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Are you struggling with your new startup? Here are some low-cost business development strategies from our experts Cameron Francis and Sam Roshan to help you and your business succeed. Find out when you listen to the 9th episode of the Digital Cowboys.


Show Notes:

  • Cold Call – 00:01:59:08
  • Each Customer Should Be A Testimonial or Case Study -00:07:16:09
  • Instagram Hashtags – 00:09:30:11
  • Twitter Hashtags – 00:14:15:06
  • Community Groups – 00:15:37:09
  • Collaborate With Complimentary Businesses (Strategic Partnerships) – 00:16:44:23
  • Content Marketing (Educational/Entertaining) – 00:17:53:01
  • Blog – 00:18:41:10
  • Cold Email – 00:20:51:24
  • Gear Your Website For Leads/Conversions – 00:21:31:24
  • Webinars – 00:22:29:25
  • Hustle – 00:26:06:15
  • Network, Network, Network – 00:28:19:06
  • Give Shit Away – 00:32:05:09
  • Leave Flyers Strategically At Places – 00:34:31:23
  • Tell Your Story – 00:35:31:07
  • Be Different – 00:36:05:20

Transcript

Cameron Francis:

All right, let’s get this started. Today what we wanted to talk about was some low cost business development strategies for small businesses.

Sam Roshan:

The people who hustle are the ones that just continue trying to find innovative ways to grow their business, or whatever it may be, and they’re just persistent at it, just not giving up and just continuously doing what you do.

Voice Over:

Digital Cowboys, episode nine. We discuss everything digital marketing and growth hacking for small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs, so if you want that competitive edge, then saddle up because Cameron Francis and Sam Roshan are about to drop some value bo

mbs.

Cameron Francis:

Hey everybody this is Cameron Francis.

Sam Roshan:

And this is Sam Roshan.

Cameron Francis:

And this is the Digital Cowboys

Sam Roshan:

Cowboys.

Cameron Francis:

This is going to be difficult. This is going to be tough. I’ll tell you what, this is our first episode that we’re filming in front of all of our people down there and as soon as we have started, we are initially copping some mad hate from the other side.

Sam Roshan:

Yeah, man. I don’t know why they’re all laughing at Sam Roshan for.

Cameron Francis:

Because you don’t say Sam Roshan. You say Roshan. That’s really what it is.

Sam Roshan:

Yeah, well if I was to say it in Farsi it would be Sohail Roshan.

Cameron Francis:

Maybe we do that. Hey everybody this is Cameron Francis.

Sam Roshan:

This is Sohail Roshan.

Cameron Francis:

No.

Sam Roshan:

I can’t. I got to roll it.

Cameron Francis:

Do it in Farsi.

Sam Roshan:

Sohail Roshan. It’s too fobbish.

Cameron Francis:

Too fobbish?

Sam Roshan:

I can’t do it.

Cameron Francis:

All right, let’s get this started. Today what we wanted to talk about was some low cost business development strategies for small businesses. Essentially businesses that don’t have any money, but they want to generate new business. Yeah, I think we can just get started with some of our low cost methods straight off the bat.

Sam Roshan:

I think one of the things that we started off with was cold calls, I think. We got on the boiler and just went nuts and just found any contact details and called them and try and hustle to get some business out of them really.

Cameron Francis:

Do you know the interesting thing is that so many business owners are so scared to jump on the phone and talk to strangers. They’re scared of being rejected. They’re scared of being told to get lost. They’re scared of …

Sam Roshan:

Uncertainty.

Cameron Francis:

Of not … You know of actually putting themselves out there but the reality is that’s the easiest way and most cost effective way to do it. And you’ll learn a lot more about yourself and your products and services by just going out there and just calling people.

Sam Roshan:

Definitely. I’m just trying to think of, I guess, what’s some ways of being able to help people think about how they can overcome some of the fears. You know?

Cameron Francis:

Yep.

Sam Roshan:

Instead of just saying, “Yeah, look, you know it’s scary to pick up the phone and cold call people.” All right, well what are the things that you think that you could share that would allow people to start thinking about, okay, well it’s actually not that bad and they’re going actually to start giving it a go and picking up the phone and start cold calling people?

Cameron Francis:

Good question. You know I equate … It’s 30, 10, 1996. I equate cold calling and I hear the reasons why people don’t want to do it, it’s because they initially say it doesn’t work, but I don’t think that they try it enough in order to determine whether or not it works or not. It’s very similar to a kid falling over a couple of times and saying to himself, “Shit, this walking thing is just not for me.” It’s like, no, you keep on walking, you keep on falling over until it becomes second nature. The first thing I would say is don’t think about the sale, don’t think about the end result, just think about the process. Think about just going, making those dials, getting rejected and becoming more comfortable with just doing it one after the other. Once you’re able to establish then, then you’re able to start being more confident in your delivery, your approach, and ultimately you’ll be able to position your products and services a lot better. That’s exactly how I would do

it.

Sam Roshan:

Yeah. And you just got to pick up the phone.

Cameron Francis:

Yep.

Sam Roshan:

Just pick up the phone and start dialing. Get the contact details and I guess think about your value proposition. You just got to, yeah … I mean the number of times you’d have to do this is not in the tens, it’s not in the hundreds. Let’s put it that way. I think it’s eff

ort.

Cameron Francis:

I have been cold calling for new business since I was three.

Sam Roshan:

I don’t think you knew how to dial the phone at three.

Cameron Francis:

Hello. No, but seriously I’ve been cold calling since I was about 15. The first thing I was doing … Right there nice and close like. The first thing I was doing at about 15 was I was cold calling for donations. I’ll tell you what that does at a really early stage is it makes you resilient. Not a lot of people have the luxury of having that experience so early on. How you fast tract that experience is just by doing it.

Sam Roshan:

Definitely.

Cameron Francis:

Just by doing it.

Sam Roshan:

There’s a totally different conversation when you’re cold calling people than you actually having a warm lead to follow up on and if you can master cold calls to actually get someone who doesn’t even know about you and your service offering and has got a billion things to do throughout their day, for them to actually give two stuffs about what you are wanting to talk to them about and give you the time of day, if you can start really understanding how you can qualify them and actually turn that into a sale, now that will teach you so much on just communications. It would actually help you with everything that you’re doing for your business.

Cameron Francis:

I would set everyone a challenge right now, if you’re a new business and you’re wanting to generate new business, contact 100 people. Do it in four hours and see what the end result is. Just straight off the bat, 100 in four hours, see what the outcome is. I think that a lot of people would surprise themselves. But, in saying that, I think people are wanting a little bit more juice than just cold calls, I’ll give a little bits of insights into how we started off and, yes, we did this through cold calling, however, we were fortuitous in finding cold and turning it into warm before we made that call. A little strategy that created was we went to yellowpages.com.au. We saw and identified who our target market was, we went onto their business profile page, and we sent them a strategic message about their business. Now the those that replied, now there was replies that said, you know, “Piss off,” or “Well, go away,” in worse language, but the ones that did reply, they are wanting you to actually give them a call and so we were able to convert a low cost scalable model of lead generation, turning cold into warm, at a very early stage. That’s how we probably generated our first, what, 20, 30 customers.

Sam Roshan:

Yeah. I’d like to move onto the next, I guess, low cost business development strategy.

Cameron Francis:

Let’s go on from the 20, 30 customers. Right? Because if you’ve not got one customer, you don’t have any and you’re starting from ground zero, every customer that you generate should be two things. It should be a case study and it should be a referral channel. Right?

Sam Roshan:

Yeah.

Cameron Francis:

Once you’ve actually gone and finished the service, whatever it is, or sold them the product, you should then use that as a basis to record, film, document what benefit you gave that person and then showcase that to the world. Because a lot of reasons why consumers don’t buy is because of a lack of trust. You showing them exactly what the product or service can give to a consumer, that reduces and removes a lot of that trust factor. You’ve been really successful with referrals. Tells us a little bit about what you’ve done there.

Sam Roshan:

Well that’s actually exactly what I did. Every time that I built a relationship with one of the businesses that we started a relationship with, I started having continuous conversations with then about and build the actual relationship to find out what they actually do, who they interact with, and just continuously requested to know, “Hey, look, we’re kicking goals for your business and would love to do the same for others, so if you’ve got, keep us in mind.” Sometimes I actually come up with strategic ways of having an alliance with a partnership with them. Creating partnership agencies where there’s a referral program in place and case studies. I mean, with what we’re doing here, the amount of every time we’ve got a successful story, we just immediately jump on that and get a client testimonial, Google Places testimonial where there may be actually video testimonial. I think all of those just really help, not only create a brand, but just like you mentioned, it’s all about building trust and if a potential prospect is hearing it from somebody else it really can help them or solidify your business and what you can do for them.

Cameron Francis:

Excellent. New strategy. Okay, let’s go on to the new social media platform Instagram. Utilizing hashtags in order to generate new business. Now you’re thinking, “How is that possible?” What you need to do is you need to identify who your ideal customer is, what they would be looking for, and what hashtags that they would use. You then go to that search bar, put in that hashtag, and then you do. You go through every image, you see what the person said, you identify exactly what that consumer is wanting, and it’s not going to generate a sale every single time, but they are there and the only thing that you’re spending at this stage is your time. Yeah, you’ve got a lot of it at this stage of your business.
Some of the things that I’d use on … The other things that I’d use on Instagram, and this is something that I told a personal trainer of mine, he’s in Mornington Peninsula and he said, “Cam, how do I generate more one-on-one clients.” I said, “Okay, what I would do is I would go to Instagram, I’d find all of the big gyms in my local area, I would then find every time someone tagged themselves into that gym, I would then follow them, and then would send them a message.” Because if you look at it this way, you know that they’re into fitness, you know that they’re in your area, and you know you can help.” It’s reverse engineering who your ideal customer is and then approaching it from that point of view. What does that cost you?

Sam Roshan:

Time. Just to add to what you just mentioned before that if you start doing these … you’re taking these steps and especially direct messaging, trying to identify who these individuals are within your local community and who it is that you want to target and sending them a direct message, the momentum in itself can create conversations.

Cameron Francis:

Correct.

Sam Roshan:

Really what you can do as a business owner is to continuously make these efforts, especially with regards to social media and allow the momentum to ideally generate business for itself.

Cameron Francis:

You know that I’ve done this for us as well, like as recent as last week. What I’ve been doing is, you know I’m a big fan of MMA, I’ve literally been contacting every single UFC fighter that doesn’t have a website and sending them a specific message, you know, “I saw you fight on the weekend. That’s really good. When I tried to search you, when I tried to look for you, I couldn’t find your website. This would really help with your branding, your marketing. I have a creative agency. I can help you with that. Let me know if you’re interested.” We got two opportunities from that. I sent out maybe 140 different messages, but we’ve got Ali Iaquinta and what’s that guy, Pantera, the Mexican fighter, but we’ve got two that we’re building a website for. I just did a deal in my spare time, while I was just on my phone messaging these fighters directly, 2% strike rate and what did it cost me, nothing but my time.

Sam Roshan:

Very good. To add to the Instagram, you’ve got influencers and I know that a lot of businesses are starting to take the, I guess, the opportunity. If there are people that you know or you can actually search these individuals that could be potentially, that would have the followers in your target market, to just approach them, whether it is a service that you offer or a product, to provide them samples. Now there’s strategic ways of you being able to do this so it doesn’t cost you too much. You just got to pick your mark, follow these individuals, and start, again, engage in a conversation, and then just give them the option of seeing if they would be happy to showcase your products.

Cameron Francis:

Do you know who this really works well for is like artists, digital artists, Nsync, things like that. Let’s just say I had an art design or graphics company, what I would do is I would create a really, really creative design from a particular influencer, without any intention of them sharing, liking, or doing anything, just because this is my passion, this is what I want to do. I’ll post it, I’ll tag them. One person did that fur Dwayne Johnson, the Rock Johnson, and he’s got a following on Instagram 50, 60 million people. He reposted that. That made a massive impact on this guy’s business, a massive, like he just had an influx of orders coming through, which is phenomenal. Works really well for graphic design and all things like that, but I’ve seen a similar approach work for so many different products. You’ve just got to go out there, identify who the right influencers are that has the similar network to your ideal customer and send them something spec

ial.

Sam Roshan:

For sure.

Cameron Francis:

Next.

Sam Roshan:

Twitter hashtags.

Cameron Francis:

What have you got for Twitter hashtags?

Sam Roshan:

I don’t have much. I’m not a user of Twitter at all.

Cameron Francis:

Yeah, no I …

Sam Roshan:

As a marketer I should be, but …

Cameron Francis:

I use a little bit. This is … The way I would use Twitter specifically is to engage in conversations. It’s very similar to other social networks. I would look at … Okay, let’s just say I’m a real estate agent. If I’m looking for a property to lease, or to buy, or to sell, I’m posting up a status and I’m using those particular hashtags, “Looking for a house,” “Wanting to buy,” “hashtag Melbourne real estate,” and I’m looking at those conversations, I’m analyzing it, and then I’m engaging in a conversation. Now where you’ve got to be really careful in is if you just go in there with the intent to just sell, you’re going to get shot down really, really quickly. You want to be able to provide a level of value or help so if someone says, “Look, I’m interested in looking for properties within this area,” direct them on where they can look, on where they can find. Although that you might have that service, you don’t want to be too pushy with the sales process so early so utilizing Twitter, the hashtags, and the locations as a search engine or for consumer insights. The only thing it’s going to cost you is time. Absolutely love it.
Another low cost method that I would want to use is utilizing community groups, business groups within your particular area. Every single location, every suburb has business groups or things like that. Utilize your specialty and go in there and provide value. Make yourself to be the authority within your domain. For example, for us, we would be attached to certain business groups in and around Melbourne. We go in there, absolutely no cost, no charge, providing this type of advice for businesses within that group. Exactly what we’re doing now, we’re giving all the information that we’ve developed and generated over our 10 years, and we’re giving it for free. But in turn, what does that do? The person consuming this now might not buy our service or might not, I don’t know, whatever, but if you share, if you get some value out of this and you share it to a friend or you talk about it in a different conversation, that conversation could spark an interest with that next person that could possibly, at one stage in their life be a customer.

Sam Roshan:

Yeah, I think there are, even all across Australia …

Cameron Francis:

I lost, ran out of breath there. Did you …?

Sam Roshan:

You did do well though. I’m sure a lot of small businesses have heard of B&I and they do take advantage of it so there’s just that … It’s across all of of Australia so there’s, in every locality there’s a group that is formed and you pay a subscription fee and you can basically go and meet up with other individuals or business owners in different industries. You’d be able to really just create a partnership program or a referral-based program, and it has helped a lot of businesses. That’s one and also you’ve got councils in every single local area. What you can do is, in those councils there are business meetings so you can actually go and offer consulting, whether it is a seminar that you want to run, that would help these individuals who have, who run their businesses. If there’s any solution that you can offer them, it depends on your business, probably would work best with B2B, as opposed to B2C, and run seminars. If people are interested, again, it’s just about how do you continuously send these positive signals out that generate conversations. You know?

Cameron Francis:

Yep. Actually leveraging off that, what this all boils down to is content and providing value. All of these different strategies, you need to be able to be providing value to your end user and there’s two ways to do it. I was talking about this the other day. There’s content that educates and there’s content that entertains. You’ve got to be just wary of the platform that you’re putting it on, but if you’re going into providing seminars and doing workshops and things like that, you are, first of all, being seen as an authority within your space, but you’re doing that by providing value in the form of content. If you’re going to be doing all of that, I would be having and creating my own blog.
Now a blog isn’t just a place where you put some bullshit content on there and you know … You’re providing value. You’re helping someone out, so it can be, for example, we’ve got Jameeka here. His content would be in the forms of video, how to guides, previous works, showing businesses how they can be promoting their companies. For us, it’s very straightforward. It’s giving marketing advice, digital marketing advice, SEO advice, branding advice, social media advice to businesses who have a real need to want to learn more about this. Factoring in the educational and entertainment, once you’ve been able to separate those two, double down on one and make sure that you are actually providing more value than what you’re actually expecting back. With your blog, what are a few things that you would add on your blog to make sure that it’s effective?

Sam Roshan:

What do you mean?

Cameron Francis:

If you put a blog on there, how … What would you…

Sam Roshan:

From a … You just want to make sure that the user experience of when people are visiting your website is on point. What would you do? You could create categories or topics, a search function, you want to make sure that every blog that you create has a title that is eye catching. Is this what you’re referring to?

Cameron Francis:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s all just ways on how to make your blog stand out. I mean, if you’re going to have a blog, how do you make it better.

Sam Roshan:

Then you can, I guess, to make it even more advanced, you can have, on each different blog, you can go into having little pop-up banners of, you know, when you’re providing value, how do you then create or how do you find ways of capturing their data to be able to remarket to these individuals.

Cameron Francis:

Excellent. I would also add social sharing, so making sure things are sharable.

Sam Roshan:

Definitely.

Cameron Francis:

If you’ve got a post up, make sure that you can get people to subscribe. You want to build an email marketing list for people to come back and I think that that’s a next one that we should be talking about. Low cost business development strategies, build a marketing list.

Sam Roshan:

You can build a marketing list not only from getting traffic to your blog, so you can capture that data, but also the cold calls that you’re doing. If there’s any individuals that you’re talking to on social media, whoever it may be, that you can grab their contact details, ideally email. At the end of the day, it’s all about these email marketing strategies about having snippets of your blogs in an email for when you’re sending out this email blast or email marketing campaign, for them to go back to a particular page that would have a particular message with a particular service offering.

Cameron Francis:

Beautiful. That’s for your blog. I would also want to make sure that my website is geared for conversions. A couple of things that I would want to make sure my website number’s clear, people can submit an inquiry through different means, whether it wants to be through instant chat, whether it’s through clicking through to social media, subscribing to a newsletter, requesting a call back, making sure that it’s all visible and easy to get to. Make sure every page serves a purpose so easy, if I’m a plumber, you’ve got a page dedicated to each service, each service has a headline, each headline goes with a description, you have your points of difference, you talk about some of the questions that your customers would have about your service before they would want to buy and then ultimately, again, make sure it’s easy for them to send that inquiry through. If you gear your website for conversions then you’re giving yourself the best possible chance to get a conversion.

Sam Roshan:

Cool. What about webinars. That’s a fun one.

Cameron Francis:

Webinars. Well, it’s very similar to your idea on seminars. It’s the same thing but online.

Sam Roshan:

Just web based.

Cameron Francis:

Yeah, yeah.

Sam Roshan:

You need a good subscribe list to be able to actually get attendance.

Cameron Francis:

Yep, yep.

Sam Roshan:

I mean you can … When you … You want to make sure that, just like you’re seminar, you have a good criteria and you have a lot of value in the content that you’re going to produce and you’re going to give to the audience, and then from there you just need that database to be able to try and get as many attendees as possible. You can share it through social media as well, and ideally even if you wanted to, again, you can use social media and particular individuals who have a good, I guess, influencers to get them to promote your webinar to be able to get people there. Again, you need to think about the intents behind every single one of these. What is the intent of having your webinar? What’s the end goal? What are you trying to achieve? And you gear the whole webinar towards that and ideally it would be either adding more value, or whether it may be really promoting a particular service or educating people on how they can choose a particular service in your business and how they could define business A from business B, whatever it may be.

Cameron Francis:

Yep, yep. Let’s just say, for example, that a company doesn’t have a database to go and promote a webinar to, pick a company. Pick any type of company that you want.

Sam Roshan:

To do a webinar?

Cameron Francis:

I’ll give you. Let’s just say, I’m a business and I don’t have a marketing list that I can go and promote the webinar to. How would you go and get people to attend your webinar? Random example, pick any type of company that you want.

Sam Roshan:

Dentist. I don’t know why I always pick that.

Cameron Francis:

Perfect. Let’s just say I’m a dentist. You’ve got a webinar. What’s the webinar going to be on? It could be on multiple things. Let’s just say it could be on fillings. Does your teeth hurt? Right? Or it could be if you’ve got kids.

Sam Roshan:

Oral hygiene.

Cameron Francis:

Oral hygiene, bad breath, right?

Sam Roshan:

I’ve got that all the time.

Cameron Francis:

I’ve got that right now. That’s what talking does. Let’s just say, for example, if you do cosmetic dentistry or whatever the actual service is, you’ve identified who that ideal customer is. Right? Now once you’ve got that, you then, what platform has the biggest encyclopedia and records of every single user, consumer, and person from age, location, sex, income?

Sam Roshan:

Facebook.

Cameron Francis:

So what you would do is, you would create a content piece and a headline targeting that particular user directing them through to your website for a subscription, sorry for an invite into the webinar to help them on how to not have crappy breath on your first date. Who’s going to be on a first date? Say between 17 and 30, male, female, single, certain income, they watch a certain TV show. There’s certain things that singles do that couples don’t, but the easiest one when you set your criteria is single. When you’re actually sending out and sending your message, you’re targeting the exact type of person that you want to actually see your webinar. It does cost a little bit of money. When you’re on a social media platform, there is a play to pay, but this is just one of the ways that you can get more people on there so absolutely love that one. What’s the next one?

Sam Roshan:

You’ve got blog, which we’ve already covered.

Cameron Francis:

Yep.

Sam Roshan:

And hustle.

Cameron Francis:

I put hustle in because it’s just so important. I think the biggest … We’ve just passed five years and that’s yay, well done us. The reason why businesses fail within the first five years is because they don’t have cash flow to be able to fund their business. That’s just what it is. The reason why they don’t have cash flow is because they don’t have new business. They don’t have new business because they’re not out there smashing the pavements, smashing the phones talking to every single person that they know, sending out 100 emails, going out Instagram and sending out messages. They’re not doing that a thousand times a day to give themselves the opportunities they need to generate new customers. More important than any of this, every one of these strategies that we’re going through right now, if you don’t have the dedication and the hustle to continue even though you’re getting beaten up and kicked in the face, you will lose. That is, I wish we kept that to last, I don’t know why I put that so early, but that is the fundamental thing and the fundamental reason why people fail within the first five years as opposed to succeeding. That’s an intangible. You either have it or you don’t. You can’t fake hustle. You can’t just all of the sudden have it. You just need to, you just need to do it. Next one.

Sam Roshan:

I always like talking about really being proactive and being persistent. You know I think those two things really give a good insight to people to hustle are the ones that just continue trying to find innovative ways to grow their business or whatever it may be and they’re just persistent at it. Just not giving up and just continuously doing what you do. That’s, I guess, a really big component of a business owner, you give up a 38 hour week to start a 90 hour one so you have to make sure you’re in it for the long haul.

Cameron Francis:

Yeah, I think it’s I would rather work 100 hours a week doing what I love than slave 40 hours a week doing something I hate. On to the next point, which is networking. You’ve got to treat every situation, every occurrence as an opportunity to build business. Now, again, I’ve said this before, you can’t just go in there wanting to sell everyone your idea. You hate that person in the room. They come in, they want to sell you, and it’s like, “Piss off. No!” Your intent needs to be to help. If you’ve got a specialty in something, it could be anything. Let’s just, let’s go with the dentist thing. I can help people not have bad breath. I walk around with minties and floss. I see someone that has gingivitis.

Sam Roshan:

No dentist is going to do that, walk around with mints and floss.

Cameron Francis:

But why not? Why not? Why not?

Sam Roshan:

That’s a good point.

Cameron Francis:

You know I walk around with Google in my pocket.

Sam Roshan:

That’s you and the rest of the world.

Cameron Francis:

Let’s just say I’m a dentist and I’m out talking. I’m not just walking up to people saying, “Hey-

Sam Roshan:

Do you want a mint? I got a floss.

Cameron Francis:

You’ve got bad breath. Here I’ve got a solution for you,” but when the conversation arises, then you provide that solution not wanting to sell but wanting to help. If you can go in that, no matter what type of business or what type of service that you provide, then you will be able to develop the relationships that has that trickle effect. That person might not buy, the the person that they speak to you about, or their cousin, or their auntie, or their whoever, they might want to be a customer.

Sam Roshan:

Or even in what we do. I mean when we’re having conversations with so many people within our, whether it’s, network or whoever we come across and we find that there are businesses and they have a lot of questions, is the first thing that we want to do, initially, is just to help them. You go, “Hey, what’s your …?” You know, we go through the process of asking them a lot of questions to see what kind of advice we can give them based on our experience that would help them, without really requesting for business because at the end of the day, I think when your intention is pure and you’re wanting to help through this networking process, people then go, “Well, you’ve asked enough question and you really have attempted to genuinely help me,” and majority of the time, whether it’s them or somebody else, you’re going to get the business again. It’s all about adding value. This is just a one-on-one. You know?

Cameron Francis:

Speaking about networking, how I would do it on an online space that’s scalable, type in your industry just by name, dentist, plumber, web, Google. Maybe not Google.

Sam Roshan:

You’ll get Google.

Cameron Francis:

Get the first thousand listings. Go to that website and see if you can start a relationship. Now if it’s a competitor, maybe that won’t go down so well, but it might be an industry buddy. It might be a forum. It might be a blog. Start the conversation. You’ve got nothing to lose. This is your time and you should be working a hundred-

Sam Roshan:

This is your time.

Cameron Francis:

You should be investing 100, 120 hours a week on this. You can dedicate 20 hours of your one week to go through and take down a thousand of the listings, go to every single one of those sites and start a relationship. Not everyone’s going to be a sale, but at least it’s going to start the, it’s going to start the momentum of getting your name out there. If there’s a website that promotes posts or that blogs, suggest that you write something for their website for their users. Again, not to sell, but to provide value. If there’s a website that you can guest post on, put a video on, or whatever it is, suggest that you can. Have it ready and then give it to them, for free, without expecting anything in return. You do that a thousand times, I can categorically guarantee that something will result out of that, a lead inquiry, a sale, something will happen from that. Let alone the experience of you putting yourself out there that many times. Very similar to the cold calling scenario.

Sam Roshan:

Next one would be giving stuff away.

Cameron Francis:

Yes.

Sam Roshan:

There’s two things. One is there are businesses that really can benefit from this. We’ve got a client of ours, again, who’s a dentist that every time someone comes and goes through-

Cameron Francis:

We don’t just have dentists as clients. We have so much more, I swear.

Sam Roshan:

That is true. I also swear by what he swears. What they do is after every cleaning, or every time they go and basically for any particular visit, he always gives them a dental kit with actual bag with their logo.

Cameron Francis:

Nice.

Sam Roshan:

Something just really small but firstly there’s branding there because these guys are walking around the local area, but also they’ve got something to remember them by. There was somebody else that I was speaking to, it was a hair and makeup, or a beautician, and she was saying, “You know, sometimes this stuff can cheapen my brand.” I said, “yeah,” there’s ways of really being able to offer something of value that will help your net result. Let’s just say, if you’re doing hair and makeup and that is your, but the majority of business that you get could be just hair because makeup is too saturated, you can provide some sort of an incentive for them to … whether it’s a percentage off, whether it might be something that you do by giving them nails for them getting their nails done. You know actually increasing the net value of every single purchase by giving that smaller offer. Giving stuff away, you just got to be strategic about it by not, I guess, harming the brand that you try and protect.

Cameron Francis:

Can I just say there is no evidence that says giving things away for free harms your brand. It’s just this thing that people have in their mind because they don’t want to do it. But there’s no, like I have looked at it and through the tests that we have of giving things away, which we do all the time, I mean we’re giving this away for free. Right? There’s nothing that indicates that that harms your brand. Now, when we first started out, our first website, we charged $99 for. $99, we probably spent $4,000 of our time in doing that, but it’s not about what profit margins or how much money you can make from the actual service itself. It doesn’t hurt to do things for free as long as, you know, that you’re learning from the actual experience itself.
A couple more I want to add and old school method of leaving flyers in places. Right? Now you’re thinking, “Shit. Do flyers still work?” Fuck yeah they do, if you pick the right place, if you pick the right target market, and you pick the right message, absolutely it will work. I was giving that example of the friend of mine that wants to target one-on-one sessions for personal training, that gym has a parking lot. That parking lot has cars from people that go to that gym.

Sam Roshan:

That was so intense.

Cameron Francis:

That gym has a parking lot. Enforcing the point. Get your message, put your message on top of their car, and wait for that call to ring. Or for that call to be people that are pissed off at you that you’re damaging their car. But that still works. You’ve just got to pick the right message, the right location that has the right target market. Last two, let’s do the last two. Let’s rip these out.

Sam Roshan:

So your story, the first things that as a business you want to be able to establish to find out, I guess for you to figure out what it is that you’re offering and who you really are, your value proposition. A lot of people just do not think about this. So many business we speak to on a daily basis and you go, “What is your point of difference and what is your value proposition?” and majority of the time all I hear is, “Well, we’ve been around. We’ve got experience and we good quality service.”

Cameron Francis:

Yeah, but that doesn’t make you different.

Sam Roshan:

I’m like, “Yeah, but what do you think the next business would say if I asked them the same thing?” Really telling your story is really identifying what makes you different. Why would I, or any of your potential customers, choose you, choose your business as opposed to any of your competitors? You’ve really got to consider these and identify what is that point that you really want to be able to continuously, that message that you want to put out to every single cold call, every single Facebook message, every single way that you’re hustling, whether it’s LinkedIn, webinar, seminar. This value proposition that a lot of people are just discounting should be the focal point of everything that you do.

Cameron Francis:

Once you’ve got that message, once you’ve got that story, which is absolutely vital because what that actually boils down to, it boils down to your vision and your mission, where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. How we’re going to get where we want to go is centered around the people that we have around us. We’ve got our message, we’ve crafted it extremely well. It’s very specific and we communicate that message through transparency, excellence, results, and communication through to our customers. These aren’t just words on a wall, these are things that we live and breathe every day with every interaction with every single person. If you don’t actually have your story of why you’re different and why you’re doing it, your competitors are going to get your customers. Thank you everyone for your time. If you’ve got any value out of this, please like and share it out to your network.

Sam Roshan:

Thank you for listening everyone.

Voice Over:

Thanks for listening to the Digital Cowboys with Cameron Francis and Sam Roshan. Now if you enjoyed today’s episode, head on over to iTunes and give us a five star rating and, please, write a review. Also head on over to digitalcowboys.com.au where we post the latest episodes and content pieces for all of our listeners so saddle up and join us next time for another edition of the Digital Cowboys.

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