Try This Marketing Strategy with Adam Adams: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down this marketing strategy, which you need to try. And to drop these value bonds, I brought Adam Adams into EO Fire Studios. Adam is the founder of GrowYourShow.com and host of the podcast on podcasting. He helps podcasters build top-rated shows and share their message with the world. And today we talk about five steps, how to be slow, ask not tell, be brief, share links only when asked, and also when hosting conferences, use marketing to connect with people and fill larger rooms than expected and oh so much more.

0:41John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Adam and our sponsors. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments, and course hosting all on one platform, plus award-winning 24-7 support. Get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 50-minute private call with me and much more at HighLevelFire.com. HighLevelFire.com. Fire Nation, 50 days will fly right on by. The only question is, will you have something to show for it? I created a free YouTube series called 50 Days to Something, a step-by-step path to build a real product, service, or offer in just 50 focused days.

1:24John Lee Dumas:Start today for free at eofire.com slash YouTube. Adam, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? One thing that people are doing out there is they're chasing shiny objects. They think this is the next big thing. This is where the world is headed. this is what I want to do. And what I usually see them do is try it for a few weeks or try it for a few months. And before they strike gold, when they're still three feet from gold, they pivot and they try the next big thing and they continue to blame it on the thing not being as effective as that they were told.

2:14What I think is the better way to do is go into it with persistence and determination. There's a quote by Calvin Coolidge about persistence and determination being the things that'll make you successful more than talent, more than brain power, more than anything else. If you are persistent and determined, you will get that success. You will strike the gold. And I think people forget about that.

2:44John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you might be scratching your heads over the title of this episode. Try This Marketing Strategy. That's the title and it's quite a cliffhanger. So I want to get right into it. Adam, what is this marketing strategy and what makes it so effective? So the marketing strategy is private messaging. It's going on different social media platforms. Specifically, we use meetup.com a lot, Facebook and LinkedIn. But the strategy is all around reaching out to people individually, but on a level that's more connection, more like courting. If you were going to ask somebody to marry you, you'd want to get to know them first.

3:33And this is the get to know you part over private message. And we found it being very, very successful in multiple different ways.

3:42John Lee Dumas:Give us some specific examples of how this marketing strategy has been so effective. How have you used it? What templates do you use? What kind of follow up? Let's get detailed, brother. Absolutely. There's been a lot of different types of ways to using it. For example, when I was hosting my own conferences in the real estate investing space, we used this strategy to reach out to people and connect with them. And we ended up filling rooms larger than a lot of the people that had been around longer than we had. And I feel like the most effective part is the private message campaigns. It's also helped with growing our podcast.

4:27We're ranking in the top 0.5%. And additionally, it's like 100 and something, usually in the US for marketing. which is kind of cool. But the way that we've been doing it is using, we call it a 5-3-5 method. The first five might be less important for the average listener because the first five are specific about podcasting. My company, Grow Your Show, does this to help people get a larger audience. The first five are just getting people, it's what you do with the thing. So whoever's listening, you're going to figure out what are your first five, what are your first three. But our 5-3-5 method has the three being the three platforms that you go to.

5:15Facebook, LinkedIn, and Meetup are really good because you can narrow down the exact person that you want. You can figure out who your avatar is, where they live, what they do, what they're interested in, what they're looking for. You can even see like on Meetup, for example, when they last attended. Same thing with Facebook. You can see when they were last on that group. And then the last five are going to be critically important because most people get it wrong. And you asked for kind of some specific tips, strategies, like how this is done. And what we do on the last five is making sure that you're slow playing.

6:00that's one of the ones is to slow it down. Basically, most people reach out and they just throw links. Like when they are told, hey, private messaging works really well, they go in and they get this one message and they'll just use it as a copy and paste message. So they'll take all of this information. It'll generally be like really, really, really long. And it'll generally have a link. And they're usually telling, they're usually promoting, they're usually pushing instead of polling, asking, inviting. And so some of the things that you'll do that everybody needs to know if you do use this is here's the five.

6:54Slow play, everything. So it needs to be basically you can't ask somebody to marry you the very first time you meet them. I mean you can, but you're likely to get slapped and might not ever get married. So it's slow play. It's relaxing. It's chilling. It's holding back. The next one is ask, don't tell. So with our private message campaigns to fill rooms, to get coaching clients, to get podcast listeners for us and for our clients, what we've done is made sure that each of these messages, every message has a question. Instead of telling, it has a question involved in it. So you're getting to know people.

7:42you're getting to know what they're looking for, where they want to go. The next thing is that it needs to be short, not long. If you've ever been on LinkedIn and you've gotten like a private message to connect with you, most of the time they try to give you all of the information that you'll ever need to know. And they'll put it in the very first message. And it gets so long that most of us probably don't read it at all. And so the opposite is going to help be a little bit more effective. So we try to keep all of those really, really short. So it's one or two questions. It's short and sweet. It's maybe a, how's it going?

8:26What's going on? Hey, I saw your profile pick. And then it's a question or two. Very, very short. The fourth one is that you never send links. And I think a lot of people say, well, how are they going to, for example, how are they going to get to my podcast if they don't have the link to my podcast? Or how are they going to come to my event if I don't give them the registration link? But the problem is when people send links to you, you get turned off automatically. And if we're sending links to other people, then they're going to get turned off. So what we've done is we never send a link without permission.

9:10For example, if we want to send a link, then what we'll do is we'll just say, hey, I can give you a link to my podcast episode. I can give you a link to my conference coming up. I can give you a link to my coaching program. Would you like me to send it? We only send if they say yes. If they're like, yeah, that'd be great. Then we'll say, here's the link you asked four, let me know what you think. Here's the link to my podcast episode. Let me know what you think of that episode. Let me know if it helps. And so you're asking them to check it out and give you feedback. And when you do that, they're more likely to actually go to the website, to go to your coaching program, to go and check out your link to your event or to your podcast.

9:58And the The last thing of the five, it's a 5-3-5 method. So this is the third five. The last thing is you always want it to be personal. A lot of people use those copy and paste messages we mentioned before. And they're just blanket and they don't say anything personal. So you might reach out to them. And if it's in real estate investing, for example, you might say, hey, I noticed that you just did your second wholesale deal. That's awesome. So you want to mention the things that they're already talking about, or maybe you notice that they've got a picture of their kids and you're like, man, those kids are so cute.

10:41And you would say something just like that. Your kids are so damn cute. I love that profile pic. Looks like you guys are having fun. And then you'll dive into the other parts as well, but keep it personal, slow play, ask, don't tell, short and sweet, never send links without permission.

10:59John Lee Dumas:Now, I got to be honest, brother, that was a lot of value right there, but it sounds like a lot of work. And I promised my audience, Fire Nation of the intro, that this wasn't a lot of work, that there was actually an easy button. So what the heck is going on here? Isn't this whole process a ton of work that's going to take up every minute of our lives? You know, it's funny. You're absolutely right. When I first started doing this, it was only me that was focusing on it. And I'd spend maybe almost 12 hours a day on social media by myself. And it was very, very effective. I mean, when I was affiliating for other people filling their conferences, we were the number one affiliate for many different people that were crushing it.

11:46We were bringing the most amount of people, but it was taking a whole bunch of time. So what I ended up doing to answer your question is hiring virtual assistants and training them the way that I did it. So what I found, if you are going to have a VA help you with this, you will create basically six different templates of the intro, of the first reach out. It's still going to be short and sweet, still not going to have links. It's still going to be slow play. it's still going to have a place for being personal. But you can actually have a teammate or a virtual assistant that goes in and still copies and pastes.

12:32And I say six different versions of it because all of these platforms, meetup.com, Facebook, and even LinkedIn, they're very sensitive if you're copying and pasting. They'll only let you do that like once or twice, and then they'll flag you or block you. So it is easy. Yes, you can train a VA to do it. So you just be a little bit thoughtful in the beginning of how you want to reach out. It might be, hey, bro, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It might be, hey, my friend, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you'll just tweak it a little bit and give that to your teammate, your virtual assistant. And if it's a VA, you might be spending something like four bucks an hour.

13:13And if they're working, eight hours a day, or if you have two of them and they're going that same 12 hours a day that I used to do by myself, it's only going to cost you like 50, 60 bucks a day. And if your product, if your service, if your conference, if your podcast is valuable enough and you can find a way to monetize that, then it's a drop in the bucket. And it makes it very, very simple, very, very hands-off to work with somebody like that.

13:40John Lee Dumas:So Fire Nation, there you have it. Adam's done all the hard work for you, created the system, created the process, and now it's just about you executing and, you know, specifically, hopefully being able to have a virtual assistant who's helping you execute just that. And we're going to be talking about the different types of applications the strategy has actually worked for and specifics and those best practices that we've kind of gone over quickly when we get back from I'm thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, if you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. That is why High Level is Entrepreneur on Fire's featured partner.

14:16John Lee Dumas:High Level gives you a website builder and hosting, funnels and landing pages, email marketing, appointment scheduling, payment processing, course and membership hosting, and so much more. Everything you need to succeed, all under one roof. No duct tape, no juggling five platforms, just one clean system for your business, and their award-winning 24-7 support has your back when you need it most. When you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you also get my exclusive bonus stack, a 30-day free trial, a private 15-minute call with me, JLD, access to my weekly live office hours, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something Execution Roadmap, and more.

14:55John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Fire Nation, If you've ever thought, I know I'm capable of more, but you're not sure where to start, I've created something for you. It's called 50 Days to Something. Not 50 Days to Perfection, not 50 Days to Overnight Millions, just 50 focus days to build something that matters. Maybe a product, a service, a course, a coaching offer, something real, and something that will generate real revenue. 50 Days to Something is my passion project. Each video is short, is tactical, and it's designed for you to take one meaningful step forward each day.

15:33John Lee Dumas:Picture this, in just 50 days, you will have built an asset. And the best part, it's completely free and it's on my YouTube channel right now. If you are ready to create something that matters, visit eofire.com slash YouTube. That's eofire.com slash YouTube and start your 50-day journey today. 50 days will pass in the blink of an eye. The question is, will you have something to show for it? Adam, we're back and I want to talk about the different types of applications this strategy has worked for. Break those down for us. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, I mentioned affiliating for some other people for their events.

16:13I mentioned working with our events. One of the things that we did for our events is specifically the copy, how we would write the messages is we would do the same thing. It was a real estate investing conference and we would say something like, hey man, I noticed that you just closed

16:32John Lee Dumas:your second wholesale deal. Or hey man, I noticed that you are interested in getting into apartment investing or whatever it is. Hey brother, hey my friend, hey Jamie, I just noticed that you had been into real estate for like three years. It's really cool. So you still got that personal part. You're not going to do a link, just the same. And we'll reach out and we'll say, I'd love to talk to you more about that. Are you by chance, our question, I'd love to talk to you more about that. Are you by chance going to the blah, blah, blah summit, blah, blah, blah conference next month? Maybe we could talk there.

17:11So it's a question. And then you just mentioned, maybe we could talk a little bit more about how you got into apartment investing at that conference, if you're going. And their reply would usually be something like this. I hadn't even heard about the, I hadn't even heard about that conference. Where is it? And then you're like, it's in Denver, Colorado. Are you thinking about going? Question mark. And then they'll say, no, I wasn't thinking about going, but it sounds interesting. Who's hosting it? And then you just keep responding and then adding a question. And eventually we would say, we're affiliated with them.

17:56And so I do have a discount link. Would you like me to send it to you? Question mark. And they'll be like, yeah, send me the discount link. And so now you're slowly getting into the conversation. It's all genuine. That's another important piece. it's got like, you can't say that I want to talk to you there and not be willing to talk to them there. This, you've got to really back it all up. Right. But we, we just mentioned through this process that we'll see them there. We ask them if they want the discount link, they say yes. And then we plan to actually connect and it works so well. Then the next one is the 535 method that we actually use for podcast growth, the way that we've done it as a third party.

18:45And I think it works really well as a third party. We'll reach out. The five, the first five, by the way, is we want the person to follow the podcast. Then we want the person to download episodes. The third thing of these is that we want them to actually listen to the episodes. Critically important. If they're downloading but not listening, it works against you in the algorithm. You can buy fake downloads and that will never benefit you because they're not actually listening to the podcast. It'll work backwards in the algorithm. So you want them to listen once they've downloaded. The fourth thing is to rate and review the show, to give you that social proofing for the show.

19:26And the fifth one is that they keep coming back to the show. So when we're doing the private message campaign for clients or for our own podcast, for example, we'll reach out and we'll ask them what kind of podcast they've listened to. Hey, I noticed that you've gotten some success in business. Where did you learn how to do that? And they might bring up your podcast. They say, I listen to EO Fire all the time. And JLD is awesome. He's adding a lot of value. We say, which episode do you like the most? They'll share with us an episode. We listen to it. And then we offer feedback. We reply within a couple of days, say that episode, for example, you just had Sean Higgins, a friend of mine on your podcast, and I was listening to that episode today.

20:12So we reach back out. I love that Sean Higgins episode that you talked about waking up, cold plunges. There was a lot of value in there. Thank you for sharing that with me. And then we'll ask, have you ever heard of this other entrepreneur podcast? As if there was one, right, John? Have you ever heard of this other podcast? There's an episode in there that I think you would really like. And they say, no, I've never heard of it. And then we just ask, would you like me to send that link? And they say, sure, please send it. And so when we send it, we say, here's the link you asked for. Let me know what you think of the episode.

20:53I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. And so that allows them, because they are going to follow or they're going to follow the podcast, which is the old word for subscribe. They're also going to download the episodes automatically. And because we ask for feedback, they're more likely to do the number three, which is to listen because now they've already gotten the reciprocity where we've listened to theirs. Now they're going to listen to it. The fourth thing is to get them to rate and review. And the way we do that is once they reply, because of reciprocity, we've already told them how much we liked the Sean Higgins episode on JLD.

21:34So then we just say, we say, what did you think of it? When they reply and they say, this is what I thought of it, and they give us something beautiful, we say on behalf of our client, we say, wow, I loved what you just said. I bet you, let's pretend this guy's name is Gary. I bet you Gary would be thrilled if all you did is just copied and pasted what you told me and make it a written review of his podcast and so we get about one out of three of the people that are writing to writing this to us to actually copy and paste it and add another rating review for that podcast and then the way we get them to keep coming back to the show and all of these things trigger algorithms to grow a podcast is after a couple of weeks or after three more weeks, we'll hear another episode on, let's say Gary, on Gary's podcast.

22:30We'll hear another one and then we'll say, man, this is a really effective episode if somebody wants to X, Y, and Z. Maybe we'll reach out to everybody that we're DMing about this show in order to increase their audience size. Maybe we'll reach out and say, hey, did you hear the last episode that just dropped on the XYZ podcast, that was bomb, right? Question mark. And they're like, no, I hadn't heard of it. I can go ahead and send you the link if you want. And then they're like, yeah, sure. Send me the link. And that keeps them coming back to the podcast. And the, the, for example, when we do this for, for clients that grow your show, their podcasts start ranking because when you do all five of those things, it starts triggering the algorithm.

23:19And so it's been a huge benefit to fill rooms, to fill coaching programs, or even just to grow a podcast.

23:26John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, I hope as Adam's talking here, you're picturing how you can apply this to your business, to your life, to whatever platform or medium that you are really focused on because this is the right way to do things. You know, I like to say, do the hard things the right way. create systems around it, become efficient around them, potentially at some point outsource them. And so now this thing that was a lot of working hard at first, now it's just happening in the background because of what you've done. And sometimes you have to do the things that don't scale at the beginning so that you can create a system around that.

24:02John Lee Dumas:And then those things can scale down the line, like if you have a virtual assistant. So Adam, bring us home here. What are those specific best practices to have our virtual assistant help us execute these strategies? You're going to want to make sure that they have some sort of template. And that's a slightly hard part. But as you mentioned, John, sometimes doing the hard work up front pays off with dividends. So what you'll need to do is create usually about six first messages. and it'll have in brackets, for example, since it is mostly copy and paste, it'll have in brackets, insert personal thing here or insert city here or insert name here, for example.

24:52You'll create that and you'll think through the possible replies. Most of the replies, just to make it simple, most of the replies are either going to be positive or negative. They're either going to say, yes, send it to me, or they're going to say, I'm fine. No, thank you. I'm not interested. So you generally can think if they're in the affirmative that they want to go to the next step, I'm going to create a set of replies that my virtual assistant can easily pull from and basically copy and paste, but fill in those blanks. And if it's negative, if it's no, thank you, then I'm going to have a series of replies for that.

25:36So it's all set up ahead of time. Other things that you want to do is think about what kinds of discounts that you think would be available. If you're having a coaching program or if you're having an event that people are coming to. The other thing that would be helpful is to have a good conversation with the person that's doing this on your behalf. If they're a VA or if they are working in your office, just have a good conversation with them on best practices of being friendly, being polite, not under, over -promising. So you're in a bad position. Just having conversations around the thought process behind some of this so that they're empowered and ready to go.

26:31And I think that's going to really help. And if your listener is thinking about stuff that not everybody's doing, this is something that is hard. It's something that not everybody's doing. Not everybody's thinking of. It takes a little bit of time. That's why it's so effective.