Do you run a small marketing agency and struggle to attract enough new clients to meet your growth goals?

Would you like to discover a way to put client attraction on autopilot?

In this episode of the Bright Ideas podcast, my guest on the show is Shaun Whynacht, founder of Blue Cow Creative, a small marketing agency based in Nova Scotia, Canada. I learned of Shaun at the last Infusioncon and when I heard that he’d doubled his revenue in just a year, I asked him to come on the show to share his story.

When you listen to this fascinating and informative interview, you are going to hear Shaun and I talk about:

• (02:13) Who he is and what his company is all about
• (04:13) The results they’ve achieved (doubling their revenue!)
• (04:58) What they did prior to what they’re doing now
• (06:13) A big investment they made, and the cost of signing up
• (08:13) How they capture leads
• (10:53) Specific tactics they use for lead magnets
• (11:53) Their focus on educating prospects
• (13:13) How they segment their list
• (15:49) The type of lead magnets they use
• (18:43) Which social networks are working for them
• (19:58) How they drive traffic
• (21:13) A description of their lead nurture process
• (22:58) How they are using the phone to follow up
• (25:03) How they are converting prospects
• (26:43) How they qualify leads
• (31:13) How they are using testimonials
• (33:53) How Infusionsoft has exponentially improved their nurturing
• (38:13) How they are using Infusionsoft for operations
• (39:46) Lightning round

Links

• The Bright Ideas Marketing Mastermind
• Book: Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
• Bright Ideas Lifecycle Marketing Webinar
• Technology Tool Tip: JobChangeAlerts.com

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.

Listen Now

Transcript

Trent

Dyrsmid: 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 with me today is a fellow by the name of Shaun Whynacht,

who is the founder of a company called Blue Cow Creative, a small marketing

agency. I learned of Shaun by way of attending InfusionCon this past year.

Shaun started to use InfusionSoft, and in the year following his using it,

he was able to double the revenue of his firm. Being as he’s got a

relatively small firm, just two people, I wanted to get him on to tell his

story because that’ll be a great story of significant results with someone

who maybe doesn’t have a huge pile of resources to work with Shaun’s story

is exactly that.Before we get to the interview, I want to give you my tool tip for

this episode, and that is something called JobChangeAlerts.com. If you want

to know when someone who you are connected to on LinkedIn changes their job

description or profile, which might be an opportune time for you to get in

touch with them to sell them your services, JobChangeAlerts.com will do

that for you. Will actually send you an email, so it’s a super-cool little

tool and it’s totally free.The other announcement is, my next life cycle marketing webinar,

which you can register for at BrightIdeas.co/webinar. If you are not yet

getting as many leads as you would like, or you’re not doing a good enough

job converting those leads to customers, or you’re not getting enough

referrals from your existing customers, this webinar will definitely help

you to improve your results. So, BrightIdeas.co/webinar, to register.So, with that said, please join me in welcoming Shaun to the show.

Hey, Shaun, welcome to the show.Shaun

Whynacht: Thanks for having me.Trent: It’s a pleasure to have you on. I think you’re the first

Canadian that I’ve actually had on my show, which is significant for those

in the audience who don’t know, because I’m Canadian.Shaun: Excellent. It’s a pleasure to be on, and be the first.Trent: Go, Canada, go. [laughs] All right. For the folks who do not

know who you are or what you do, please take a moment and introduce

yourself and your company.Shaun: I consider myself an entrepreneur of life. I’ve had a business

since the age of 17, and a couple since; but most recently, what I’ve been

doing is a company called Blue Cow Creative Design and Productions, Ltd. We

do a lot of content creation for clients, including social media marketing

and lead capture, drip marketing, those kind of things.Trent: Okay. So, very much a marketing expert in the marketing agency

space, which is ideal because a lot of the people who are listening to this

show either run a firm like yours, aspire to run a firm like yours, or

could use the services of a firm like yours.You came to my attention because InfusionSoft profiled you for some

of the success that you’d been having since starting to use their

application. I want to talk a bit about that because obviously I’m a big

InfusionSoft fan. I use it myself and I think that there are people who are

considering using it, or could be using it, and I’d really love them to

hear from people who are having success with it.

With that said, you run a two-person agency?

Shaun: Yes.

Trent: Okay. Let’s jump to the conclusion first, So the people who are

wondering, ‘Why do I want to listen to this interview?’ Since starting to

use InfusionSoft, can you tell us a little bit about the results that

you’ve been able to achieve?

Shaun: We’ve been using it almost two years now. After the first year

of using it, we’ve noticed that our revenue has doubled from the previous

years. It wasn’t just a banner year just because of the economy, it was

actually what we have proven to be attributed to the benefit of using

InfusionSoft through educating our prospects before they actually decide to

work with us. And then the service after the sale, that it’s allowed us to

1. That’s really what it has done for us and it’s almost like having two

other people working 24/7 for us when people are inquiring online.

Trent: Yeah. That’s pretty significant. Doubling your revenue and the

work of two other people.

Before InfusionSoft, how did you used to do what it is that you’re

doing now? Or did you even do it?

Shaun: If anybody listening is familiar with the old show MacGyver, I

say that we’ve MacGyvered a system together, where we had multiple

different systems out there running, one for invoicing, one for emailing,

one for contacts, and none of them really worked together. It wasn’t that

we looked at them as systems that didn’t work together. We just didn’t know

that there was a solution out there that would do it all in one.

When we heard about InfusionSoft and did the online demo, we were

hesitant that there was a claim that there was a service out there, that we

could subscribe to and use their software, and do all that. It took

probably six months for me to convince myself to take that leap and

actually try it, but it was the best decision we’ve done since then.

Trent: What you just said there is not uncommon. It’s a reasonably

good-sized investment up-front, a couple thousand dollars, and then it’s a

couple hundred dollars per month. I’ve had people email me who’ve listened

to the show, to ask about the pricing, and then right away, ‘Oh no, that’s

too much money.’ Did you think the same thing when you were looking at it

to begin with? Was that one of the things that was causing you to not pull

the trigger right away?

Shaun: Definitely. It wasn’t because I saw it as I didn’t have the

money to invest in it, it was just a big investment, especially for a small

business, a young entrepreneur who was just trying to make ends meet month-

to-month. Then, actually doing it, and looking at the other systems we used

where commonly they were considerably less per month, but you get what you

pay for. The time it saved us to not have to go between all those, it

actually works out cheaper if you figure out the time you’ve wasted with

the other services, by using their all-in-one solution.

Trent: Was there subcontractors that you used to use for various

manual processes, that now you’ve been able to automate and so you don’t

require those subcontractors, or even just your own time?

Shaun: It was my own time. It was replying to people’s inquiries about

common questions and those kind of things. For us, for what we do, because

a lot of the work is in creating a project and training our clients to use

it and be able to pedal on after the sale and use those solutions. To

educate them after, and have that resource there that they can come back

to, and currently drip information out to them after the fact to enhance

that service, was something that I would have had to spend a lot of time,

for one with a calendar and figure out, when do I send all this stuff, and

then actually physically have to do it. InfusionSoft just makes it all

simple for us.

Trent: Indeed it does. There’s three main pieces to InfusionSoft.

There’s the CRM component, there is the online shopping cart so you can

receive payments for whatever you would like, and then there’s the whole

marketing automation/email/autoresponder, however you would like to

describe that. I just call it the marketing automation piece. Are you using

all three pieces?

Shaun: I use all three. I use, more so, the campaign manager and the

campaign builder for a lot of the stuff. Probably about 80 percent of the

function we use it for, is for that. We have a lot of free resources on our

website where people can come in and request to download a free eBook or

free report, and then they get into a campaign where they’re getting drip

information about that, to convert them down the road, about when they want

to make that decision to move with a company like us, that they’re already

educated about what we do. We do that before the sale.

Then, after the sale, we use a lot of follow up through that, getting

people into education sequences, going out. We use the CRM, obviously, to

keep track of all the contact information, but also keep track of a lot of

the pertinent information regarding that client’s account, whether that’s

passwords, and things of that nature.

When it comes to the online payment and the eCommerce side, we don’t

use it as much. We don’t have an online store, but we do have certain

products. We do workshops where we get people to register and it processes

through that and puts them in the sequence for those workshops.

We wrote a book last year on marketing for small business and we sell

that through there, as well. There’s definitely a lot of power there on the

shopping side that we don’t use, but a lot of clients in different

industries could use it a lot more to their advantage than we do.

Trent: Yeah. Good segue into my next bit of questions. You started to

talk about free reports and capturing leads and so forth. I want to shift

to that because I think lead generation is a big problem for a lot of

people, especially when they are first starting out, or even when they’re

thinking about starting out. That’s probably the biggest fear I find in

people: How am I going to get my customers? In the next bit of the

interview, we’re going to talk specifically about what’s working for you

for lead generation, what you’re doing to nurture and educate those leads,

and then how you’re converting them to customers. Then, if we have time,

because I want to keep this under an hour, for sure, We’ll talk maybe a bit

about some of what you’re doing for up-sells and cross-sells and referrals.

Shaun: What we do for lead generation: when we started doing this kind

of thing, it was looking at people that were similar in our field and

seeing those mass numbers of contacts. Whether it was social media and

looking at their Facebook pages, to hearing about their email lists and

hearing about the thousands of people that they have, and being overwhelmed

by that and wondering how you can do it.

We’re looking to build quality connections as opposed to quantity. We

do it a lot through offering free webinars. We do a lot of them live, and

then we’re getting into more writing little white papers, two or three

pages, on things like permission marketing and Facebook advertising and

those kind of things.

In our industry here, most of the business community are owners over

45 years of age and up. So a lot of them haven’t grown up with the social

media side. They haven’t grown up with the technology. A big part of it

based around education. We don’t base it around, if you do this, you’re

going to make X amount of dollars, you’re going to bring X amount of

clients through your door. It’s education first. Then, they try it for a

bit, and then they want to take it to the next step. That’s usually the

point where they get in contact with us.

We do a really good job. We give them maximum information with

minimum commitment to begin, and that’s the key to lead generation. If you

want somebody to download something, if you want to email them something,

all you really need to give them, or for them to give you, is their email

address. You don’t need their address, you don’t need their phone number,

all that stuff. The more you ask for, the less you’re going to get. As you

get them through that whole sequence, and educating them, and building that

trust that you know what you’re talking about, then they’re going to be

more willing to give you that information down the road. That’s what we’ve

seen. It’s what we heard about first, and we tried it, and we see that it

works, so that’s what we’re doing.

Trent: Let me ask a follow-on question for that. You, like me and

probably everybody else, when you get that email address from an

individual, we really don’t know anything about them. In the case of Bright

Ideas, they could be a small business owner, they could be a marketing

consultant, they could be the CEO of a marketing agency, they could be

somebody thinking of starting a marketing agency. The way that I would want

to nurture and educate, because I have products across a couple of

different spectrums. Some products would be applicable to more than one of

those four categories, and other products wouldn’t. I don’t want to just

start sending out all my stuff to everybody, so I start to segment.

What is it that you do? You must segment somehow, because it’s not so

difficult to do. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re doing to make

sure that you get your list segmented in the right way?

Shaun: The information they’ve put out there for those lead generation

tools are very specific to that certain area. For example, we have one

where it’s a ten-video series on how to use Facebook, how to set it up, how

to do the very basics of it. We know that the people that are signing up

for that are very basic users. You’ll have the odd person that’ll sign up

because there’s something for free, but the majority of them are that way.

They’ll go through those ten videos, and then at the end we’ll make them an

offer to go to a more advanced phase, or they just sit there for a bit and

they just get periodic emails.

If they make the step up, then we know that they’re looking to go a

little further. The key is not, get an email and send them everything but

the dog’s lunch, it’s very segmented and making sure that you make them the

ones that control when they want the next bit of information. We find that

it works really well. Every webinar that we do, we do them for free, we get

a couple of really good leads that turn into clients, so it does pay back

itself multiple times after the fact. A lot of our clients that we try to

teach this to haven’t really grasped the concept of giving away something

for free. It’s like, ‘Why should I spend my time doing that if I’m not

getting paid for it?’ Well, you nurture them now, they’re going to pay you

back later if you do a good job at it.

Trent: Absolutely. It’s not as though you’re restricted to giving away

this information to one person at a time. The beauty, obviously, of a

webinar is that you can leverage your time by giving one bit of information

to many people at one time.

Shaun: The key that I’ve found with using InfusionSoft specifically

for this is that you’re not set to a start and end time. You spend the time

to create these products, create these sequences, and depending on when

people come into the funnel, whether it’s today or three weeks down the

road, they’re in the program. They’re getting the information based on the

time that they went in. It’s not like somebody’s going to miss some

information, and I think that’s what’s key to that. It allows us to

leverage the power of InfusionSoft above and beyond doing it manually, like

we had before.

Trent: Going back to what you were talking about with the lead

magnets. A lead magnet, by the way, in case people are unfamiliar with that

term, is what you are giving away to get the email address. It sounds like,

Shaun, that you have more than one lead magnet. How many different ones do

you have?

Shaun: We’ve done the webinars. We’ve recorded them, so those are now

available. People can go on there, sign up, then they get the link to the

videos. There’s probably two or three of those right now. We’ve got our

Facebook video series, we’ve got our book that we wrote, that’s now

available in eBook format and audiobook format for free as well. We’re

working on one right now, that’ll come out in probably the next couple of

weeks, on permission marketing.

Trent: Cool. Of those three, which one works the best for you?

Shaun: The videos. People like to be able to watch a video. The way

that we do them is solely with screencast for the trainings. People

actually get to see what we’re talking about, as opposed to giving them a

printed report. The printed report does all right, but not as well as

video, especially if you have some information to give out, just turning

the camera on and talking to the person will have a higher engagement, we

found.

Trent: I also think it goes a long way to build more trust, as well,

because they’re hearing your voice, and I think that we form a lot of our

opinions about how we feel about another person when we can either hear or

see them on our screen, versus just reading some text that they’ve written.

Shaun. Yes. You get to hear their voice, you get to see them. It’s all

those things that you would have if you were in front of that person. My

background is in video, so I’m a big fan of it. I think people are using

video more and I think they can use it even more as we move forward.

Trent: Speaking of video, I’m actually right in the process of

creating a new lead magnet myself, called The Conversion Tactics Toolkit.

If you’re listening to this on iTunes and you have not yet been to Bright

Ideas, go to BrightIdeas.co and you’ll be able to have an opportunity to

opt in to The Conversion Tactics Toolkit. It is an entirely video series.

All right. Is there anything that, in terms of capturing email

addresses, that’s working particularly well for you that I’ve not yet asked

you about, that you would tell somebody if you were sitting in a coffee

shop having this conversation?

Shaun: What I tell people is that if you’re doing this kind of thing,

and you’re on different platforms like social media, Twitter and Facebook,

is you need to have all your lead capturing/lead generation tools available

in all those different platforms. That’s worked really well for us. When we

create something new, we send it out to our existing email newsletter list

that we’ve gained over the years. We also put it on Facebook and do some

promotion there. We put it on Twitter and LinkedIn. The more relevant that

the information is to the networks that we’re doing, then we find we’re

getting some really good engagement that way.

Trent: Do you find that there is one social network that tends to work

better with the business audience than the others?

Shaun: Not really better, it depends on what we’re doing. Depending on

whether it’s a video series, or if it’s-, specifically let’s talk about the

Facebook one, because we had a higher engagement promoted out on Facebook

because they were in that medium when we were doing it. Whether it’s doing

that there, or sending it out by email, I think it’s relevant to what

you’re offering.

Trent: That makes a lot of sense. People hanging on Facebook would

obviously want to know how to use Facebook for marketing.

Shaun: Time of day, too, when you’re posting things. If you’re

targeting a business owner, which in most of the cases we are, we find a

higher engagement when it’s near the end of the day, as opposed to the

middle of the day because most people are engaged in their business. Even

on the weekends, surprisingly enough. At least here, we have a high

engagement of business owners that will subscribe to stuff on the weekends

because it’s low cost, in most cases free, for them to opt into it. That’s

when they’ve got some time to be online.

Trent: What are some things you’re doing to drive traffic to all these

offers? Are you getting traffic to your blog because you’re blogging, or

are you doing paid Facebook ads?

Shaun: We’ve done a little bit of paid Facebook ads, and they do

convert quite well for us. The majority of the stuff that we’re getting for

new leads is through our existing emails and through referrals. Most of our

new business, probably about 85% to 90% of it, is all referral-based. We

don’t do too much advertising. A lot of it comes through other people

sharing the content, being on our Facebook page, and those kinds of things.

Trent: Do you think there’s anything that you’re doing specifically

that’s stimulating those referrals, or is it just people who are genuinely

happy with the services you’re providing them?

Shaun: I think it’s the fact that we’re very real in the way we

present ourselves. We’re not making any false claims. We’re not giving them

the ‘This is the be-all solution to all your financial freedom.’ We make it

known that these are steps that you need to take to learn and know this

technology and we’re here if you want to take it to the next level. People

really appreciate that we’re not leading them in and making them sink or

swim.

Trent: Yeah. All right, let’s transition to nurturing now. You’ve

talked a bit about it. You’ve talked about the importance of educating

people, but I want to get a little bit more specific now, if we can. Let’s

use your video series, ‘Lead Capture,’ as the example of the guinea pig for

this part of the conversation.

Someone, they see your lead magnet, they give you their email

address, they hit the submit button, or the sign-me-up button, whatever

you’ve called it. What happens in that campaign builder? What have you

built, and what’s going to happen to that new subscriber? Walk us through

that.

Shaun: Once they sign up, they’ll initially get an email welcoming

them to the series, explaining what each of the videos are going to be

doing, and giving them the realistic expectation that they come out every

three days on a weekday and they spend whatever the length is there. In the

videos at the end, they’re then given a link to them. So that if for some

reason they can’t watch one, they’re going to get that in the end for that.

Throughout the process, then about a quarter of the way through,

we’re prompted to mail them out a letter just to introduce the company. No

sales or anything is in that letter. Just excited to have them going

through the series. Just introduce our website and those kind of things a

little bit more. Then, near the end, once they’ve finished, we’re prompted

to give them a call and see what they thought about it. See if they had any

further questions. They can talk to me personally about their journey

through Facebook.

We’re promoting it also as education, to use it on a personal level,

so we’re getting both sides of the fence there. Because I truly believe

that even though somebody might not be in a business and might not use it

for a business purpose, they know somebody that could. We’re not

eliminating educating those people that want to know how to use it for a

personal reason, too.

Trent: I’m very happy you mentioned that there was a call in your

sequence. I think that some people are needlessly scared of the telephone.

When you say call, they think cold call, and they think, ‘Ugh, I don’t ever

want to do that. That would be horrible.’ But, you’re not making a cold

call.

Shaun: No. That’s the key with putting the call near the end of the

sequence, as opposed to initially, at the beginning. If we put it right

when they signed up, we would technically be cold-calling them. Whereas at

the end, we’ve provided them ten videos, ten contact points of information

where we’re helping them every time. We’re never asking for the sale. Even

the call is not sales-oriented. It’s not, ‘Here we have a paid program’, or

anything like that. It’s ‘Just wanted to thank you for going through that.

Do you have any questions? If you ever want to take it to the next level,

this is who we are.’ We thank them for doing that. In most cases, we get

thank-yous back. Other times, we even get people saying that they’ve never

actually had a call that wasn’t pushy sales.

Trent: When you’re making these calls, do you find that people…

‘Hey, this is Shaun from Blue Cow,’ they’re like, ‘Oh hey, Shaun’. What’s

the response that you get, the vast majority of the time when they answer

the phone?

Shaun: They know who I am, even if I’ve never met them, because

they’ve heard me. Each of the videos are probably 15-20 minutes in length.

Some are shorter. They hear my voice throughout those videos. They know my

name. I introduce myself at the beginning, so it’s kind of like they

already know me when I call. It’s a familiar voice on the phone, as opposed

to getting somebody else to call.

Trent: Definitely it’s an easy phone call for you to make and it’s an

easy phone call for them to receive.

Shaun: That’s right.

Trent: How many times, even though you say it’s not a call to ‘be

pushy’ or ask for business, how, in your experience, are you finding that

some people are volunteering, ‘Hey, actually I would like to work with you

to do blah, blah,blah.’ or if that never happens, how are we starting to

convert some of these prospects to clients?

Shaun: Probably I have just over 50% of those people openly, as soon

as I thank them for that and I ask them if there’s anything else they might

need education on, they’ll openly tell me what it is. The rest of them, you

have to dig a little bit about that. I’ll ask, ‘How are you using

Facebook?’ first, if you have a business, and then I’ll ask, ‘How are you

using Facebook in your business?’ and they’re hoping to do some advertising

and that kind of stuff, so I lead them to one of our webinars on Facebook

advertising. Or, we have a report that goes with that and I tell them about

that. But probably more times than not, they want to schedule a time to

talk on the phone, and then, if we do a good job and convert them, then we

end up working with them.

We’re not scared to admit that the relationship is not a fit, if

that’s the case. A lot of people will not do that. They’ll just push and

push for the sale, whereas we want to work with a certain demographic of

business owners. If it doesn’t fit for us, and it doesn’t fit for them,

then we thank them and we both go our separate ways.

Trent: That’s a really, really important point, that you’ve brought

1. Because a lot of small business owners, they get a few years in, and

then they realize they have this hodge-podge of customers, 20% of which are

generating 80% of the revenue. The other 80% are, kind of, a pain in their

butt because they took them maybe out of desperation in the early years. Or

they just took them for reasons that weren’t really solid reasons. Does

that sound familiar to you? Did you go through that experience, or were you

very choosy from the beginning?

Shaun: No, I was not very choosy. Starting out, any hook that came

into the water, I was biting at it. Using the InfusionSoft system, it’s has

allowed us to qualify those people and see, when they receive emails, what

are they clicking on? What are they doing? To see how interested they are,

so that when we talk to them, we can tell now if they’re really going to be

a key client. If we can’t help them, there’s no point in even going through

that process.

Even if the money’s there, we’d still do this work if we didn’t have

to get paid. We just enjoy doing it, especially if it’s helping people. But

also, that need to help people led us, in the early years, to jump at those

early leads because we feel that people were needing our help. We would

just do stuff. We’d discount some services just so they could use what

we’re doing. But in the end, like you said, that’s probably that 80 % that

just takes up more valuable time than you have, when really, they’re just a

one-off project whereas we’re trying to build long-term relationships.

Trent: You mentioned qualifying. I want to dig a little deeper into

that, if we can. In InfusionSoft, there’s something called lead scoring?

Shaun: Yes.

Trent: I apologize to the audience for all the frogs in my throat

today. I don’t really know why I’m having such a problem here, but I’m

doing my best. Are you using lead scoring, and if so, how are you using it

to help qualify the prospects that are in your funnel so that the people

who deserve the attention, be it the phone call and so forth, are getting

it?

Shaun: We currently don’t use lead scoring. I know the power of it. I

just don’t think that where I’m currently at with the business, that it

works for us the way we’d want it to. We do a lot of our qualifications by

the initial phone call and talking with people. We make it known that this

is what we hope to get out of this call and this initial consultation and

get them to commit to that first. Then we sit down. Just talking to people,

we find, is the best way to do it.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t go in and look at the back history to

see how many times they’ve been checking out our website, what they’ve been

looking at, before we sit down, so I can see how interested they are; or,

if they just decided to come to our website and call right away.

The lead scoring is a powerful tool, especially if you’re in a

business where you might even have a sales force or a sales team where it

can figure out if they’re a hot lead based on their interaction and those

kind of things.

Trent: When you are interviewing a prospective client, do you always

meet with them face-to-face before they become a client? Or, are you

sometimes getting clients who aren’t in your town?

Shaun: It depends on the situation. I prefer to meet face-to-face

whenever possible, but I realize sometimes that time restraints, distance,

and weather don’t allow that. We do a few phone calls for this kind of

thing, but in most cases we try to sit down. I think one of the key things

is to not come across as selling them something. But them identifying what

their needs are, what their goals are, and realizing that what we could

offer will be a solution to that. We find that’s really good.

One of the first things I ask somebody is, ‘What do you hope to get

out of working with us?’ They tell you right away. ‘This is what my problem

is and this is where I’d like to go with it.’ Now it gives us a target to

work towards. In some cases, that goal is something we can’t attain for

them, so it’s either try to get them to a realistic level, or just say,

‘Maybe there’s somebody else better suited for that.’

Trent: That’s a very powerful thing to be able to do. I know that when

I was running my last technology company, and this was in the early 2000s,

before any of this fancy-schmancy marketing automation stuff, that I was

aware of it maybe it existed. One of the first questions we would ask when

we would get a meeting with a new prospect is, ‘Why’d you take the

meeting?’ That was a really terrific way for someone to tell you their

agenda right at the beginning, so that you knew the points that you needed

to speak to so you’d have a chance of converting them into a good client.

Shaun: Yeah, for sure.

Trent: We’ve talked about how you’re capturing leads. We’ve talked

about how you’re nurturing leads. I think we’ve covered how you’re

converting your leads to customers as well, unless there’s anything else

there. Is there anything that’s major in your process on the conversion

part of it that we haven’t talked about?

Shaun: Because a lot of our new business and new leads comes from

referrals, it’s using the power of asking for testimonials. I’m a big fan

of testimonials and people telling their story of why they chose to work

with us. What they liked working with us, so we can use that on our

website, on our blog, on our social media, to promote that experience.

Because I think working with a company should be a positive experience as

opposed to just hiring somebody, and then not really understanding what it

is that we do. That talks back to what we do in the early stages with the

education. It’s not really a lot about educating them about what’s out

there. But educating them about the process we take with them, in the early

stages. So that they know they’re involved in that process and they don’t

feel left out.

One of the things we’ve heard a lot is that they’ve worked with other

companies and they don’t hear from them for a few days and they don’t

really know what it is that they’re doing. Then, they get a bill in the end

and hopefully the project is good, or not. That’s key to what we do.

Trent: How do you ask for testimonials? Do you just call them up and

ask them? Or do you have a process, campaign, something?

Shaun: Yeah, we just have a little note campaign that we add to that

contact at the end. Just thanking them that the project has completed and

we’ve successfully launched, depending on what it is. And just ask them to

go to our Facebook page and write their testimonial, as opposed to just

emailing it to us.

Trent: Wow, that’s cool.

Shaun: In most cases, but if they’re not on Facebook, then obviously

we take it by email, but we want it to come authentic from them and not

seem like we’ve reformatted it and pushed it out after the fact.

Trent: Then, you can take a screen shot of it on Facebook and reuse

that particular image wherever you like.

Shaun: That’s right. Plus, immediately, all their friends see that

they’ve posted something on our wall, and it helps that way.

Trent: Golden nugget, there it is. I’ve got to write that down –

testimonials on Facebook.

Shaun: You can always copy and paste it and use it in other things

after, but at least the original source is authentic.

Trent: Yeah. Okay. This nurturing process that we’ve been talking

about obviously is working very, very well for you. And you’d mentioned,

before InfusionSoft that this was not so easy. Did you nurture, in any way,

shape, or form, like you do now, only you did it manually and it took a lot

of work? Or, were you like maybe a lot of people out there who would get a

prospect, call them three or four times, ‘Nah, they don’t want to take the

meeting’, and then just give up?

Shaun: Yeah, the last one there, that was pretty much me. A lot of the

process of using InfusionSoft was learning the keys to nurturing and that

that was actually a key point to doing business. The benefit with

InfusionSoft is not just that they’re a software, but there’s a whole team

of people there that are invested in your growth and the well-being of your

company.

So if you have any questions about, ‘How could I use this element?’

It’s not just the p’s and q’s, and click here and do this. It’s ‘Here’s how

you take it offline, here’s how you use it.’ So I think that they’re really

great that way.

I’ve also been down to both InfusionCons in the last two years.

That’s a huge event that really helped me focus my business, learn what I

needed to do, and realize that I didn’t have all the answers, but I could

learn them down the road.

Trent: That is such an incredibly good point. I’m wondering if you do

this: back when I was running my technology company, I participated in a

couple of mastermind groups where, in one case, one of them was called True

Profit, and another one was called Vistage. We would meet, I think one of

them was four times a year, and the other one, I can’t remember. I think

also four times a year. You’d sit down in a room with other people who are

running companies exactly like what you’re running, just in a different

marketplace. And we would openly share a huge amount of detail in every

area, from marketing to operations, so that we could all learn from each

other.

I can’t emphasize how valuable that was, because you’re learning from

people who are doing exactly what you’re doing, and they’re running their

own businesses. Do you participate in anything like that?

Shaun: I currently don’t. I’m currently looking for something like

that. I do see the extreme value in a mastermind group, but just in the

area that we’re in, we haven’t found that kind of thing. We do a lot of

networking and talking to businesses in other areas that cover a lot of the

key basics of bookkeeping and all that other kind of things that we need to

talk about. But when it comes to specifics, we currently haven’t done

anything like that.

Trent: Okay. Well, I’m going to introduce you to something like that.

Bright Ideas does have a mastermind group. If you go to

BrightIdeas.co/mastermind, you can learn more about it. It is specifically

targeted to people who are marketing consultants and marketing agencies.

However, with that said, because that’s what, when you read the page,

actually by the time this is published, there will be a full page

explaining everything, Shaun. If you go there right now, it’s just what I

call the pre-launch page, where you can register for updates and so forth.

Even though, on the full page, which, people when they’re listening

to this will see it, I want them to understand that the principles and the

things that we talk about, and it starts off with a two day workshop, two

day online workshop. The principles that we talk about are going to be

highly applicable to whatever industry you’re in, but most of the people in

the group probably will be running marketing agencies. With that said, one

of my facilitators, and you probably know him, his name is Dustin Burleson.

That name ring a bell with you?

Shaun: No, it doesn’t.

Trent: Oh, okay. He was one of the Ultimate Marketer finalists at

InfusionCon this year. He’s the guy that has the orthodontics clinic

that…

Shaun: Okay, yes, now I know.

Trent: Four clinics now, because he’s using, it just blew up once he

started using InfusionSoft. He’s going to be inviting a number of the

people who attend, other orthodontists who attend his seminars. This first

one that we’re going to do, I’m not exactly sure of the mix of the people.

Regardless, if you’re looking for a mastermind group, just head over to

BrightIdeas.co/mastermind and there will be information there for you to

check out.

All right. Sorry, again, for all the frogs in my throat. I don’t know

why. What do I want to ask you about next? We were going to make a

transition, how are we doing for time? We’ve still got a bit of time.

Are you still – got a few minutes left?

Shaun: Yes, certainly.

Trent: I know. I know what it was. This wasn’t on my list of

questions, but you talked about this early on. We’ve talked a lot about how

InfusionSoft and the campaign builder is helping you with marketing, but I

want to talk about how it’s helping you with operations, and stuff that

happens after people become a client.

Can you speak to, because the campaign builder, I mean, campaigns

don’t have to be marketing-oriented. Because all a campaign is, is a

sequence of communication and activity, which is more or less any, and

almost every, business process. Can you talk about anything that you’re

doing in that regard?

Shaun: Well use a lot of the CRM side of InfusionSoft, with the custom

fields and and the custom tabs, to tailor it towards the information that

we need to keep about each client’s project. When we’re dealing with people

that we’re building websites for, or setting up online accounts, we keep a

lot of their account details in there; attach their records, so that if I

need to go in, or somebody else needs to go in later to send them that

information, it is there for them.

The other side is, also, using a lot of the tracking of the emails

that we send out. We can send them out through that so we can see when

they’ve opened them and any links that they clicked on. As for using any of

the sequences internally for the actual project building, usually once we

take on the project, when we finish it, a lot of that communication is just

done one-on-one with the client by our team, or any subcontractors that we

use. Then, after the sale, we go back and give them some resources about

using that service or that product that we’ve created for them.

Trent: Okay. All right, Shaun. Well, I want to thank you very much.

Oh, before I go, my lightning round. Can’t forget the lightning round.

Three questions.

Shaun: Okay.

Trent: Question number one: what are you most excited about for 2013?

Shaun: For 2013, what we’re more excited about it we’re launching a

new area to our business called the Seniors Learning Academy. Because here

in Nova Scotia, we have a large contingency of seniors who are using iPads

and a lot of them don’t know how to use them. This whole project is, first,

teaching them how to use these new pieces of technology for their

lifestyle. We’ll be rolling that out in a DVD learning series for them.

That’s what we’re really excited about, coming up.

Trent: Now is that a product you’re going to sell?

Shaun: Yes.

Trent: Okay. I was going to say, because how does that fit in with

lead gen? But now I get it. That’s just a revenue producer in its own

right.

All right. What is your favorite business book?

Shaun: Ooh, well, I’m currently reading, and I’m really liking, Seth

Godin’s ‘Permission Marketing.’ I really like the mindset of that. Anything

that he writes has been stellar, right from ‘The Purple Cow,’ to ‘Meatball

Sundae,’ I think is the latest one that I read before this. Anything Seth

Godin puts out, I think, is golden.

Trent: Finally, for the folks who have been listening to you now and

think, ‘Hey, I might like to do business with Shaun’, what’s the number one

easiest way for them to get in touch with you?

Shaun: The best way is to go to www.BlueCowCreative.ca.

Trent: Terrific. Shaun, thank you so much for making some time to be

on the show. It’s been a pleasure to have you on.

Shaun: It’s been a pleasure being here.

Trent: All right. To get to this show notes from today’s episode, go

to BrightIdeas.co/66. When you’re there, you’ll see all the links that

we’ve talked about today, plus some other valuable information that you can

use to ignite more growth in your business.

If you’re listening to this on your mobile phone, just text TRENT to

585858 and I’ll give you access to the ‘Massive Traffic Toolbox,’ which is

a compilation of all of the very best traffic generation strategies shared

with me by the many proven experts that have been guests here on the show.

As well, you’ll also be able to get a list of, what I feel, are the very

best interviews, thus far, that I have recorded. I can promise you will

discover many bright ideas as a result of those interviews.

Finally, if you really enjoyed this episode, please head over to

BrightIdeas.co/love, where you will find a link to leave us a rating in the

iTunes store.

That’s it for this episode. I am your host, Trent Dyrsmid, and I look

forward to seeing you in the next episode. Take care and have a wonderful

day.

Recording: Thanks very much for listening to the Bright Ideas podcast.

Check us out on the web at BrightIdeas.co.

About Shaun Whynacht

As a leader in social media consulting, Blue Cow is on the leading edge of technology application, combining an up-to-the minute understanding of current tools and trends with proven skills in creative design and video production to offer clients the latest, hippest approach to their business needs. But Blue Cow’s approach dictates that superior customer service and a personalized approach is the hallmark of their operation; here high tech meets down home.