EntreLeadership - #249: Pat Flynn—The Top Marketing Trend Now

Episode Date: March 5, 2018

In this special four-part episode, we ask marketing pros Pat Flynn, Ryan Deiss, Rachel Hollis and Jen Sievertsen to weigh in on the best way to spend your marketing dollars now. Tune in to find out their top 2018 marketing trends so you can decide how to best connect with your customer—and maximize your budget at the same time. One thing’s for sure: getting the most bang out of every single buck is one trend we can all get on board with. entreleadership.com/podcast Pat Flynn's website: Smart Passive Income Pat Flynn's book: Will It Fly? Free tool: EntreLeadership Goal Tracker Marketing to Millennials from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message for Ken with the details. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. From the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Hey, this is a special week here on Entree Leadership, bringing you something a little different. We're going to be focusing on marketing, because marketing is a huge part of what you're doing in growing your business. So we're going to bring you four experts this week.

Our four experts this week will be Pat Flynn, Ryan Dice, Rachel Hollis, and Jen Severson. We lead off with Pat Flynn. He's the founder of Smart, Passive Income, and the best-selling author of his self-published book. Will It Fly? This guy is the entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur are going to be some great stuff. Also, bringing you free resources from our Entree leadership team and from our friends at InfusionSoft. Pat Flynn is a marketing powerhouse, a guy who has.

has figured it out from the ground up. Love the story. Love his reach. And this guy's got some great thoughts for you. So let's get right to it. Get ready to listen and learn. Here's my conversation with Pat Flynn. Well, Pat, good to have you with us, man.

We appreciate your time. Excited about getting some practical wisdom here. We've been getting a lot of different voices to weigh in on big marketing shifts, trends that you see for 2018. So I hit you with a lot of. that. What do you see? What do we need to be aware of for 2018? You know, in the digital marketing space, especially, but everywhere, we're seeing this trend now where it's less focus on getting new and more focus on making the experience for existing customers, people in your ecosystem

already much better. I think a lot of people now are seeing the benefits of focusing on what's what I like to call building super fans because really there's a trickle-down effect there. Most people try to get more people into the ecosystem. But when you serve those top-level people in your audience in your customer base, that has this effect to grow the user base in a better way because you're getting people who are recommending that other people come into this space. So, you know, really, it's all about not trying to build a super fan right away because it doesn't happen right away, right? You don't become a fan of somebody the first time you listen to their music. You might like their music, right? You might be interested in it. You might like the lyrics and

the things that they're saying, but it takes time. It takes more touch points. It takes perhaps going to that first concert, for example, to get to that level that way. which you would just continually think about this person or play them on repeat or perhaps spend a ton of money to get their merchandise. So that's kind of the trend now for businesses is to kind of follow that same suit of building super fans. Yeah, now that's really good, very insightful. So what's that process look like? And in relaying that also, and you've laid it out for us, but what would be some characteristics where business owners that are sitting in here and they're going, okay, Pat, that's right on. How do they begin to see the shift from regular fan?

you know, a fan. I mean, they're, they are a fan versus the super fan. I'm an NFL fan. So I'm thinking of the guy who shows up, you know, three hours early. He's painted head to toe in this obnoxious quality paint. Yeah, he's got his shirt off in 34 degree weather, whatever it is. So we know we all have a mind's eye on a super fan right now, but how do we begin to see the difference and then take that and go right into, all right, this is what the journey looks like to lead some. somebody from fandom to super fandom. Right. Well, to give you an idea of the equivalent of the person who's painting themselves in two-degree weather,

which I cannot relate to because I live here in San Diego and just any colds just scares me, right? But the equivalent for your business would be somebody who, for example, if you were to go to an event or hold a meetup or something, they would drive hours just to go and hang out with you. The moment you come out with a new product, I mean, they want to be first in line, right? Similar to like when Apple comes out with new products, those super fans are camped out. for days because they just want to be the first to touch the new version of the iPhone. You know, that kind of person. But here's some other benefits as well.

They're often going to have the highest LTV or lifetime value. They're not just going to buy one product. They're going to buy every single product, whether you do a good job of pitching it or not. So I love this because I don't like to sell hardcore, but I like to have the experiences that I create for people do the selling for me, such that, you know, it's just a very easy, just, you know, you're teeing it up for them. And then, yes, they're going to go take advantage of that. But even more than that, they're going to become your top marketing team without you having to pay them anything because they're just going to be evangelist and ambassadors for your business like it's their job.

Like their life depends on it because you know what? To them, their life kind of does depend on your brand in some way, shape, or form. People can build this like habit of consuming your content or using your products and they can't imagine life without it. So that's what we want to create because your brand will grow just intensely from there. Plus, and one of my favorite things about building superfans is they're always going to be the first ones to speak up if you're doing something that doesn't align with your brand. And I love that because, you know, a lot of times when you're in the business and you're in the trenches, you might not know the direction you're going is the wrong direction, but your super fans

will be the first one to tell you, no, no, no, that's not you. Like, don't do that. And it'll save you a lot of time, money, and stress and headache down the road. Now, obviously, fans aren't created the moment. People discover you. They're created over moments over time. But the first time a person discovers you, it's often from a recommendation from somebody else, which does help, or maybe it's a Google search or a link on another website or something, or they just hear about that product. So I think it's really important to engage that person right away.

And you can do that in a couple of different ways. Number one, I think the most important thing is to speak the language of your target customer and to just know exactly how they describe the problems and the pains that they have. Because although you might have an amazing solution for that problem, if you cannot describe it in a way that resonates with them, well, they're not going to know you have that solution. I think it was Jay Abraham who said, if you can define the problem better than the target customer, they're going to automatically assume you have the solution. So it's sort of like those lyrics like I was talking about in music. If I hear a song and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going through those same things in my life right now, I'm going to resonate with that person. That person's going to capture my attention now. Now I'm going to download their music on Spotify or now I'm going to at least pay attention to them.

Another great way to get kind of people into your ecosystem and have them pay attention and kind of climb that superfan ladder is to provide a small, quick way. in. A lot of businesses we try to, yes, we want to help people out as much as possible, but we try to go too big too quickly. And because it's too big, it doesn't happen right away. I think if you can provide a five to 15 minute piece of advice that can really help a person feel like, wow, I already got something from being a part of this, they're going to be hooked. I think it was Charles Duhigg wrote a book called The Power of Habit. There's a whole chapter on the reward process and the habit forming of these small quick wins. So is there anything in your business right now that can provide a small quick win? If not, I would recommend doing that because you're doing yourself and your audience who wants to be there with you a disservice. Now from there, here's where the magic happens. You can bring people who are now, I call them active members of your community. They know you exist, but they're not quite like part of the community yet. We want to, we want to raise them up to that community level. And what is community? Community is interaction. And the cool thing is it's not just interaction between you and your audience or your customers. It's interactions with each other. And when you create events or when you create moments where they can

kind of share ideas with each other, forums, you know, Facebook groups, those kinds of things. That just elevates the brand in a whole. And now people will have this identity as being a fan or follower of your brand. It's very similar to, again, I keep using this music analogy, but it's so perfect. Like, you know, fans of Taylor Swift, they call themselves Swifties, right? Or fans of Star Trek, right, Trekkies and, you know, those kinds of things. You will have your own fan base like that. But that's not quite yet super fan status, but it's still having that community is great.

And oftentimes, as you might know, people come for the content, but then they stay for the community. But how do you get people to that next level? And this is my favorite part. And this is fun, too. I think this is the cool part about this. It's not like, and yes, getting more traffic and stuff is important in analytics and Facebook ads. And yeah, it's cool. But it's not necessarily fun.

For me, the funnest part is the surprise and the delights. That's how you get people to pay attention, right? The surprise part's really important because that means it's different. It's unusual. It's not normally happening, right? And so if you go to, you know, sleep every night and you have your spouse there and you say, good night, I love you every single night, right? It just becomes expected.

But it's that random, I love you at 3.48 p.m. on a Tuesday, you bring flowers to her office. That's what's going to get talked about. All the other people are going to be like, oh, my gosh, you have this amazing husband. And then everybody else is, and it gets remembered, right? So it's those pattern interrupts through the surprises. They don't have to be very big that can get people to pay attention. And likely your competitors are definitely not doing that. So take that opportunity, whatever opportunity it might be throughout the journey, to offer these small surprise and delights.

And again, like I said, it doesn't have to be very big. I mean, I would challenge those listening right now and watching perhaps to try to find one customer and just send them a video message, thanking them for being that customer. The reaction is going to be off the hook. Yeah. And that's really great. That's some amazingly practical advice that people can begin to implement right away. But I'd love for you to cast a bit of vision here. So when we begin to do the things that you just laid out and these people go from consumers, customers, fans to super fans, and then we begin to multiply the super fans.

What happens when there is a tribe? So this is more than a couple, but a tribe of super fans. What's that transformation look like? I mean, that transformation can mean new products in your business that you would have never thought that you have created because you already know there's that set of customers there who are going to buy. And likely you can determine what those products can. can be by just asking them. Hey guys, what would be something you would absolutely need and want right now? We'll go build it to you for you.

And guess what? That's going to make them become even bigger fans of you after that. It's going to make them shout your brand and your company to all their friends and family to the whole world. But what's also really cool about this is the stuff perhaps, and this is very much in alignment with what I do and what I'm trying to do. Some people maybe not so much, but I think this is really important. And that's how else might you be able to serve outside of what it is that you provide

as a business. For me, for example, I build schools around the world and I get my tribe to come together to help. I was able to, for my birthday a couple of years ago, build two schools with the help from my community on my blog as a result of people who just wanted to support these things that I also was very passionate about. And I'm very passionate about education worldwide, but also here in the U.S. as well. And so, you know, a lot of people are helping me with some of these bigger, more legacy goals that I have, too. Once you build that tribe, I mean, There's no better way to future-proof your brand than to build this tribe of superfans. Yeah, let me do a quick follow-up here because I'm listening and paying attention.

I see this with other folks, and clearly you've done it. But I think that the latest example of how you put this opportunity out on your blog to people that you know love what you're giving them as it relates to writing or other resources. And you say, hey, this is something I'm personally passionate about. I'm going to go do it. If you want to be a part of this, boy, that would mean the world to me. and because they trust you, then they give you that support. But it is all trust. That's what I'm hearing is trust is a huge part of creating super fans.

Trust and also the fact that hopefully by building people into super fans, you've provided a ton of value for them over time, right? And that, of course, plays along with that trust. But then when you have an ask, it's almost like, yes, you're finally giving me a way to pay you back. For some, it's opportunities such as the one we just, the example I just gave, others, it might be something else. But, you know, oftentimes when you help people, they're going to want to just naturally, because it's human nature, want to reciprocate and give back. So, you know, with this tribe comes true power, but obviously with true power

comes, you know, true responsibility. And I would hopefully, and I'm preaching the choir here, but everybody who has that power after they build that tribe, I know you would use it for good, right? He is Pat Flynn. He's doing a lot of great things. He's got a podcast. He does so much great content and the Entree Leadership Tribe. I think there are a lot of people that are probably in both tribes. We're thrilled to have you. You know you got a lot going on real quick before I let you go. I want you at least tell folks who may not be familiar with you

and those that are where they connect and maybe some exciting things we've got going on they should know about. Yeah, no, thank you. I appreciate that, Ken, and thank you to everybody who's consuming this content. You can find me at smart passive income.com. I have a blog and a podcast over a couple hundred thousand subscribers. have a bestselling book called Will It Fly, self-published, still Wall Street Journal bestseller. And my big passion right now, too, one is teaching people about how to start a podcast because

it's obviously a medium that can really, truly change lives. And secondly, my work toward hopefully getting entrepreneurship to be kind of more standard curriculum in elementary schools. I have two young kids, and that's something that's really important to me. Yeah. And I would concur, I think it ought to be mandatory. I can think of about eight other classes to slash and just teach people entrepreneurship and how to ask questions and actually go find out what it is they want to know. Pat, thanks again for being with us. Thank you. Appreciate it. Hope you enjoyed that. That concept of super fans, how to develop them and what to do with them once you get them in the tribe is very important stuff. And here's what's great. Every one of

you has some super fans. You just probably haven't identified them that way and you may not be treating them that way. So really, really good stuff. I'll tell you, What else is good stuff? The free resources we bring you every episode. The resource from our Entree leadership team this episode is the goal tracker. It's going to help you create unstoppable momentum. Everybody and every organization needs goals. And you've got to empower yourself and your team to create the goals and then execute against them.

This tool is something that you can use and your team can use. Print it out. Hand it out. educate your team on how to use it. This chart is giving you a goal, an action plan, and a target date. Couldn't be any more simple, but it is very, very powerful. Here's how you get it. Text goals 2018.

That's one phrase, no space. Goals, 2018. Goals, 2018, text that to 33444. Or you can go get the link in this episode's show notes. And our friends at InfusionSoft are giving you a marketing to millennials guide. Now this is a big deal. Millennials are good for $200 billion a year.

$200 billion. $200 billion. 30% of the world's population is defined as millennials. They are now the number one demographic in the American workforce. So the point is, if you ignore millennials, you do so at your own risk. Now, these millennials grew up with an internet connection at all times. iPhones, a Facebook account. all before graduating high school. Think about this.

Amazon was founded in 1994, meaning half of millennials, have never lived in an Amazon-less world. And we're not talking about the rainforest. So you've got to be able to reach these people. But only 15% of small businesses are marketing directly to millennials. This is an atrocity. Here's the good news. The marketing to millennials guide from the fusion soft will help you do what you need to do here.

So those of you that have been in business for a long time and aren't scene growth and you're thinking, well, I either give up or I got to do something different. How about do something different with this guide? Be intentional. Put the marketing to Millennials Guide into action and give your business a chance to grow. To get it, go to the link in this episode's show notes, episode 249. All right, folks, that's going to do it. Can't believe another episode is in the books. On behalf of Will the producer, Jim the engineer and the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again. very soon.