 Okay, well, I should give you just a little background. I am a graphic designer and copywriter by trade. That's how I started my career, because I have a fine arts degree and no one knows what they're going to do actually for a career with a fine arts degree. There really aren't clear career paths. And so I just sort of backed my way into marketing over many years and for a certain period of time worked for startup companies. One of the goals when I started my business was to bring that kind of strategic thinking to small businesses. But I also am sort of a techie person and I, as a graphic designer, went from working on a board to working on a computer. I color separated the first job that went directly to film in Peoria and I like that stuff. So, you know, I build websites and I do marketing automation and I know a lot about marketing. So I try to bring that to everything I do. And so my speaking here is based on is I go out there and I see a lot of thought that, you know, you just build a website and people will come. I've actually had clients tell me that. They're real disappointed. We built the website and we just thought that was it. You know, people are automatically going to come. And that was kind of where we started with websites, I think. And then when we realized people needed help finding them, we added SEO and paper click and we did email newsletters and, you know, we had a Google place and all those are necessary. I'm not saying those aren't necessary. Then when different things started happening on the web, then it became clear that, well, there's social media. We can't just have a website. We need to do social media, too, because there's a lot of eyeballs there. Videos, you know, the second largest search engine. Blogging, podcasting. But in many cases, people do those, but they're all still kind of islands. And sure, there's some effort of connecting them. But that's really that old traditional model of using a website like a brochure. The come and find us kind of sales. Or, and ignores a basic relationship building. And I like to think of it as where a lot of times in marketing we're asking somebody in Marys on the first date. You know, I just met you, but here's what I have to sell to you now. You know, why aren't you buying from me? And, you know, we know the majority of people are coming to your website first. That's part of their due diligence and figuring out if they want to do business. Another part of our problem is we inundate people. The everything you want to know about us newsletter. You know, with the five topics that honestly no one has time to go through five topics. You know, and if you want the one that's number four, I mean, how long does it take you to scan down there and what's the likelihood you're going to read that? And the other thing we tend to do is we treat everybody the same. You know, we don't really differentiate if you bought from us. If you haven't bought, we don't know which product you're interested just here. This is what we have to sell. You look like a prospect. And so we're always closing because we don't have a process that allows us to segment who we're talking to. And so why doesn't that work? And why do we need to do something different? Well, most people start looking long before they're ready to buy. And then when they want to buy, they want to buy now. And I was talking to my friend Stephanie and we were talking about actually one of my nurturing sequences where it's provided by the marketing and automation company. So I just kind of branded it and I was using it and she goes, yeah, you really shouldn't be using that. It's a downloads. And I was kind of thinking about it. Yeah, honestly, I download things all the time and I never go back to them. And I think that's what a lot of people do because like we only have now. We used to have yesterday and tomorrow, but now we're at the point we have so much packed into now that we only have now. And so anything you do as a business owner to get people interested, you have to do it so they can do it in there now and there now might be right now or there now might be tonight at 10 o'clock or there now might be Saturday morning at 3 a.m. because they need pricing because they've decided to buy, but that's their only time that they have to do that. And if you don't have it out there, how are they going to buy? So thinking about people, how they work, how overwhelmed they are and making sure the things that we offer to them related to our website are going to capture them at the point in time when they're interested. A lot of times that those people, somebody said this earlier, they come to your website once and that's it. So having some way to capture them at that one moment when they find your website is a really critical point. And the other thing is because if they aren't going to come back and it takes seven to 14 interactions with you for them to really feel comfortable enough to buy from you, how are you going to facilitate that? So it's time, and you try to do it manually, it's a little overwhelming. Think about how many times you reach out and touch a prospect, you probably don't do it nearly that many times. Other reasons why it doesn't work. People only really want to hear, you only have time to hear about what interests you. And so you don't want to sort through the email newsletter with the five items. You want the one that you're interested to just be right there. So not just the one thing you're interested in, not everything. Why it doesn't work. If you don't nurture your prospects, you are always starting at the beginning. So everybody's a new prospect, so you have to do a lot more. And if they're not ready to buy, then you have to do a lot more lead development. And otherwise, you only have so much energy. So some of the things you could do in your business that weren't involved with lead development, like celebrating people after they sell and cementing that relationship you're not getting to because you're busy with lead development. So why did this happen? Well, this happened, part of what makes us all have to have changed as consumers is because of the digital world we live in. So what we see and why a standalone website doesn't work anymore, we see Google and Facebook and Amazon and they're all using the power of now. And they're giving us what we want when we need it because they have databases that track us and they've got us in there and they know what we're interested in. And so they're using predictive technologies to know if you're interested in this, you might be interested in these things. And of course, we're all getting those emails to say, you know, oh, you haven't been here for a while and here's the shoes you shopped for last and don't you want these shoes? And here's some other good sales shoes. And so they can deliver what interests us just when we are interested. And the thing that happens when we're in this world where the things we're getting are personalized and we're getting advertising based on our location or our searches or activities and how much we spend we're dealing with companies that are integrating their marketing across these huge companies integrating marketing across all the channels. And so what I get in my email it relates to what I shop for a browse for and everything connects is that it makes us start expecting that not just from big companies but we expect that from small companies too. And we lose our patience for stum. You know, there's been a lot of dumb advertising in the past and it was John Wanamaker who said, I know 50% of my advertising works. I just don't know which 50%, you know, and it's the same. I mean, that there's a lot of dumb things, but people just did a lot of them and counted that part of them were going to work. But now we've more or less lost our patience with that. And so how do you as a business adjust to a new consumer group that no longer wants to be the motivator for themselves to buy? They want you to do it. They want you to tell them what you have that they're interested in. How do you do that? So what can a small business do to compete in a digital world? And there are successful businesses using these ideas and creating a web of stickiness. So multiple touches, extending their brand across all their channels that they're in, using interactive content that people can respond to, not just something static but something interesting. Magnet offers, you know, the by best things you need to know about this product I'm selling you are that the two things that people don't realize when they're buying HVAC or, you know, it can be used for any product. And I think while business owners often have trouble creating content, all the time when they sell to people, they're delivering content. They just don't understand it. They don't get that what they do every day all day is really deliver content. So somebody earlier said, how do you get people to be willing to do content? Well, no, maybe you videotape them and then you transcribe that because honestly, all business owners do this all day. They just don't understand what they're doing is delivering content. So successful businesses are trying to work smarter and not do the dumb advertising thing. And they're using the power of information and they're letting, they're automating things. They're letting automation do the heavy lifting. When I first found out about marketing and automation, it was the big answer to me for something I'd heard from businesses all my career, which is, yeah, I tried that, but it just doesn't work. And I tried radio advertising, it just doesn't work. Or, you know, I did social media, it just doesn't work. Well, and a lot of the times the reason it doesn't work is you don't have a plan. You don't have anything to take people from this place to this place to a sale. And that's how small businesses can really compete with the large ones is to have a strategy to understand how people buy. So what is marketing automation? Marketing automation is a combination of a customer relationship, management database for the most part, and marketing activity automation. So you've got a database with your prospects and customers in it and you can trigger a series of actions. And it enables you to do some things, integrate your marketing channels. And link in to your other other softwares your company might be using. And you can do lead scoring and personalization and you can automate marketing responses and you can integrate everything that's connected in your business usually given, you know, there's some of course outliers that you might have a workaround but mostly everything and allows you to be smarter. And I have to say if you can build WordPress websites, you can do marketing automation and you're going to like it because it's fun and techy and if you like flow charts at all and get flow charts and understand them that's really just a core design of most marketing automations. You're creating this to happen after this happens and then there's a timer and then this happens. I mean if you like techy things you will like marketing automation. And so to developers I say this is something else you can sell. Why build a website when you can like create a whole success network for your clients? And then to business owners who might be here I say just don't count on your standalone website to be the be-all and end-all for your business because it just can't. You need a sticky network with interesting things that's dynamic and that draws people in and lets you grab a hold of their information and continue to reach out to them in different ways. And so how is this different from a Facebook pixel? One thing is you don't own the information with Facebook pixel but you would with marketing automation. So there's a lot of email systems so constant contact, MailChimp, MI, etc. They are a form of automation as you can do autoresponders and now many of them have added limited amounts of automation. I've done some of that with MailChimp. I now charge more from MailChimp than I do from Fusionsoft because you know just kill me right now if I have to go and figure that out because there are things that look like they should be working but they weren't working and it was frustrating. It wasn't very clear. Marketing automation is just a lot more than those and there's of course a lot of funnel softwares but marketing automation is more than a web page with a lot of hard sell on it. It's really a way to connect a lot of different places that you already are on the web and reach across those channels and make sense of everything and entice people to come depending on where they are in their sales process. So how to integrate? And I think a really critical part of marketing automation is strategy. You've got to start with strategy. You have to understand people's businesses and you have to map out your business processes and your communication flows and that's how I always start. We do an in-depth strategy session. It makes your head hurt. That's how you know you're doing good strategy is that you're thinking really hard about things. You have to look at all the different softwares and what needs to be integrated with what and what's the best marketing automation platform that's able to do that. And then does the software they're using have an API? Is there something else they maybe should switch to that's going to integrate? Because the API allows different databases to talk to each other and it makes it a lot easier to pass information between them. So there are lots of different marketing automation softwares. They all probably have a slightly different focus. They have different capabilities. Some are more complex. Some are more expensive. Some are less complex and less expensive. And so if you've never done any kind of strategic thinking or processes here's just some questions that you should ask yourself. If you're the business, ask your business if you're a supplier. So who are your ideal customers? Who do you really want to sell to? It's not just everybody. Who do you make money from? Where should some analysis? Who's your most profitable customers? How do we find more of those? Where are those? Why do they buy from you? Different products that might be different answers. Different services. What motivates them? Where are they on the web? Where do you find those people? And what's the sales process? This is a long sales process. Do they come to you and they buy once in their lifetime? Do they come to you and they buy once every month? Can this is something that you can send them something? The minute they run out of it, bam, they have another one. Is this can be sold on a subscription basis? Is it something where it's a progression? They're going to buy this, but then they're going to buy this. And then they're going to buy this really big thing, which may be like a consulting product. And then what kind of information education visualizations? What do you need? How are you going to push that sales long? What kinds of things make a difference to these clients? What's going to make them want to buy more? How do you move them along? What information makes a difference in that sale? And then maybe you need to qualify that. My friend Stephanie is a consultant. She's very highly concerned. I heard ideal customer is not me because I take a while to make decisions. They make really fast decisions and they do a whole lot of work. And when she says, I think you should do this. By God, they're already starting to do that before they're off the call. So she has a long intake form because she wants to weed out people who won't do the work and who don't care enough. So that's all done through marketing automation. And the minute they fill that out, bam, they get an email. Even when they click on, I want to work with you. They immediately say, oh, I'm so happy you want to work with me. Here's my intake form, bam. They go to that and she can tell where they are. If they don't fill it out, she can send them a reminder. If they finish it out, she sends them another link to schedule a time with her to talk about it. And then she has a long consultive call. Think one to two hours, maybe more with them where they have discoveries during that call. And she has a plan. She has a sales process. I wish I was half the sales person she was. She's working through their main reasons they might not want to buy and by the end of that call, she's got them signed up. So it's all driven by marketing automation and she does it brilliantly. So it should fit the business. That process isn't right for somebody who's selling greeting cards. That's something people buy on certain periods during birthdays. But everybody has their own little schedule that could be discovered. More strategic mapping questions. What's your customer life cycle? And how do you know where a customer is in the life cycle? We have a dual customer and we're working on a marketing automation and one of the things she wanted to do is be able to send an email to that pregnant woman that relates to the month that she's in relative to when she's due. So is it first month or third month? Different things happening. She wants to be able to say to them. She wants to get their due date and then the math works back and then the emails say, oh, you must be in your first month. Or you're, oh, your fifth month. Oh, you're feeling like this now. So she's really giving them information they want to have. Here's my tips because doulas know a whole lot about being pregnant and they know a lot about after you had the baby. She comes in into sleep coaching. So if she gets that due date, she's gotten every piece of what she needs to know to talk to that person with just what they're interested in at that moment. So where is your customer in their customer life cycle? And is there a natural progression to your sales? So what's your best call to action? And this is what I love to do with customers. What's your lifetime? What's the lifetime value of a customer for you? How much do you spend on getting a new customer? And there's all kinds of calculations. You can Google it. You're basically, you know, on average, what do you get from a customer revenue-wise every year and then how, on average, how long do your customers stay? And so that's their lifetime value. You only want to spend, you know, probably a couple years. You don't want to spend more than you're going to make from a customer in like maybe two, maybe three years because of course you start, you know, you're going to lose money if you spend more than you're going to make with the new customers you get. So you want to, that's a really powerful number to know about your customers and it helps you make marketing decisions. And it can vary. And you can have different customer segments. You're going to spend more on some and less on others. More, so what kinds of information is irresistible to your customers? You know, and you can brainstorm this. So maybe you've never even done that, but that's something if you know your, and usually business owners know their customers. So what makes them share contact information? And you know, go read some National Enquirer headlines or something like that if you have any questions, you know, and what kinds of things make you pick things up and look at them. You can add that kind of spin to your magnets. What promotions will excite them? There's always coupons. There's always discounts. And what kinds of content have you already created that you can, you know, reuse, repurpose, revise? And great, I believe great marketing automation happens when the powerful strategies that come out of sessions like this and the deep understanding that business owners have of their buyers comes together with really dynamic creativity, you know, over-the-top creativity. You know, very, you know, a voice that fits what your customers, what will appeal to them. So this is, you probably won't be able to see much, but this is something I did for a client is for an Acne, someone who's interested in Acne treatments. And she's offering a, you know, a, let's see, what are we, a premium is your birth control causing your Acne. And then if they click yes, they go to download it, she pops up with a three video, a three video series that she is a very prolific person with Stefan and so she's got Acne treatment one, Acne treatment two, Acne treatment three that she's already got, and then a free consultation. And that's just an idea of, you know, how she's drawing that person in and getting them more involved with her. She's also at the bottom, you know, another thing marketing automation gets, lets you do is let people opt in for as much information as they want and opt out if you're giving them too much. So you can, you can design an opt in, you know, an opt out sequence so if they want to opt out you can ask them, well, am I just sending you too much? You know, would you want to hear from me if, you know, we're going to miss hearing from you so how often and let you, let them choose, you know, maybe they hate emails but maybe they're really interested in you and they would want to hear once a month. Well, that's better than not at all. So you can also design things like that that help people choose how often to engage. The guy before me, I'm sorry, don't know his name, the Google Analytics, when you look at your Google Analytics and you ask yourself who are all those people and why didn't they buy from me? You know, marketing automation allows you to capture leads that would have been missed and then do more nurturing than is manually possible but if you're missing leads, that person was interested in you for some point in time right then and you are letting them go by not capturing them. So, and the statistics say 50 to 80% of those people would have bought from you had there been some nurturing sequence available to them and, of course, more leads equals more money so that's why it should matter to all of us. And here's just an example of a website that we're just starting. We've been in the proposal process and she's finally said let's go ahead with it and we're meeting on Tuesday. So it's the Sagar Lounge in Texas and they're going to have a storefront and they're going to have a point of sale system they want to have a membership level and you're going to get different offers depending on what level member and it's going to be based on how much you spend what membership level you qualify for or say they want to have a website and they want e-commerce well it's still, we think we want e-commerce on that and they're going to have events in there at their location and so they've chosen Infusionsoft because they're marketing automation because it gives them the ability to take the information from the point of sale to be able to discern from that where people are from membership but Infusionsoft will take that and allow it to be shown on the website so when I log into the membership section on the website the offers I'm going to get because of my membership level are going to be different the offers that other people are going to get and the reason for that is all going to be driven by the point of sale their cash register that is going to all that information is going to be available to the website and served up to the website so the right offers can be on the website and then that is going to impact what events you get invited to and so you're going to have that exchange of information between the bricks and mortar store and Infusionsoft the point of sale information is going to go into your marketing automation the member information also and then that will all get driven to the website and determine which events you get invited to and it also then we could incorporate that into social media so you could also then take that same list of members and show different ads to different member levels you could send all kinds of reminders to events and manage your events through the marketing automation all of that and there's different plugins that would go into marketing automation we'll probably use Membarium for the membership we use Spotify for the point of sale and that all works together to take information and allow you to be a smart marketer and to make sure the same experience people have in store is the one they have online and it gives you more branding continuity across all your channels when you're able to do that and so therefore your presence is much stronger so some other benefits marketing automation is you can segment your lips you can just figure out what people are interested in and we're going to talk about how to do that on your WordPress site so you can stop treating everybody the same and once you figure out what people are interested in you don't have to send them information on everything you can just send them information on what they're interested in which makes it more likely to read it which makes it more likely to get a response for you you can identify, track and engage customers online you can integrate with your social media you can just show ads to people who visit a page or do an action and I know you can do that with a Facebook pixel but I can put a Facebook pixel on my marketing automation landing page and then I can also then trigger other activities you know when people land there besides an ad so I can send them an email and an ad that's giving you kind of multiple things I could send them a text I could send them a send out card just a huge amount of integrations with marketing and automation and you can sell anytime, day or night and you can respond anytime, day or night so more benefits you can track your customers across the web and the IP sensing code I put on the website can tell you people you don't know who are there so later on when they sign up for something you can look back at their activities and see what they were they were coming to visit you in the past and what they were doing and then that gives you more information on what prospects do where they like to go you can automate multiple things email, direct mail, text Facebook ads, phone call reminders you can do internal organization so if A, B, and C need to happen internally or you have three people they need to do different things you can automate emails so when something happens you don't have to remember to do it it just happens for you you can get statistics from your customers that can drive follow up and you can measure the ROI of your campaigns back to half of your advertising you can send people to different places and you can see which of those external awareness channels which are delivering the most awareness so I have to caution that the marketing is so organic and it is the accumulation of all touches that drives the responses usually not one-to-one and you can compare this group of actions to this group of actions but unlike sales that is very one-to-one marketing is organic and it is the multiplying effect of seeing your information about your business in different ways that helps people act so I have some strong opinions on what is the best way to design WordPress sites to make them work because I think marketing and automation works best with a WordPress site that is designed to take advantage of its power and I want to say every product or service needs its own big page with a preponderance of copy and you might want to have different landing pages of the same product for different segments because you may want to talk to people differently depending on if they are a teenager or if they are not anymore they may be buying for different reasons so why have just one page and the thing with Google search the way I understand it I am not an SEO expert but when people search for all your services so what does Google do with a page with all your services that is not a good landing page for anything it is all your services nobody says all the services they want to know about this service or that service so when you design your website many I still see many websites maybe you have a need for all your services maybe you are going to be on the phone with your client you are going to go through all those and ask them but when people search that is probably not what they are doing so you still need one full page for every different product or service with enough copy on it and I want to say 300 minimum 1000 when you start to look at the statistics of what Google is likely to serve up as the best option for this search 1500 when you start trying to search for 1500 so the more you know the more you know I have business owners people don't like to read I don't want to have any words they like to read and they are like blind unless you put words with your photos they don't see those photos they only see the words and they want to know you are an expert so you have a lot of words so they are in headlines and sub-heads and bullet copy I know my own patience for reading long paragraphs stops in the middle of the second sentence so I used to like to read I am not sure what happened to that but anyway not scammy not like the web copy I was supposed to where they wanted to puree a law firm in there it's awkward you cannot put that in there 12 times it just doesn't sound right so lots of sub-heads ask for the sale always ask for the sale big big flaw of all marketing copy as people want to tell you about it but they don't say this is how to buy every page needs to ask for the sale every page needs a response mechanism I am on that page I want to buy how do I do it not just so what I want to see on on every page is and I want to say the ideal google landing page is probably also the ideal prospect landing page I want to see something to download I want to see something to sign up for on that page grab that person while they are interested they are spending a long time if you are seeing certain customers they are spending a long time on those pages there should be some way to grab them on that page don't make them look for you be there right there when they are likely to buy be there and grab their information the visitors time on the page so you can have different offers depending on how long people spend on the page which page that's telling you what they are interested in and you need something on that page of great value to capture their contact information give away some of what you do just give it away free that's the first thing that I do and I'm going to give it to you now free it needs to be enticing it needs to be interesting it needs to grab that client it can be fun it could be something funny people like things funny lord knows we need more fun things in our lives life has not been as much fun in the last couple of years and I think people appreciate fun a lot more because of that so not just one contact form you do need that you need a contact page people need to be able to click and find out where you are who you are how to get a hold of you but that's not the person who's like I really wonder how that works I wonder if I have this question that's on the page with your information they need a way to reach out to you and so that more focused way on the pertinent download or on the pertinent page and that's going to help you segment your customers as to their interest and now you can nurture them with focus now you're not just sending an email newsletter and it's all pre-built so it's like you have to stop and do it it's all pre-built so bam when they fill that out then this happens and then it can send you notices it's some kinds of businesses and it's somebody you know seeing that they downloaded something it can set it up to it can send you a task reminder to call that person or you can have a follow-up email hey I thought I saw you downloaded it how did you like that tell me what you think I'd like to hear from you so you know or you know let's have coffee you know and talk more about that you can reach into that if you need face to face and everything should drive to face to face the way you sell everything should drive to that so more best practices to you want to capture people's interest so you can nurture you can trigger that nurturing campaign you want to link to your social media and you can show you can take those lists and upload ads just for those people you can have it so that if they do one thing boom they're going to see an ad now they won't going to maybe know that they're the only person seeing that ad right now for all they know everybody's seen that ad because Facebook doesn't say who's seen this ad oh it's just you I mean they just show the ads so for all they know they just run their website now they're seeing you every place because consistent look and feel I mean this is really the branding part of me says this is really important you know make sure that everything you do looks and sounds like you that just helps it be more you like you wouldn't do that personally and your brand is your business person it's who you are as a business and it has to have a consistent look and feel and the sound across all channels always you know provide an opportunity to buy so when people are ready you're ready to and I think the numbers tell it and these are some statistics I just googled you know 75% of companies that use marketing and automation see a return on investment in 12 months and then sending out relevant emails through marketing drives 18 times more revenue than email blast just to everybody send people just what they want and companies that excel at lead nurturing they generate 50% more sales ready leads at less cost so it's sufficient too so I just want to say you can create a website or you can automate business and a lot of times if you're creating the website you're in the position to do this or if you say I want to do that pull in somebody else to do it if it's really clear to you this would benefit my client don't be scared to pitch them on that this is what you ought to do you're the expert they're going to listen to you my god they don't know how to build a website so if you're building their website they think that you are the by god god of tech wonder I mean they're amazed that you can do this so um anyway so and I I have this link here um it's just a it's just a nurturing sequence that lets you see like um it doesn't sell you anything and it's it's not an affiliate link um it's something infusion soft gives me because I'm a certified partner it it lets you see pictures screenshots of where you are and then you get to the next email it says oh here you are and this is what you clicked on and this is what it looks like and I think it's fascinating and it gives you a little glimpse behind the scenes of what marketing automation software looks like and of course like if you're ever really interested like I'm glad to show you or we could do a zoom or you know we can you know get together and have coffee or anything that's safe to ask me questions or or talk to me about that so anyway so questions I have a sort of question but there was a part in there just wanted to emphasize on that when your email is copying everything it says to entice and or basically entertain you and uh anything those are very basic foundations Google tells you from their guidelines so basic so basically she's telling you this Google's telling you this if you're not doing it please do it start doing it today yeah don't hesitate to have a little attitude differentiate yourself it's really been true always in advertising and I've seen this in companies and some companies get very conservative and they just want to do what the other companies are doing and all comes across like you know it's like it all sounds the same and unless you say something different no one hears you it isn't even they don't hear words I mean so much marketing is overblown that if you just want to use those overblown words and not say something unique people discount marketing because they figure you're lying to them to start with so they're going to say oh yeah you're great right everybody's great everybody has excellent customer service right that's what we all experience in every business isn't it excellent customer service right and so no one believes that so try to take your strengths and say them in a unique way I even say to clients if you have a big place where you don't measure up then find some way to deal with that and say it okay we're not so good at that but yep we're really still really good at this don't come to us for this though because we don't do that because people you're going to be more genuine you're going to be more authentic people are going to believe you for the good things better if you're honest about the less than good things and if you only say good things but they're only kind of like 70% true most of the time and I'll try to find some other way to differentiate yourself because they're strong enough in those so say what you are 100% try to make that your strength and then let the people because that's important to you know be the ones who choose you so yes they shut down and they just don't think they need automation at all is there like a good starting kind of software that you would suggest to kind of like to start out with I know that it's just like softwares they hear LFO and they're like well that's what we need you know it's often called confusion soft you know I am a certified partner you know the little ones are not like the big ones so they aren't really enough like them that you could say oh this is a stepping stone experience that I'll do MailChimp and then I'll know how to do Infusionsoft but MailChimp automation was very different then it's very different than Infusionsoft and so I would say um no you know no I thought of having a class before I mean just like a big but I haven't decided to do that but I've thought about you know with that help people who wanted to take that you know the other thing is suck it up and hire someone to do it and then let them build it for you and then just you can learn enough to update it and do small changes in things along the road but I mean I I think some of them are a little simpler I'm trying to think I have a friend and I've decided Jen who does Infusionsoft but she also does one of the other ones and she thought it was a little simpler um I don't find it's not hard I think yeah I think maybe it might be easier I would say you know maybe figure out what there's what what the real fear point is and maybe it's the strategy because I think that marketing automation once like what I do is come in with the strategy sessions I you know the big post-it notes and we map you know it's pretty messy I have markers and then I go back and go and creates flow charts online so that they've got a whole set of flow charts of what's going to be built in in the marketing automation that I use which is Infusionsoft but you know this is what we're going to build so it could be that if they just had a blueprint then it becomes more you know just building it and it wouldn't they don't have to think about when I first wrote copy and okay I'm an art major so I had to write a couple papers but we're not talking a lot of writing and I had to come up with my three steps for writing copy because at that time you know I you know I had a typewriter okay and and so it's not a fast we're talking a long time ago we want to talk about how long Mark and I could share notes and yeah so you know that first I had to think about what I wanted to say and then I had to write it down in any old way shape or form without worrying about the words and third I had to come back and and make the words and so I think with marketing automation there's more there's a strategy you know then what's you know here's here's all the things you need to do for this product and then we're going to do this and then we're going to do this and then we're going to do this and this service and then we're going to do this and then we're going to do this and then we're going to do this and then if I if I think about that separately if I'm trying to build it and think about that at the same time I think that would be a problem so I think if you can separate it into this is what we want to accomplish The other thing I say is start with the low hanging fruit first and just do the big things and then do the rest of your things later. So do the really important parts that are, it's your main product and you do the nurturing sequence for them because that's the one you make all the money from. And then come back later and add to it. I mean that would be another way to do it and just parse it out in steps. I mean I can build in a sandbox in a way that is a big, because people buy marketing automation software and then they get in the weeds deeply and they don't get something accomplished. So I can build it in my sandbox and when they buy it, boom, I can install it and then it's up and running. And there's some big efficiencies in building it before you install it. So anyway, anybody else questions? Yes? So you're asked so that you can deliver solutions for your clients or did you need to do that to be able to learn how to use it or is it? I, a little of both, it's very in-depth so you learn a lot. I mean there's a lot to know. So I have other people I work with, my web developer does this too and so I have several, my friend Stephanie has done some very sophisticated things and I got interested because Stephanie was sick and she wanted somebody to help her with her infusion software. So I said, well, she said, well, you know, you learn this and then you can, and we trade services a lot and I'm like, okay, but I don't think I really ever, I did learn it but I don't think I really ever delivered the help she needed because then I get busy on client work and I wasn't helping her because the client work, I get real money and we're just trading out. But then I took a three-day class on how to build campaigns, an online class, and so I felt like I had some foundation there but then I started to, and I did sell it some before then and then I thought, I think I want to sell, I want to add this. It seems to me like the whole and most people's marketing plan, they have their marketing plan but they're missing this big hole where all these leads are falling through and this lack of efficiency because they aren't capturing people, they aren't nurturing people. So I really believe in this and there's not as many people selling it so that's good for me, it differentiates me so that's when I decided, no, I'm just going to do this, I'm going to go for the certification which was a month long and you have to pay for it too so you pay and then you work real hard for a month and then if they pass you, you get the certification but then the thing I realized afterwards and this was also a driver is that you get this, you can package things and resell them. So say, and my doula client, we haven't ever finished that project but that was our goal is we're going to package this series of nurturing sequences for all her different products and sell them to other doulas and so you're in a business say you think, I pretty much understand what I'm doing, maybe more than the typical company, that can be something that people can actually create a product to sell to their peer companies across the US so you could, and InfusionSauce has an internal marketplace that's available to all their certified partners so that you, but you could just also sell it through a certified partner like me so you could sell it, you have webinars, you could sell it to other people in your business so anything you can create is pretty cool, like you could take your business and what you know about it and make a product of, you know, best practices, automation to sell to other people and to me that was the cool tipping point thing with me being the part that I could facilitate that for my customers and, you know, it's a cool thing to talk about, it's a neat thing to do and I bet there's more people who could do it than they've ever actually thought about doing it. Interesting thing I found because I didn't use certification, I worked into it and like, okay, let's try this. So the client actually, while learning this, I'm actually on the phone with somebody at InfusionSauce using the client's account. Right, yeah. So they actually went through the whole flow chart process of setting up the whole opt-in process, what we need. So he says, what do you want, what do you want it to do, what was the end result do you want to do, what's all the steps you want to do. And so you can do this and this is the step process. And I was like, so, yeah, it's a beast, it really is. It's a beast, it can almost do anything you can imagine, except there's a few outliers, you know, they have a Facebook group, it's everybody going, you know, WTF, why want to do this, you know, like, I needed to do this, I needed to do this now, why aren't they doing this, why aren't they new doing this in the new version, of course, like any kind of software, there's a huge, like, they're in the process of building a new version and all the, you know, things you have in the old version are going to be in the new version, of course, that doesn't happen instantaneously. Yeah. You can only use it in Firefox. Oh, wow. Oh. You can use the flow chart version if they use the visual part of the flow chart. Yes, yes. I was like, oh, okay, whatever. That's weird, but yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, but it's cool. I mean, I like it because I like stuff like that, so it's fun. Okay, any more questions? How many people here are developers like? Cool. Cool. And how many people are like business owners that are interested in, like, or individuals? Okay. Okay. Well, definitely developers, you know, you would like this. It's fun. It's, and you can do, like, so many cool things with it and integrate it in so many different ways. It really could expand your business. And I can get you distance. So, don't go with that online pricing until you call me. Depending on how hungry they are, the pricing changes through the month. So, if you were to decide that, you know, we could find a time in the months where the discounts are getting better because any marketing questions? General marketing? Yes. I don't see any reason why not to do that. It does make your contact form a little more complex, but, and I would make it required because if someone just wants to contact you and that's sort of pain and butt to do, then they don't want to do that. But sure, why not? Why not let people choose that versus? And it somewhat maybe depends on the kind of business. But I still am a strong believer in, you know, even if it's just you're using MailChimp, you know, like, do some simple stratification of your customers and have a different form on every page that takes you into a simple, you know, series, yeah, a sequence of emails. I mean, you can do that in a simple way on MailChimp and you're not going to be able to drive as much and, you know, eventually you're going to have to rebuild it and, you know, as, you know. You can, but I would recommend like if you want to do stuff like that, hook it to OptinMonster. Okay. OptinMonster will make that a little more powerful. Good idea. And if you're willing more out of that, then invest in the actual product. Yeah. They get into it. Yeah. Or whether it's an admonie or contact or whatever it is. Like, the more that you want out of it, you're going to have to hook it up with a little something that you can do. Like, you know, the AB testing and everything, the OptinMonster is really powerful. Okay. I mean, you can do that in Infusionsoft, of course. You can. Yes. But if you can't afford those trades, OptinMonster would be a sweet spot. And Infusionsoft has come down in price and, you know, and now it starts with like a $99 month for like 500 contacts in one seat. So, you know, and there might be, they vary all the time as to whether you have to pay anything up front. They do a kickstart and they did used to make you pay like $2,000 for the kickstart and that's come down. I've seen the kickstart done well. I've seen the kickstart done crazy poorly. I've seen things done in the kickstart that then triggered when they shouldn't have because somebody just, you know, put all the contacts in that and they weren't supposed to be in there, but never took them out and they were moving really fast. And I don't think anybody realized. So I've sat through a number of different clients kickstarts before I was a certified partner. So because that's what you had to do to get started. Sometimes you come out with something valuable. Sometimes not so much. They're supposed to build one, have, build one together and have you build one. And that's to get you busy, you know, in hands on. And some, you know, I would do that same thing with someone but I also would just build it myself if someone went, you know, no, I don't do that. No, I can't do that. That's too techy. So if you want to talk about, if you want more resources on, like, for example, not being an automation people or especially whether it's in social media, vlogging, marketing, WordPress. People that you want to follow specifically. Chris Lemma. There's a lot of talks on automation and actually marketing. Chris Brogan as well. And if, other ones I like is FlixBrout, Kiss Not Tricks. Those are also really great resources. So you want to learn everything that she's talked about in the end tomorrow. Those are the people that you probably want to look into more. You'll learn a heck of a lot of things. There's a lot to learn but, you know, it's, yeah, I think watching videos and listening to things is a great, a great idea. Yeah, there's a return on it. A lot of things we do in marketing, you know, that helps you understand some of the other things you do in marketing, you know. I mean, billboards are interesting. I had a client I was quoting billboards for and they can do really interesting things. And I think if you tied billboards to marketing automation, so this is a carpenter. He has kind of a, a, a board that kind of stretches people and it relieves pressure on people's backs. So his target client are people in pain. So, and it's much less expensive than back surgery. So his client is maybe somebody who's been told they need back surgery or somebody's in a pain clinic. So I talked to the billboard company and I wanted to buy billboards outside like, you know, bone surgeon, back surgeons and pain clinics. And we got prices on that, but they said to us that, oh, but I can come and I can Jill, Jill fence that billboard and everybody that drives by and then it will be able to show them an ad. Plus, we can Jill fence the pain clinic. We can Jill fence the orthopedic surgeon. And we can Jill fence his business and we can tell everybody who saw that ad and anybody who walks in this business. And you know, how powerful is that?