GUEST!! Marketing GIANT - Marcus Sheridan - Secret to INSTANT Customer Growth! | Ep. 414

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast from marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This, Not That podcast, and I got to guess, I've been trying to get on this thing for a long time, because the dude is a legend. He is. Marcus Sheridan. I don't even need to tell you who he is, because you already know who he is, but for those of you being under a rock, let me tell you about him. The New York Times calls him a web marketing guru.

0:33He's got a wild backstory, which he's going to tell us a little bit about. But the thing that I really fell in love with is his book. They Ask, You Answer became this bestselling book. And it was literally named by Book Authority, one of the five best marketing books of all time. Then he had another book called Endless Customer, which became a national bestseller USA Today. The dude speaks everywhere. He's a legend. He's a big deal. So, Marcus, welcome to the podcast. Man, Jay, that was really nice, bro. Let's do this, man. Let's do this. We're going to have a good combo today. Absolutely. All right.

1:02for everybody who doesn't know your your story which i think is awesome because everybody's like maybe they're in a job they don't like or things are falling apart can i go in another direction you have a cool backstory so how did marcus become marcus yeah i started with a couple buddies just unexpectedly a swimming pool company in 2001 i was right out of college and things were going okay up until the crash of 2008 and it looked like we were going to lose the business and file bankruptcy. But the cool thing, Jay, as you probably know about pain and suffering is it forces us outside of our comfort zones.

1:37And so this is when I really started to learn about things today that are just normal marketing speak, like inbound marketing, content marketing. And as I was studying that stuff, what I heard in my simple pull guy mind was, Marcus, if you just obsess over your customer's questions, worries, issues, concerns, and you're willing to address them online, you might save your business. So I said, ding, ding, ding. That's what we're going to do. We're going to become the Wikipedia of pools. And we became that. We became the most traffic swimming pool website in the world by obsessively answering every question that you could think of through text, through video about, in this case, in ground and fiberglass swimming pools.

2:17And the business took off. It saved the company. And I started to write about that. And And that led to other companies and events saying, hey, can you teach us how to do that? And so today I teach organizations how to implement this system, which is called Endless Customers. That was the third edition of They Ask You Answer. And it's been an extraordinary ride. And I still own the Swing Pool Company in Virginia, which is pretty fun. Still a pool guy at heart. I got to know something. Anybody in your life, in your orbit that has a problem with their pool, are you like the instant phone call? Like, help me?

2:51Well, the problem is, man, I've been out the game so long now. It's like I don't have all that knowledge that I had 15 years ago when I was writing about this every day. But yeah, for the basics, I can help you out. Wait, because I live in South Florida, and sometimes you're like, I got an alligator in my pool or whatever. Can I call you if that happens? The pool world in South Florida, it's so unique. It's one of a kind and not an easy place to have a swimming pool business because the competition is fierce and the prices are low. There you go. Horrible combo. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. All right, so let's get into it though.

3:28You know, everybody out there listening, I don't care if you're a business, consumer, nonprofit, whatever you are, everybody struggles with the same thing. How do I get more leads? How do I get more customers? SEO is changing, AI, whatever. So I feel like you have the answer. What is the secret sauce here? How do you become a brand that people want to interact with? Yeah. We talk a lot about this in Endless Customers. We call it the four pillars of a known and trusted brand. And this is a great litmus test because if you follow these four pillars, you're going to be loved by humans. You're going to be loved by Google.

4:03And you're going to be loved by AI. That's the big three right now. And I will say, too, that eventually it's going to be a big two because it's going to go back to being humans and just being AI. because traditional Google search is just not going to be a part of the game. And who knows? I mean, I don't know exactly when, but I know within a certain amount of years, we're just, for the most part, we're not going to be using the phrase, just Google it. By the way, kids don't use that phrase anymore. That is becoming an antiquated phrase in and of itself. The future is not people clicking on blue links.

4:33The future is people getting their answer immediately. That's just what we want. That's what history tells us too. And so what are the four pillars of a known and trusted brand? Number one, we have to be willing to say online what others in our industry aren't willing to say. We've got to be willing to talk about stuff that buyers want to know, but businesses don't want to talk about. So I'm sure we'll get into that, Jay. Number two, you've got to be willing to show with video what others aren't willing to show. That's fun. Number three, you've got to be willing to sell in a way others aren't willing to sell.

5:04Everybody thinks they've got a unique sales process. Generally, they do not. And finally, number four, you've got to be more human than others are willing to be. So those are the four pillars of a known and trusted brand. Say, show, sell, and be more human. If you do that, you will differentiate and you'll disrupt and you'll become the most known and trusted brand in your market. So, okay, now I'm listening to this out there and I'm saying, oh, I'm in a regulated industry. My boss won't let us go off brand. And here you are saying, and I agree with this playbook, that you have to say what other people won't say.

5:39You have to do what they won't do. So how do those two things come together where your hands are a little bit tied, but if you don't do what you're talking about, there's no way to break through? Yeah, that's the problem, right? And look, the number one email I think I get probably is from marketers saying, I am so frustrated because I see what you see, Marcus, and I know these things would work, but my CEO doesn't allow me to talk about these things and we're just playing everything safe. We're not willing to go, you know, fill outside the circle, right? It's like, and what you have to understand today is the rule breakers become the rule makers and everybody else eventually becomes the rule followers.

6:20But you do have to become rooted in, all right, am I willing to give the customer what they want or not? Am I truly buyer obsessed or not? Because if you are, you say, all right, I'm going to put them first. And to put them first, that means you got to address the things that they want to know. And when we look at that first pillar that say what others aren't willing to say and also show. But what it comes down to really, and this has been true now for the better part of 15 years I've been talking about is just basically five subjects that move the needle in every single industry. Five things that buyers want to talk about, want to learn about, want to research, want to understand before they reach out to a company.

7:05And we call these the big five. All right. And the big five dominate industries in terms of research. They are, number one, cost questions, cost rates, prices, budget, anything to do with money. Number two, problems slash fears or objections. When somebody is thinking about buying something, Jay, they start thinking what could go wrong. Number three, comparisons. People love to compare stuff online. Product versus product, service versus service, brand versus brand, method versus method, go down the list, company versus company. Number four, reviews. We're obsessed with reviews. The thing about reviews though, is we want the good, the bad, and the ugly.

7:51We don't just want the good. And finally, number five is best. Best, most, top, but think about how many times you've gone online and searched best such and such, right? It's like hundreds of times. So cost, problems, comparisons, reviews, best. Those are the big five, okay? Okay. Buyers and consumers are obsessed with them. Businesses don't want to talk about them oftentimes. And that creates a huge level of distrust and distance from the buyer and from, in this case, AI visibility and AI recommendations and Google. It just has a terrible effect on your ability to generate leads. You know, it's really great that you just went through those five, because what I was going to ask you is like, how do you find out what people, you know, you should be saying that other people aren't.

8:34I'm like, do you go on Reddit? But really, those five things you just talked about are kind of timeless. When I'm out there trying to buy something, I do want to see the price. I want to see the reviews. And I want to see how they check off against their competition. I mean, everything you just said applies to business marketers, consumer marketers, nonprofit. It does not matter. And is that a reality? It's not like you need to go and find out what is the hot take today in my industry. If you focus on this, that is what's going to attract that trust? Oh, yeah. There's no question about it. And this works for B2B, B2C, Service Product, Local National.

9:08One of the problems, Jay, and I know you've seen this before, but oftentimes companies like to think that they're different and the rules don't apply to them and my buyer's special and our industry's special. But when it comes to these five things, I mean, this is every industry. We've seen it. We've got the data on this. And one of the quickest ways that you could immediately brainstorm this and just get a world-class editorial calendar is I've got a free custom GPT on chat GPT right now. If anybody goes online and you go to custom GPTs and you do a search, you just search Marcus Sheridan. There's a ton of like, um, I shouldn't say a ton.

9:42There's like six or seven GPTs that I've, I've built for folks. One of them is called, uh, endless content titles. Uh, and this is great because what it does, it takes the big five as I've like, as I've written about, as I've trained folks on and it does it for your business. And all you have to do is say, hey, this is what I sell. This is where I'm located, whatever it is. And it will just instantly just create like I was next to you. Hey, here's the big five for you, for your product, for your service. It rocks. It's really, really solid. So, okay. Along those lines, part of your playbook, and really it came out of your pool company playbook where you became the Wikipedia for kind of the pool world.

10:21And I think it's really the right playbook moving forward is that you kind of, you know, agenda marketing is what I would call it. You're just constantly putting out value, value, value. And then the earth brings back to you opportunity. And in the world that we're moving towards where people aren't to your point, clicking on these blue links, they're not going off of ChatGPT. Eventually they're not going to go off of Google. What is the playbook to build trust for your brand, understanding that people are not going to be leaving these platforms, but they're going to be consuming your information there.

10:54Like what should we be thinking about as relates to what we're putting out there to build that trust? Well, it really starts with, all right, I've got to have a baseline framework or system to use. And that's why Endless Customers works is because a lot of people say, oh, I know I should be doing content, but like roughly where do I start? So it's like, okay, Well, you start with the four pillars, say, show, sell, be more human. And then under each one of those, you've got micro frameworks like the big five. The big five, super obvious. But once you do the big five, you apply that to text and to video, certainly to your YouTube channel, which I would argue, by the way, just as a side note, your YouTube page is quickly becoming more important than your website, folks.

11:38So if you're not picking up on that, you really should be just based on the mega trend that video is. YouTube is only increasing with like YouTube usage is increasing with AI. You've seen a lot of companies, their website traffic is going down. Their YouTube traffic is not going down because of AI, right? And so YouTube has a big play in the future. And so once you have that baseline content foundation, you're putting the content on your website and on YouTube, then you can repurpose it, of course, and put it across all your social platforms. Because today, unfortunately, we've got to be in more places than we were before if we're going to generate the awareness.

12:17Because to your point, Jay, you've got to meet people where they are. You can't try to force them in this square peg in the round hole. It's like, if the buyer is on the TikTok, well, we need to go to the TikTok. Even if you don't like the TikTok, it doesn't really matter what your opinion is on the platform. What matters is where is the buyer. We've got to meet the buyer where the buyer is. I learned a long time ago that personal opinions can really screw up smart business decisions and so i don't allow how i feel about platforms to dictate if i am making myself aware if i'm leveraging the platform for a particular brand i'm making that a clip and i'm putting that everywhere because it is so true so often you're in a meeting like i'll say you guys should use pop-ups on your website for whatever and they're like i hate pop-ups they're so annoying they drive me bananas i'm like yeah but but they work you know or YouTube, for example, oh, I'm never going on YouTube.

13:08If you don't have a YouTube strategy, you forget it. You are in, I don't know what you're thinking. So it's so important for people to hear that your opinion is not the most important thing. It's what your base is really interested in. Well, it goes back to that phrase, they ask, you answer. When I say they ask, it's like, what do they want? It's not just their questions. It's your questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, and how do they want to behave? How do they want to buy? And this is the big adjustment that so many need to make. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but one of the third pillar there is sell in ways that others won't sell.

13:48Let me give you an example of this. There's a stat out by Gartner that says 75 % of all buyers would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience. What does this mean? Well, it doesn't mean we hate salespeople. It just means we don't want to talk to salespeople until we're good and ready, until we're confident, until we're comfortable, until we feel like we're not going to make a mistake. Now, how do we take advantage of this trend? Because that's the key. When it comes to trends, you always got to say, all right, what are we going to do about it? And in this case, what we know is buyers want control.

14:18The way to give them control is through self-service tools on your website. Self-service tool is usually some type of interactive tool that as the person does it, let's say answers the questions or whatever it is, they're able to take an action or get an answer that previously they would have had to have gotten by talking with the human first. Okay, so let me give an example of this. One of the types of self-service tools is what we call self-selection tools or recommendation tools, essentially. So if you go to the Riverpool's website, my swimming pool website, on the homepage, you'll see that there's different interactive tools that you can use.

14:57One of them allows you to figure out what is the best type of in-ground swimming pool for you. Now, we only sell fiberglass pools, but we know fiberglass pools aren't a good fit for everybody. So instead of having a sales conversation about that, you should learn that before you ever talk to a salesperson. You would want to know that. We would want you to know that. So we have a tool that you answer your series of questions. And at the end, it literally recommends to you, hey, you should get a concrete pool. You should get a fiberglass pool. Every single day, we recommend to people that they don't buy our product with this tool on our website.

15:31And why do we do that? Because we want to be the most known and trusted brand. And we want to be the most known and trusted by humans. And of course, again, by AI. Another example of this, pricing estimators. Every single person, when they have a problem, and they know they need to buy something, the first literal question that comes out of their mouth is, hmm, I wonder what this is going to cost. That's what everybody wants to know. They don't need to know the exact number at the beginning, but they need a sense for it, Jay, because if they can't get a sense for it, they're going to opt out. So one of the most effective, I would argue, it's actually the, it is the most effective self-service tool that anybody can put on their website would be a self-pricing tool or a pricing estimator, as we like to call it.

16:18So for example, my swimming pool company, you can build and price your pool on our website. Now we've got dealers that set the end price. So how can we have a pricing estimator? Well, it's called an estimator for a reason. It's not a quote tool. It's an estimator. But this gives someone an answer to the question of roughly how much is this going to cost? Now they're able to go through this series of questions and they're able to say, I think I want this. I think I want that just like they would with a salesperson at the end. They get a range. And now because they got that range, they're happy.

16:52But here's what's wild about that, Jay, is we've seen that companies that have an estimator on their website. And it shows clearly on their homepage and they've got a call to action that says get instant estimate. Get instant estimate. immediately you'll see a three to five hundred percent increase in leads the day you put it up the day you put it up and i've got the data on this because i started a company on this that is an ai software that helps organizations quickly easily and cost effectively build pricing estimators it's what it does it's called priceguy.ai and um what's crazy is this one tool cost somebody to use for the entire year about$200.

17:34And you'll pay for it probably within the first 24 to 48 hours of it being on your website. What's wild though, Jay, is most people will say, there's no way I could do that. There's no way I could put a pricing estimator on my website. I'm telling you, the day is coming when if you don't have some type of pricing estimator tool and you're not willing to talk about price at all, the day's coming when A, humans will hate you even more than they already do when they can't find it. And B, and this is the real kicker, AI is not going to recommend you. Because if you look at where AI SEO is going or AI optimization, whatever you want to call it.

18:12And I've done a lot of work around this. I've got a software that actually measures this called AI Trust Signals. And we know all the parameters that dictate, and this is a moving target, by the way, but dictate, does AI want to recommend you? Are you visible to AI? And one of them is pricing transparency. And it's getting to the point where if AI cannot find an estimator on your website, they're not going to recommend you because they're going to say, ding, that's a lack of transparency. Just like negative reviews with AI are very highly weighted, much more so than regular reviews. Whereas Google didn't do that.

18:51They didn't wait negative reviews. AI does, and they do it heavily. So this is a different moving target, but the point is you've got to create all these powerful trust signals. The way you create these trust signals is by talking about things that others aren't willing to talk about and producing better content more consistently, and everything becomes a signal, and all those interactions become a signal. And these tools that we're talking about putting in your site, they become a signal, a trust signal that says you are worthy of doing business with, and I can recommend you. And so clearly you want to lean into self-service as a business.

19:28And the beautiful part about all of that is that, by the way, operationally, it'll take a load off of your team of being on calls and conversations. They're a big fat waste of time. It's crazy to me. One thing I didn't realize when I started Price Guide was how many folks would come back to us and say, we actually now use this as a requirement for people to do before they meet with us because we don't want there to be shock and awe when we're having a conversation. It just means the sales conversations are so much better, which is the opposite of the person that's thinking, I don't want them to see anything to do with how much this might cost because I don't want to scare them away.

20:04What scares people away online is when you don't address the thing, when you allow them to live in a state of ignorance. People can't stand being ignorant anymore because they know if they just make a few clicks more, they're going to find that answer they're looking for. So the question becomes, are they going to learn that answer from you? Or are they going to learn it from somebody else? Is AI going to learn the answer from you? Or are they going to learn the answer from somebody else? My mindset is always, I want them to learn it from me, Jay. Like that's the goal. And hopefully that's the goal for you if you're listening to this right now.

20:39All right. I love all this. I I told you Marcus was going to just share so much good stuff. How does everybody get involved with your world? Where do they find you? Where do they consume your stuff? They want to be all in on Marcus Sheridan. Easiest way to do that is connect with me on LinkedIn. That's where I put my best stuff. All right, so connect with me out there. You can also message me, Marcus at MarcusSheridan.com. My website is MarcusSheridan.com. You can get the book at EnlistCustomers.com or just go to Amazon. I think you'll love the book. Of course, it's available on Audible. But if you're looking for a great speaker, someone to come teach your team or speak at your event, I'd love to have a conversation with you because that's what I do.

21:16And I'm pretty dang good at it. I can attest to this. I've seen Marcus speak. He crushes it. He's got the highest ratings all the time. He's an incredible dude. Marcus, thanks for being here, man. Yo, bro. My pleasure. You did it. You made it to the end. But wait, the party is not over. Listen, I want to keep hanging out. Subscribe to this podcast. And if it wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, give it a five-star review. Why not? But you know what? I want to do even more with you. Go to gurumediahub.com and we can partner there. You can find out about all of our free events, all of our stuff.

21:49And if you're epically bored, go to jschwedelson.com and we can stay connected. You can find my newsletter and everything else I got going on. Thanks for being here and hope you subscribe.