Alistair McBride 0:00
And this problem was all around how to give people who are in the zone where they want to be building authority they want to be gaining that recognition how to give them quick wins.
Voiceover 0:15
Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.
Alistair McBride 0:25
Welcome to The Recognized Authority podcast. I’m your host, Alistair McBride, not McDermott, McBride. Yes, we’ve swapped roles here today. Welcome, because today my guest is somebody you might be familiar with: Mr. Alastair McDermott, how are you doing?
Alastair McDermott 0:43
Very good. I’m delighted to be in the guest chairs in
Alistair McBride 0:47
the hot seat chair. But if a swapper rolls now, you may well ask, why did we swap roles because Alastair has something to something to explore and something to say, we were discussing a problem. And this problem was all around how to give people who are in the zone where they want to be building authority, they want to be gaining that recognition, how to give them quick wins, because by definition, it’s kind of a long road, you know, you need to put in the hours, you need an hours that you don’t need to put that many hours, but you need to put in consistent time over time. Am I right on that one?
Alastair McDermott 1:28
Yeah. And so that’s, that’s the issue, I think that puts people off doing content creation and inbound marketing is that you have to commit to this, like this long term plan of content creation on a consistent basis. And like, it’s, it’s a, it’s a slog, and I’m like, I don’t think anybody who has created a successful podcast, or YouTube channel, or even written a book, like there’s nobody has done any of those things, you know, in inside of a month, or inside of a quarter, you know, and how to be successful. So like, how do you get a quick win? That’s what I’m really interested in.
Alistair McBride 2:03
Exactly. Without it all. Being in your head being with all I’ve done this one chapter, as I say, if it’s a book or whatever, it’s all very self referential stuff. But this is a win in a people coming to you in that inbound sense. So let’s just go. So we started with the question, right? How do you create a single piece of engaging and effective content that resonates with potential clients and generate quality? leads? So there’s, there’s the question, so if you’re interested in hearing the answer, stay tuned, because we’re going to explore it now the next one. So let’s talk about it. So what do you have for us MC T? What are your were your thoughts going on this one? Because you most definitely have come up with something on this. It’s something that may seem obvious. Yeah, people aren’t doing it, right. So let’s discuss it.
Alastair McDermott 2:54
Okay, so to roll back, the reason that we’re doing inbound marketing is because we want to generate leads for our business that results in sales. Like that’s why we do it. And there’s a lot of pieces to it, and building authority and personal brand, and all those things that go into it. But one of the reasons why people don’t do inbound, is because things like outbound and referral based marketing, like networking, get quicker results. And that’s the piece that has frustrated me a little bit. Because I know that the inbound stuff works when you commit to it over a long period of time. But some of my clients, I’m talking to them, and they want a quick win. And so thinking about this, like how do we get a quick win. And it’s to create a single piece of content that starts to generate leads, which result in sales, almost instantly. That’s the idea. And there is a category of content out there already. And it has this awful, awful name. And I even hate saying the words, but people call it a lead magnet. And that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking
Alistair McBride 3:53
about so why I wasn’t allowed start with the words how to do a decent lead magnet. And rightly so but and look, this is the point because a lot of people will hear a lead magnet and they go oh, I have a lead magnet. Yeah. Oh, I made one of those years ago. Yeah. Nobody ever downloads. So what I’m saying those people?
Alastair McDermott 4:12
Yeah, I completely understand there are like I have created countless lead mines. I don’t like I don’t even know how many. You know, probably more than 50. And many of them. Most of them have been in affecting
Alistair McBride 4:25
50. Yeah, a year. It’s not like you’re not you.
Alastair McDermott 4:31
Wow. Yeah, I’ve been I’ve been in business 17 years. So
Alistair McBride 4:34
that’s a lot across 17. Anyway,
Alastair McDermott 4:38
yes. So probably not all of those have been for myself. Now. Some of those have been for clients, people like that. But okay, let’s not get distracted by that part. The thing I think that people are getting wrong about this is they’re thinking of lead magnets as a way to get email addresses and collect email addresses. And that’s not the goal of the lead magnet. The lead to go One of the lead magnets is to generate leads and sales. And that’s the big issue here is that people are thinking about it in the wrong way. And so what happens is they’re optimizing for the wrong thing.
Alistair McBride 5:10
So let me just dive into that, because I hear you and I instinctively know you’re right. But I also know well hold on a second is the first step not to get that email. So they’re in your orbit and can take their time moving through your content until they feel that they’re ready to, as you say, Go inbound toward you that I can put their hand up in some fashion and say, right, I want more stuff from you in whatever capacity that might be. So why, why are we thinking of it now? And how is it wrong to think in terms of their to get their email rather than to move them toward a sale?
Alastair McDermott 5:47
Well, I think that the big issue here is, well, there’s a few few different issues. But but one of the problems is, there’s a lot of nuance around creating these in an effective way. And, like, this is something that I’ve only started doing successfully recently. And I realized that the issue is the alignment between the lead magnet, and what you’re selling has to be one to one perfect alignment, that can’t be even slightly out of kilter, it has to be a direct link between the thing that you’re selling afterwards, and where that lead magnet brings them. And that’s the part that I’ve got wrong in the past. And a lot of people that I know, will
Alistair McBride 6:28
go so far as, say, nine out of 10, if not more, yeah, I’ve got that wrong. And the
Alastair McDermott 6:32
problem is, they’re often missing for collecting email addresses. And if you optimize for that part of the puzzle, you may get really good at collecting email addresses of people who won’t then buy your service or product, that’s an issue. And so what you need to do is you need to work backwards from your product service offering. Now you have to have that like that has to be nailed down, that has to be in alignment with, you know, your client’s problems, and your business goals and all of that as well. Like, the whole thing needs to be like this, you’ve got to be running a tight ship here, the whole thing needs to be in alignment for it to work properly. But if you work backwards, from what you know, we help these people solve this problem, which is your typical positioning statement. So you know who you’re helping, and you know, the problem, their pain that you’re helping them solve. And it’s, it’s useful to think of that in terms of a transformation. So we take them from place A to place B, and that this service that we do, the things that we do, our process is right in the middle between point A and point B, it’s the thing in the middle. And so if you think about, okay, what we’re, what we’re thinking about here is we’re thinking about, we want to sell them that service, getting them from A to B, but we need to show them that we can help them with that. And we need to give them something that starts to help them to solve that problem. And that’s so that’s what it’s about, it’s about taking something in the middle there. And using that as the lead magnet for wonderful, better word I hate that I even have to say. But it’s about creating that piece of content that helps them solve a piece of that problem that’s in the middle. Because the problem is what’s in between those two things. The problem is the is the pipe between A and B. And so we want to help them solve that problem. But the part of the problem that we want to help them solve, it has to be near the start of that process. So it needs to be something near the start of the transformation from A to B. And it needs to be directly in alignment with that process. And it also needs to be a narrow enough problem for them to solve quickly by themselves. And so once you start to bring in all of that piece of nuance into it, that actually makes it a bit more tricky, particularly because once you take that and start to apply it to real world situations, it can get really tricky to find a piece of the problem where you know, somebody is, is doing something where the person who who’s your buyer, for example, might be a CEO, and the CEO is the person who signs off. But maybe you work mostly with the tech team. And so what you’re used to doing is helping solve problems with the tech team, but you need the CEO to sign off. So now what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to find a lead magnet, you’re trying to find a piece of content that helps them solve a problem for the CEO, not for the tech team, because the tech team or the buyers, and that like that’s where all of this gets gets more complex. That’s
Alistair McBride 9:16
a classic one where the buyer isn’t the user, because then you’re dealing with two different groups with very different perceptions of the need. Which brings us into another question because I can hear an awful lot of people going, okay, Alistair, you know, I hear where you’re coming from here. But for example, like if I was to start them on the thing that they need to do to get where they’re going. It’s boring, or they think it’s boring. So if I say the thing that they actually have to do, which will make them you know, have 10 steps, it makes them one and a half or even two steps into it in that journey where they are, but it’s not very exciting. It’s the classic. You know, you want to give them what they need. And what they want, but that’s the seriously tricky thing, isn’t it? Because they’re like, oh, that’s no fun, or that’s really boring, or that does nothing and he could don’t understand. That’s why you’re coming to me as the expert. But that’s way too much explaining for, for want of a better word lead magnet. So how do you make that kind of juicy appealing? Instantly? Like, yes, that’s the thing I need, while actually, or that’s the thing I want, I should say, while actually giving them what they need. So that when they’ve done it the match, as you say, the next logical step is, well, what’s the next step? I better get back to Allah Sir, in your case, to, to to continue this journey to the destination, I want to get to so. So how do you create that balance between giving the people what they want, and so that when they do it, they want to do more?
Alastair McDermott 10:48
Well, you’ve got, so you’ve got to try and give them a quick win. And this is the really hard part. Because what what a lot of experts that trap a lot of experts will fall into, and I’ve done this a million times, is we start to create something, and we pick a broader problem. And we start creating this all encompassing solution to this broader problem. And then like, suddenly, we’ve accidentally written a book or something, you know, this huge project, which is great, you know, that like that’s, that’s super effective, you know, like, that, not maybe effective is the wrong word there. But that’s a very useful thing to do. But it’s not going to be optimized for lead generation, in a quick win kind of scenario. And that, like, that’s the issue here, is we’re trying to fix something too broad. And so that’s, that’s where, like, I think one of the most important things that you can do is document your process that you take clients through from start to finish. Now, there are loads of reasons why you want to do this. It’s very, very good for branding and marketing to have a documented process we can show people, you know, we we are I don’t just approach this ad hoc way. You know, we have we have our signature signature process, our proprietary process, whatever you want to call it, it’s it’s a step by step process that we take people through, and then start to examine the start of that process. The first step?
Alistair McBride 12:11
Absolutely. I mean, just as a general rule, it’s a great idea. I mean, there’s so many good, as Alistair said reasons to do that anyway. Not least one of them is the proprietary process. And from someone who helps a lot of people negotiate, almost everyone on the other side, just immediately tries to commoditize, whatever it is, you’re selling. Oh, the guy down the street will do it for 20% Less, why should I go for you? So you need when you have that your map, your system, your processes mapped out, it allows you to very distinctly say, how you’re differentiated from your competition as just one part of that argument of that counter counteraction of that point, so that they can’t compare apples to apples, apples to apples, right? So. So just just to double down, there’s huge benefits in that, and there are many more. Okay, so if you have your process again, how do we then get into them, you’re getting them at the start to often do things that they need, rather than that they think they want. So how do you how do you flip that, particularly if it’s not particularly exciting, if they bought a thing, for example, there’s already a certain level of trust. So you don’t need to sell the first step particularly, right. But if it’s a freebie, it has to be inherently interesting. And as you said, has to address whatever issues with them right then and there, right in the present moment. So how do you get how do you get that?
Alastair McDermott 13:32
So the the key thing, I think, is to be what’s the right word, to be creative with your thought process? Okay, because if you if you try and do something like planning is quite often the first step in in almost like any kind of project where you’re creating something for a client. And that’s what a lot of people who are listening to this or you know that planning is the first step. So we’re going to go in, and we’re going to assess the situation, review the current situation, the goals, the challenges, and then start to create a project plan around that, like, that’s really typical. And so that doesn’t make for a really good kind of quick when it’s really useful. And having a paid discovery or paid roadmapping session is is a really great next step. But having something before that is key, because that’s that, like can you give them a quick win before that. And that’s where I think if you have something and when I’m saying something I’m talking about something that is short to the point and one of the things I like about lead magnets, again, I hate the word but but one of the things I like about the concept of them is that you’re creating something that has to be consumed quickly and used instantly. You never want them to save it to the hard drive to look at later because they never will. So what you want them to get them to print it out or save or fill in there and then if you can, and that means that it’s usually quick to consume means it’s also quick to create And that’s where it starts getting interesting, because then you can look at, okay, what can I create, that somebody can consume quickly, but will still give them value. And so, like the ones that I really like, are things that people can use in a very actionable way, like cheat sheets, checklists, and templates. And those are things where people can get value straight away.
Alistair McBride 15:21
I mean, the other thing that springs to mind, I love your opinion on this, because imagine a few people listening might be thinking the same, you know, that that almost clickbait level of sort of quizzes, what type of such and such are you and, you know, maybe there’s three types, or there’s five types or whatever, and they do a little quiz, and then it sends them a report. When those things are done, well, they can be actually kind of incisive, because they tell people a bit more about where they’re at, and maybe bit more about the underlying problem of that phase. And that struggle that they’re going through when they’re done. Well, how do you feel about those sort of quizzes? They were all the rage about, what, five years ago or
Alastair McDermott 15:59
so yeah, Ryan Ryan, wrote the book ask and he had a hugely successful launch around that. And he got a lot of referral partners, a lot of people signed up for that. And, and that was incredibly successful. And I think that I think that there is something in that approach. So what he’s talking about is first dividing your target market into segments into kind of high level buckets. And then targeting those people separately with different different sales funnels, or marketing funnels flexibly. Because they’re segmented already. First of all, they’ve opted in when they when they they’ve made a micro commitment just by choosing their segments. And you’re also able to talk to them in their language that’s really useful. I think that for a lot of people who are listening to this, that’s going to be too advanced, I think that you start off, don’t don’t, don’t start off with where you’ve got multiple buckets, start off with a single customer, and make something their single ideal client to make something for that person for that avatar with that need. And, you know,
Alistair McBride 16:56
that’s something that occurred to me, as you were saying that if the thing is quick to produce, it also points towards produce the thing for a particular market segment, or maybe one of your customer types of customer avatars, and then see how it goes. But then you also have that thought, what about this customer avatar, maybe have two or three? Right? And you can create another one or tweak the thing to see. Which, which flies better? Basically, is that part of it as well that you can actually test?
Alastair McDermott 17:28
Yeah, so over, I like to start experiment for simple and then layer complexity on top. And that’s my approach to almost anything. Oh, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of like a software development approach as well, where you want to just get something working first. And you can even like one of the things that’s interesting about this approach is, you can even do this without an email list. So you don’t have to have a page on your website, where people put in their email address and download the form. It’s, it’s great if you have that. But you can start out by just creating whatever your lead magnet is, and your lead magnet could be like, it could be a 30 minute video, it could be a PDF, I really like PDF for its simplicity. And you could you can combine those two things. But what you’re doing is you’re creating something, putting it up for some someone to access, and then asking, you can start ask people, Hey, do you want this? And people will put their hand up and say, Yes, I’d like to get that. And in fact, I did this just last week, where I put up on LinkedIn, I said, Hey, I’m creating something, which is going to be something that’s going to help people create a single piece of engaging effective content. And I sent that out to my existing email list. And I sent that out on LinkedIn as a post, and I put it on a couple other places as well. A lot of people replied and said, Yes, I’m interested, please send them on to me. That is it working in a very meta way. Because it’s also
Alistair McBride 18:50
an A lovely kind of, what is it call it, you know, lean startup type idea where instead of building the thing, you test to see if there’s an interest first? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, some would go as far as you know, if he were really down that’s down the street to say, sell it first, then build it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it’s that same attitude, which I love. So, yeah, you’ve pre validated that there’s interest in it before you actually go and create the thing, even if it’s just as you say, a two page checklist or cheat sheet or something like that. So if somebody wants to do this, what are some of the next steps? Or what are some of the maybe what are some of the traps that people fall into?
Alastair McDermott 19:28
Yeah, so the big one is, first of all, being out of alignment, it absolutely has to align directly there has to be a follow on so that when they when they solve this one narrow problem, that the next problem that’s revealed, because every solving every problem reveals another problem. Maybe a nicer, better problem to have, but there’s always a follow one problem, but that it’s it reveals a problem, which is then next logically in the sequence of what you help people with. And so this way, I say start with your process. And so the other big mistake that people make is trying to do something too broad. So it’s got to be narrow, and maybe narrower than you think it should be. It’s got to be something that people can do in half a day, you know, Could you
Alistair McBride 20:13
could you give me an example on that, because people are kinda gonna write has to be narrow, but they don’t quite know, you know, in a maybe more actionable or tangible sense. What you mean, can you can you think, example of maybe one that’s too wide, and then one, that’s just right.
Alastair McDermott 20:30
Okay. So this is hard to give examples, what I don’t want to pull examples from specific coaching clients. But in a in a project where you have, let’s say, the goal is, let’s say the goal is to get ISO 9000 standard for a foreign organization, right. And that’s the so you’re a quality safety consultants, who helps people to get that end result. And in order to get there, there’s like 500 steps that they have to put into place to get to that end result. But at the very, very start, what they’re trying to do, maybe the reason they’re trying to get there is they’re trying to bid for a trying to bid for a contract. And the reason they want to get there as they want to win a contract where somebody has to meet certain regulatory standards. And so what you can do is you can say, Okay, the first thing that you need to do before you start even thinking about ISO 9000, is to start to put the building blocks in place for your your, for your organization. And so you take the very, very start and say, the very first thing that you’ll need to do, and you will know what your process is to take them through all of those steps, maybe you’ve got like a, maybe you’ve got like a seven step process. And underneath every one of those seven steps, there’s another five steps, and that breaks down to another five steps under that. So you’ve got this kind of behemoth of a process. But you say the very first thing that we’ll do at the start is, we will make a list of all of the inputs and all of the outputs, for example of this, of this production production line, or whatever it is that you’re trying to get the regulation for. And that’s all you do, because that will then be the next step into once we’ve got the list of inputs and outputs, that will then become what we start to focus down on in the next step, the next step is to then map out the processes that occur for all of those inputs and outputs. And so all you do is you help them with the very first step, you don’t try and help them with with mapping out the whole process. And so I know that’s not a great example, it’s actually quite close to something that a, a coaching client of mine is doing at the moment. Another example, is, I was talking to somebody about how can you give somebody a quick win in a scenario where you’re helping them to change something about the way that they deal with their clients. So what he’s going to do is, he’s creating a swipe file of email templates that they can send to their clients. So he’s just writing the email template and saying, if you need to, you know, like, let’s say, let’s say it’s scope creep, if you need to prevent scope creep on a complex project, and it’s happening all the time, here are five email templates that you can send one by one, as the client attempts to increase the scope, because you know, clients always try and push the boundaries and things. And you know, they said, the templates get increasingly more firm in terms of pushing back. But but that’s a really simple, effective thing, if somebody’s got that problem of they’ve got a custom project. And the client is, is increasing the scope. Now they’ve got a set of templates that they can just copy paste,
Alistair McBride 23:36
that sounds like an amazingly useful thing as well, as you said, for the person reading, I think, Oh, all right. That’s what I need today. It’s a quick they’re suffering from project scope creep, and they go ahead away pushback without offending people, because that’s because from a negotiation point of view, I mean, that’s what you don’t want to do unless somehow you plan to. So that sounds like it’s superbly needed. And they can use it that day.
Alastair McDermott 24:03
Yeah, and I really, that’s why I like this kind of templates and swipe files, because they’re instantly like you want something that’s instantly implementable, because you want, you want people to download it, and instantly implement it. Because then in there, you are top of mind and you’ve built that trust, then your follow up happens. But the like, the key thing is that it’s all again, in alignment with what you’re ultimately selling.
Alistair McBride 24:27
Just a question because something that occurred to me there when you were thinking of an example, I remember many years ago, when we started out doing a lot of the stuff, you know, the negative lead magnets were renowned for doing you know, considerably better than the positive ones, you know, the five biggest traps plan or for you know, whoever the problem is, like the you know, the five biggest mistakes keynote speakers make when they’re preparing for their first keynote or something like this, you know, that you know, as So the potential disaster, the pain sales, shall we say? How do you feel about that?
Alastair McDermott 25:07
Yeah, so the way that I feel about selling based on pain is I like, I know some people talking about exacerbating the pain, because you need to focus in on the pain, because pain sells, people will move away from pain in a way that they will never move towards gain. And so pain is incredibly effective. But it’s very frustrating, particularly if you’re, you know, morally upstanding, and you don’t want to hurt people. But at the same time, the pain is what sells. So the way I like to think about this is, it’s about explaining the pain. So can you explain the pain or the problem area as much as you possibly can and explain the full scope of it and what the knock on effects of it might be. And when you start to do that, what happens is usually the problem is much bigger than people realize. And then that’s where they start to realize, okay, I actually need to take action on this. And that’s what will get people to take action. And what we should be doing is helping our clients solve their problems, we should be improving their situation, as Alan Weiss would say, improve this client situation is the only job that we have as as consultants or as experts in what we do. So you know, Can we can we? Can we explain the pain in such a way that it’s useful to motivate them? And actually,
Alistair McBride 26:27
that’s because that’s my main concern ran that as I asked, the thought was, then they go, you know, oh, I’m falling, I was falling foul of one or two of those points. Now, that’s informative, because they’re going oh, it’s like an expert saying, this is where most people trip themselves up. So you can see why it’s appealing because people go, Oh, God, am I am I why am I falling prey are one of those. So that is helpful. I mean, it can be serving people. But one thing, my main concern that it may not, it could fall into the trap of not helping people take the next action, because then they go, Oh, well, okay, I’m fine on three or five of those. Now, I know not to do those too. Thanks for that. There’s no need to talk to you anymore. She had I mean, so. So, as you said, have something to compel the individual, the user, the reader, whatever, to take the next step.
Alastair McDermott 27:19
Yet, like there has to be a logical next step. And there should be like, if you’re following your process, and you’ve got your documented process, and it’s your signature process, and you’ve put, you’ve written down the steps. And so one by one, you’re ticking the box as you take a client, so So let’s say a client is referred to you, and they’ve got great trust built up, and you don’t need to sell them. They just say, Here’s my money, let’s start, I know you could do this job, I’ve been referred you. Let’s just start. So what would be the process that you would bring them through? And so you know that the first thing that you do with them is, is what what other clients would have gone through the lead magnet to do and then just bring them to the next step? So it’s what like, what’s that next step, that next step, is what you start to talk about in your and you can start to reveal more of the process in your follow up. And that’s where the follow up is. And that’s where having the email address is useful. Because you can actually set up an auto responder, which will email them automatically and you want to make sure that you’ve set the expectation that you’re going to email them. But that’s where you can start to follow up and create the parasocial relationship, which is that one sided relationship where they start to feel that they trust you and know you, because they’re consuming the quality content that you’re providing for them.
Alistair McBride 28:31
Continuing to opt in by opening your emails, reading or emails, or whatever it might be, until they’re ready to move to the next level, or indeed on subscribe, if, you know, yeah, as appropriate, hopefully enough, are moving up to that next level. And so how was your thoughts? Have your thoughts evolved or changed around this idea of the lead lead magnet as you as you hate?
Alastair McDermott 28:55
I wish we had a different phrase, but I have to use this. It’s what we thought. Yeah, I think so. I think that for, for me, like I like creating, like, I’ve created a whole ton of resources that I’ve put available for free. And many of them are downloadable by signing up through my email, you know, signing up for an email, opt in of some kind, and you can download stuff. Some of them like I have some books are available for free on Amazon, and things like that. They’re also lead magnets, by the way. It’s just that that well, particularly with books on Amazon, I have no idea for book sales and Amazon I have no idea who bought Amazon owns all the data around that. And that’s why it’s less valuable. That’s why we’re selling books or giving away books away on your site is more useful, because then you have the information. But
Alistair McBride 29:41
salutely I give a quick plug there if you don’t mind. Yeah, go ahead. My labor of much work for God knows how many months, maybe 18 months to stage and my book The dealing with Goliath the psychological edge in negotiation is out very soon. and this will be available for free to those who want for those who want to read it in paper. Paperback or indeed on Kindle can get it soon on Amazon. Awesome. But it is available for free if you’re happy to read it as a PDF, to dip into it. And if it’s to your tastes, you can read it wherever you want.
Alastair McDermott 30:19
Awesome. Go go to Al mcbride.com. I’m guessing to get that McBride TOCOM
Alistair McBride 30:22
slash book. That’s correct. That’s awesome. So if when you listen to this, it’s not out yet there, you can sign up there as an interested person. And it’s also the be more goodies coming along with it, which are, will be things that will be essentially lead magnets in the future, one of the being the seven most successful tactics used by buyers and sellers, that one from some of the early conversations I’ve had gets people’s blood up that very much gonna tell me more. So that’s actually from a pile of research. So that that’ll be quite a good one. Yeah, anyway, just thought I’d music interjected. That is both a small and large lead magnet right there folks. Check it out if it happens to be of interest to
Alastair McDermott 31:12
awesome. And yeah, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. Wherever this podcast is,
Alistair McBride 31:17
too. I’m sure we’ll mention it again, with a little chat about that. In September. Cool. Sorry, please continue.
Alastair McDermott 31:25
Yeah, I was just thinking about different places, I was just trying to think of different examples of lead magnets to kind of just cement the, the start of the process thing. And what I was just thinking of is in the real estate industry, somebody’s trying to sell a house and the realtor wants to get wants wants to get there, once you get the sale. So when one one thing near the start of the that people start to think about when they’re selling their house is what we’ve got to stage the house to make it look good. So one simple lead magnet, there might be home staging tips, to get a quick sale, or something like that, you know, and so, and that’s where the real estate, you know, the the, the seller suddenly realized, actually, this is a lot harder to stage the house than I thought it was gonna be. And then they might say, well, you know, maybe we’ll get some get some help with this after all. So that’s, that’s just one one other example, kind of from a different different industry. But But again, it’s just about being at the start of the process. And that is an interesting example, because it’s nothing about actual home. Like it’s not about sales, negotiation tactics for the seller or anything like that. It’s just about get down the
Alistair McBride 32:39
line. Yes. Yeah. Dream of that. Exactly. It’s a roundabout where you want as an estate agent to meet the client when they’re preparing to sell it. They’ve. Yeah, so again, that’s a temporal alignment as at the stage that the prospect is at.
Alastair McDermott 32:57
So, so you asked me a bit earlier, I’m going to try and answer the question. So I think that one, so one of the issues is going too broad, not being aligned to what you’re selling, not being at the start of the process, you want it to be something right, right near the start of the process as close to start as you possibly can. And then people jump into creating something I think too quickly. So you need to know your target market, you need to know who they are, you need to know what they care about. And this is like this is relevant for any kind of sales, you absolutely have to know the things that your target like your ideal customer avatar, ideal client avatar, the things that they truly care about the problem that you solve for them, and then start to think about, okay, what’s the quick win. And like, like you said, you can actually create the crate the marketing for it, before you actually create the lead magnet, I think that’s the better way to go about it. I didn’t understand this when I started out. First of all, I used to create the thing that document and then I worked backwards and created the marketing for it. I think it’s better to go the opposite way, even though it’s counterintuitive. When you create the marketing, like the landing page for your for your opt in, then you can take that. So first of all, before you even bother to create the next step, you first of all, you can show that to people and say, if I created this, would you opt in for this would like would you want this? And if you get enough people saying yes, then you can go and create it. Then the other thing is you can actually use that to then say, okay, these are the things I promised in this, I need to make sure I deliver on all those promises. So you can make sure that you actually hit those. And then actually, you say you’re kind of doing it the opposite way around, but you’re creating something that meets all of the things that you promised. So yeah, that’s that’s the that’s the process that I would go through. And, and then setting up some kind of follow up where the follow up, starts to give support and say look, if you want help with this, I’m available. You know, I’m happy to get on a call. You can even put some kind of limited free Call offering there when you say, Look, I know Chris doe does this, I think he says something like, every week I do 325 minute calls with people would you be interested in? In helping them to solve this problem? Would you be interested in one of those, let me know if you if you would. And that’s that’s the the approach that he uses with that, you may not want to do that, you might, you can ask them just to hit reply, you know, tell you what they’re doing. But what you want to do really is you want to get into a conversation. And most people who are selling, who are listening to this podcast are selling something relatively high ticket. And so we need to get on a call with our clients with our potential clients. So ultimately, the goal is to get on a call. And at that point, then you can see if it feels like a good fit or not. Now, you may want to do some sort of check for fit before you get in a call with the clients, you know, you might want to get them to answer a few questions first. But ultimately, you want to get the call. So that’s the goal. Yeah, but all of this, what we’re like everything that we’ve talked about here, most people could do this in a day or two, that like that’s the key is getting it set up. And, and like I said, you don’t have to put this, you know, in an email system like ConvertKit, or MailChimp, or one of those. It’s nice if you do but you don’t have to, you could just put this up on your on your website as a PDF or download and let people download it. And now you don’t have their email address, but they’ve got something valuable for you. And there should be a call to action at the end of it. And that’s that call to action is hey, do you need help with this? Maybe it’s sending them to another piece of content. Maybe you’ve recorded a five minute video that you’ve put up on how to use it. And that’s the next step. And then in there, you’re building rapport in that video. And then you can say, hey, if you want more help, and you can bring them on the next step in the chain.
Alistair McBride 36:43
So with all that said, What’s your current lead magnet?
Alastair McDermott 36:49
Like currently making magnet is changing?
Alistair McBride 36:52
That sounds exciting. What are you moving to?
Alastair McDermott 36:54
It’s getting very matter here. So I apologize for the inception, my lead magnet is now going to be a lead magnet about how to create lead magnets.
Alistair McBride 37:03
There you go. So well, to be fair, like this is why you have the conversation. Yeah, because as we said at the start, people are going yeah, I get the whole I want to build authority I get when you have authority, people are coming to you, you’re able to charge premium prices, you’re able to choose your clients much more on your projects, and so on. People like largely are getting that. But as you said, if if they know they need to do so much consistent work over time to get there. They’re thinking they can imagine there’s a lot of procrastination and starting, whereas with this, it allows them to start potentially right now.
Alastair McDermott 37:40
It’s what I’ve been super frustrated with, I want to help people get a quick win. And when I start to talk to people about content creation, and creating a podcast and maybe writing a book, and I’ve had a couple of coaching clients who started to write book, and things like that GPT. And all those kinds of things really do help with speeding that up. And I’ve actually I’ve just published my own
Alistair McBride 38:03
policy today on level of Chatty PT Yes, yeah, yeah, I think it’s
Alastair McDermott 38:06
good to kind of publicize what level you’re using it. And you can check out my blog or my, my LinkedIn, you’ll see I’ve written a bit about how much I use Chachi. Beatty, and how much I advise using it. And, and but yeah, so you can create these things quicker with the use of these tools. But it still doesn’t give you a quick win. And so that’s why I’m creating this because I want to create a single piece of engaging and effective content that resonates with potential clients and generates leads that result in sales. Because that’s like, that’s why we’re doing this. Ultimately, the whole thing is not because people have an ego that they want stoked by becoming known as The Recognized Authority. Ultimately, the reason they want to do it is because they want to become known as an authority so that they can command higher fees, and work less hours. And that’s ultimately what we want to do. That’s freedom.
Alistair McBride 38:54
That’s Yes. freedom to choose your clients, choose your rates, choose your projects, choose where you want to focus, choose where you want to grow. That’s what it’s all about.
Alastair McDermott 39:04
Absolutely. And so that quick win, is it for me, giving people a quick win by helping them to create something that will start generate leads tomorrow. That’s what this is all about.
Alistair McBride 39:14
Super stuff. Any last thoughts, thoughts or points? Where people do at the end of this? How can they,
Alastair McDermott 39:22
at the end of this, you can go visit the recognized authority.com. And you can download a lead magnet about creating effective lead magnets. But I’m not going to call it that. I’m not even sure if I’m going to have that word in there at all. I’m still still thinking about that. So you need a new term. I do. Yes. So yeah, so so that’s what like that’s what it’s all about. It’s about helping people to get leads more quickly. And I still do absolutely espouse the idea of creating a long term large body of work like a podcast you to channel writing a book or a blog or something where you are demonstrating your work, demonstrating your knowledge and sharing your expertise in public. And that is what will bring in inbound inquiries on a kind of a long term consistent basis. I absolutely do believe in that. But let’s get a quick one at the start. Let’s create something that starts to generate leads straight away. And that’s what this is all about.
Alistair McBride 40:24
Excellent. Well done.
Alastair McDermott 40:28
Thanks out. And thanks for coming on as the guest interviewer. Thanks for listening, I know that you’ve got a choice of podcasts and shows that you can listen to so I really do appreciate your time and your attention. If you did find this episode, interesting. I would truly appreciate if you could take 30 seconds to rate the show in your podcast player or even leave a text review. It won’t take you long but it has a huge impact on the growth of the show. And it also helps to motivate me and continuing to do it. So it’s right where you’re listening to the show. You can also find a link in the show notes which will take you to rate and review. Thank you again. See you in the next one.
