#518 WP-Tonic Show With Special Guest Paul Tobey

Brand Building Advice For Small Companies Plus We Discuss Effective Copy-writing Trends in 2020 From Paul Tobey!

As the founder and CEO of Training Business Pros, Paul Tobey is widely regarded as one of North America’s top trainers and internet marketing experts. He is also a highly respected and in-demand speaker known for his passion, professionalism, and enthusiasm and his dynamic, well-prepared presentations.

Paul is a multi-award winning jazz pianist and former Arkadia Records recording artist, having enjoyed a successful 22-year career as a musician. In search of a fresh challenge, Paul traded artistry for entrepreneurship, selling sheet music online and helping artists develop tools to market themselves. After mentoring with a number of the world’s top trainers, Paul began to take on the world of Internet marketing and founded Training Business Pros in 2007.

In the years since, Paul has personally trained thousands of business owners and executives, helping them save on their bottom line while improving their personal and professional lives. To find out more about Paul Tobey.

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the WP tonic show. This is episode 518. We’ve got a returning guest. He did a great job when he came on the show for the first time. We got Paul Toby back on the show. So Paul, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

Paul: Sure. I’m Paul Toby. I run a digital marketing agency and training company and do executive consulting for established businesses.

Jonathon: That’s great. And we’re going to be talking about how you can build a brand, a small company online, how you can still build a brand in 2020. And we are also going to be talking about the power of copywriting to hypnotize your leads. That sounds interesting. Doesn’t it? I’ve got my great host with me Adrian. Adrian would you like to quickly introduce yourself?

Adrian: Hi everyone. My name is Adrian. I am the CEO and founder of Groundhog. We help small businesses launch their funnel or their list and scale their business.

Jonathon: And before we get into the main part of our interview report, I just want to mention one of our great sponsors and that’s Kinsta. Kinsta has been sponsoring the show for almost over three years now. They are a great hosting company. They only specialize in WordPress. If you’ve got a site, a WooCommerce site, a learning management system, we call this membership site for yourself or for clients. You really need quality hosting. And that’s what you get from Kinsta. They base all their technology on Google cloud. You get a superb interface and you get great support as well. So if that sounds interesting, go over to them, have a look at their plans. I suggest that you should buy one. And at the same time, tell them that you heard about them on the WP Tonic Show.

So Paul, let`s talk about how you build a small company and build a brand. Because especially online, there seems to be new companies starting almost every day, where there are new Facebook. It’s a very competitive congestive, but can small companies still kind of build a little niche and brand in 2020.

Paul: Not instantaneously. It takes a little bit of effort and time. I like to break things down into measurable bite sized chunks. I had a mentor once called Brian Klemmer and he said, how do you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. Essentially, if a company is trying to break through into the market, establish brand, establish themselves as a competitor in a specific niche or niche. It’s important to look at that from three perspectives. The first one is, is that I believe the definition of brand is promises delivered, honoring your commitments. Essentially, if you make a promise to the marketplace and you over promise and under deliver that will erode brand from the get go. So brand is essentially created over time by delivering on your promises. Number two, in your messaging, you must, and this is super important, be consistent. So for example, if you Jonathan Denwood as a social influencer have been doing episode. What is this 500 and?

Jonathon: 518?

Paul: I would consider that to be consistent with you.

Jonathon: I think it slightly bonkers.

Paul: But I think it’s important that you pick your times, you pick your social channels, you spend your efforts on a consistent and measured basis over time. This will tend to help prop up the brand. It won’t help you deliver on your promises. But essentially when someone ends up being a client and you deliver on your promises, then essentially they will talk about it on the social channels that you are already on. And that’s, what’s super important. And I see that happening with Groundhogg and I see that happening with other companies.

So that’s important. Number three, you have to properly leverage communication channels. I think the most important communication channel that you have is with your clients directly. And that means utilizing a CRM to its fullest extent, staying in front of them, making sure that there are trigger points that the CRM is doing, that you just don’t have time to do. And of course also keeping up your social influence as a communication channel. So those three things, one deliver on your promises to be consistent in your messaging and three leverage your communication channels.

Jonathon: Before I put it over to Adrian, do you think also a lot of this is subconscious that everything’s got to match. Like you say, you serve how you respond to support questions, your marketing, it all has to be, which is really difficult. It always has to be consistent and on message. Because you’re kind of dealing with client people’s subconscious. Does that make any sense Paul?

Paul: Not totally, but I think I understand what you’re trying to get at. People are essentially overwhelmed by all of the noise that’s online. So your question was how does the company build a recognized and powerful brand online? You have to be different. You have to stand out and difference means the three things that I talked about. And essentially what will happen is people will make a decision on you. Not based on their conscious thinking, but on their subconscious thinking, which subconscious is like 90% of the brain, which basically psychologically filters everything. So they’re going to filter everything you say through this subconscious mind, which judges and looks and compares.

And that’s basically what the subconscious mind does base on history and memory compares what you’re saying to everything it understands and knows. And it’s looking for differences. How does this compare to that? For example, when I was a jazz musician for like 23 years, when they would write about me in the newspaper as I was on tour in various places, typically what the reviewers would do when they compare my playing to another performer. They would say, well, he plays a lot like Oscar Peterson, right-hand like Oscar Peterson and a left hand, like Dave Brew Back. Does that make sense? And that’s how the subconscious mind works. It typically tries to find the differences between what you’re saying and what it recognizes.

Jonathon: Over to you Adrian.

Adrian: Earlier on that part of brand is delivering on your promises. How would a business actually going about figuring out what it is that they’re promising? I know it’s not always obvious, you know, as a software company in my early days, we didn’t, you know, we thought the promise was we’ll just deliver great software. But that’s not really what we’re doing. The promise is the end result of using our great software to accomplish some sort of result. And we’ve further defined that as launching your funnel, growing your list and scaling your business. That’s our promise to you when you use our stuff is we’re going to help you accomplish those three things. Not just the fact that, you know, we’re going to deliver you great software. So how does a business that might be in that mindset where they think the product is the promise and of itself goes through the process of actually figuring out what they’re delivering?

Paul: Yes, you are correct. Mr. Toby, essentially, you don’t sell cars. We don’t sell cars. We sell luxury. We sell convenience, we sell affordability, we sell economics, and we don’t sell cars. We sell speed. That makes sense. And I think a lot of companies in the beginning when you’re putting together some kind of market strategy. You have to decide what it is we’re really selling. In fact, the first time I ever heard that was from dr. Robert Anthony. He is a great psychologist and a person wrote something called the secret psychology of persuasion. And I think most companies don’t necessarily land on it in the beginning, but over time, they kind of figure out what it is, they’re what problem they’re solving or how they’re actually helping. So I think the best place to start if you’re doing that is to maybe pick up a book by Bob Blum called insight advantage.

I’ve done a great study of this particular process. In addition to the other things like vision and mission, purpose, core values. But from a marketing standpoint, if you’re trying to create a message and this will lead into some things that I want to talk about later, that you mentioned copywriting. This is very important because it’s basically a four step process that a Bob Blum lane out it’s like, who is our target audience? So it’s basically four things who what, how and own it. And the who part is who is our target audience. That’s that exists in sufficient quantity to become brand loyal to us, to spur profitable growth. And that’s very important. If the audience must be targeted and they must be in sufficient quantity to spur a profitable growth. So who is our audience and what do they want?

What do we do that solves a problem in the marketplace. It may not be necessarily what they’re looking for, but that’s the differentiator. It’s like, well, what do we do? And why does that matter? And the third part is how do we do that? How do we sell our, what to our who? And that’s multiple marketing online, offline, everything that you do must be brand consistent and all the messaging must be consistent across multiple channels. Whether you doing books, seminars, podcasts, you name it. Everything must be consistent because eventually people will learn to recognize and they like things they’re familiar with. And then finally own it. Own it means through all of those channels, you run a series of imaginative events. For example, if you take a company like Neiman Marcus, who was a one store, one shop, a high end retailer in Dallas, and basically couture is not Dallas.

It’s really not the place for that. Cause you know, Cowboys and whatever. And they had one store that they started an organization called Paris in a fortnight. So every 14 days during the hottest months of the year, they would run this Paris in a fortnight thing where they would have people exhibiting art. They would have concert in the park and interspersed with that, they would do runway shows. Eventually Neiman Marcus from that became so popular that they became a global brand in excess of $2 billion a year. So it all starts with this sort of series of imaginative events. So who, what, how and own it.

And that’s, if a company is looking to figure that out, I would highly recommend picking up a book called insight advantage. What is your insight advantage? What is your uncommon offering in the marketplace? Because it doesn’t matter what’s better, better as subjective. For example, Jägermeister, if you’ve ever had Jägermeister, my personal opinion is it’s not a great alcohol. I prefer good glass of scotch or nice glass of wine. A Yeager is kind of like harsh and whatever, but it has one skew and it’s a very, very profitable company. Why? It’s different, it’s not better. It’s just different. And that’s what companies need to figure out. And insight advantage is a good place to start.

Jonathon: I remember I read the history of North face. And Patagonia, they’re both outdoor brands, outdoor clothing. North face was started by a couple in San Francisco and they developed their brand initially through a tent. They sold tents. And they sold a tent that climbers and outdoor people mountaineers really I wouldn’t say it was revolutionary, but it was clearly better than what was the rest of the competition on the market. And then they slowly win into other outdoor products. And in the end they were bought by a very large Belgium multi international clothing company.

Patagonia, similar you know say both like Patagonia is it’s the environmental outlook. It’s, you know, if you buy a Patagonian, if you get stolen or damage, you can send it back and they repair it for free. They’re quite expensive, but you know they’re seen as their products will last a long time. And you’ve got this free repair service. So is it kind of finding having a good product, but also offering something that the competition, like what Patagonia is doing the about, you can send the product back for life of the product and they will attempt to repair it.

Paul: I think that’s a good example of honoring your commitments and brand is promises delivered. So if they’re basically offering an unconditional money back guarantee. That’s what we call in the business risk reversal. You’re taking the risk off the purchaser and you’re putting it on yourself. And it has that promise by the way, has been a eroded by marketers over the year. But if you can actually offer that, I think that’s a great way to reach your market, get them to understand that you’re taking the risk and they’re not. And whatever problem that it solves, hopefully when they get it, it’ll solve their problem and they won’t return it. Basically my experience with that is less than 5% returns across the board.

Jonathon: It doesn’t matter the returns, what they offer is if it gets damaged at all, you can send it back to them and they repair it for free.

Paul: It’s like the sunglasses company.

Jonathon: Yes. I know what you mean.

Paul: Adrian. Name of the sunglasses company events doesn’t matter where you buy them. It doesn’t even matter if you buy them second hand, you can take them into any store. And they will replace what’s broken on them. It doesn`t matter if you sat on them. It’s basically they just have this sort of lifetime guarantee on their sunglasses, which is kind of neat. It’s different as they say very different.

Jonathon: Yeah. Well, we’re going to go for a break. When we come back, we’re going to be talking about copywriting. We read back in a few moments folks.

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Jonathon: We’re coming back. We are having a discussion about branding and how do you build a brand? Not the easiest thing, but it’s important when you’re a small company. So Paul hypnotic copywriting, what’s this about Paul?

Paul: But before you jumped into that, you asked.

Jonathon: Oh yes. Thank you so much. I almost forgot there. I am going to discuss our second sponsor. And that`s WP Fusion. And WP Fusion, if you’ve got a CRM or active campaign drip, infusion soft and you’re looking for a powerful and an effective way for your WordPress website to communicate with one of these CRMs you need WP Fusion. What it enables you to do with one of these modern marketing atomization platforms is amazing. It’s an amazing company that’s established a clear brand in the past three years that they’ve been on and off sponsoring the show for over the past three years. Their support is much appreciated, but let’s gets to the cracks of it. If you’ve got a client or you all for yourself, you need your WordPress website to communicate with these CRMs. You need WP fusion. So go over there, have a look at their packages. Buy one and tell them that you heard about them on the WP tonic show. So hypnotic copywriting. What’s this about Paul?

Paul: Well, it all stems from the number one challenge that companies have when it comes to putting out marketing messages, especially online. It tends to be the one area that gets missed or overlooked or underestimated in terms of its value in creating a website. So for example, most people would put their efforts into design and does it match the company brand? And they would put a lot of time and effort in the logo is if a logo is actually going to sell something. Words sell, and I think people underestimate or have completely underestimated the value of that in terms of connecting with an audience. So we talked a little bit earlier about brand is promises delivered, but we also talked about being consistent in communication and being a powerful communicator. And persuader is an important element in reaching an audience. And when they come to your website, they’re basically reading words, headlines, sub-headlines, bullet points, and things like that.

And if you piece them together without any knowledge of how people’s psychology or the psychology of persuasion actually works, then your marketing messaging tends to miss the Mark. So I’ve made a great study over the years of people like Joe Vitale, Gary Bencivenga, PT, Barnum Robert Cialdini, and Dan Kennedy. So some of the great copywriters of our time, and I think there’s a consistent message that they all share. And that is words can put people into a focused mental state, subconscious that we talked about earlier, that is completely a curiosity driven where the only thing that matters is what do I do next?

And that’s what we call a good user experience. They come to the website and you capture their attention and interest. You explain to them as quickly as possible what the benefits are, but basically create enough curiosity so that they’re so curious, the tipping point is, do I buy or don’t I buy? And hypnotic copywriting can help push somebody over the edge. So that’s essentially what hypnotic copywriting is putting people into a focus, mental state building curiosity, where the only thing that happens is what comes next.

Jonathon: Yeah. I’ve got to tell you, it still is a weakness, but there was a major weakness for me reflecting back. But I’ve got an excuse. I have dyslexia. So I’m a very visual person, video images. That’s what got me into web design initially and dream weaver. I’m really daunting myself.

Paul: Oh, no, I’ve been talking to someone who started a digital marketing back when no one had ever heard of it. So I’ve I’m a big fan of Dreamweaver in the early days.

Jonathon: Yeah. But I realized recently. So I joined a course by I don’t, you know, you know, this guy, Frank Kern. Yeah. And he talks about all the people that you’ve just mentioned old copywriters in the day of print, newspaper, print, and magazines. And he actually through the course that I purchased, I don’t normally purchase these types of courses. But it was at a very affordable price. So I bought it and I did learn because he was actually launching a brand online brand for his wife who wanted to sell cosmetic to build a cosmetic brain. And he went through the process of writing the copywriting, getting an initial batch of goods, how to do videos and how to start building a brand online. It was fascinating actually, but his emphasis was copywriting. Like what you just said over to you, Adrian.

Adrian: So what are kind of like the three, if you could choose three, what are the three main elements that you would use to capture that initial intention? Because from years and years and years of research, the, you have like what seven seconds or 13 seconds to capture someone’s interest when they land on your homepage from either like a Google ad or Facebook ad. Or maybe just organic search. What are the three first things that they need to see in order to give you the time to stick around within that seven seconds using hypnotic copywriting techniques?

Paul: And do you want to talk about that in the context of say a webpage or a landing page?

Adrian: Yes.

Paul: Okay. So the first thing is the headline is the most important element. You can have a pre headline and you can have sub headline, but the main headline should be front and center. And don’t overwrite that with images because well, people say, well, you know, images, paint a thousand words. We don’t want them to paint a thousand. We want to paint the words that we choose, not what images choose. So words can paint very specific images. And so the first thing is, is that people think in pictures.

And to prove that all you have to do is watch what your brain does when I list things. So let’s go watch what your brain does. Okay. So computer chair, desk, floor, tree, road, car, sun, moon, sky, clouds. What did it do? Every single instantaneously, the brain immediately without any hesitation, visualized every single word in the brain.

So people underestimate the power of people thinking in pictures. And so the words that you choose must paint a picture and then lace it. Secondly, with emotion best, make them feel something. So fast car, green tree, bright sun, strong sun, hot sun. Everything that kind of creates some type of feeling associated with the imagery. That’s what we call hypnotic connectors, connecting the imagery with the feeling.

And then the third thing is that the reason why this would be the probably interspersed with those first two things, the reason why I need it. The reason you’re the best one to give it to me and the reason why I should buy that now. So to me that if you follow that formula, people think in pictures, people make them feel something and give them the reasons why. The reasons why they need it, the reasons why you’re the best one to give it to me and the reason why I should buy it today.

So that’s how I would start visualizing the entire landing page based on those things. It doesn’t mean there aren’t many other elements that you can use such as, you know, BOGO, which is the biggest selling offer of all time. In fact, if you look at BOGO, buy one get one free versus half price and versus half price. And the other one was 50% off. So buy one, get one free half price and 50% off all mean the same thing. So why it is buy one get one free, gets 86% better response than the other two. And the answer is people like value that’s piled on. So they rather buy value than get something at a discount. So that’s how that works. Does that answer your question?

Adrian: Yes it does. Thank you! Jonathan.

Jonathon: Two other factors that come to mind that I’ve been thinking about recently when it comes to copywriting Paul is you got to find the vocabulary of your target audience. How they talk different groups of people. If you get a group of CPO`s and then you get a group of online marketers in two separate rooms, this is going to be English, but it’s going to be two very different conversations. Isn’t it? And the second thing is really, and I’m not sure there’s this word actually exists, but I create it. That’s nichefy. That that’s really being brutal and finding an audience and then cuts in it.

Because the more you nichefy it, as long as you don’t make it ridiculous where there’s only like five people in the world that could buy your product. Is that you’re dealing with most of North America, Canada, and most of Europe. And that could be even bigger depending on your price point. Is really nichefy. And that really helps with the copywriting and making it more targeted. What did you think of those two points Paul?

Paul: So the first one was talking about speaking the language of your audience. I think that’s important. It also depends on its product or service. And obviously speaking the language of your audience is super important. But what I’ve always found is, is not necessarily dumb it down, but speak in common language and colloquialisms. And if there are specific colloquialisms for that audience, use them regularly. Common phraseology that they use, I think, and especially if you’re dealing with a highly intelligent audience, you certainly don’t want to underestimate their intelligence and speak at a grade eight level.

You can speak a bit higher than that, but at the same time, you don’t want to make it overly complicated, which is essentially just trying to make yourself look like a good writer. And I think good writers tend to bury themselves. An English degree from university does not make you a good business copywriter. I’m talking about salesmanship in print. So yeah, if you’re speaking to an audience and you’re delivering information and you’re writing that the new England journal of medicine, that’s a very different thing than it is to try to sell a widget to a million people online. So common language colloquialisms, phraseology and stick to like a grade eight level of speech. So that’s the first one, the second one. And just remind me quickly what it was?

Jonathon: Nichefy more than what you think you should.

Paul: It’s very simple in business actually to create a business people. I think overestimate the uniqueness of their business. It’s like I’m doing something that nobody else does. If you’re doing something that nobody else does, there’s probably no market for it. So I would suggest to most people pick a business that you can find plenty of competition, because if there’s plenty of competition, there’s obviously an audience. I think a lot of people try to create an audience where none exists. I’ve done a lot of training over the years, Jonathan. I mean, literally thousands of people who’ve come through my doors over the years and I’ve heard some pretty crazy business ideas. And some of them you just listened to and you go, that’s never going to work. You know, it’s just too niche and too specific. But what you do is you pick a niche that’s popular.

Jonathon: I do get what you mean. I didn’t explain it. I think that you got to find a broad market, but then you got to find a sub level of that market.

Paul: Just be different. All you have to do. I mean, that’s what, the second point that I was going to make. It’s like just find a niche that’s competitive, but go into that and be different. I always think of Adrian’s businesses in a highly, highly, highly competitive marketplace. And he knows, and maybe Adrian could speak to this. He knows that he’s not after everyone. He’s not after the whole market. And he’s after a specific niche in that market that is different. You know, what makes Adrian different? Well, first of all, it’s the first and only one for WordPress really that’s worth any value. It does what the big CRM companies do at a fraction of the cost.

So he can carve out a fairly large audience out of that with Groundhogg, because it’s just clearly different. And I know because I work with Infusionsoft and MailChimp and get response. And back in the days of auto response plus version three that nobody’s ever heard of, there’s one that dates your, what was it? You mentioned earlier dates, seriously. I mean, this stuff’s been around forever and you know, Adrian knew like that market exists. He’s been working in it a long time and he picked the product in a way to go about it. That’s clearly different and that company will have great legs in the coming years.

Wow. That’s great. Over to you, Adrian. Oh, I think we better actually wrap up our podcast part of the show. Hopefully Paul, you can stay on for some bonus content. So Paul staying on for some bonus content would be able to watch on the WP Tonic YouTube channel and on the WP tonic website with a full transcription of the interview. So Paul, how can people find out more about you and your thoughts and what you’re up to?

Paul: So the best place to find out about me is on a website called that’sambitious.com. It is an online learning site where people can have over a hundred hours of very specific content on how to run several aspects of their business, including marketing and digital marketing but there’s many, many other things there. And if they use the coupon code WP tonic, they can get 50% off any of our subscriptions.

Jonathon: Adrian how can people find out more about you and what you’re up to?

Adrian: Yeah. So if you have gone to that’s ambitious and you’ve taken their courses, and now you’re an expert. If not a copywriter, you have a bunch of leads that you need something to do with, we have the marketing automation and CRM tools that will allow you to grow your list and scale your business by constantly keeping up a consistent communication with your audience in order to further grow revenue and expand.

Jonathon: That’s great. And I am doing a free webinar with Chris Badger, the CEO of lifter LMS on the 4th of August. That’s Tuesday, the 4th of August at 9:00 AM Pacific standard time. And basically if you’re looking to build your first online course membership website. And so your experience so the world basically lifter LMS is one of the cheapest and best ways of doing it.

Almost everything is free that you need that comes with the core of lifter. And then you just need to buy one extension for Stripe at $99. And off you go and I and Chris will be showing you how to build a learning membership website in one hour, and then you’ll be able to take some money. And that doesn’t sound too bad. Does it? So join us for that free webinar. And we’ll see you next week, but remember, we’ve got some bonus content with Paul, which you can see the quickest on the WP Tonic YouTube channel. We will see you soon folks. Bye.

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