Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Made in the UK for HR consultants worldwide. You're listening to the HR Marketing Guys podcast.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Hello James here and welcome to this week's podcast. In this week's main event, I'm going to be talking you through three of my basic marketing laws that you definitely need to know in order to get new clients and grow your consultancy. And in this week's thought of the week, I'm going to talk to you about your own personal reward system and whether you need to start treating yourself to more pampering sessions like me. So let's jump straight in.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: This week's main event.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: As a HR consultant, there are certain HR basics that you follow, like a universal law. And when business owners ask you for advice, you fall back on these basics as well as your experience to provide them with the guidance they need. As an example, when it comes to ER matters, you might ask if their employee has been there less than two years. You might ask if they've been treated unfairly at all. And you might ask if they have a protective characteristic. They're really important things you need to know in order to provide the right advice. And when it comes to conducting an investigation or disciplinary, you know that there are certain processes that you need to follow. And when it comes to a culture or change management project, you follow certain frameworks to help guide you too. You're an awesome HR consultant because you know the basics and you've got lots of experience which helps you create the best possible solution. Marketing is the same, really. It's just systems, processes and frameworks. And something I always refer back to when offering marketing advice, are my three basic marketing laws, which I'm going to talk you through right now. So let's get started with my first basic marketing law, and that's to leverage emotions. The vast majority of big purchasing decisions, and this goes for both B two B and B two c transactions, are not only made with the brain, but they're also made using gut feel and our emotional mind. We make buying decisions with our heart, then our brain rubberization stamps the decision. This is particularly true when it comes to choosing a HR consultant, and that's because the average business owner or manager doesn't know much about HR and they don't know what makes a great HR consultant. They have nothing rational to compare you to when making a decision. So instead they ask themselves whether they like you, get along with you and get a good feel from you. And then they'll find things to rubber stamp the decision, such as cost, location, perceived expertise and years of experience.
In short, they make 80% of the decision using their emotional mind and then 20% using their rational mind. Therefore, your marketing must appeal to them emotionally first and the most powerful emotions you can target are your clients needs, wants and fears. Needs addresses the essential solutions your product or service offers to solve a problem. So at a psychological level, this is always brought back to survival. We then have want. So wants go beyond basic needs and are driven by desires for comfort, convenience, status or pleasure. Here you want to tap into your client's dreams and aspirations at psychological level, and then we have fears. So fears are about tapping into your clients anxieties or concerns about missing out, facing negative consequences, or dealing with undesirable scenarios. And this is always brought back to threats or loss. An example of this is the psychological concept of loss aversion. So people tend to prefer avoiding losses rather than acquiring equivalent gains. In other words, the pain of losing something is psychologically more powerful than the pleasure of gaining something of equal value. So if you're writing a headline, I'll always angle it about preventing pain rather than achieving success. And we see this in the tabloids quite a lot. So there's so much we can talk about here. And that's a nice summary to get us started. And when I've made my millions and I'm bored of the beach, I would love to learn more about consumer psychology because it really does underpin everything I do as a marketing professional. So long story short, you really need to tap into your client's emotions when marketing or consultancy, and the story brand framework, which I talk about in an earlier podcast episode, is a great way to do this. Let's move on to my second marketing law then, and that's to be highly relevant. When marketing your consultancy, you have a very, very small window of opportunity to grab a business owner's attention. So you need to stand out. And in order to do this and to increase your chances of getting noticed, your messaging has to be so relevant to who you're contacting. This is why I'm a really big fan of creating target markets via industry because you can then contact each industry at time, do your research, and create messaging that really hits home.
Another reason to create target markets via industry is that people would much prefer to work with the perceived specialist in their field. Lots of consultants have contacted me because I'm a marketing expert for HR consultants. So think about picking a marketing person to help you grow your consultancy. You'd likely pick me over another marketing expert that didn't specialize in HR and I'm not saying that to be big headed, the same just goes for your clients. So even though your skills are transferable, which means that you can easily work with any type of business, business owners would rather buy from someone that is perceived specialist in their field as it provides you with instant credibility authority and helps you to build all important trust with your prospects. So being a perceived specialist will help you to get more sales faster. To summarize all of this, I always say that relevance increases results and you should do everything you possibly can to make you, your brand and your marketing more relevant to whoever you're targeting. And then we have my third and final marketing law. You need to systemize your marketing. And there's a couple of reasons as to why you need to create a system. The first is that cutting through the noise is harder than ever. So think about your LinkedIn feed right now. There's so much content out there, isn't there? There are 900 million registered members worldwide and thousands of posts are made every second. And over on Facebook, there are 510,000 comments, 293,000 status updates, 136,000 photos uploaded and more than 4 million likes across various posts every single second. Yeah, that's right, every second. It's honestly wild. The second reason is that people only buy when they're ready to buy, and you need to be in the right place at the right time with the right message. In the other big marketing company that I lead, people tell us that they've been listening to the podcast for years before they decided to buy, which I always find crazy, but it just shows that your client's right time to buy is completely out of your control. It could be there and then it could be a week later, a month, or even years. And according to stats, you need 28 to 62 touch points before someone is ready to take action with you. Sadly, we don't have a crystal ball and there's no way to predict when that perfect moment will be. So the best thing that you can do is to show up consistently. And my final reason is to remember that one time marketing doesn't work. So one time marketing is when you do something like send a bunch of emails or send out a bunch of LinkedIn DM's and try to get people to take action straight away. I know loads of business owners that do this, don't see any results and then give up saying that marketing doesn't work. The reality is that they're doing marketing completely wrong. So because of all of these reasons, you need to create a marketing system. This system needs to build a relationship with your prospects for as long as needed before they book an appointment with you and turn into a happy client. And that's why over the years, I've created and perfected a three step lead generation system that I use in every business that I work in. Honestly, every aspect of your marketing and sales can fit and should fit into one of these three categories. So let me talk you through these three steps. Now. Step one is to grow multiple audiences like your LinkedIn connections and email marketing list. So I call these activities list building and it's the first thing I focus on when trying to grow a business. Step two is to then build a relationship with your list. So once you have a bunch of LinkedIn contacts and an email marketing list, it's important to get your touch points in, create posts and send emails. You need to be consistently seen and heard over long periods of time before people are ready to buy from you. And to do this, you need to put lots of quality content out there. And this is where the HR marketing box really helps because it's full of content and content ideas to help you get as much content out there as possible in the quickest and cheapest way. And then the third and final step is to commercialize your relationship. You'll do this by encouraging a warmed up prospects and all of those people that you've built a relationship with over months or years or however long it's been to book a discovery call with you. And there are lots of ways to do this, like specific campaigns, webinars and via your service ladder. So let's summarize. Imagine you're with a client right now and you've got an ER case on your hands. There's a bunch of questions you'd ask straight off the bat to establish what's going on and where they've been going wrong. It's the same for me. So if you jumped on a call with me today and said, hey James, my marketing isn't working, I'd first ask who you're targeting. I'd then ask you how much research have you done and how much do you actually know them and what really makes them tick? And then how are you leveraging those emotions in your marketing? I'd then look at your brand and messaging to see how relevant you were to them. And then I'd figure out if you're doing one time marketing or using a system to build a funnel of lovely clients. If the answer is no, then this is where I would get started straight away. So let's recap my three basic marketing laws that you need to remember when marketing or consultancy the first is to understand what makes your clients tick and to leverage their emotions. The second is to be highly relevant in every way that you possibly can. And the third is to grow your consultancy using my three step lead generation system. So that's step one, grow your LinkedIn connections and email marketing list. Step two is to build a relationship with your list over time, and consistency is key here. And step three is to commercialize the relationship by getting a discovery call booked in the diary.
So in this week's main event, I mentioned the HR marketing box and I wanted to give you a little bit more information about it because I think it would really help you to get more marketing out there. It's an online content library that's full of ready to use content and ideas. We talk about everything from employment law, performance, management, mediation, leadership, recruitment and so, so much more. It's all written by expert HR professionals, edited by expert marketers, and made pretty by expert designers. You can pick and choose what you use and use it in any way that you like, whether that's a quick copy and paste job or as a starting point for your own fabulous content. And you can customize everything really easily in canva. So why should you consider becoming a member? Well, quite simply, the HR marketing box is a huge time saver and is great value for money. The monthly cost is equivalent to just 1 hour of your billable time, so it really is a no brainer. But what happens if you still can't find the time, time or energy to put content out there as regularly as you need? Well, we have some fantastic marketing VA services available too, and our most popular package is the LinkedIn done for you package. As part of this package, we'll personalize all of your content and we'll create a LinkedIn newsletter for you, and we'll schedule three posts a week on your behalf, perfect to keep your profile and presence ticking over while you're busy looking after clients. So to learn more, please visit my website, thehrmarketingguy.com and go to the HR marketing box page. Or feel free to book in a virtual copy with me and let's have a chat.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: James thought of the week in this.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Week'S thought of the week, I want to ask you what your own reward system is. As a HR consultant, you're familiar with reward structuring, but have you ever stopped to think about how you're rewarding yourself on a personal level? This probably sounds like a bit of a random question so let me give you some background as to why I'm really interested in this at the moment. If you've listened to previous episodes of my podcast, you'll know that I've been working with a dietitian to help me recently with my brain fog and other ADHD type symptoms. I'm doing this because, one, it's really annoying, and two, I want to be as efficient as I possibly can be, and that's really difficult when your head is up your ass. If you've ever experienced brain fog, then you'll know exactly what I mean. Anyway, we've figured out that carbs just don't serve me in any way, and that's why she advised I try the keto diet. And honestly, when I'm on it, I feel like I'm on fire in every possible way. It's great. But then I also have no self control when it comes to pizza or McDonald's. I work really hard all week, eat really well, train at the gym, and then I'll go home on a Friday night exhausted from the week, get straight on, deliveroo, and order the dirtiest pizza that I can find, pour mayo all over it and devour it like some sort of crazy animal. It's great at the time, but I feel terrible afterwards. I know this, yet I can't stop myself from doing it. And when I was explaining this to Susie, she said that I was treating naughty food like this as my reward system. And that's when the penny dropped. I was like, ah, I've never thought of it in this way, and I've never heard it be described like this behavior be described as a reward system either. And she said that you need to replace your current reward system with a reward system that you're more motivated by. And she was coming up with new suggestions instead about buying myself some new clothes as a treat. And I said, hey, I don't need any more encouragement there. I'd be bankrupt within the month. But I did want to spend more time on holistic wellness, like yoga, indian head massages, reflexology, spa days, and all of that jazz. Anything to calm the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system because I'm a bit of an anxious allen at times. And all of these things are recommended by the holistic psychologist Nicole Lipera. I read her book last year when I was on how to do the work, which I would highly recommend if you're into this sort of stuff. So she talks about this type of holistic healing a lot, which I think is cool to know and be aware of. So I kind of feel that a big penny has dropped recently for me, and I've been able to break from a naughty behavior pattern that was stopping me from fulfilling my full potential, which I'm really happy about. So instead of eating pizza like a crazy animal on a Friday night, I'm going to book in some sort of holistic wellness stuff, and I'm really motivated by by this. Anyway, all of this got me thinking about the other people in my life, including you. Maybe you're doing stuff that you don't want to be doing but can't seem to stop. Whether that's eating too much pizza, like me, smoking, drinking, or anything else that you're getting up to. Maybe you're using it as a reward system, and that's why it seems too good to give up. And maybe recognizing it as simply a reward system will help you to stop repeating bad patterns and instead give yourself the opportunity to reward yourself with something more healthier and happier. I don't know, something to think about, but like I said, I really feel like a penny has dropped recently for me, and I'm just really excited to share this new understanding of the reward system, or your own reward system, with anyone that will listen.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: You've been listening to the HR Marketing guys podcast, helping you to get new clients and create a life you love.
