:18
internal operational changes, market changes.
16:22
And that way you can find those correlations. And I think that's a really
16:26
important point as well. And I just see a lot of businesses right now making
16:30
very reckless, dangerous decisions. And because Claude
16:34
told them to. Yeah. Yeah. And that, to your point,
16:38
that is the dangers because especially if they're just using Claude
16:41
tool. On its own, right? It's not plugged in into anything.
16:45
Yeah. And you're just having a conversation. Oh, my numbers dropped, my sales dropped,
16:49
or my CAC's gone up, etc. And to your point,
16:53
it can give you 100 million ideas or reasons
16:58
why this can be. And a lot of businesses just take that without
17:02
that context, right? I think it's a super dangerous path a
17:06
lot of businesses at the moment trying to find the answers
17:09
because they, they just don't know why. Yeah. Yeah.
17:13
And I, because I think this, this kind of boils down to like,
17:18
you know, when you, when you think about like context or just the things that
17:21
are happening, it's almost like boiling things down to like first principles thinking.
17:25
You know, it's like, what, what are the, what are the,
17:28
like taking something apart and just looking at all of the individual components
17:33
within it? Like the, an ad platform or
17:36
whatever platform isn't the only variable in the equation.
17:41
There are lots of other parts and components to
17:44
this, right? Even, you know, we were talking about,
17:49
I think we were talking about this earlier and how like, you know,
17:54
some businesses will, you know, they might look at
18:00
when they're starting a new marketing strategy, for example,
18:05
or they're trying to launch a new acquisition channel and they might not be able
18:08
to to figure out why it's not working. So they go hunting
18:12
new strategies and new techniques and new this and new that,
18:15
but they're not— again, they're not even like— they haven't even spoken to customers.
18:20
Like, if you've got an established business, you've been selling for a while, fine.
18:23
But we do see this with a lot of like startups, you know, or like
18:26
who are launching a new channel or new product or whatever it is, and they're
18:30
not speaking to customers. Yeah, they're not running like website visitor
18:34
surveys. And I think this is even in itself like just such a
18:40
an untapped, you know,
18:43
opportunity. Like what? So let's say you've
18:46
got, I don't know, you're doing some form of ad. I don't care what you're
18:50
doing, like a billboard, a flipping radio ad, a Facebook ad, whatever.
18:54
You put a message out there and you are getting clicks to your website.
18:58
So there is a message in the ad that people have seen and
19:02
they've been interested enough to click. And then people aren't converting on
19:07
your website. And what do these businesses do? They're like, let's try different ads,
19:10
let's try different platforms, let's try different this. Wow. How about you just actually ask
19:13
people a little pop-up survey widget on your website, like a live chat, and just
19:17
say, hey, what brought you here? Freeform text field.
19:20
Just ask them. And again, businesses will say, oh,
19:24
only 10% of people do that. Fine. If you've got 1,000 visits coming to
19:28
your website, that's 100 people you're going to get. And that's, that's, that's pretty accurate
19:32
from what we've seen when, when you have As long as you're not asking,
19:34
like, some people will put like a live chat thing, they'll say, hey, let us
19:38
know if we can help with anything, no one's going to respond. If you ask
19:40
a very direct question, people will respond and you like 10
19:44
to 20% opt-in rates, 10 to 20% response
19:49
rates is what you should expect to see on that when you've, when you kind
19:52
of ask very specific questions. And you can alternate those questions over time.
19:56
You might say, I don't know, let's say you're selling gazebo,
20:01
you might say like, like, what's your,
20:04
what's your biggest concern? Or do you currently own a gazebo?
20:08
Or, you know, have you ever bought a gazebo before kind of thing,
20:12
right? And then you can, you can gradually start to piece together more
20:17
of those, like an understanding, like what are the friction points?
20:22
I'm in big favour for the live chats on the website. Like it
20:26
is something that from the very beginning, um, I've been
20:29
telling our clients, especially when it comes to building new websites, you know,
20:33
or improving their websites, put a live
20:36
chat there and put a person behind it. Yeah, I mean, that was before
20:40
the AI, um, shopping assistants were there and all that, but like,
20:44
have a person, part-time person, a couple of hours a day,
20:48
just the real person behind it answering people's questions.
20:52
You will find out so much more about why they're there,
20:56
why they're not buying, what stopping them, what is the objections
21:00
and all that, and then use that to enhance the information on the
21:04
website. But start with that. And there's loads of free tools out there that
21:08
you can utilize. Now, obviously, with AI live chatbots
21:12
and, you know, a lot
21:16
of businesses rolling this out, however, they're still
21:20
relying on the automated answers.
21:23
And what they're missing out is they actually, when they are can't
21:27
produce an answer to a question. There isn't a human being on the other end.
21:31
Yeah. Only a fraction of businesses who actually then pass it on
21:35
to a customer support person sitting on the other side answering
21:39
in real life, real time. Right. And then to,
21:45
to your point, implementing these little pop-ups,
21:49
asking the right questions and then guiding them to the right answer.
21:53
And then if that's not found, You know, or the question hasn't been answered,
21:57
then I think the live chatbot is just like a super, super helpful
22:00
tool. If the business doesn't have the
22:04
budget to start calling customers, you know, at least have one person
22:07
there for a couple of hours picking up all these blocker
22:13
questions or blocker problem conversations from the customers
22:16
on your website to then turn that into a solution.
22:22
Yeah. Yeah, no, 100%. And I think, you know, the biggest
22:26
objection generally here is, I mean, there's 2 things.
22:29
There's normally, we don't have time or,
22:32
you know, can't afford to hire someone.
22:36
And it's normally combined with the, the, the,
22:39
um, response of, oh yeah, we tried it before. We didn't really get
22:43
any responses. We didn't, nobody really used it. So it's not, it's not worth us
22:47
hiring someone. You know, we don't get any responses on it,
22:51
or we don't have time, you know, and we don't get any responses anyway.
22:56
The biggest thing by far, I'm trying to remember, like, I think
23:00
it was like a pet brand or something like years ago that I was speaking
23:03
to. And they, they had like a live chat.
23:08
And like most live chats, it says, hey, let us know
23:12
if we can help with anything, or hey, how can we help? And it's like,
23:14
it's such a broad question. And I think they said at the time, they were
23:18
getting like maybe 1% or 2%
23:22
response rate on there if they were lucky. And then
23:26
they changed it, they changed that question to, hey, what's your
23:29
pet's name? And then that shot up, I can't remember
23:33
what it was like, maybe like 30% or something insane like that, like 30% of
23:38
visits. And the great thing about that is sure, not everyone would turn
23:42
into a conversation, but a big percentage of them, once you've got people talking,
23:46
you can then ask follow-up questions. You could say like, hey, how long have you
23:49
had Rex for? And like, what's, what's his
23:52
favourite food? Like, and you can, once you've got your foot in the door,
23:56
that's all you need. And then that's where the gold can happen. But again,
23:59
it's, it's, I always use this analogy of like, if you like saying like,
24:03
how can we help? Can I help with anything? It's just like that annoying person
24:06
in the shop that comes up to you and the response is always, no,
24:09
no, I'm fine. I'm just looking. Yeah. Make it personal. Yeah. The minute you
24:13
make it personal. And it's, but it's just easier to respond as well. Yeah.
24:16
Right? Like if you say, how can I help? I'm kind of like, oh God,
24:20
like I can't bother to like, or some people don't even know
24:24
how to articulate exactly what they're looking for. And it's just so much cognitive bandwidth
24:28
and it just causes friction in the buying journey. People are just
24:32
like, they want to go at their own pace, but just asking a very specific
24:35
question and like tying it to your brand, for a pet brand,
24:39
like what's your pet's name? What's your dog's name? What's your cat's name? Perfect,
24:42
right? And there will be examples of that, like other examples
24:47
that you can use. Say you sell, I don't
24:51
know, gazebos or whatever. Gazebos are like the outside things, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah.
24:55
So, you might say like, hey, are you buying for an event or are you
24:59
buying for your home? Yeah. Very easy question. Very easy
25:03
for me to answer. And I probably will answer that because it's like, yeah,
25:07
I want to like, because I'm looking for something clearly. So,
25:11
you just need to think about, and this is worth testing as well, because again,
25:15
the, responses and the insights that you can
25:19
get from this are just so, so, so invaluable. And it
25:22
just, it always,
25:25
I've always found it baffling how like, we're not
25:29
thinking about that. We're not like thinking about speaking to
25:33
customers in any way. You know, we started
25:37
this conversation talking about like picking up the phone, speaking to customers,
25:40
but even through a live chat. Yeah, we should be trying
25:44
to speak to people any possible way we can. And I think with the right
25:48
initial question, and people love talking
25:52
about themselves and their problems and what makes them happy and what makes it like—
25:55
I think with the right initial question, to your point, you can
25:59
open up the door to such a big revelation.
26:05
Right. We just need to think about it from our own perspective.
26:08
Like if I was buying this or if I was buying that, Like,
26:13
what would be the right question for me to be asked so that
26:17
I can reveal why I'm here in the first place? Yeah. Yeah. You know what
26:21
I mean? I think people just are scared. However, I think business
26:24
owners know their customers.
26:27
You know, they're just focused on the wrong thing. Obviously, they're focused on the growth,
26:32
minimizing costs, maximizing revenue, sales and whatnot.
26:36
And that, that whole customer thing is forgotten. And I think that they
26:40
just need to step back a bit and, you know, rethink and
26:44
reevaluate and reignite that conversation about their customers.
26:49
Right. Because it is about their customers. Yeah. Service or product that
26:53
you sell. Yeah. Right. And they know so much more about their customers.
26:57
They just outsource that knowledge or responsibility to people
27:01
further down the line in the, in the business. Yeah.
27:04
But I think the founders, when they started the business, you know,
27:08
naturally knew so much more. Yeah. And that knowledge
27:12
is just not shared anymore to that extent. Yeah.
27:17
Yeah. And even, um, even I remember there was a jewelry,
27:21
uh, brand that I consulted with a couple years ago,
27:25
and, um, one of the things I got them to do is to have a
27:29
question on, um, uh, what do you feel is missing from
27:33
the— is there anything you feel is missing from the site? And we just,
27:35
we wanted to make it super low friction to begin with, so were going to
27:39
do open form field, but then we just did like a multiple choice and we
27:42
gave people the option to kind of send an actual message as well.
27:46
Um, but it was, it was like such— so interesting.
27:49
So like, I think the answers we had were like not enough images, not enough
27:54
product description, and overwhelmingly by far people said they
27:57
wanted, uh, buyer guides because they didn't know how to pick the right diamond.
28:01
Like, because there's a lot of like different diamond options, and especially like
28:05
for the— for this, uh, particular company as well. They sold, uh,
28:08
kind of like lab-grown diamonds. And I think,
28:12
you know, and these are the things that maybe we don't consider, but people often
28:16
think it's, you know, it's a good option to have multiple choices, you know.
28:19
Oh, we, we let people buy real diamonds and lab diamonds, and,
28:23
you know, because we give people choice, they're gonna buy because we've got loads of
28:26
options now. And it's like, actually, the opposite often happens, you know. People see lab-grown
28:29
and then they're like, should I buy that? Should I not? And how do I
28:33
know? And it's kind of like they want to buy a guide. It was like
28:36
60%. And this wasn't, this was, you know, this wasn't like insignificant.
28:40
We had like 6,000 responses or something in total over
28:44
time. And it was a huge majority were saying like they wanted buyer guides.
28:48
So we were able to then put that into production as a matter of priority.
28:52
And you wouldn't necessarily have known that otherwise. You're just like, no one's
28:56
buying. Like, what's going on? And again, like most businesses, they're like, we need to
28:59
fix the ads. We need to do this. And it's like, no, people are hungry
29:02
for, they want help. They're stuck. Your customers are stuck.
29:05
And you wouldn't realise that otherwise.
29:08
It's such a crazy thing.
29:12
And even, I think Rich and
29:15
I were speaking about this before for some businesses.
29:19
I don't know if we've actually deployed this yet. And, you know, this is something
29:22
that'd be quite interesting to try. But you can do the same thing with social
29:27
ads. You know, you can even run Messenger
29:33
campaigns, right? And just asking questions
29:36
in those Messenger campaigns, just surveying the audience,
29:40
just saying like, hey, what's your favourite this? Or how would you feel about
29:44
this? Or even, you know, it could be Messenger, it could be like an
29:48
engagement thing where you just do a post and you ask a question in that
29:52
post, you get people to comment, right?
29:55
And the great thing about that is that has, you know, inevitably when you get
29:57
comments on the ads, it kind of has this virality effect as well. But you
30:00
can get real insights from real people and
30:04
see what people are saying. How would you deploy that
30:09
strategy for businesses who have a
30:12
great or huge, humongous, or even an average-sized
30:17
email list of subscribers?
30:21
I think this
30:26
is in a case where you have a lot of leads who are not converting
30:30
for whatever reasons, be it a D2C or service
30:34
or course, maybe. How would you find out that from
30:39
the— This is, this is really interesting. I'm glad
30:43
you mentioned about emails, actually, because this is very often the first place people
30:47
think when they hear surveys. Yeah. They think, oh yeah, we'll send
30:51
a survey out to our customers and they, you know, flip and make this 12-step
30:55
Typeform survey and send an email to
30:59
all their customers and say, hey, would you fill out our survey for us?
31:03
No one's gonna fill out your survey. Yeah. Why would I?
31:07
I get so many of those emails. I hate them. I ignore them.
31:11
So boring. Like, and you can increase the response rate
31:15
by offering a voucher.
31:19
Yeah. The other mistake people make as well is they'll offer
31:23
like a, I don't know, like a gift card or something. If you give me
31:26
like a £100 Amazon voucher, like, okay, cool. I can kind of get some good
31:29
stuff for that, right? But that's expensive. That is expensive to do a £100 Amazon
31:33
voucher. So it depends what stage you're at. But I just, I don't
31:37
think email is the right place to do
31:41
that. Because as well, it's just, it is just hard work.
31:46
Maybe, like, I'm not disagreeing with this.
31:50
But if you fail to capture the answers
31:53
at the initial stage, and now you have the leads
31:56
sitting in your, you know, CRM.
31:59
Yeah, fair point. Like, how would you then try to start
32:04
that conversation to convert them? I would apply the exact same principles we've
32:09
just been talking about. Yeah, make it super easy and just ask one question.
32:13
And again, this is the problem, is you send an email and you say fill
32:16
out our survey. Even just the word survey, it's just horrible. It's like nobody wants
32:20
to fill out a survey. Um, so if, if you like, if there's
32:24
a specific, like, what is, what is the biggest thing you're trying to figure out
32:28
right now? Right? And maybe you've got multiple,
32:31
maybe like, I don't really know, maybe there's a couple of things. Pick one,
32:34
just pick one of them, and then just email people. And this is what I'd
32:37
probably do. And you can set like a reply-to email address, right?
32:40
Um, so they don't, you know, bombard one person, but have it come out
32:44
because you can do this on most CRMs or most email marketing platforms. You can
32:47
have the sender name different from the reply-to
32:51
address. So you can have it as if it's coming out from one person,
32:54
Um, so I'd have a person in the business and I would say, um,
32:58
hey Jane, super curious, like, what may— um,
33:01
actually, what made you sign up for our list? Is it even like— again,
33:04
that's too broad. But, um,
33:07
again, insert whatever brand you're in.
33:10
What's— hey, what's your— what's your, um, pet's name? I want to
33:14
send them a little gift kind of thing. Yeah, maybe that could be a good
33:17
way of starting it. And pet's name, that's not really going to help you,
33:20
right? But hopefully that example, it's like, I guess
33:24
the point I'm trying to make here is just keep it really simple and easy
33:28
for people to respond. Ask one simple question. And again,
33:31
if you can tie a gift into that, like I think if you say I
33:34
want to send them a little gift, you know, and then you might
33:38
send like a personalized voucher with, you know,
33:43
like a discount with the little dog's name on it or whatever. How would
33:47
you approach that from the online course perspective?
33:51
Where people maybe sign up for a lead
33:55
magnet, they watch some training, they download some material,
33:59
but they're not progressing into purchasing the course.
34:03
Depends what the course is. Give me an example.
34:08
Pick any from our existing clients.
34:11
Vocal training. Yeah. I mean, if you look at like vocal mastery, so the easiest
34:16
thing there is like,
34:19
Um, uh, what, maybe it's
34:23
like something along the lines of, you know, what, what are you,
34:27
what challenges are you having with your voice? Or, hey,
34:31
hey Jane, um, so you signed up for the training recently. Do you find your
34:35
voice often breaks when you're singing? And, and, you know,
34:39
if, and there's a very good chance, like if I've signed up to vocal training,
34:42
it's probably because I'm having a problem with my voice, and it's probably because
34:46
I use my voice for my profession, or maybe it's like a dream or like
34:49
something I want to get into. So, if you're asking me a very direct question
34:53
like that, you've got my interest because I'm like, oh,
34:56
maybe they've got the answer for me. It's such
35:00
a directed question. You're gonna have my interest.
35:04
Do you know what I mean? But that can go very wrong.
35:08
Like the first answer I gave, like if you keep it very broad, Like if
35:11
you were to say, why did you sign up for the vocal training? That's then
35:15
scary. Because I've then got to go into detail and say, oh,
35:18
well, you know, last year I did this and blah, blah. And whereas
35:22
if you just say, hey, do you find your voice breaks while you're singing?
35:26
Question mark. Nothing else. Nothing else. Just that.
35:31
And it's kind of like, yeah, I think that
35:35
the magic is in not overcomplicating it. It. I remember,
35:39
um, Ryan Dice, digital marketer, he like talked about this.
35:42
And when we were doing like, you know, outreach to begin with in the agency,
35:46
and it, and it was so— and I always— he said like, if you're,
35:49
if you're going to send an email to like leads who you haven't heard from
35:53
in a while, just say like, um,
35:56
I mean, there's this— I think Chris Voss talks about this as well. It's kind
35:59
of like, have you given up on this kind of thing, to like restart things.
36:03
But, but the key What most people do is
36:06
they'll say, hey, John, haven't heard from you in a while. Have you
36:09
given up on this? You know, just wanted to make sure, you know,
36:13
and you ask a question, but then you layer it, you sandwich it.
36:17
Yeah. Right. So it's kind of like, but the magic is in just
36:21
saying, hey, Jane, have you given up on this? And no, like, you know,
36:25
hopefully hear from you soon. Cheers, Tom. Just,
36:28
have you given up on this? Question mark. If you want to sign off on
36:32
it, if you just want to put Tom, cool. If you— but you can also
36:34
just put nothing. Because I think as well, even if you think about
36:38
that, right, it's like, if that lands in your inbox, that doesn't feel like a
36:41
marketing email now. Like, if there's no even sign-off on it, like, you can see
36:45
it's come from Tom because of the sender name or whoever. Um, but that
36:49
email feels like a very real email. I remember we,
36:53
we had an influx of answers on that, like, crazy. Yeah.
36:57
And I was so surprised because I remember when he was
37:01
talking about it. It's really scary to do because you feel like naturally inclined
37:05
to sign off on certain things, you know, in a professional and nice and
37:09
stuff. And it's, yeah. And it's, yeah. And so to your point,
37:13
in answer to your question, like, I think that would be the magic. It would
37:16
be like, hey, Jane, do you find your voice breaks when you're singing?
37:20
Because it's almost like Oh, maybe,
37:23
maybe this person's having the same issue I'm having. Because there's
37:27
no context. Because I think what people would be inclined
37:31
to do, because again, the salesperson hat comes on, is,
37:36
hey, do you find your voice breaks when singing? I've helped thousands of
37:40
students all— and then you're like, oh, they're trying to sell me something. But if
37:44
you just leave it open, there is this kind of like, oh, are you having
37:46
the same problem as me? And then you reply back and you say, yeah,
37:50
do you have that? There's like this shit and you don't
37:54
because you don't know the context. Yeah. And it's such an interesting,
37:58
like, fascinating, like, psychological loophole
38:03
almost. People just feel inclined to respond to
38:07
that kind of like open-ended question with no expectations
38:10
to them. Yeah. Yeah. Love it.
38:14
But yeah, I think so. Yeah, the whole, um,
38:18
just speaking, speaking to customers is like such a—
38:23
in, in any way, shape, or form, like, I think that's the main takeaway
38:27
that, you know, I want people to kind of take away from this. However you
38:31
can do it, if you can, if you can call customers or prospects,
38:34
great. I mean, even Mike's been saying this recently, right?
38:38
He's been like, you know, like, I wish I'd started like calling people
38:42
sooner, like just calling leads and stuff, because it's like And, you know, the response
38:45
rate is so much better because no one expects a call. Yeah,
38:48
yeah, yeah. Everyone expects an automated response. 100%.
38:52
Yeah, 100%. I think the, this, the,
38:56
even Stephen Bartlett has that on his podcast, you know, with a lot of guests
39:00
who are, you know, specialists in AI talking
39:04
about the job losses in here, you know, with progression
39:07
of AGI and AI taking over the jobs and things
39:11
like that. And over and over again, every single guest says,
39:14
what? Human interaction is what will remain.
39:19
Right? Yes, automate. Yes, you know, use Claude,
39:23
use ChatGPT to churn the numbers, to crunch the data and
39:26
all that. But it's the human touch that will remain
39:30
because AI can't replace it. So whilst everyone
39:34
automates, go back a step. And actually place
39:38
a human, like a real human, be it a chatbot,
39:41
be it an email response and that kind of thing, you know.
39:44
Sure, use your autoresponder, but make it a bit more human than just automated
39:53
Yeah. And live events. I'm not talking about like
39:57
events, events like, you know, Glastonbury, but show
40:01
up live if you can.
40:04
Live stream, live webinars, live recordings.
40:08
Yeah. And even, you know, even outside, and I think, you know,
40:12
there's, this is all very contextual to the, you know,
40:15
the kind of business you're in, but like, you know, I've seen
40:18
a lot of B2B brands, especially of like,
40:22
you know, when you have a very high customer value,
40:27
doing things like hosting dinners. For leads,
40:31
like paid-for dinners, you know, really, really nice restaurant where people
40:35
were going to want to come to it. And I can't remember if it was
40:39
Tomorrow.io or there was someone else who'd started doing this.
40:42
And they said, like, you know, the— and
40:47
this is, you know, Tomorrow.io is a company where they have very long buying cycles.
40:51
Naturally, you know, they're selling like these weather intelligence platforms to Um,
40:55
airlines and things like that. You know, there's not like an easy sell,
40:58
but it's just like, it starts conversations with prospects that might have otherwise
41:02
gone cold. And the way you position it as well, which is, which is really
41:06
smart, is you don't position it as a, hey, come to our dinner so we
41:10
can sell, because that's kind of what it feels like. Oh God, they're going to
41:13
try and pitch me something. And, you know, even if you're offering me a free
41:16
dinner at a nice restaurant, it's like, I don't want to be pitched. So how
41:19
you position it is like, hey, we're bringing together like some of the smartest
41:23
minds in aviation. We're all going to meet up for dinner so you can meet
41:26
your peers. Yeah, that's how you position it. You don't position it
41:30
as like, come to our dinner and we're going to do it and do a
41:32
network and you don't do a presentation. That's the key thing.
41:36
You don't flippin' pull out this slide deck and be like, oh, here's our
41:40
software. No, no, you put it in their interest so they can network
41:44
with our peers and the conversations will come about naturally.
41:47
And the super smart thing you can do as well is you have
41:51
some of the people that come to that dinner will be clients. Yeah. And inevitably,
41:56
like, you're hosting this dinner, it's going to come up in conversation. Like, what do
41:59
you guys— how do you guys know? And, oh, you use Tomorrow? Oh, how do
42:02
you find it? It— then you've got prospects selling to themselves.
42:07
You've got your clients selling to your prospects. Yeah, that is the ultimate
42:11
sale. So like, in a B2B context, amazing. And then even, you know, D2C,
42:15
we were talking about— and this is a, you know, obviously Ben Jerry's is huge,
42:19
probably like billion dollar, maybe they're owned by One of these conglomerates.
42:24
But anyway, Ben Jerry's, you know, doing that festival thing. I think they've done it
42:27
for like 2 years running now, right? Um, this music festival, but it's
42:31
smart. It's just a brand activation, you know, they're giving out free Ben Jerry's and
42:36
people are going there because it's sunny and there's music on and it's like,
42:39
but it's smart, you know, it's a smart way of doing it. And, you know,
42:43
and the whole wristband situation, do you remember when we talked about it? Yeah,
42:47
yeah, yeah. We went to that Yeah. New launch, the launch of a new flavour
42:50
that they had. Yes. Yes. Interesting point, actually. I do. It's funny
42:54
because I was saying, like, I think there's very these, like, smart, subtle things
42:58
that, like, a lot of people don't think about. And I was saying about how,
43:02
you know, I think there's a lot of brands out there, they'll do an event
43:05
and then they'll be like, the event's like quite expensive. So let's save some costs
43:09
and just give people a stamp. Yeah, right. That washes off. Yeah,
43:13
that washes off. Or a paper wristband. And that might seem logical. It's like,
43:16
yeah, flipping out costs money to put on an event. But they had the
43:21
kind of like festival style, like fabric, fabric,
43:25
you know, ones like you get at Glastonbury and Boomtown and things like that.
43:29
And that probably costs you a little bit more. But it is
43:33
so Instagrammable. That's the thing. And it's
43:37
like, if you can get thousands of people turning up to this event, who are
43:40
then all sharing, like, you know, there's that classic picture everyone does of
43:43
their like wristbands or like couples who've got their wristband together, like, oh, look at
43:47
us. And everyone's sharing it. Or ice cream holding ice cream. Your brand name
43:50
on it. And it's like, it's just such a, again, it's a
43:54
perfect example of like one of these small things you can do,
43:57
like a small little increase in the budget, but it will
44:01
probably, and again, nobody can obviously say this for sure, but it
44:04
will probably pay for itself tenfold in the same
44:08
way as what I was saying with like calling customers.
44:13
People will go away and tell their friends about it. I've mentioned this
44:16
book before, but I think it's a really great book because it It's kind
44:20
of like the net— it's called Unreasonable Hospitality by— I
44:25
can't remember what the guy's name is. And he, you know,
44:28
he's worked, I think he, you know, has had his career in
44:31
the hospitality industry, you know, restaurants and things like that. So it's
44:35
kind of positioned as a hospitality book. But I think in the context
44:40
of what we're talking about, it's so worth any business
44:44
reading because it is exactly that. And it's talking about
44:48
how You know, these little subtle things that you can do that
44:52
just get people talking and sharing. And remembering you
44:56
as a band. Yeah. And it's like, it always reminds
45:00
me of, I feel like I always mention this, but the CD Baby
45:04
email, order confirmation email, such a like subtle
45:08
thing. Do you remember that? And it was like, you know, we're placing your order
45:12
on a satin pillow. Yes. You'll be placing your CD on a satin pillow
45:16
and it's been waved off by all of our staff. Oh, of all
45:20
the It's such a great email. I'm gonna put it in the link
45:24
to this, uh, to this episode, like an image or something.
45:27
But that email, like, you cut— like, and especially
45:32
now, like, back then social media probably wasn't a thing, but like,
45:36
um, but it's the kind of thing people will screenshot it, they'll send it in
45:39
their group WhatsApp, they'll be like— and they'll be sharing it on their Instagram stories.
45:43
And think how easy that is. It costs you nothing. It's just like going a
45:47
little bit wild and crazy with your confirmation emails. Yeah. Right. And it's the
45:50
kind of thing that's going to get responses and shares. And, you know,
45:53
for these guys, it ended up getting huge media publicity. They had
45:58
like PR pieces wrote about them. It's like brands are out there flipping hiring
46:01
PR agencies to, you know, get the mentions.
46:05
There are just things you can do by being a little bit weird or
46:09
being a little bit different or just doing things that nobody
46:12
else is doing. Yeah. Like handwritten sign-off cards.
46:17
When you're shipping stuff, yes, it may take
46:20
a bit more human resources instead of the printed one.
46:24
But even if you do a printed one, if you just get one person or
46:29
an owner or someone high enough up
46:33
the management chain and just sign the card physically with
46:37
the pen, sign every card. Everything else can be printed, but if there could be
46:41
like a signature, you know, with the name, that is
46:44
already something so different and so personal. Do you remember I used to do that
46:49
for Soul Scents? Yeah, yeah, like handwritten note thanking the
46:53
customer, and then people would share it on their Instagram. Yeah, you used to put
46:56
like the oil on, on it, and I would just like, yeah, I would
47:00
spritz it with a bit of a scent. So there's like, yeah, like this is
47:03
such a— and people have commented on it, I remember, like reviews and stuff,
47:06
and it's like, you know, It's smart. And it, because it
47:10
creates an experience. Yeah. And I would do it as an extra effort,
47:13
especially when I was utilising Etsy, when people would say it's
47:17
a gift for somebody. And you can't, you, again, all of these things,
47:21
you can operationalise them at scale.
47:25
Of course, it's going to cost you more. Yeah. But in
47:29
a highly competitive world,
47:33
that is your edge. And you can, you know, and you might say,
47:36
oh, you can afford to charge more. People will
47:40
pay more if there is an experience behind something.
47:43
Yeah. And this is the crazy thing, like whatever it's costing you, you can
47:47
probably cover that just by increasing your price a little bit. And people will pay
47:51
those increased prices a lot of the time if you can give them a,
47:54
like a mind-blowing experience that they just cannot get elsewhere.
47:57
Unboxing experience. Yeah. Yeah. And even
48:01
to your note of like handwritten, to your note of handwritten
48:04
notes, There are companies like Impact.
48:07
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And, you know, so you don't have to,
48:11
again, at scale, you don't have to do that. You can work with companies like
48:14
Impact. And I think they, you know, I don't know if it was Impact that
48:18
does this. There's one company that like, you know, hires ex-convicts,
48:23
you know, to help rehabilitate them, get back on their feet
48:27
to do the letters because they are all handwritten. It's not like, you know,
48:30
they're printed. They are genuinely handwritten letters.
48:36
It's, yeah, like you say, it's just, it's such a, it's such a meaningful
48:41
touch because you can tell when something's been handwritten, right, as opposed to printed.
48:44
Um, and it is a really, really cool touch. Like, if you can write them
48:48
yourself, amazing. If you're a startup, you know, you've got the ability to do that,
48:51
great. Um, but if not, yeah, using companies like Impact,
48:54
and it can just give you a, um, and we're not affiliated with them in
48:58
any way, um, but I just think like these are just examples
49:02
of the things that are so small that can be done,
49:05
but they're just not being utilised enough.
49:09
Yeah, I think it's just because everyone is jumping on a bandwagon of automation
49:13
and AI and forgetting what the human touch is and what,
49:17
how much benefit and growth a human
49:21
touch can bring. Yeah. And it, I think like,
49:25
I guess the main thing to think about here, because everyone, I think
49:28
people You know, anyone watching this is probably feeling pressure of
49:33
acquisition costs. And here's the thing, acquisition costs are
49:37
always increasing. The cost of platforms is always going up. It's getting more and more
49:41
expensive to advertise. And that's probably never going to change. It's just going to get
49:43
more and more and more expensive. And, you know, yes, sure, you can find
49:47
like new underutilized platforms and, you know, find like an arbitrage
49:51
on like, you know, certain new platforms that are coming out fine.
49:54
But you can't rely on waiting for that to happen.
49:58
So there is always this game of like, and the
50:01
businesses that are winning right now are the ones who aren't
50:06
like at the mercy of the platforms because their,
50:10
you know, their margins are so vulnerable, their order values are
50:14
so small that they have to get the lowest acquisition cost possible. Because as
50:18
soon as those costs rise, they go out of business, they're screwed. Or they try
50:21
to scale, acquisition costs increase a bit, they're screwed. What the
50:25
smart businesses do is they find ways to, again, increase their average order value
50:29
and increase their lifetime value. And you do that by creating
50:35
or retaining customers and by giving them these experiences where
50:39
they want to come back. And then the other kind of unforeseen
50:43
effect, like we've been talking about, is that you also inevitably, when you do things
50:47
like this, you get referrals, people share
50:51
things, and people sharing things then brings down your acquisition cost as well,
50:54
like inadvertently. Right. And that's the thing, because you'll then start getting more
50:58
referral traffic because more people are sharing things. So your overall acquisition costs
51:02
end up coming down anyway. And it's just like, but,
51:06
but, but again, everybody is so obsessed with the strategy,
51:09
the platform, the this, the creative, that, and those things
51:13
are all important. Yeah. And I'm not saying they're not important, but it's
51:17
like, it's so, I just think If
51:22
I, you know, if I look through my Instagram feed and I look through my
51:24
YouTube feed, everybody is talking about the strategies,
51:27
the platform, the creative. You need more creatives, you need more this,
51:31
you need more that. Nobody is talking about these other things.
51:34
Nobody's talking about these other things. And that is where, you know, it's how we
51:37
opened, like when other people are zigging, you've got to zag. Yep.
51:42
Like that is what it comes down to. That sounds like
51:46
a good place to to wrap up. So, totally agree.
51:50
Thank you. You're very welcome. And we will see you guys in the next one.