Episode Description:
Julie Guest is the author of the new book The Client Stampede. Her book details 7-steps to driving traffic to your business! Julie takes the time in her interview to explain how she developed the system selling her house for what she owed, during a recession when home values plummeted 20-30% across the country. She utilized techniques used by the largest digital advertisers in the world, like Facebook and Google. You might be surprised to hear what she has in common with them, and what drove her success!
Connect with Julie Guest
Website: https://www.bolderlouder.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-guest/
Purchase Julie’s Book – “The Client Stampede” on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3mt4LDA
Action you can take right now:
The goal of this podcast is to provide marketing and service insights, but also to provide actionable items that can occur right away without much thought. This episode explores how you can take target a specific audience for a specific outcome.
- Write down your target market – think of it as a profile of your ideal customer.
- Define the scope and size of this audience – you can use Facebook Ad Manager to provide some inights inyour demographic without running an ad or paying anything (you can determine potential reach for free).
- What does the TOP 10% of that audience look like? One of Julies most powerful insights was retargeting a small portion of the target audience over and over for maximum exposure instead of spreading the net wider with less points of contact.
After-Show Thoughts:
The thing I love most about this episode was Julie explaining the impact of having multiple touchpoints with a prospective customer over increasing reach with less exposure. When put some bluntly it sounds somewhat obvious, but the reality is many companies spread a net to wide and can’t afford to make 7-10 touches with a prospective customer. With a wider net they reach a lot more people but can only afford two or three touches per prospect.
Previous guests have mentioned that number of exposures for maximum impact could be higher in the 10-15. Looking at commercials on television would support this argument – many companies running ads you’ve likely seen far more than 3-5 times. Liberty Mutual commercials with the Emu I’ve seen so many times it’s connected a negative connotation between me and the brand – but I’m willing to take a step back and assume if the campaign continues with the level of ad-spent to have this impact, it must be working!
Episode 33 Transcript:
Audio file
the-client-stampede-selling-a-home-in-a-recession-w-special-guest-julie-guest.mp3
Transcript
00:00:00 Justin
Can traditional marketing techniques used by the likes of Facebook and Google actually be used to maybe increase the value of your home by over 20%?
00:00:12 Justin
Today’s guests has proven that it can do that and more. Coming up on the marketing and service.com podcast.
00:00:25 Justin
Second page, Justin Russo here from marketingandservice.com podcast. The podcast designed to help you grow your business by creating incredible customer relationships. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like or subscribe or follow.
00:00:46 Justin
Or if you really want to do me a huge personal favor, leave a review.
00:00:49 Justin
It means so much to.
00:00:50 Justin
Me in today’s episode we have an incredible guest, Julie.
00:00:55 Justin
Julie Guest is one of America’s top business strategists. A former attorney and a bestselling author, she’s the CEO of Bolder and Louder, a full service marketing agency specializing in transformational, marketing and branding. Julie has consulted with reinvented and repositioned hundreds of companies and brands from.
00:01:15 Justin
Fortune 100 companies to celebrities and fast growing small businesses. In 2012, Julie coauthored a best selling business book with the motivational speaker Brian Tracy, and her contribution won the editors Best Choice Award.
00:01:29 Justin
Today, Julie has just released her new book, the Client Stampede 7 Simple Steps to make more money have more fun and give more back.
00:01:40 Justin
Julie provides some incredible insight as to how she was able to position and market her home and get 20 to 30%.
00:01:50 Justin
Over the going rate during the.
00:01:52 Justin
Session in an element of how she did this was actually using direct mail campaigns.
00:01:58 Justin
Something that’s surprisingly the two largest digital advertisers on the planet.
00:02:04 Justin
Google and Facebook both send me snail mail offers all of the time.
00:02:10 Justin
What is the irony that the two biggest digital?
00:02:13 Justin
Marketing companies are relying on traditional mail pieces to grow there.
00:02:17 Justin
And so in this example, Julie proves how Directmail helped her sell her home for far more than any realtor was willing to list it for.
00:02:26 Justin
And Julie, welcome to the show.
00:02:28 Justin
Thank you for being here today.
00:02:29 Julie Guest
Hey Justin, thanks for having me.
00:02:31 Julie Guest
It’s a real.
00:02:32 Julie Guest
Pleasure to be here.
00:02:34 Justin
So you just released this incredible book called the Client Stampede, which is to help small businesses grow big, which is a goal of just about every business.
00:02:45 Justin
How did this come to be and what can you tell?
00:02:47 Justin
Us about the book.
00:02:48 Julie Guest
And so the book, the book, the Client Stampede is something that I probably should have written a long time ago, but it really came about because if you remember in the last housing recession, I had purchased a house in Los Angeles at the top.
00:03:05 Julie Guest
Of the market.
00:03:06 Julie Guest
I paid far too much for it.
00:03:08 Julie Guest
Had beaten out, you know, eight other offers.
00:03:10 Julie Guest
And it would only be a few months later that the you know, the the bubble burst.
00:03:16 Julie Guest
So when the bubble did burst.
00:03:19 Julie Guest
You know, not long after that, my husband at the time had to relocate to Arizona, so we needed to sell our our house as quickly as possible, but unfortunately.
00:03:27 Speaker 2
So this.
00:03:28 Justin
This is probably like two 2008 2007 2008 timeframe.
00:03:33 Julie Guest
Yep, 2007.
00:03:33 Justin
Yeah, I I did the exact same thing.
00:03:36 Justin
I bought a house right at the top top top price right before the bubble burst.
00:03:41 Justin
I actually always make the joke that it was my mortgage that broke countrywide.
00:03:47 Julie Guest
You wasn’t mine, maybe?
00:03:48 Julie Guest
Both I got, I think my mortgage was like.
00:03:48 Justin
Yeah, I think we both signed those documents at the same time.
00:03:51 Julie Guest
9550
00:03:53
Oh my gosh.
00:03:54 Julie Guest
Yes, and so you know when, as you know, when when, uh, when?
00:03:59 Julie Guest
Uh, when the bubble broke, it broke spectacularly and and our neighborhood properties were losing value.
00:04:04 Julie Guest
You know 20,000. You know $30,000 a week in some areas, and so it was getting pretty scary and.
00:04:12 Julie Guest
I you know I, I knew that we had to sell and I interviewed all these real estate agents and when they heard that.
00:04:19 Julie Guest
I had a.
00:04:20 Julie Guest
You know 95% alone and you know.
00:04:23 Julie Guest
And they saw what the market was doing.
00:04:25 Julie Guest
Like no one wanted to sell the house because we owed more than what they believed the house was worth.
00:04:30 Julie Guest
And they all said.
00:04:32 Julie Guest
You know, call me back when you’re in foreclosure and I’ll sell.
00:04:34 Julie Guest
Up to you then and you know, I there was absolutely no way I was going to just, you know, walk.
00:04:40 Julie Guest
Away from the house.
00:04:41 Julie Guest
I I I.
00:04:42 Julie Guest
Felt pretty strongly made.
00:04:43 Julie Guest
An obligation of financial obligation, and I you know, I was going to do everything.
00:04:47 Julie Guest
That I could to.
00:04:48 Julie Guest
Honor that and I didn’t want to be going to the closing table with the check, so I realized that.
00:04:54 Julie Guest
I you know I was going to have to sell it myself, and fortunately I had started my marketing agency about 18 months prior.
00:05:02 Julie Guest
Yeah, and and I was.
00:05:04 Julie Guest
Relatively new to the industry.
00:05:06 Julie Guest
I had had a few wins which was great, but I certainly wouldn’t.
00:05:10 Julie Guest
You know, I was really a newbie, frankly, and I figured that if there was ever a time to test your own marketing.
00:05:17 Julie Guest
Chops it was, it was.
00:05:18 Julie Guest
When your backs against the wall.
00:05:19 Julie Guest
And you’re upside down in a sinking market and.
00:05:23 Julie Guest
And so, So what?
00:05:25 Julie Guest
I ended up doing is, you know, I had to had to be really strategic and I had to figure out how could I create.
00:05:33 Julie Guest
A customer experience that was going to be so different from anything else that was happening.
00:05:39 Julie Guest
You know, in in the real estate market, and that would basically draw people in because it was very clear to me that just putting some signs out.
00:05:47 Julie Guest
And throwing a.
00:05:47 Julie Guest
Few Flyers wasn’t going to work at that time.
00:05:51 Julie Guest
As you probably recall.
00:05:52 Julie Guest
If you held a.
00:05:53 Julie Guest
Open house and had you know two or three groups a weekend through.
00:05:56 Julie Guest
It was considered extremely successful, so I knew that I had to.
00:05:58 Justin
Yeah, Oh yeah, yeah.
00:06:01 Julie Guest
Yeah, I I knew I had to think much more creatively and outside the box and I you know, my goal was just to try and extract every possible dollar of value from the house.
00:06:13 Julie Guest
Because you know, I I my experience with real estate agents is that with the very few.
00:06:21 Julie Guest
Exception most of them just do the bare minimum to sell a house and if the house is too difficult to sell then they don’t they don’t want.
00:06:27 Julie Guest
To touch it and so well.
00:06:28
So and.
00:06:29 Julie Guest
Why do we need that?
00:06:29 Justin
If I can interrupt you for a second if we can.
00:06:31 Justin
If we can go backwards for one minute, did you have a particular goal in mind?
00:06:39 Justin
When you realized you weren’t gonna get the traction from the real estate agents that you needed and you thought I will try to market this home myself, was there a certain price or a certain goal that you had in mind that you wanted to achieve?
00:06:54 Justin
Was it to sell it for what you owed on it?
00:06:56 Justin
Was it to cut a smaller check or is it to try to make a few bucks?
00:06:59 Julie Guest
Ever wanted to do was sell it for what I owed and and hopefully not have to come to the closing table with a check.
00:07:06 Julie Guest
To sell the house so I I just wanted to get out from underneath the loan and sell it for what we.
00:07:10 Julie Guest
Owed yeah and at that time.
00:07:11 Justin
This is really.
00:07:12 Justin
I I I only ask because it it’s it’s really impressive to hear this as a a fellow marketer who also lost, you know about 30 to 40% of my home value within six months of.
00:07:28 Justin
I I honestly would not have had the even the thought that I’ll just market this to get my 40% back.
00:07:36 Justin
I would just I would have given up and I would have probably just handed it back to the bank.
00:07:40 Justin
Fortunately, I even thought about walking away just because everyone else was and I thought to myself, why am I the only idiot paying my mortgage?
00:07:46 Speaker 2
Right?
00:07:47 Justin
Right now, fortunately I did, and I kept the house and I’m still here now, but I I find that really impressive that you took that on and that you you, well, we even get to whether or not you achieved this goal, but just the concept of saying this is something that is even conceivable is is really incredible and impressive.
00:08:06 Julie Guest
Going through it was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done in my life ’cause I never knew until the last moment.
00:08:12 Julie Guest
If it was gonna work or not.
00:08:13 Julie Guest
So basically and in that show I wanted to compress the whole customer experience and change the entire strategy around selling a house.
00:08:21 Julie Guest
So usually as you know when you sell a house now you’ve got BIOS you’ve got.
00:08:25 Julie Guest
The sellers the.
00:08:26 Julie Guest
Unless you’re in a really hot market, the buyers come in.
00:08:29 Julie Guest
They look at the house, then they think about it.
00:08:31 Julie Guest
Then they might come back with an offer and their own sweet.
00:08:34 Julie Guest
Time and you.
00:08:34 Julie Guest
Know you’re kind of as.
00:08:36 Julie Guest
A seller, you’re really at the buyer’s mercy and you’re on their timetable, frankly.
00:08:41 Julie Guest
And you know, I knew that we didn’t have that luxury of time.
00:08:44 Julie Guest
And So what I wanted to do is I wanted to compress that entire customer experience and I wanted to create a scenario that would put me as the seller entirely in control of that whole experience.
00:08:56 Julie Guest
What I did is I created a marketing campaign that would.
00:09:00 Julie Guest
Ran it basically would launch for seven days.
00:09:03 Julie Guest
It would only run for seven days and it would launch on the Monday and the point of the marketing campaign would be to drive as many people through our open house which would be held two days on a Saturday and Sunday.
00:09:15 Julie Guest
And the goal would be to sell the house to the highest bidder on the Sunday night.
00:09:20 Julie Guest
And so as you can tell, that’s a completely different experience than you know.
00:09:25 Julie Guest
A typical experience buying a house.
00:09:26 Justin
Yeah, sure is.
00:09:28 Julie Guest
The reason that I did it is, for two reasons, really, one is because it creates pressure and scarcity, right?
00:09:36 Julie Guest
So anyone, as long as I could get enough people interested in the house, anyone who was a potential buyer would look around and go.
00:09:43 Julie Guest
Oh my gosh, I’ve got all these other people that I’m potentially competing with, you know.
00:09:47 Julie Guest
And it up my game.
00:09:48 Julie Guest
And secondly, they were now on my time frame, not their own.
00:09:52 Julie Guest
So if they were interested in in purchasing the house.
00:09:55 Julie Guest
Then they had, until, you know, 7:00 o’clock on Sunday evening to basically put their bid in and be included in that process.
00:10:03 Julie Guest
And so basically by by completely changing up that entire customer experience, you know we it was a.
00:10:10 Julie Guest
It was a huge strategic shift and it was a game changer for us because now we were completely in control.
00:10:16 Julie Guest
The entire process and everything was on our timetable.
00:10:19 Julie Guest
On the money.
00:10:20 Julie Guest
Day the marketing launched and I’ll tell you that.
00:10:23 Julie Guest
All hell broke.
00:10:24 Julie Guest
Loose because we had the neighbors knocking on our doors, wondering what on Earth we were doing.
00:10:29 Julie Guest
I mean we had this massive sign outside the front of our House.
00:10:33 Julie Guest
I I had had put in place about 30 different marketing components to the marketing campaign so it was it was pretty involved.
00:10:40 Julie Guest
But basically, if you lived within a 15 mile radius of our house, you.
00:10:46 Julie Guest
Would have seen one or.
00:10:47 Julie Guest
Possibly multiple pieces of marketing.
00:10:50 Julie Guest
And it was.
00:10:51 Julie Guest
Unlike anything that you would have seen and so on, the Monday when when the first pieces dropped, I mean we had people knocking on our doors.
00:10:58 Julie Guest
We had people driving by like what the hell were they doing here?
00:11:01 Julie Guest
Going on and.
00:11:02 Justin
And were these were these direct mail pieces?
00:11:03 Julie Guest
You know we had.
00:11:05 Julie Guest
It was everything.
00:11:06 Julie Guest
It was direct mail.
00:11:07 Julie Guest
It was, you know, we had.
00:11:09 Julie Guest
We had advertised it on Craigslist.
00:11:10 Julie Guest
We had put it in the newspaper.
00:11:12 Julie Guest
We had hired a special needs group to go door to door and do flyer delivery.
00:11:17 Julie Guest
We had, you know we signed up and it was a big logistical thing that we that we did because we knew that we were, you know, we’re we’re competing against the recession.
00:11:27 Julie Guest
Elect fear mongering.
00:11:28 Julie Guest
But so basically Monday, Monday it dropped and then by Thursday and we had people knocking on the door saying can we please just get an early preview?
00:11:38 Julie Guest
To your house ’cause we can’t make it on the weekend and as soon as that started happening I thought you know what we’re onto something here because we’ve got people that are really eager to get inside.
00:11:47 Julie Guest
And you’ve got again, this is the recession.
00:11:48 Julie Guest
No, it’s buying houses, right?
00:11:51 Julie Guest
The abstract of all that is that we had by the end of the weekend. We had over 200 people through the house.
00:11:56 Julie Guest
US and we were able.
00:11:58 Julie Guest
I think there were 16 people in total that placed bids of those.
00:12:02 Julie Guest
Only three were really serious and you know we ended up selling it to.
00:12:07 Julie Guest
The highest bidder.
00:12:08 Julie Guest
Who happened to be a couple, ironically, who lived just a few blocks away.
00:12:13 Julie Guest
They were not in the market to buy a.
00:12:15 Julie Guest
House at all?
00:12:16 Julie Guest
But they ended up buying our house for their daughter.
00:12:19 Julie Guest
Because they had seen our marketing, they were curious like if we went out and then once they came into.
00:12:24 Julie Guest
The house they.
00:12:25 Julie Guest
Kind of fell in love with it and all of a sudden you know they became they became contenders for the property and you know, uh, one thing.
00:12:35 Julie Guest
I just want to make clear to your listeners is that it wasn’t about us selling the house.
00:12:40 Julie Guest
And trying to take advantage of anybody. I mean, these buyers were so thrilled they had beaten out. You know, 16 other buyers to basically get the house and we were thrilled because we got full market value which was $3000 more than we owed, but was.
00:12:55 Julie Guest
It’s $200,000 more than what the real estate agents told us. Our house was worth and so this whole process was so valuable because it really helped unlock.
00:13:08 Julie Guest
I mean, I just really wanted to maximize the asset.
00:13:10 Julie Guest
The value of the asset, and that’s what this process did.
00:13:13 Justin
You obviously you had, like you said, a very narrow timetable to come up with this whole plan.
00:13:19 Justin
So you need to reload.
00:13:20 Justin
Kate, you devised this plan that I think you basically said was theoretical when you came up with it.
00:13:27 Justin
You weren’t sure if this was going to work or not.
00:13:29 Justin
You’ve never tried it before.
00:13:31 Justin
You were time bound, and then you actually succeed.
00:13:31 Speaker 2
Did you see this?
00:13:35 Justin
You do it, you mic drop.
00:13:37 Justin
I mean where do you go from there?
00:13:39 Julie Guest
I remember when the when when the property sold and the paperwork was signed I I still didn’t even breathe the sigh of relief because as you know, just because you have a signed agreement, you know a deal is not done until the money exchange.
00:13:52 Julie Guest
Changed and I remember not actually sleeping a full night until we had been to put a escrow company and all paperwork had signed, you know, had been signed and I think I walked.
00:14:05 Julie Guest
Out I think I walked out with.
00:14:07 Julie Guest
A check for around 2:00.
00:14:08 Julie Guest
$1000 I can’t even remember, but I I just I didn’t.
00:14:11 Julie Guest
Even care I you know we’ve got.
00:14:13 Julie Guest
Out of the house we had, you know they were really happy.
00:14:15 Julie Guest
Everything had gone really, really well so.
00:14:19 Julie Guest
It was to me the the biggest lesson of this entire experience was just the importance of strategy.
00:14:28 Julie Guest
Right, it’s like if I had tried to sell my house the same way to everyone else sells theirs, and every other realtor approaches selling a house.
00:14:35 Julie Guest
I would have never succeeded, ever?
00:14:38 Julie Guest
Right and so.
00:14:40 Julie Guest
This process, which it’s divided into 7 steps, is what I call the client Stampede, and it’s something.
00:14:48 Julie Guest
That can be used by any business you know anyone in any business of any size.
00:14:54 Julie Guest
You know whether you are a solopreneur and maybe you own your own landscaping company that you’ve you know you’ve kind of fallen into by default, or whether you are, you know, a serial entrepreneur who you know builds.
00:15:08 Julie Guest
And sells businesses.
00:15:10 Julie Guest
This strategy works for everyone because it is strategy, right?
00:15:14 Julie Guest
It’s it’s about really taking a look at your business from a completely different perspective and putting pieces together that are going to make you irresistible to your target market and help you unlock the true value of the assets that you’re selling.
00:15:30 Julie Guest
And attract the right people who want those S.
00:15:32 Julie Guest
It’s so that’s that’s this process in a nutshell.
00:15:36 Justin
Wow, so you sell your house.
00:15:38 Justin
You relocate to Arizona.
00:15:40 Justin
You had a successful marketing agency.
00:15:43 Justin
Now you’ve had this huge win and have done something that virtually sounds absolutely impossible.
00:15:49 Justin
Having lived through that and now you relocate, when do you decide I want to take another challenge?
00:15:56 Justin
And I want to be an author and write a book.
00:15:59 Justin
I mean because that.
00:15:59 Justin
I mean, congratulations that also is a huge accomplishment and an incredible undertaking that you you must be really proud.
00:16:07 Julie Guest
Of thank you and it, I mean writing a book, you know it is a huge undertaking.
00:16:13 Julie Guest
But it’s, you know, as a.
00:16:14 Julie Guest
Marketer one of the.
00:16:16 Julie Guest
Most important things that we can do for our customers is help them make educated decisions right.
00:16:23 Julie Guest
So it’s about, let’s say if you’re a graphic designer, it’s about helping educate your prospective buyers about what good and bad graphic design looks like or.
00:16:32 Julie Guest
What a good.
00:16:33 Julie Guest
What a really good website?
00:16:35 Julie Guest
You know.
00:16:36 Julie Guest
They initially have a really good website versus a website that just looks pretty, but it’s just going to sit there gathering dust and is not going to get you know traffic or anyone.
00:16:44 Julie Guest
To visit it.
00:16:44 Justin
Right now it’s functional.
00:16:45 Julie Guest
And so that could.
00:16:47 Julie Guest
Right, so the education piece is so critical and and I I’ve, I’ve always been really passionate about helping other business owners.
00:16:58 Julie Guest
You know I started.
00:17:00 Julie Guest
I started my own business my first business when I was 17 in high school and you know, I’ve I’ve.
00:17:07 Julie Guest
Own multiple businesses and it’s been, you know, it’s been an.
00:17:11 Julie Guest
Awful lot of.
00:17:12 Julie Guest
Hard work, and it’s been a very hard grind.
00:17:15 Julie Guest
You know my star sign is Capricorn, so I’m a.
00:17:18 Julie Guest
Goat, so I just yeah.
00:17:19 Julie Guest
I just keep plodding on.
00:17:22 Julie Guest
And so I really wanted I wanted a book that somebody could just pick.
00:17:27 Julie Guest
Up and instead of them feeling like they are drinking from a fire hydrant and trying to understand how all this marketing speak works, you know, should I be advertising?
00:17:37 Julie Guest
On Tik T.O.K.
00:17:38 Julie Guest
How do I?
00:17:38 Julie Guest
How do I?
00:17:39 Julie Guest
Get more followers on Facebook.
00:17:41 Julie Guest
You know, am I doing, we’re doing the right kind of banner advertising like all that stuff.
00:17:45 Julie Guest
Like all of that is just marketing tactics.
00:17:48 Julie Guest
And if you don’t have these strategic pieces
00:17:50 Julie Guest
In your business in place.
00:17:52 Julie Guest
Your business is going.
00:17:53 Julie Guest
To be a tiny tiny fraction of what?
00:17:57 Julie Guest
It could be.
00:17:58 Julie Guest
It’s the strategy that unlocks kind of the hidden value in your business, and so for me, this.
00:18:03 Julie Guest
Book was a.
00:18:04 Julie Guest
It’s something I wish I had made the time to write a long time ago, ’cause I could help more people, but.
00:18:09 Julie Guest
It’s something that you know I could very confidently give to anybody who said that they were either they either owned a business they were thinking of owning a business, or they already had a business.
00:18:20 Julie Guest
You know, that might have hundreds of employees and I could say here read this this is.
00:18:24 Julie Guest
Really going to help.
00:18:25 Julie Guest
Get your thinking where it needs to be and you can take away some very very powerful strategies.
00:18:32 Julie Guest
Simplement immediately.
00:18:34 Justin
Wow, so what’s?
00:18:35 Justin
What are some examples of some things that someone listening could do right away to start on this process?
00:18:43 Julie Guest
The the first step of the client Stampede formula.
00:18:46 Julie Guest
There’s seven steps, so the you know some of them are not rocket science, but it’s the way that you put them together, and so the first step is knowing who the person is that represents your most ideal buyer like we know for this.
00:19:03 Julie Guest
Plus I figured when I was selling the house I was like I do wire.
00:19:07 Julie Guest
If I could pick an ideal buyer out of the sky and.
00:19:10 Julie Guest
Mr Station what?
00:19:10 Julie Guest
Would they look like and who would they be and where would they live?
00:19:14 Julie Guest
And you know, I was my ideal buyer.
00:19:16 Julie Guest
Was someone with cash who was prepared to pay full market value?
00:19:21 Julie Guest
It was probably gonna be a couple in there.
00:19:24 Julie Guest
You know mid 40s or mid 50s.
00:19:26 Julie Guest
Uhm, we knew the area didn’t need.
00:19:29 Julie Guest
So they they didn’t have to relocate, so they were they either lived in the area currently or they had friends in the area.
00:19:37 Julie Guest
They didn’t have to be convinced that this was a good area to live in.
00:19:40 Julie Guest
And and who who just really fell in love with the house?
00:19:44 Julie Guest
And so for me, being really, really clear about who I wanted as my buyer, I was able to be in reverse, engineer our marketing campaigns, to speak directly to those people and.
00:19:56 Julie Guest
You know, I never asked people their age when they were checking into our house because we made everyone you know show ID and stuff for insurance purposes.
00:20:04 Julie Guest
But when we went back over the data that we collected, interestingly enough, the vast majority of people that went through the house.
00:20:12 Julie Guest
Fitted that description you know and it just goes.
00:20:13 Justin
So it’s spot on.
00:20:16 Julie Guest
Yeah, it just goes to show the power of that of that target.
00:20:18 Julie Guest
So so step.
00:20:19 Julie Guest
Step one is is being really clear about who your ideal buyer is and a lot of people hesitate on that because they think that they’re being restrictive.
00:20:29 Julie Guest
And and they they they think that the way to attract more clients is to make themselves appeal to more clients.
00:20:36 Julie Guest
But the reality is that the opposite is true.
00:20:38 Julie Guest
The more specialized you can make your message, the more it’s going to actually speak to those people.
00:20:43 Julie Guest
And if you aren’t afraid that your business that you are being too restrictive.
00:20:49 Julie Guest
An easy way to do that is just pick multiple ideal buyers and create campaigns specifically for them.
00:20:57 Julie Guest
You know, like as as a real estate agent if you’re.
00:21:00 Julie Guest
Selling where maybe?
00:21:01 Julie Guest
You are maybe you specialize in equestrian properties and you have a whole website that just focuses on catering to the equestrian buyer and you talk about you.
00:21:09 Julie Guest
Know you’re you.
00:21:10 Julie Guest
Demonstrate your knowledge of the soil and how the fences are built and what to look for in the barn and all that kind of stuff.
00:21:16 Julie Guest
And then the flip side.
00:21:17 Julie Guest
Is that you maybe also specialize in luxury waterfront properties so you have a whole separate website for that and so there there are different strategies that you can use to really hyper target your ideal buyer.
00:21:31 Julie Guest
And if you have your ideal buyer, right?
00:21:34 Julie Guest
That that everything else kind of can flow so much easier.
00:21:39 Julie Guest
But if you if you falter on that first step, especially with the other six steps, it can make life a lot more difficult.
00:21:45 Julie Guest
So that’s one strategy that they could do immediately.
00:21:48 Justin
Yeah, one thing that I absolutely love about that strategy is that one thing that people don’t realize also is that the better you’re targeting your marketing, the less expense.
00:22:00 Justin
If it is like like obviously for all the reasons you just said, it’s a brilliant idea, but also the fact that if you just blasted a postcard to every single address in a 15 mile radius, you would have spent a fortune sending a ton of mail to irrelevant people.
00:22:15 Justin
So the fact that you can save all that money and you better reach out.
00:22:20 Justin
Target and you’re going to create a better relationship because the people receiving the stuff and the messages that you’re sending are the people who want to see it, right?
00:22:29 Justin
Like you know, someone who’s rich and and and lives in Beverly Hills. They don’t want to get an ad for, you know, used Chevy’s at a buy here. Pay here.
00:22:39 Justin
But right, and I think it’s just it’s so important.
00:22:43 Justin
It’s just so important to have that target really defined.
00:22:46 Justin
And it’s it’s actually been a theme on this podcast over many episodes about how important that is, and really defining the target.
00:22:52 Justin
So I love love that you brought that up.
00:22:54 Julie Guest
So to use your to use your postcard analogy, Justin, which is a great plan and mean.
00:23:00 Julie Guest
The the way you know if I had if I had $1000 to spend on a postcard and it costed dollar per post CAD.
00:23:08 Julie Guest
Most people would send out 1000 postcards, right? Because that that’s kind of what the vast majority of.
00:23:15 Julie Guest
People would do.
00:23:16 Julie Guest
But for me as a marketer.
00:23:17 Julie Guest
I wouldn’t do that at all.
00:23:18 Julie Guest
I would identify the top.
00:23:21 Julie Guest
200 prospects and each scene that.
00:23:25 Julie Guest
We want to pull.
00:23:26 Julie Guest
Postcards because, you know, as I’m sure you’re well aware, it takes multiple touches for somebody to actually take action on a specific ad campaign, and so by just being a little repetition, a little persistent, you can significantly increase your return on investment usually.
00:23:46 Julie Guest
When we do direct mail campaigns at our agency, our biggest response rates are not from the first mailing or even the second mailing.
00:23:53 Julie Guest
It’s usually from the 3rd, 4th and 5th mailing.
00:23:56 Justin
That’s that’s fantastic.
00:23:57 Justin
’cause I know one thing, a lot of small businesses that I see they do is they will do the postcard.
00:24:03 Justin
They will do the direct mail.
00:24:04 Justin
They’ll do it.
00:24:04 Justin
Once and they’ll say.
00:24:06 Justin
You know what?
00:24:06
Right?
00:24:07 Justin
We really didn’t get a big return on that.
00:24:09 Justin
Let let’s shift and let’s go to a digital strategy.
00:24:12 Justin
Then they’ll run a single Facebook ad and they’ll run that for a week and spend $1000 and they’ll say we didn’t really get a return on that.
00:24:20 Justin
Let’s try something else and they just keep going around around in this circle.
00:24:24 Justin
They never really see the.
00:24:25 Justin
Results and they feel that.
00:24:27 Justin
Sense of failure because they haven’t succeeded in their marketing campaign, but it’s really like you said, not having those touchpoints be repeated over and over and over again to really build that awareness and really start to bring people into the top of the funnel.
00:24:42 Julie Guest
But what you just described, like I call that the Squirrel syndrome, where you know you.
00:24:46 Julie Guest
Run from treat like.
00:24:47 Julie Guest
A squirrel running from tree to tree looking for new nuts.
00:24:50 Julie Guest
And you know, I’ve done it.
00:24:52 Julie Guest
I’m guilty of it.
00:24:53 Julie Guest
Have been guilty about in the past where I’m always looking for the next new exciting thing.
00:24:57 Julie Guest
And one of the best pieces of advice I was ever given.
00:25:01 Julie Guest
It was, you know, pick one strategy, just one and implement it like crazy.
00:25:07 Julie Guest
And before you move on to the second one and it takes an enormous amount of discipline to do that.
00:25:13 Julie Guest
But you know, for anyone listening who who can relate to what you just said about you know what I really tried.
00:25:18 Julie Guest
Direct mail released into you know postcard postcard.
00:25:21 Julie Guest
We did a mailing.
00:25:22 Julie Guest
And it didn’t work, or I really use, we ran.
00:25:24 Julie Guest
A Facebook ad and it.
00:25:25 Julie Guest
Didn’t work like it doesn’t mean that.
00:25:27 Julie Guest
It doesn’t work.
00:25:28 Julie Guest
It just means that you couldn’t get it to work the way that you did it, so don’t write it off as a strategy, but you could be so close to success you could just be right.
00:25:36 Julie Guest
That tipping point here don’t walk away.
00:25:39 Justin
That’s great advice.
00:25:40 Justin
Most people do give up right before at the tipping point, and it’s kind of a shame.
00:25:45 Justin
So you offered up what your best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten is.
00:25:48 Justin
So my next question is going to be what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in business over the years that you have taken as a powerful learning experience?
00:25:57 Julie Guest
Experience, so that is a great question.
00:26:00 Julie Guest
Unfortunately you gave me a heads up that you’re gonna ask for that.
00:26:03 Julie Guest
So I had a.
00:26:03 Julie Guest
Little bit of time to think because.
00:26:05 Julie Guest
I am I’ve made.
00:26:07 Julie Guest
So many mistakes in running my business and I I will say that the full confusion here like I used to be one of those perfectionists that you know was so scared of doing anything.
00:26:18 Julie Guest
In case I made a mistake and one of my mentors took me aside and said you have to make you know you have to give yourself permission to make.
00:26:25 Julie Guest
Mistakes the trick.
00:26:27 Julie Guest
The goal here is.
00:26:28 Julie Guest
To fail forward faster.
00:26:30 Julie Guest
Right meaning that to get to your destination you’re going to have to make all these mistakes, so you may as well go helpful.
00:26:37 Julie Guest
Ever make as many mistakes as you can as quickly as you can and get to success faster then.
00:26:44 Julie Guest
Then try and draw it out because no matter what you do, you’re gonna make mistakes.
00:26:48 Julie Guest
Or just he just basically said.
00:26:49 Julie Guest
Go for it.
00:26:50 Julie Guest
So there was another big piece of advice, but so I I digress your question.
00:26:54 Julie Guest
The biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my business is.
00:26:57 Julie Guest
UM, accepting a client who showed what I call red flag behaviors come into our agency.
00:27:05 Julie Guest
And you know, when you when you have a client that is, you know, incredibly disrespectful and rude and not committed and frankly abused so you know.
00:27:19 Julie Guest
It’s so it’s it’s demoralizing, not just for me.
00:27:22 Julie Guest
It’s demoralizing for my team, but it’s, you know when you when you go to bed at night thinking about a person and you wake up in the morning and you’re still thinking about them and you’re feeling sick in your stomach like that’s a sign that your client needs.
00:27:34 Julie Guest
You know you’ve got a problem with it.
00:27:36 Julie Guest
And so for me, you know, I I there’s one plan in particular, I can think of that in my early days.
00:27:44 Julie Guest
I really needed the cash flow and so even though even though they exhibited multiple red flag behaviors, you know I still took them.
00:27:53 Julie Guest
We still it.
00:27:54 Julie Guest
Sit with them.
00:27:54 Julie Guest
Into our agency and it just.
00:27:56 Julie Guest
Ended up being one of the most stressful, awful experiences I’ve ever had investors that you ever want to repeat.
00:28:03 Julie Guest
So yeah, that would be my biggest mistake.
00:28:07 Justin
Wow, awesome.
00:28:08 Justin
Thank you so much for being on the show today.
00:28:11 Justin
You are a rock star I I’m so impressed by your resume and all the accomplishments you’ve had and it’s.
00:28:18 Justin
It’s I’m grateful that you came here today to share this.
00:28:22 Justin
Of course, the book is the client Stampede that is out now at all major booksellers, right?
00:28:29 Justin
Plus, Amazon Barnes and Noble, and it’s available internationally.
00:28:30 Speaker 2
Right?
00:28:33 Justin
Is that right?
00:28:34 Julie Guest
Yep and sure.
00:28:35 Justin
Very cool, so thank you so much for being on the show.
00:28:38 Justin
I really appreciate it.
00:28:39 Justin
And if someone wants to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to do that?
00:28:43 Julie Guest
So the best way is just, you know, go to the client Stampede website which is just client stampede.com and you can fill out a contact form or I’m on Facebook which is the handler.
00:28:56 Julie Guest
At client Stampede or unlinked.
00:28:59 Julie Guest
And that’s the best way to get hold of me.
00:29:02 Justin
Great, well thank you so much.
00:29:04 Justin
I hope you have continued success in this journey and thank you so much again for being.
00:29:09 Justin
On the show.
00:29:10 Julie Guest
Thank you so much Justin.
00:29:11 Julie Guest
This is a fantastic show and I it’s very well being a real honor.
00:29:14 Julie Guest
To be here with you.
00:29:16 Justin
Wow, I just never would have thought of trying to sell my house for what I paid for it after it took such a big hit in 2008.
00:29:25 Justin
Julie was an incredible guest and I think she gave us some great insight and I loved again.
00:29:30 Justin
I want to reiterate that she brought up the importance of that target market because I’ve said this over and over again on the podcast.
00:29:36 Justin
Our guests have said it over and over again.
00:29:39 Justin
It is so important to be able to define a very intensely specific target market.
00:29:45 Justin
So you can get the most out of your marketing dollars.
00:29:49 Justin
It’s easy to advertise to everyone and hope that by spreading that wide net that you catch the people you’re looking for, but it becomes a very very expensive proposition to do it that way.
00:30:00 Justin
And as Julie explained, it’s much better to be able to take that same pool of money.
00:30:05 Justin
And retarget your prime target over and over again.
00:30:09 Justin
Thank you so much for listening today.
00:30:10 Justin
If you like this episode again, please feel free to like follow, subscribe and if you want to leave me that five star review, that would be awesome.
00:30:18 Justin
Come join us on the Facebook group marketing and service.com on Facebook. And of course if you want to shoot me a note my email.
00:30:25 Justin
Thanks so much for listening. We will catch you on the next one.