Digital Marketing Strategy: How Casey Graham Reached 5,000 customers and $2 Million in Sales in Just 3 Years
3 years ago, Casey Graham was at rock bottom. He was $80,000 in debt, he’d just missed out on a major family event (because he was on the road making sales calls), and things at home weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders.
For many early-stage entrepreneurs, this is an all too familiar story.
Fast forward 3 years, and Casey’s company has become extremely successful, all thanks to a major realization he made on a trip home from overseas (when we was missing out on that important family event).
While on the plane, Casey realize that the way he was delivering his product was wrong, he sales strategy was wrong, and if he was going to ever realize his dreams of owning a successful business, he was doing to need to do a number of things differently.
In this episode of the Bright Ideas podcast, I’m joined by Casey Graham, founder of The Rocket Company, and also the winner of Infusionsoft’s 2013 Ultimate Marketer award. Having made some pretty big changes to his business 3 years ago, Casey now generates over $2 million a year (with very high profit margins), is completely debt free, and is having more fun than ever!
When you listen to this interview, here are some of the things that you are going to hear Casey and I talk about:
- How entering his company in the Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketing Finals really helped his team to get ultra focused
- (10:52) The story of how Casey fired himself from his last job to start his own business (and how awful it turned out)
- (19:12) How his very first email broadcast from Infusionsoft earned him a few thousand dollars (something that he’d NEVER done before)
- (20:12) Casey’s traffic generation strategy, and specifically, how Twitter played a pivotal role in growing his list from 832 to over 47,000 in just 3 years
- (25:12) How Casey sets up automated nurturing campaigns in Infusionsoft
- (28:16) How Casey warms up his new leads in a very special warm up sequence, which is then followed by a webinar sequence that results in the vast majority of their product sales
- (32:42) How webinars play a crucial role in Casey’s sales funnel and how he structures them to produce maximum conversions
- (34:00) How he presents an offer in his webinar so that more sales result
- (37:30) How Casey generates substantial additional revenue via up-sells and cross-sells
- (38:30) The 3 types of up-sells that Casey uses and how to replicate what he’s doing in your own business
- (47:12) How Casey is building “relationship capital” with his customers with specific examples
- (52:00) How the success of all of this has massively changed Casey’s life
- (55:10) What he is most excited about for 2013, his favorite business book, and how to reach him
Links
- The Rocket Company
- Call Ruby
- (Book) The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business
- PlusThis
More About This Episode
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
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Transcript
Trent: Hey there bright idea hunters. Welcome to the Bright Ideas
Podcast. I’m your host, Trent Dyrsmid and this is the podcast
for marketing agencies and entrepreneurs who want to discover
how to use content marketing and marketing automation to
massively boost their business.On the show today is Casey Graham, founder of The Rocket Company. I
first learned of Casey when I was at Infusionsoft’s annual
conference. His company one the annual 2013 Infusionsoft
Ultimate Marketer of the Year award. To do that, he had to beat
out some pretty impressive competition. You’re in for a real
treat with this interview.In the interview, we’re going to talk about how Casey, a couple years
ago, was essentially broke, driving around in a little red
pickup truck, and really trying to make his business a success.
Fast forward three years later – He’s got a mailing list of
47,000 people, he’s doing over $2 million a year, he and his
family are completely debt free, he’s got a wonderful team of
people helping the company continue to grow. He’s actually now
removing himself from all operational roles so he can focus more
on strategy. Like I said, this is going to be a very fantastic
interview.Before we get to that, a couple of special announcements – My tool
tip of the week is a brand new tool called PlusThis. You can
get there, if you’d like to use our affiliate link, by going to
brightideas.co/plusthis. PlusThis is essentially a library of
add on tools for Infusionsoft users. One of the tools there,
for example, is the integration with GoToMeeting. One of the
things, if you’re doing webinars with GoToMeeting, wouldn’t it
be valuable for you to know who attended and who didn’t attend?
You can get that information from GoToMeeting, but you have to
manually export it from GoToMeeting and then import it to
Infusionsoft, and that creates duplicates, labor, and
inefficiencies. That is one of the many things PlusThis can
help you automate.The other announcement I wanted to make is that our next webinar on
life cycle marketing – If you haven’t yet seen one of these
webinars, they’re a huge hit because it really goes into detail.
I show what I do, and what guests on my show have done to
increase the pace at which they are attracting new customers,
which obviously makes our companies more profitable, which
allows us to invest in further growth. If you want to get
registered for one of those, just go to brightideas.co, join up
on the mailing list, and you’ll receive a notification of the
next time I’ve got that webinar running.Please join me in welcoming Casey to the show.Hey Casey, welcome to the show.Casey: Thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.Trent: No problem at all. First off, congratulations on your
recognition as one of the Ultimate Marketer finalists this year
for Infusionsoft, that’s quite an accomplishment to say the
least.Casey: Thank you. I’d never heard about it until a year ago, and then
we went to InfusionCon a year ago, and we saw them on stage and
decided to apply for it this year. Somehow we were able to make
it through the rigorous interview process and the cuts and all
that and be a part of all that. It was awesome. We learned a
bunch from the other guys that were finalists as well, and are
actually continuing to learn from them. I would highly
recommend being a part of the Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketer
process, just from the relationships that you build.Trent: Yeah, no kidding. Both Dustin and Andy have been on the show
as well.Casey: That’s awesome, you’re getting it done.Trent: I try to make it my effort to get all of the Ultimate Marketers
on the show now. I think you’re being a little too humble here,
you didn’t just make the grade, if I remember correctly, you
won.Casey: Our team won. Me and Michael, and The Rocket Company won the
award. It was awesome to win, and to be a part of that. I
don’t know we won, the other guys were so awesome. Dustin and
the other guys, BlueChip, they were doing so much. It was cool.
Like I said, the process – I don’t know if everybody who
listens to this in an Infusionsoft user or not, but people that
Infusionsoft should be a part of the Ultimate Marketer process,
because it helps you think through your processes, since you
have to present them to people. What it did internally for us
was great. The award was awesome, but what it did internally
was solidify a lot things that needed solidifying. I really
appreciate you giving us a shout out for that.Trent: For the folks who don’t know who you are, and I normally start
my interviews with this, but I kind of skipped it, a little bit
on purpose because I wanted to send you that congratulations.
People don’t necessarily know who you are or what The Rocket
Company is. I want you to introduce yourself in just a moment.
For the folks that are listening, the big why on why you want to
listen to interview, and I think Casey is probably going to get
into it, is he was driving around in his little red truck trying
to find customers, and was not having a real good time at it,
and I’m going to let him tell that story, and then here he is,
some amount of time later, I don’t remember if it’s a year or
two later, he’s the Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketer of the Year,
and his business has absolutely blown up, in a good way, as a
result of that. We want to get all of those things out in this
interview, and I think we’re going to do a real good job with
that.
With that said, Casey, thanks for being on the show. Please take a
moment and tell us just a little bit about what your company is
and does, and who you are.
Casey: The Rocket Company is an online learning for pastors and church
leaders. Church leaders get caught a bunch of things in college
or seminary – It’s kind of like us, even as entrepreneurs, you
can go to business school, but then there’s all of this stuff.
People that are actually listening to podcasts now, they’re
going, “That’s great, I learned that in business school, but
what is it really?”
That’s what The Rocket Company for churches, go, “That’s great, you
learned all that stuff, and you learned some theology, you
learned something in school. There is real stuff you have to do
as a pastor, like preach better sermons, and raise money, and
deal with volunteers. The Rocket Company provides online
training, learning and coaching for pastors in that way. It’s a
totally online model, except for some live events that we do.
It’s all digital, it’s all online, and it reaches all across the
world now. We have about 5,000 customers that are connected to
The Rocket Company, and that’s the niche which Rocket Company
serves.
Very simply, why we do it is that we believe in the church and we are
trying to help the church be successful. We’re tired of pastors
preaching boring sermons, we’re tired of cheesy TV pastors
trying to raise money on TV and doing it the wrong way and
turning people off, and we’re tired of volunteers burning out in
churches because there aren’t enough. We’re creating solutions
and coaching in those areas, that’s what we currently do.
Trent: If I was to really shorten that into a super simple
explanation, you help churches become more effective at the
business side of being a church.
Casey: Yes, and no. Yes, I think that’s right in a lot of ways, but
there’s a heavy relational slant on it. It’s not just business
as usual, we help them develop the interpersonal skills to be
able to pull off raising money, volunteering, preaching, and all
that stuff. Yes, you’re right. It’s where the rubber meets the
road. Simply, when people ask us what we do – We help the
church succeed. That’s what we do, and we feel like these are
the areas that make the most impact right now.
Trent: The reason I said that is that I think that probably few, if
any of the listeners right now, are involved in the church
business. I don’t want them to click the stop button, thinking,
“Oh, this is for churches, it wouldn’t be for me,” because that
couldn’t be further from the truth as they’ll learn, as they
keep on listening to this.
Casey: Well, we’re a business that serves churches, so you should
listen because we’re [inaudible 08:55]. 86% of churches are
broke or behind budget this year. The clientele we’re serving
do not have a lot of money, and the other reason, the clientele
we’re serving don’t get a financial benefit from using our
services. If they’re giving [inaudible 09:14] to the church,
they don’t get a percentage of it, they’re not a salesperson,
their salary stays the same.
It’s all on goodwill, so it’s much harder to sell to somebody. If
somebody is buying a product and you’re increasing their income
or business revenue, they’ll keep buying from you because they
get a personal benefit. For us, it’s the complete opposite.
We’ve still been able to find success even with having niche and
as 86% of them are broke or behind budget.
Trent: How much success are you guys having? How much revenue are you
guys doing a year?
Casey: We are over two million last year, for 2012. In 2013, we’re
projected to be 2.4, 2.5.
Trent: That’s a pretty nice growth rate.
Casey: Actually, this year will probably be the slowest one on
purpose. We grew about 832% over the last three years. We went
from about $212,000 in revenue to over two million in three
years. We need to catch our breath, hire the right people, get
the right people, get the systems in place, that kind of thing,
because we just grew [inaudible 10:18] and we’re trying to
organize now.
Trent: I’m so glad you mentioned that, because that’s the story I
really wanted to dig into. Let’s go back to the red truck,
let’s go back to pre-Infusionsoft. Tell us a little about what
your life and your business was like, and how you got into this,
because you had a real struggle. I want people to understand
that anybody can go from a real struggle to where you’re at now.
Casey: Here’s the deal – I was on staff at a church. At 27 years old,
I fired myself from being the CFO of a church, and I hired
myself as the CEO of a startup company, that I was going to go
out and help churches. I had no plan, no strategy, I’d never
started a business before. Here’s what I had – A wife that
wanted to stay home with a one year old baby, that is the
hardest work you can do, but unfortunately, she doesn’t get a
paycheck for staying home. That was that, and then we have
$36,000 saved up in the bank. I said, “We’re going to go after
this, I’ve got $36,000, and I think churches need to have money
for ministry. They need to learn how to raise money better.
I’m going to go out and do it.”
We started, and we did the good old fashioned Casey driving around,
in my 1998 Red Ranger Ford pickup truck that I got as a junior
in high school, and literally going into churches and walking up
to secretaries or assistants, and say, “Hey, I want to talk to
your pastor about our services.” Just doing the old fashioned
cold calling.
Also, cold calling anybody. In fact, I would drive by churches and
see the phone number on the side, and call it. It was cold
calling, driving around doing that. I did that for about two
years, and the strategy was so amazing that second year in,
here’s what the results were – I missed dad’s night at my
daughter’s school. People listening to this may or may not have
kids, or are maybe single or whatever, but the point is this.
I started a business, not only to help people but to create autonomy
where I could be at dad’s nights, and I was missing them. I was
missing family dinners, I was traveling around the southeast to
try to get deals. We ended up being $80,000 in debt in the
business. I had a business partnership I got into. I ended up
the worst, the bottom of the barrel when it comes business is, I
had to lay off three people at one time – Not because of
anything that they did, but I just thought business was all
about sales and growth, and I wasn’t managing the back end of
the business, and it just got away from me honestly. I had to
tell the ladies – I set them down and said, “Hey, in two weeks
we’re not going to have enough money to pay you, so I’m going to
have to let you go.”
Being at the rock bottom, at that point, I literally went around the
world. I went to the Philippines. Only a dumb entrepreneur
would do this, and I said I was going to go to the Philippines
to outsource, we did some outsourcing for churches, and decided
to outsource the outsourcing to try to save money. While I was
there, literally, I can’t get all the story, but a guy climbed
through my window, it was a totally random act of violence, he
came in literally with a knife, bloody, trying to kill me,
randomly. I ended up running down 13 flights of stairs with an
armed guard in the middle of the Philippines with a machine gun,
looking up at this guy hanging off the side of a building on the
13th floor getting in there to kill me. I know this is the
craziest story you’ve ever heard.
Trent: It is a little unusual.
Casey: Here’s the point – I got so low that I was traveling around the
world trying to save a business $80,000 in debt, with a bad
business partnership, and I was rock bottom. I said, “You know
what, something’s got to change.”
In that moment, at being at the bottom, and literally being around
the world and flying back is when I started the process of
realizing the problem’s not the market, the problem’s not the
economy, the problem is not anything – The problem is me. The
way were doing it wasn’t working, and we needed some changes.
That’s what happened in the first two years of our business.
That was probably too many details, but that’s the real story of
where this thing came from.
Trent: I wish we could have got those last two sentences out to the
entire planet, because you said something there that was so
incredibly profound, that entrepreneurs say, but that few others
do – The problem wasn’t the economy or the world, or this or
that or the other thing, the problem was you. That is something
I find is unanimous in entrepreneurs, we are never the victim.
Our success and failures are always our own. As soon as you can
adopt that mindset, in my opinion, you set yourself free,
because then you’re in control and you can choose to change the
outcome, which you did, and we’re going to tell that story.
I do want to offer up one other idea. You mentioned at the beginning
of this, that you were doing it the good old fashioned way, and
then you went on to tell how you were prospecting. It may have
been old fashioned my friend, but I don’t think it was good.
Casey: That’s funny. That’s true, it was terrible.
Trent: There was nothing good about making about making cold calls,
missing your daughter’s event, and being around the world, there
was nothing good about that.
Casey: [inaudible 16:03] everybody I met said this was how to do it –
You go to leads groups, and you pass business cards out, and
this how you do it, it was the old fashioned way to try to do
this deal, and we live in a different time. I just had to learn
the hard way. That’s what the story was.
Trent: You and me both. I have often said to people in conversations,
and maybe even on my show here, that I never get it right the
first time. I always duff it the first time, and then I get it
figured out the second time around.
Let’s get into your discovery of Infusionsoft, when was that?
Casey: That was at that point, right after that trip around the world,
about three years ago, middle of 2010 – I was searching online
and I saw a donate redirect on a website I was on, and it said
Infusionsoft, and I was curious what it was, so I Googled it and
went to their website. I was low with no money, no team, I was
worn out and they’re making these promises on their website like
– Infusionsoft is like having 25 people sell for you while you
sleep. It’s automated, and all this stuff.
I thought, yeah, whatever, but it was worth me putting in my e-mail
address for the demo. I got an e-mail back late at night, and I
thought man, these people are on top of it, they work all hours
of the night. I’d never heard of an auto responder before. They
sent me e-mails, and finally got me on the phone and sold me on
Infusionsoft, and I put money where my mouth was and did things
differently. That’s how we found it.
A big transition happened though – When I used what was called the
Infusionsoft Success Coach, there was Brandon Steinwig, he got
on the phone with me, and said, “Thanks for getting in on the
call today. When are you going to send your first broadcast?”
I said, “What’s a broadcast?”
He said, “Well, that’s why you bought Infusionsoft, right?”
I said, “Well, I bought it because of all these promises.”
He said, “Let me tell you what Infusionsoft actually does. Do you
have an e-mail address?”
I said, “We have 832 e-mail address.”
“Do you have anything you can sell online?”
“I’ve got $80,000 and a red truck if someone wants it.”
He helped me understand that you can sell something online, and that
people would buy stuff that we had done, it was just sitting
around my office. I was like, “I’ve got this old seminar I did,
we just recorded it because there was a machine there, so I
recorded the three hour seminar I did for church leaders.”
He said, “All right, let’s put this on a website, let’s send an e-
mail out to them. I’ll help you write the e-mail and get things
started.”
Within a couple of days, we put it up there and I sent the e-mail out
to the 832 people I’ve never e-mailed before. I said, “Hey, I
just want you to know, I’ve been driving around doing all this
high-end consulting, here’s a $99 product you can buy right
now.”
Within the first couple of days, we sold a few thousand dollars
worth. I was like, “You have got to be kidding me. I have been
doing all this stuff, driving around, missing dad’s nights,
trying to make money, and I just sent out one e-mail and made a
few thousand dollars?”
That was the point when everything started to change, it was an aha
moment for me.
Trent: In three years you go from guy in the truck, no money, to guy
with a $2 million plus business which has a very healthy profit
margin. I hope people who are listening to this get inspired
and fired up, and think man, if this guy can go from broke,
selling to churches that have no money to this wonderfully
successful business, maybe there’s something about this whole
marketing automation stuff that I could use in my own business.
The answer of course is “Yes there is.”
Let’s try to dive into more details, and let’s talk. It all starts
with lead generation, can you tell us about the process that
you’re using for attracting and capturing leads for your
business?
Casey: Yep. Our attraction strategy is very simple. After going
through hell and back, we said, “We can’t do everything, but we
can do something.”
When we learned about attracting traffic to our website, we said,
“Here’s what we’re going to do – Number one, we’re going to have
blog.” Everybody on this call can have a blog, and everybody
can write three times a week. If you say you don’t have enough
time to write a blog three times a week, that isn’t true, unless
you’re incapacitated and almost dying in a hospital.
Every single person can do that and add value to people who could be
their potential customers. That’s the outpost through which all
of our stuff happens. We put stuff on the blog.
Our strategy to attracting traffic is that we know where pastors are,
unlike business people, because a bunch of business people
aren’t on Twitter. Most pastors, when you speak at a
conference, say how many guys are on Twitter, 80%–I don’t know
the exact number–but it would be 8 out of 10 people would raise
their hand. That’s where pastors are, so what we said is we’re
going to dominate one thing. I know there’s Google+, I know
there’s pay per click, I know there’s SEO, I know there’s
Facebook, I know there’s all these other things, but we’re going
to dominate one thing and what we know how to dominate is
Twitter.
I’m on Twitter, our teen is on Twitter, we know Twitter, we know
pastors on Twitter, so that’s what we decided to do. We put all
our eggs in the Twitter basket, and so here’s what we’ve done –
We went out and found celebrity pastors that we can either buy
their time, you can rent anybody’s time, and we get them on an
online event, and we have them tweet out the links to our
landing pages. Part of them being a part of it is that they’ll
promote it, and that drives a tremendous amount of traffic to
our website.
In the last three years, with the Twitter strategy of getting famous
people to tweet to us, and for us using Twitter to generate blog
content, we’ve grown our list from 832 contacts to about 47,000
contacts in a three-year time period. That’s what we did.
That’s it, and that’s all we did. We know there’s other things
we should do, and we’re going to do those in the future, but to
start out and be simple and dominate, that’s where we started.
Trent: Man, that is impressive. 832 to 47,000, wow. I think anybody
could do this in a business, they could find out who the
celebrities are in their space or niche, contact those folks,
because they’re all looking – Did you have to pay them, or did
they come on because they wanted the exposure?
Casey: Most wanted to just help people. Most wanted that, but we paid
them anyway. What I found is that you had to pay some, it’s
just the way it is. The point was, people hear that and go,
“Oh, I don’t have anybody. I’m in the salon business, there
aren’t any salon celebrities.” Yes, there are. There are
absolutely places you can go where there are salon people that
other salon people learning from and listening to.
People say, “I’m in a retail location, what is there to do in a
retail location?”
Well, that’s why smart companies have Justin Bieber as a celebrity
that drives people to their retail locations, because they’re
renting a celebrity at the top end of their of funnel. It
associates them with that person, and that is a lead driver, a
lead attraction, a lead magnet that they can pull people in.
Every single niche has people that people listen to. If you can
align yourself and go as hard as you can to reach those people,
don’t quit because the first one tell you no, you can get
aligned with those people and they’ll help you significantly.
Trent: That’s a very good idea. I want to give a quick shout out to a
resource on this topic of defining your nice, if you got to
brightideas.co and on the navigation bar, you’ll see the life
cycle marketing guide, scroll down through the links, and that
links to a whole bunch of articles, but in the attract interest
category or section, you’ll find an article on how and why to
define your target market. There’s a whole bunch of details
there for you.
Let’s move on. Your strategy worked exceedingly well, your list grew
like mad. Here’s the thing – Just because they’re on your list
doesn’t mean they’re whipping their credit card out and willing
to buy your stuff, right?
Casey: Totally different.
Trent: Correct. So, what happens between getting them on the list,
and getting them buying stuff. There’s something that happens
between those two things, what is that?
Casey: What we found is that–I hate to say this, I probably shouldn’t
say this but I’ll say it anyway. It’s a great way to [inaudible
24:55]. Most people try to treat this like sex on a first date.
They get somebody on their list, and then they try to close to
the deal. It’s like, come on. People do that to me all the
time. I get on a list and they’re trying to close the deal with
- If that’s how you do real life, I’m sorry, but if you
understand that a healthy relationship is built over time and
built on trust.
Between attracting traffic and converting the sale there’s a whole
thing we call building relationships on the list so what we try
to do is build the relationship. Here’s a couple things that
have worked. I’m giving everybody practical things that you can
- I like everybody to know that I’ve had a red truck. The
reason why, is that the only thing you remember from my
introduction speech is that I had a red truck. It’s a red
truck.
I like people to know I have a family when they come onto our list.
When we’re e-mailing our list, and we’re sending stuff out, I’m
not only introducing them to stuff that can help them, I’m also
introducing them to my family. The reason why, is that we’ve
found people trust people and have an affinity for them if
they’ve seen their family, and they see they have kids, and what
they look like. Do they look like weirdos? Are they normal
looking? Can I relate with these people? That kind of thing.
The red truck story, like a story of struggle, here’s where
we’ve been, here’s how long we’ve been doing this, that sort of
thing.
The third thing we like to send is connecting us with famous people
in our niche so that we gain credibility. If we’re sending out
e-mails or doing videos and people see you and they associate
you with the leaders. That builds credibility. Inside of that,
we’re building a healthy, what we call like a dating
relationship via e-mail, via video, and warming people up. We
don’t send people directly into a sale unless they ask for it,
if they ask for it or click on a link to buy something, they can
go buy something. For most people, we do what’s called a warm-
up sequence. We are warming them for the point in which we feel
like we can move in to take action and create a purchase, so
that’s what we do.
Trent: Let’s dive into that a little bit. Let’s say I come to your
site, and I get one of your lead magnets, I fill out the form
and give you my name and e-mail address, hit the submit button,
the first e-mail, is it going to give me just what I asked for,
“Here’s the free report,” or whatever it was? Is there going to
be anything else in that first e-mail?
Casey: The first e-mail, we’re just giving them what they ask for, but
we’re also tell them there’s more coming.
Trent: What comes next? When do you introduce the truck, the family,
and the celebrities?
Casey: That’s a great question, and it depends on where they came
from. We have a very complex business now. I’m going to start
where it was really simple. We used to do 10 emails over 30
days as our warm-up sequence. The point of those e-mails was
those different things: likeability, trust and credibility. If
say something about the red truck, it’s, “Hey, I used to drive
around the Southeast in a red truck, and here’s what I learned
about that and learned from pastors.” Then we do something very
helpful.
Again, the whole thing’s not about the red truck, it’s just a mention
in a what we call a by the way moment. We’re mixing those in
throughout the 10 over 30 days, and that’s how, when we first
started, when we were selling just one program and it was a very
simple operation, that’s how we did it and we mixed a little bit
of personality in with a lot a bit of helpful content. It was
about 20% personality, 80% helpful content.
Trent: Okay, excellent. Yep, go ahead.
Brian: Key in that, we would put in the PS, “Oh, by the way, we know
you downloaded this report on church giving, we have a cool
coaching program called Giving Rocket, and you can click here
and you can go check out all of that kind of stuff.” Again, it
was there. If somebody wanted to go get it, they could. During
that first 30 days, we’re building the relationship and
nurturing them and getting them to know us and us to know them.
I’ll tell you a trick – One of the best e-mails we ever do,
especially when you’re small, and you’re trying to get off the
ground or try to grow in Internet business, just do an e-mail
that says, “Would you please reply and let me know?” [inaudible
29:36].
Just ask them a question and the question and the question of what we
found out is a question about either their personal life. I
would send one with a picture of my family in it, and say, hey,
tell me about their family. I’d love to get to know you and who
you have in your family. Again, I ask them to divulge some
information to me, and I divulge some to them, when it’s a two
way street and a conversation starts, those people end up being
low hanging fruit that will buy just about anything from you.
Trent: I do something almost like that now, and you’ve given me an
idea how to improve. Anyone who’s on my list will know that in
one of my first e-mails, I say what they’re struggling with the
most, and I ask them to reply because I want to get a
conversation going with these people, and it does work. Not
everyone replies of course, but the ones that do become your . .
.
Casey: No, but the people that are opening and reading and engaging
do, and those people, man, those are some of the best people.
Some of them are weirdos, but a lot of them are great people.
Trent: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. If you don’t have an e-mail
in your warm-up sequence that says reply, you might want to
consider doing that.
I’d love to dive deeper into what you’re doing with your advanced
strategy, but I’m going to keep on keeping on here, because
we’re going to run out of time, and there’s still some other
categories of life cycle marketing I want to talk about.
Before I move on, you’ve got the 30 day warm-up sequence. What
happens the end of those 30 days?
Casey: We transition them to a webinar sequence after that. A webinar
is where we sell the most, and so after 30 days we put them into
our webinar sequence. It’s built for over a two-week period to
get them on a webinar, and to get them to hear helpful content.
About 80% help, and there’s 20% sales. Sales is woven
throughout the webinar, and that’s where we get the most sales.
What we found is that when we consistently did webinars like that,
every single month per niche topic we have, that’s where the
huge growth came from, was consistently doing new content
webinars. They got everybody on the nurture list, after they go
warmed up to us, then we got them on the nurture sequence, which
is where we’d move people to listen, buy, and hopefully become a
customer.
If they don’t become a customer, they still get helpful content, but
they’ll be invited to the webinar that happens next month. If
they come to that one, we’ll come to different topics to reach
different types of people, so that’s how that works.
Trent: In you webinars, you mentioned you weave in 20% sales
opportunities. Do you make an offer at the end of the webinar
that says, “Hey, if you want more you can go this page and you
can click this buy button and get this thing.”
Casey: Our webinars are very simple in structure. Most of them around
about 45 minutes long, and the beginning of the webinar we
always do success stories. After I introduce myself and success
stories, we tell them that’s why we have Giving Rocket. You’re
going to see a button below as I talk throughout the rest of the
webinar, and you can just click that button, and by the way, you
can click it if you want to right now and see everything that’s
listed for this webinar offer, and my voice will keep playing
because it’ll open in another tab. That’s right within the
first five minutes.
We come back as we’re doing helpful content, so we’ll say that when
it comes to fundraising, here’s something they could do. And
that’s why we did it with Giving Rocket. With Giving Rocket, not
only do we tell you what to do, we’re going to do it for you.
It’s done for you, fundraising resources. If you click the
button below, you’ll see all the stuff you get da-da-da. That’s
what’s called a by the way pitch.
Then, at about the 70% mark of the way through, we turn it and we do
about a ten minute full on explanation of what Giving Rocket is,
why we have this Rocket, how it can help them, special offers
and bonuses if they do it within the next 48 hours, click the
button below, that kind of thing. Then go back to helpful
content at the end. We found that putting it about 3/4 of the
way thorough, with pitching the by the way moment as you lead up
has worked very well for us.
We have a page, and on the page it has one button, and the button is
always below they video, and they can click it, and there’s a
special offer per webinar. That’s how we sell.
Trent: Are these webinars live, or live simulation?
Casey: No. We got away from live webinars a long time ago. I am not
a fan of live webinars. If you want to do a live webinar,
that’s great for you. I don’t like doing them for many reasons.
Ours are prerecorded and pre-done in advance, and that’s how we
do all of them. [inaudible 35:00]
Trent: I would imagine, in you particular niche, these folks have
probably never even heard of a webinar simulation, and I know
that you’re not saying these things are live, but do you say
they’re recorded, or do you just not say?
Casey: We don’t say either. We say we’re going to have a webinar at
this time, and that you can sign up and show up. Here’s what we
do: On the webinar, I’ll say, “Guys, tweet us right now at the
Rocket Co., we’ve got our teams, they’re waiting right now.”
They’re interacting with The Rocket Company on the webinar, not Casey
Graham who’s doing the webinar, or Michael Lukaszewski, my
partner who’s doing the webinar. They’re interacting with the
company, not us as a right to interaction. We still get
interaction, but it’s with the company. We always have somebody
scheduled to be available during those times do all of our
social media interaction during the webinar.
Trent: Brilliant. What software tool are you using for the recorded
webinar?
Casey: I have no idea. I know that the video is on Vimeo, but I don’t
know what the technology piece is. I’m not the technology guy,
so I have no idea for that. I just record the things and send
them to our team, and they do all the technology. I’m sorry, I
hate it that I don’t know that.
Trent: That’s okay. One of the ones that is very popular, it’s by a
guy named Geoff Ronning, it’s called Stealth Seminar. It’s been
around a long time, a lot of people use it, I’ve used it in the
past. There’s another one I’m not as much of a fan of us,
because I tried it and it sucked initially, but apparently it
works quite well now, it’s called Evergreen Business Solutions,
I think what its name is.
There’s more and more of these webinar recording software platforms
that are available, so if you just Google around you’ll find all
sorts. If you type the word review after whatever name, then
you’re looking for, you’ll find people reviewing those products.
Be mindful, when you’re reading those reviews, most people are
an affiliate with that particular software platform, so read
between the lines and make sure it’s as objective as a review as
possible.
Casey: That’s good, good words.
Trent: Now we’ve got some conversions happening, we’ve captured leads
in this discussion so far, we’ve nurtured them, we have
converted them with recorded webinars – Which is brilliant by
the way, because you can put it all on autopilot. Once they buy
something, they probably might by some other stuff. In other
words, would you like fries with that?
Could you talk about what you’re doing to upsell, cross sell, and
generate repeat business?
Casey: Yes. The upsell that we’re working very hard on, which has
worked very well, is something we’re really excited about is, we
sell on CustomerHub. CustomerHub was bought by Infusionsoft.
We use it deliver all of our content.
Let me tell you why we use it deliver all of our content – It’s that,
and I didn’t know this until recently, that’s why we implemented
all of this, this is what we’re currently doing. You can one
click upsells inside of CustomerHub. People that are in there
consuming content of module one of your program, how to be a
better real estate agent or whatever, you can have a little
video on the side or inside CustomerHub, that says click this
button and you can get this da-da-da for free, because you’re
watching module one and we’re going to give you a special offer.
They go to a secondary page in CustomerHub, and it’s a one click
purchase. It says, add this to my account or I agree with this,
or whatever. It’s just one click, and it goes on their credit
card, which is on file. That has been huge, because we’ve taken
all the go get your credit card back out to customers, and we
can just create banners on the side.
Does that make sense? I know I’m beating inside the weeds here, but
one click purchase inside of CustomerHub, and if it’s not
CustomerHub, you need a solution that creates a one click
solution for repeat buyers. It’s the PayPal effect.
What I mean is that people ask me to give money all the time, but
they’re little project fundraiser things they’re going to do.
Anytime there is a PayPal button, I will click the PayPal, and I
can just enter the amount and be done with it. I don’t have to
get my credit out and all that kind of stuff. That’s how your
customers feel.
Don’t make them get their credit card out again, that works really
well. That’s number one of selling inside, it’s where your
customers are consuming content. If you’re not giving them
places to consume content, I would rethink that. I would give
them a portal or a place to consume content that also has
natural upsell opportunity in the same area. That’s just my two
cents, that’s not how we started, that’s where we are now.
That’s number one.
Number two is what we’ve done as well is the good old fashioned build
the sequence out in advance. If somebody buys core coaching
project – Let’s just keep using Giving Rocket, to help increase
church giving – We just go ahead a write a three day sale into
that sequence that happens automated whenever they get to day
78, 79, and 80, whatever those days are, and those e-mails just
go.
It’s a three day sale for everybody in that sequence, and it’s on a
product that is related to the core coaching program of Giving
Rocket. That is the fries that come with it. It can come two
months in, we have some six months in, some 12 months in, that
kind of thing. That works really well. That’s just scheduling
e-mails in advance for people who have currently bought
something.
The third thing we do is we upsell [them the] store. At the point of
purchase, if you’re buying this, we’ll give you 50% off this
systems bundle or whatever, because you’re buying this product.
Hit add this now, and they can just click inside the
Infusionsoft checkout and add it, and we have a lot of people
who do that. It surprises me. A lot of people, and I don’t
know the percentage, click on that and take that offer. Those
are three ways we upsell.
Trent: All right. So I want to dive in those a little bit. Let’s start
at the back, and then we’ll go backwards. The way you just
described on the Infusionsoft order form, you can very easily
put an upsell on there, is that what you’re talking about?
Casey: Not the order form, but in the store. You can’t upsell on the
order form unless there’s something we don’t know about.
Trent: You can.
Casey: You can?
Trent: You can. I do.
Casey: I need a blog post or something, I would love to do that.
Trent: I’ll just send you an example on one of my order forms, and
you’ll see. I put a little video in. My videos are hosted with
Wistia, which is a sponsor of Infusionsoft, a shout out to them,
thank you for that. It says, “Hey, here’s another thing that’s
complementary with what you just bought, if you want to add it
to your order, click the button right below.” They click the
button, it adjusts the total, and they check out.
Casey: That’s great. We want to learn from that. Ours is done in the
store, if they buy a store product, the e-commerce thing
Infusionsoft provides.
Trent: I haven’t messed with the store yet, I’ll make sure I do that.
Maybe your way is better than mine, but I’ll make sure to share
a link with you.
Casey: That’s awesome.
Trent: I’ll also put it in the show notes, this episode, so if you’re
listening to this and you want to see what the heck I’m talking
about, there will be a link in the show notes. I’ll give it to
you at the end of the show, in the post production there will be
a link to that.
One other question I wanted to ask on point number two was – You said
you built the sequence out in advance. Are you, for Giving
Rocket, dripping the content over time?
Casey: Yes.
Trent: Can you talk about little bit?
Casey: It’s 12 module program. They get one module per month. They
can unlock all the modules by paying an upfront fee with a
discount, but we still drip the content out over time. The
reason we do that is that… This is where we’re different from
a lot of Internet marketers that just want the payment and all
that stuff. We found that there is a significant amount of
customers, that if they get all the content at once, they never
do anything with it.
Trent: Yeah, it’s too much.
Casey: What we’re trying to do is to continue to market them to watch
a video, not all the videos. Even if they buy up front, we
still drip out, “Hey, did you know in module two, you can watch
all this.”
We give them benefits to pull out and that kind of thing. They’re
busy, just like us – How many times have we bought a book or a
seminar, or something. With great intentions, you listen to the
first thing and then you don’t ever do anything else with it.
It’s because they didn’t continue to sell to you after the
purchase. We keep continually selling. Go to the content now.
There’s another reason we do this as well. Guess when they go
to the CustomerHub, and they watch a video inside CustomerHub,
guess what they’re seeing on the side?
Trent: An upsell.
Casey: Getting them to consume the content again and again we found
works well for us in all the programs we sell.
Trent: Do you have an e-mail sequence that is reminding them to go
back, saying that there’s more and more content?
Casey: Yes. It drips out. There’s two e-mails a month. One says,
there’s module one, it’s available. Here’s what’s you’re going
to learn, blah, blah, blah. In the second one, we do some kind
of piece that’s helpful. For example, something like a written
version of something helpful. We also do two other e-mails a
month to our customers that we can put in our sequence that are
sales e-mails that are upsells, “Hey, you’re in Giving Rocket
month 2, but did you know that we have something called
Volunteer Rocket, and if you click this link you can just add it
on with one click, and it’s only another $49 per month, and it’s
50% for the next… whatever.” I’m making that up, 90 hours,
whatever the deal is.
You can build that stuff in, build the upselling into your e-mail
sequencing of delivering your content. Most Internet marketers,
actually none I’ve bought stuff from do that.
Trent: Brilliant. Giving Rocket is a monthly pay for 12 months,
correct?
Casey: Yup. $99 a month for 12 months.
Trent: If they want to unlock it, get it all now, what is the discount
they?
Casey: $997. They save about $200, basically two months for free.
Trent: Very good stuff man. You’re giving me lots of what I call
golden nuggets, so love getting those.
How are we doing for time? We’re at 44 minutes. I’ve a got a few
more questions in what I call the lightning round, and I want to
ask you how you’ve changed your life from the red truck to
today. Before I get to that, is there anything I haven’t asked
you, Casey, that you think has been a huge aha for you that you
want to share?
Casey: Here’s the number one I think would say creates the
competitive advantage. If somebody comes to your McDonald’s and
plops down a Burger King, what’s the difference? If somebody
comes and does your exact business, what’s the difference?
Here’s the number one difference is that we spend an inordinate
amount of time and money building relational capital with our
customers. We don’t Infusionsoft the whole customer life cycle
marketing, to me, it’s 50% of it. The other 50% is that it’s a
care software, it’s building – We are caring for our customers
in unique ways using Infusionsoft. We are reaching out to them
and deeply caring about what’s going into their lives, who they
are, who their family is, that stuff isn’t tactics, it’s core to
us.
For anybody in the info business, or anybody that’s trying to sell
something online, or whatever you’re doing, whoever is listening
to this, I would say that your differentiator is not your
marketing, it’s not your product, but it’s the relational
capital you have with your customers. I would build in as much
capital as possible to love, care for, take care of them and
deliver a tremendous – you can sell an average product with
great customer care, and people will love you. A good enough
product.
Everybody tries to have the best product, but they suck at taking
care of people. Take care of people, period. We have great
customer care, great response times, great service, all that
stuff, and that’s where we put our eggs for long term. It’s not
in being a better marketer. We love being the better marketer,
but what we believe is the best is taking care of people and
treating them right.
I know everybody will agree with that, but here’s my question: If I
looked at your business budget, how much are you spending in
customer care? How much are you spending in proactive customer
care? How much are you sending direct mail to them that’s not
asking for a sell, but thanking them? How much time and money
do you spend on referral partners, thanking them for referring,
not just asking for more referrals, and really building that
side of it out? That’s where the gold is.
You see I get real passionate when I talk about that, because most
Internet market people you learn from are just about getting
paid, and getting some money out of people, and selling. Or I
live on the beach, or I’m a guy that’s just on the mountain
somewhere and I just live in my mansion and I have all these
customers that pay me millions of dollars. Well, that’s great,
but we care more about our customers than anything else so
that’s what we spend time doing. Sorry for the long answer, but
that’s my heart.
Trent: That’s okay. Can you give us an example of exactly what you’re
just explained?
Casey: Every customer that buys from us, we send a personal,
handwritten thank you note every time they buy something. When
was the last time you or anybody listening to this has bought
something off an Internet marketing website and gotten a
handwritten thank you note from somebody on the team, that’s
personalized to you and what you bought? It’s rare.
Trent: Let’s go with… never.
Casey: That’s one that everybody listening can do. What people do is
they send that crap on Twitter. They’ll go “I got a thank you
note for The Rocket Company, I just bought a $79 product, and
they sent this.” Here’s the other thing – we ship a box.
In the box, we’re The Rocket Company, so we send a bunch of finger
rockets. They’re things you shoot across the room, and they’re
awesome. We send a coffee mug and a Rocket Company t-shirt
that’s actually a cool, nice looking t-shirt that’s not a piece
of crap. We send that out and tweet that stuff, they put it on
their Facebook pages, and they say, “The Rocket Company is over
the top when it comes to customer service, I just bought this
$99 product, and they sent all this stuff to me.” That’s
practical stuff we do.
The other thing I’d say we do is, we hired Call Ruby. Have you ever
heard of Call Ruby?
Trent: No.
Casey: It’s an outsourcing company that we use that answers our
telephones for us all the time. Nobody knows it’s Call Ruby,
it’s just an answering service. When anybody calls our phone
number, we always have somebody who picks up and answers the
phone, they get routed – They may go to voicemail ultimately, or
they may go to whatever, but when they call, somebody answers.
That’s a $250 a month investment we make, and it is a huge
investment because nobody ever says that they can’t get in
touch with The Rocket Company – They won’t e-mail me back, or
answer the phones, that sort of thing. Those are practical
things we do.
Trent: These finger rockets, the coffee mug and the t-shirt, you don’t
tell them in advance they’re going to get that stuff, do you?
It’s not on the sales page, you didn’t like say hey, if you buy
this, you’re going to get a t-shirt? No.
Casey: No. It’s surprise and delight.
Trent: How has all this good stuff changed your life from the days
back of the red truck?
Casey: We went from $80,000 in debt and then I had about $200,000 in
personal debt from a mortgage. About $300,000 in total, to now
our family is debt free and business is debt free. From a
personal standpoint, we’re all out of debt. That’s huge for us,
and the reason is not so people can go, oh great, you’re out of
debt, because nobody cares if I’m out of debt.
What is cool is now that we can make better decisions, because I’m
not making business decisions on I wish I could get out of debt.
It’s allowed us to then go we can invest more money here, we
can put more money there because we’re really caring about the
business not just about trying to make a rich owner. That’s
huge.
The second thing is from a time off perspective. Obviously, driving
around in a red truck doesn’t promote much time off. You know
what, if I’m your listener – People hate when people talk about
how good their life is, but honestly, selling online and selling
recurring income online – I took four weeks off last week and
went to Belize and went on a Disney cruise, and went to the
mountains with my family for some rest and relaxation. I wasn’t
worried one bit about what was happening because I know that we
have automated processes that work. We have a great team of
people of that are helping people step off. From a time off
perspective, it’s been huge.
The other thing is that we’ve been able to help so many more people
by Casey waking up and realizing that I was the problem, and
that I couldn’t do it one at a time, this is not working, and
being willing to say that I’m going to struggle as a business
owner and I’m the problem. There’s two problems and I’m the
problem and I’m the issue. From that point of saying that it
wasn’t anyone else’s fault but mine, and saying that we’re going
to create this has allowed us to reach so many more people.
Now we have 5000 people we’re serving. I couldn’t serve five
effectively when I was driving around doing it the old way.
We’re able to accomplish our mission, and that’s where the
personal satisfaction comes. It’s not that we created an upsell
opportunity, that doesn’t make me satisfied. What makes me
satisfied is when we get the success stories back in from some
guy in Australia who says “I’ve bought you product, and here’s
what’s happening in my church,” and we get a success story
unsolicited that comes back.
We get, I think the last count was 109 success stories in the last
100 days of people, unsolicited who just come in and say, “This
is working, thank you for what you do.” That’s really the pay
off and the reward, so that’s how my life has changed.
Trent: Yeah, that’s pretty cool. All right, lightning round – Three
questions and then we’re done. What are you most excited about
Casey for what remains of 2013?
Casey: I’m most excited about getting out of all the operational roles
from Rocket Company, and I’m focusing on creating the exact same
thing we did in the church space, I’m doing in the business
space. We’re creating a place for people listening to this, for
you, for anybody who wants to create content for the life cycle
marketing thing, for any piece of it, for attracting traffic,
for building relationship, to converting the sales in webinars,
and we’re creating a high end opportunity for them to come in,
and for me and my team to be content creators and do it for them
in two days by the time they walk out of the room.
We’re excited about doing that content creation machine which is
awesome. We found that that’s a huge thing. I can create a
webinar in fours hours and have people on it in 24, some people
think that’s hard to do. It’s so easy, so we’re just going to do
it for people who need to create content that will be part of
life cycle marketing. I’m super excited about that. That’s
probably the thing I’m most excited about right now.
Trent: What’s your favorite business book?
Casey: My favorite business book is “The Advantage” by Patrick
Lencioni.
Trent: “The Advantage”, okay. Lastly, for anyone who wants to get in
touch with you Casey, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Casey: It’s Casey C-A-S-E-Y@ultimatemarketers.com.
Trent: Okay. All right, man. Thank you so much for being on the show.
It’s been a fantastic interview. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I
learned some things and I hope the audience has as well. In
just a few moments, when Casey and I sign off, I will announce
on how you can get the show notes. If you have questions for me
or Casey, just go to the bottom of the post where this will all
be help, and just leave your comments there and we’ll be sure to
leave you an answer.
Thanks very much, Casey.
Casey: Thank you.
Trent: To get the show notes for today’s episode, go to
brightideas.co/62. When you’re there, you’ll see all the links
we’ve talking about today, plus some valuable information you
can use to ignite more growth in your business.
If you’re listening to this on your mobile phone while you’re driving
or doing whatever, just send text “Trent” to 585858 and I’m
going to give you access to the Massive Traffic Toolbox, which
is a compilation of all the very best traffic generation
strategies that have been shared with me by my many proven
experts that have been guests here on the show. As well, you’ll
also be able to get a list of all my favorite episodes that I’ve
published thus far on the blog.
And finally, if you really enjoyed this episode, please go over to
brightideas.co/love, where you’ll be able to find a link to
leave us a rating in the iTunes store. I’d really appreciate it
if you’d take a moment to do that, because it helps the show
build its audience, and of course the more audience members we
have, the more we can help to massively boost their business.
That’s it for this episode, I’m your host Trent Dyrsmid, and I look
forward to seeing you in the next episode. Take care, and have
a wonderful day.
Announcer: Thanks very much for listening to the Bright Ideas
podcast. Check us out on the Web at brightideas.co.
About Casey Graham
In 2008, Casey Graham started The Rocket Company out of a passion to reach church leaders worldwide – to train, speak, coach, consult – all to help the church. With barely any money in the bank, a stay-at-home wife and a one year old daughter, he set out on a dream which almost failed a few times. Five years later, The Rocket Company is reaching thousands of church leaders and expanding its service offerings. In 2013, they won Infusionsoft’s Ultimate Marketer of the Year award and are now helping other business leaders grow their businesses. Casey lives in Atlanta with his wife and kids.
[xyz-ihs snippet=”InfusionsoftCTA”]
Scott’s mission is to solve the challenges small businesses face in marketing their products and services. He leads the Demand Generation team and oversees marketing activities that drive new prospects and customers for Infusionsoft. His own entrepreneurial experiences and his understanding of what small businesses need enable him to continually evolve our software in innovative and successful ways.
