AP 1223: What Are Some New Ways to Get More Leads?

AP 1223: What Are Some New Ways to Get More Leads?

Pat Flynn: What up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1,223 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur, just like you. And today we're speaking with Matt Woicik over at ml2solutions.com. He also has another website where he teaches digital marketing at digitalmarketingextreme.com. And he's got a very interesting question today, he's talking about getting more leads because his business has changed a little bit during the pandemic. In fact, he helped a lot of local businesses that would often get a lot of help from the Chamber of Commerce and other places like that and he would help out those kinds of businesses.

Pat Flynn: But a lot of those businesses are now not able to do business like the way they were before, many of them shut down, many of them have changed their ways. However, Matt has now been able to consider different ways to build more leads and get in front of new audiences. So we're going to go a little bit into the change and what has happened but then we have a big brainstorming, just jam session in fact, where a lot of new doors and opportunities open up and you can see exactly how we get there and where he's going to go from here. So again, check out Matt over at ml2solutions.com for his agency and digitalmarketingextreme.com. Here he is.

Pat Flynn: Matt, welcome to AskPat, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me today.

Matt: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Pat Flynn: I'm excited to get to know you, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Matt: My name is Matt Woicik. I'm a digital marketing strategist and own my own digital marketing agency. So I help small businesses with websites, search engine optimization, paid ads, analytics, whatever it takes to get them on the internet and raise awareness. And my background actually, was in IT for 20 years but IT is in a state of flux. It has been for many years, the Cloud really did change everything. So I decided I'd better change what I'm doing for my next second part of my career and digital marketing was a great and natural transition for me at least from the technical side, learning all the marketing stuff. But in the end, both IT and digital marketing's about helping people get what they need. In this case, get on the internet and perform, make sure their computer or server didn't crash or things like that. And I've always liked helping people and that's what I'm trying to do, help them get over all these technical boundaries.

Pat Flynn: I love it. Matt, are you running the business with just you or do you have a team? I'd love to know a little bit about the size of your company.

Matt: Yep. So even though I promote myself as a virtual business that was pre pandemic but definitely now, I am a company of one and I want it to stay that way. So I definitely, want to leverage freelancers, virtual assistants, consultants to allow me to scale but I'll still be the face, the strategist, basically the person they interact with but to scale it that way. Sometimes when you promote yourself as either a single person or a "home business" eyebrows get raised sometimes. And so I decided, "Nope, I'm a company, I'm a virtual business. I take care of you. I have a "team" that'll help you out, and you know how that works. That's me, I'm a project manager. I can take care of all those things.

Pat Flynn: That's cool. I love it. And is there any particular type of business that you help or is it just all general, whoever?

Matt: Well, definitely, as we've all heard to niche down but one of the things that where I came from, the business I was working as an IT manager, we're providing home services. So that was a natural transition so whether a plumber, an electrician, people that do local services. There's a lot in marketing that becomes unique when you talk about a local business. So you have reviews, Local SEO, Google My Business or whatever Google's calling it today, so there is a little bit difference. But I did notice during the pandemic that for both obvious reasons, some of those businesses could not function, I mean, unfortunately they had to shut down. That opportunities started opening up in other ones online.

Matt: And fortunately, I had already been learning things about online courses and membership. And so when customers like that came up like, "Oh wait, I can talk to your language too. Yes, I'd love to help you with your marketing." Because at the end things like SEO and paid ads though different, are about promoting a business whether it's a local business, a virtual business, an online business, you still need promotion and ultimately, lead gen. Different, you don't have to walk around trying to convince somebody to fix your leaky sink but again, you're still selling a service whether it's a course or I'll mow your lawn for or something like that.

Pat Flynn: Right. That's really what it all comes down to. So tell me, Matt, what's on your mind today and where can I best help you?

Matt: Well, one of the things that I think the pandemic unfortunately does, hope we're on the tail end of this... It really showed was a lot of the... Well, what we're traditional ways to get your name out there whether that be joining the Chamber Commerce and other local networking group, going to a local meetup or something like that, going to "where your customers are." Well, we just couldn't for those reasons. And I think some businesses and some organizations transitioned well and some didn't and maybe they're just going to, I don't know.

Matt: Chamber of Commerce is around for decades, they probably, always going to be that way. But what it started me thinking more about were some of the things I was thinking when I started my business to make sure I had multiple revenue streams, "Hey, wait a second. Can some of this online techniques work for local businesses?" And obviously, you've been talking about passive income strategies for a long time and things like that and so it got me really thinking, "Should I be developing an email list, should I set up a lead magnet?" Things like that and I've been going back and forth on that but I'd love to get your take on that.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Well, where are you struggling right now? Are you looking for different kinds of leads and having issues with that?

Matt: Yeah. And again, I may not be sure of this but it does feel like when you're in the client service industry, you too are always about generating leads. My clients, "Hey, I need more roofs to repair or whatever." So it's like, "Yeah. I guess, they're in client service too." So yes, lead generation I think is the ultimate thing that definitely, a marketing company... I mean, we're looking for customers too. The only weird part I think is the difference between the B2B market and the B2C.

Matt: If you're selling a product obviously, as you make one course and you can sell it a thousand times. Yeah, provide someone SEO, you still have to do the SEO for the next client, there's only so far you can take that. But nevertheless, I think lead gen and especially, coming out of the pandemic, I think it has changed. People are looking differently for things, they're looking in different places where they might not have before. It's still, always word of mouth referrals that's going to happen but that's not scalable where I think a lot of the online techniques do have more scalable potential within them.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Lead gen, I mean, there's a whole expansive universe about the different kinds of things that you could do to generate leads. Really what it comes down to is like you said and what we were talking about earlier is getting to where the value is as quickly as possible. What used to work back in the day was just information. Information didn't exist, the internet was coming about. So if you had information, the more of it the better. And now it's the opposite, we don't want more information. We just want results and transformations as fast as possible. So to me whether it's B2B or B2C, always understanding who it is that you're targeting is number one. What are problems, what are their challenges and struggles? And this is why niching down is really key.

Pat Flynn: And if you wanted to focus on one particular sector to start out with and focus on what their particular struggle is or maybe the number one challenge or the number one struggle and build something to really either overcome those objections right away or even provide some result in a very short period of time. Well, then that helps you stand out from all the other noise that's out there. Because that's the other problem that's happening is, there's everybody's fighting for each other's attention now. So how do we stand out amongst the other person who's also trying to get this person's attention too? And of course, that lead magnet, that value proposition that comes up front for free could come in many different ways. It might just simply be the best answer to questions that people are asking. It could be perhaps, a report of some kind that people need to get access to be able to better understand how to do what they need to do.

Pat Flynn: It could in fact be a solution to a very specific problem or a piece of software that maybe is given out for free. A loss leader is sometimes going to be an option where, yes, it might require a little bit of work upfront but then the outcomes or the ROI is much higher. And that loss leader can come in many different forms. It could come in the form of giving away something that you could potentially charge for or it could come in the form of a quick consultation especially if you're charging higher. So if that's the case like in many cases, B2B, a quick call or consultation's going to be like the starting point. The answer is, okay, well, how do we get to that phone call as quickly as possible? How do we reduce the amount of friction? How do we, before they even feel like they need to call, know that they're going to call anyway? Where could we go to put ourselves in front of them? And thankfully, like you said, we're coming hopefully, out of the pandemic and we're able to meet in person again.

Pat Flynn: And a lot of those things that used to work are going to work again but I think the environment has changed. So communities online where those people have now come to find each other could be great and building relationships with those leaders of those communities or those admins and creating something for them or becoming the go-to resource that gets spoken about is a great thing to happen too. I know a business who's helping people with SEO in a way that's really interesting. They're creating actually, you probably, know about them. HubSpot once created a reporting tool which was beautiful because after it was built, it was basically hands off. People were coming in to a website grader.

Matt: Yes.

Pat Flynn: And you can just pop in your website into this website grader and I used it, everybody else I knew used it because what did it do? It provided real results that were for me, personalized for me in an instant. And of course, you get the report it's like, "Hey, you're doing well here but you're not doing so well here so you could go and find the information yourself or you could just work with us."

Matt: Yep. And of course, that's the perfect one to get the call.

Pat Flynn: Absolutely, dude. Especially, if it's very clear what solving that problem will do. If you solve search engine optimization for example, because your website's too slow and all this other stuff that the report gives you. Well, then imagine how much more money you'd make when you have all these customers coming in free of charge in front of your virtual door. So what ideas is this maybe sparking for you? I know I'm just jib jabbering right now but I'd love to know where you're...?

Matt: And I think this is the challenge of marketing. It is so broad and I have the same struggle when I-

Pat Flynn: Exactly.

Matt: ... when I talk to my clients. The thing is usually they have a specific thing to, they're coming to get marketing. So that helps to start the conversation going and what's that phrase? The cobbler without the good shoes, you're your own worst enemy sometimes. But no, and that's what I've been thinking more and more because traditionally you would be looking for local clients in your local areas but now, and I think people have opened up this idea of, "Wait, I could work with anybody anywhere." So the idea of looking more toward the internet of finding your clients that way. So I think that's one way and definitely, community is one of those things that, where are possible clients hanging out?

Matt: But then I think, again, you get back in that trap where now you're casting your net wide again. When you were just looking for local clients because you're local, you had a more finite base. But one of the things I thought and it's interesting to bring up that HubSpot example, because I was actually, able to find a tool to put on my website to do that automated, not an SEO report but actually, a digital marketing report. So that really provides that opportunity to say, "Hey look, here's the things that aren't going well." But like most challenges, you still got to get them on your website to see it and HubSpot obviously, has a much bigger presence. But the other thing that I have really thought about was this idea of providing value independent of my services and by that I mean, providing inaudible people want to do marketing themselves.

Matt: Now, I'd love them to hire me but again, they're like, "Hey, I can figure this out, the Internet's there. I can watch some YouTube." Well, can you? Or wait a second, why don't I take that knowledge and put it in a format where they can try it themselves with the hope that they'll find out, "Wow, this is really harder than it looks." And so that was one of those things and that was actually a thing I did during the shutdown period where unfortunately, my business pretty much stopped too because nobody's going to spend on marketing when they can't even open their doors. And so that's something I've been trying to do on this side is develop maybe a parallel brand that is like, "Hey, want to do marketing yourself? Hey, here's some techniques, here's some tools, here's how to get started." And then you move into the standard content marketing type of thing. So playing both sides of the same marketing thing, "I'll do it for you or I'll help you do it." So.

Pat Flynn: I like that. What's nice about that is then you can price anchor and show value on both sides, "Hey, you can do this yourself but look at how much time it's going to take you and you don't have the time to do that so let me do it for you. Here's how much I cost but here's how much you'll get back as a result of that investment." And then on the flip side it's like, a person may not want to work with you right away and think that they could do it on their own, and maybe they can and great. You could still provide value to them but you cost a lot and this costs not a lot but maybe they couldn't afford you anyway. But now you're still able to at least take in a little bit of revenue or at least help a person and then maybe word of mouth takes play from there. So tell me a little bit about how you're doing that, are you on a YouTube channel or what's your platforms for doing that?

Matt: Yeah. So, well first I'll admit, it's fallen by the wayside because my business is picked up so that's good. Again, this was my crosstalk.

Pat Flynn: Okay, well that's good.

Matt: Yeah. Exactly. But having said that you want to be not reactive, you want to be thinking ahead and so this idea of multiple different things. So I just developed an entire different brand, a new website, different URL, a whole thing like that. And just well, kept myself busy writing content so I created a whole bunch of howtos because we know howto is something people search for on YouTube. So I created a bunch of videos there, repurpose those as podcast, admittedly, it's not a podcast. It's a repurposed video but you'd never know. And now it's just been sitting there but what I really thought the way to get people in that aren't just discovering it, say on a YouTube was an email newsletter so something that's providing content. So each week I'll give another marketing tip or something, "Here's a video that goes along with it. By the way check out my ultimate guide to digital marketing." And then throughout my website of course is a small little ad for my own agency.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. No, that's great.

Matt: So that's been what I've been doing. The problem again is, I am a company of one so maybe I need to realize, I need to invest a little more and take some of the profits from one brand and move it to the other. And again, the ultimate goal I was realizing as I started developing it is, there may be people who literally, want to do their own marketing but they still would like a guide, somebody to provide value. So is that a course down the road? Is that potentially a membership or a book?

Matt: And then again, I've been listening as you have too, community. People want to be with other people, I've got to believe that a bunch of plumbers would like to talk about their marketing because they're in different areas. They're not competing against each other but they're like, "What gives? We need more leads, what's working, how can we do this? What's this Google business thing. Why is Yelp so bad?" They want to talk with each other and just go, "Yeah. That's what's working. And if there isn't a community like that, "Well, hey. Maybe I should start one." Again, with a marketing slant. Obviously, I'm not going to teach them how to do plumbing or how to balance their bills, their other things.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Plumber's marketing society or something like that. Maybe not because that's PMS. Maybe we don't want that acronym.

Matt: I always watch the acronym. But no, just the idea of realizing that as a small business owner myself thinking, pre pandemic as a local business myself not a virtual business. I structure that but not really thinking like that. I was going to Chamber of Commerce meetings. There are probably, groups of people out there that would resonate with this and like to talk to fellow small business owners because you like to talk to people have the same problems as you. Maybe that's not the first step but thinking again about how you can build up with always still being available, "Hey, you're just tired and you want to run your business. I got an agency, we can take care of this for you and bring you in some leads."

Pat Flynn: My thought now Matt, is imagine if you stepped up to become the person to bring all these service based people together to learn from each other, to learn even whether it's just specifically a plumber community or it's maybe one ring out, it's a service based community but there's plumbers and there's dentists or whoever in there. But they can learn from each other too which is really interesting. And I like what you said because it is a worldwide audience likely they're not even going to be competing with each other.

Pat Flynn: So there's a ton of value there. I would start with even just one sector and just start talking to people and say, "Hey, would you be interested in this?" What could you do to micro test this? Maybe it becomes a limited time even just so that if it doesn't work it's going to end and you don't have to worry about managing a not so great community forever. But say like, "Hey, I want to try something for the third quarter in 2022, we're going to put together a plumbing community just to see if there's value there and it's free to join."

Pat Flynn: And you just wrangle a whole bunch of people in there and then you get to see, was that great or was it not great? And of course, all along the way, you're in there helping making connections, you're in there to provide that safe space for those people to connect and wow, so much value. What could I do in return? Or this community is sponsored by your agency. That could be amazing and could be a nice way for you to have a pool of people to even test other things with down the road. That's absolutely incredible, and then imagine just like a plumber one, you get to the national plumber society and they hear about it and you invite them in there, and maybe they become a guest AMA, ask me anything person for a week for the plumbers who are in there to come in and just the plumbers start talking with each other about joining this thing.

Pat Flynn: There's meetups in person that happen and literally it's just all in one sector and, "Oh, by the way if you need more leads, we all know who to go to." Go to Matt, obviously because he's the guy. That could be really amazing. And I would start in a single sector first. There was a story about a guy who created a universal bug spray. I don't know if you've heard me tell this story before but he created a universal bug spray, it killed all bugs. So he packaged it up as a universal bug spray, sold it in the stores and nobody bought it because people have an ant problem. They went to get the ant killer. People have a roach problem, they wanted the roach killer, people had spider problem they got the spider killer.

Pat Flynn: So what he did was he just took that formula, it was the same formula but he just put a different wrapping around a package for the different problems that people had and it just sold like hot cakes because it was the best one. So you could create a course or a community or whatever you could micro test again and you can create specifically, for one sector and then you test that. You feel what that's like and can you be automated even at that to a point where you're fully removed from it even at some point and then it works, okay. Let's package it in another thing and just change the first module to be specific to that particular sector. And then you can have like these suite of courses down the road.

Matt: Yeah. No, there's a lot to say and again, it goes back to finding those commonalities between people and people already have... Pest control business owners are going to be way more interested in talking with each other than pest control owners and plumbers. So again, it goes back to think about a niche, think about a way you can provide value to a group and be that facilitator. And one way or another there are revenue opportunities in there if you can get the people together.

Pat Flynn: Exactly. And imagine how much easier just to target those people advertising wise if-

Matt: Oh yeah. And that's where I was going, was the community aspect is interesting but it still feels like... And again, we always seem to go back to building an audience through email because then you have those other opportunities. But again, that might be just, we're moving on beyond that and really bringing people together as opposed to just trying to get an email going with them.

Pat Flynn: ... yeah. The way that I would do it would be to, let's just use the plumbing example again. I make friends or already have friends in that space and I invite two or three of them to all talk about their best marketing strategies on a webinar and the webinar's going to happen on this specific date and I run ads or I talk about in community so that everybody knows this event's happening, where people can get a micro, Costco-size sample of the things that are going to be available elsewhere later. And that allows me to collect all those emails of all the people who are interested in that. If we get no emails then okay, that sector didn't work and let's try it again in somewhere else. But that's how I would collect emails up front for value that is being provided and that is also your lead magnet at the same time.

Matt: That makes perfect sense. And that actually, ties a lot of these online techniques together. You're indirectly building your list, you're offering value through a webinar. You're sort of developing, potentially, a community by just the people that show up. That's very insightful and maybe I've been too lineal, thinking you'll go step by step but really you can package a whole bunch of things around. And I love this concept that the micro test, it's very insightful.

Pat Flynn: Cool. I'm glad, Matt. And a lot of industries are... So webinars in my space, the entrepreneurial online business education space, they're very prevailing. In fact, it's just oversaturated to be honest but in spaces like plumbing, I mean, people go to plumbing conventions and they travel and they spend hundreds of dollars on, what about a free workshop that you can get at your own home? That's super massively valuable. And I wouldn't even call it a webinar per se. I think I would-

Matt: Workshop, I think. No, and that's what's really fascinating because you would do that pre pandemic. You would offer through a chamber or a networking group, "Hey, I'm going to do a marketing seminar or something like that." And people would show up.

Pat Flynn: ... in person?

Matt: Yeah. In person. But again, now there's either there's still the hesitancy or they're too busy because... But this idea, "Hey, you still know that there's some, you need to do better with this. Where can you?" In fact, this is actually, fascinating. Maybe using those "old school groups" to be the ones that promote it. Again, you might have to pay them to get on their chamber thing but they're all about ad promotions too and say, "Hey, I'd love to sponsor a workshop for your group and again," but I still like your idea of specializing because a chamber is broad. But the idea of saying, "Yeah, workshop but a virtual," and then there's the key because now they can all attend. Everybody knows how Zoom works now, you just fire one up and you give it the concept.

Pat Flynn: Yes. That is so true. Hey, you know how to use Zoom now. Yeah. I love that positioning. So lean into that, I look forward to catching up with you, Matt and seeing how this all works. But I think that with your existing digital marketing knowledge now, along with these new ideas, you're going to knock it out of the park, and if you swing and miss on the first vertical you got more pitches coming your way.

Matt: Totally agree. Well, Pat, thanks very much for brainstorming and giving me some ideas to keep running with things. I appreciate it.

Pat Flynn: This was a good jamming session. Thanks, Matt. I appreciate you. Where can people go to find out more about what you have going on?

Matt: Sure. So my agency itself is ml2solutions.com so that's my digital agency. My other brand if you'd like to learn about a little digital marketing is digitalmarketingextreme.com. So that was my second brand. It's a good show website, I know it needs more work but it was the thing that kept me a little sane with kids running around the house, trying to do schoolwork and I could just write and put up some content. So those are the two presences I have on the internet right now.

Pat Flynn: Awesome. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate you.

Matt: My pleasure, Pat. Thank you very much for chatting with you.

Pat Flynn: All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Matt. Again, you can find him ml2solutions.com and digitalmarketingextreme.com where he can teach us some stuff too. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. This was a lot of fun. And Matt, thank you again for coming on and I wish you the best of luck. Can't wait to see what you do with a lot of the ideas that we had from things like the grader and the website quiz situation plus getting into digital communities that already exist and providing value there. And of course, at the very end there, really getting into a webinar situation which acts as both a value add and a lead gen opportunity. So a lot of really amazing opportunities for you and I cannot wait to see what you do with this. So again, thank you so much. We'll have to catch up with you again in the future to see how everything works out.

Pat Flynn: But thank you, the listener for listening all the way through. If you want to potentially get coached here on AskPat just like Matt did today, all you have to do is go to AskPat.com and fill out the application there. We'll see if it's the right fit and I might reach out to you. I look forward to reaching out to you, hopefully. So again, askpat.com. And thank you again for all the reviews this year. I mean, we're almost halfway through the year, it's just bonkers that we're here already.

Pat Flynn: And I hope you are making your way toward your goals. If you need some help, if you need some support, accountability, masterminds and all those kinds of things, I highly recommend you consider joining SPI pro. You've heard me talking about it before and I'm not going to stop because it is providing the best value that we can right now. Because it's not just us at team SPI helping you. It is all of you, all the listeners coming together and supporting each other and forming groups and getting challenged and holding each other accountable.

Pat Flynn: It's a safe space to be able to ask questions and get help from other real entrepreneurs. Again, check it out, you can apply, see if it's the right fit for you. If it's not, we have some other options too but you can go to spipro.com, that's it. Just go to SPIpro.com. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. And I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Until then cheers, peace out and as always team Flynn for the win.

Pat Flynn: Thanks for listening to AskPat at askpat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. I'll catch you in the next session.