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Interview Transcript
Jack: Hey, this is Jack Mize and welcome to another episode of Online X-Factor. Today I’m really excited because I have a Facebook marketing expert. He’s also a speaker and a business coach. Welcome, Nick Unsworth. How are you doing, Nick? Say hey to everybody.
Nick: What’s happening, guys? Great to be here. Thank you, Jack.
Jack: You know, it’s odd. People see us…I’ve seen pictures that we’ve taken and people say: You know, Jack, are you and Nick related? Are you brothers? You’re almost like twins.
Nick: Uncle Jack, man. Uncle Jack. (laughing)
Jack: I’m going to tell you right now one reason I really like Nick is because I can get my Facebook answers from Nick. I shouldn’t say this but I’m not a big Facebook fan as far as the use.
People have actually heard me say it’s a big time suck. It is, but you know what? I know it’s great for marketing and I know it’s great for marketing local businesses.
You know why they call it Facebook, Nick?
Nick: Why? What’s that?
Jack: Because letsseewhogotfatandbaldsincehighschool.com was taken. I think that’s what most people do.
Nick: I can see that.
Jack: Most people start looking up…But as far as marketing, everybody’s there. So regardless of whether you like it or not or you think it’s a waste of time…I don’t know how many people I hear complain about ‘Why do I want to see what so and so had for lunch?’ Well, you know, the fact that you know what they had for lunch means you’re looking at it. So people are on Facebook.
So first thing I want to do is get some basics out of the way. Tell us a little bit about you and who you are, what you do, and what got you here.
Nick: Perfect, man. Again, thanks for having me here today. My background is I’ve been an entrepreneur for about 10 years and I have had local businesses for about 7 out of the 10 years -everything from real estate to – I had a business networking company that was similar to like a BNI…so lots of experience in the local market.
When I got into Internet marketing and more specifically Facebook marketing and social media marketing, all I did was use the same principles that local businesses use every single day… that’s things like asking for referrals, building relationships, creating sales that way and getting ideal customers through referrals.
When I saw the opportunity with Facebook marketing (because like I said that’s where all the eyeballs are – that’s where all the people are) and so I just decided to figure out how to market on it.
For me I wasn’t a power Facebook user, either. I was more of a kind of guy where I was on it but didn’t really use it, but I saw the opportunity and just dove into it.
I think what makes me a little bit different from other people who do online marketing or Facebook marketing is all my strategies are based off fundamentals that are timeless… ask for referrals like I was saying and things like that.
I got started. I started in my local area. I ramped up fast because I was getting results for local businesses very, very fast. My first 90 days I had over 100 local businesses as clients.
I want to tell you a story because it actually ties into a strategy I’m going to teach you guys today. What I did was in my first 30 days in the business cranking away I got a bunch of new clients, and I decide to run a contest.
I gave away an iPad and I ran ads on Facebook. I was explaining that I was giving away an iPad and I created this whole process. I also asked people to write reviews about me and my business and things like that, too, that were customers.
I simply targeted people that lived in Connecticut (which is where I lived at the time), but I also targeted Chief Marketing Officers, right? I said: Why not? It would be a demographic that could get me outside of the local market and into the national market.
So I ran those ads and within 3 days I get a phone call. It was a guy named Quincy. He was out in Hawaii. He calls me up and is like: Hey, I’d like to speak with Nick Unsworth. I’m like: Yeah, this is he. How are you doing? He’s like: Oh! I thought I’d catch the receptionist. I’m like: No, she’s off. Right? So he starts asking me a bunch of questions and says: Listen, Nick. We’ve got a big technology conference coming up in Honolulu in April, and we want you to be the keynote speaker.
I just about fell out of my chair, Jack! I’m like: Are you kidding me? It’s like my first month in the business and these guys are asking me to be a keynote speaker which I haven’t…outside of doing my 30-second commercial or 60-second commercial and BNI in a network meeting, I hadn’t spoken onstage or anything like that.
But of course, I said: Absolutely. What’s the payment? What do I get? He said: Well, we’re not on a big budget but we could pay a couple thousand bucks and travel expenses. Then he said: To get started I just need your media kit. Of course, I’m like: Alright. I’ll send that right out.
Get off the phone and here I am Googling…What’s a media kit? I’ve got no freaking idea. I was 27 years old and in the business…The point of the story is that from a Facebook contest, from ads, my first month in the business it positioned me as an expert (I hate the word guru…); it positioned me that way. There are great things about gurus but it positioned me in a way that set me apart from everybody else and landed me a speaking gig.
The next thing I knew I had national clients and I just continued that process on and on and on. That’s one of the things I’ll be talking about with you today – that process of running some Facebook ads – that local business can become that local celebrity or that guru in their market from that, which is great.
Jack: Yeah, and the fact that you kind of did this by accident, right? I see a lot of people that are doing Facebook by accident. I go to so many restaurants or I don’t know how many businesses I pass that have a ‘Like us on Facebook’ decal. Then when I talk to the business they don’t know why they need to get people to Like them but they just think it’s something they should be doing…getting people to Like my business.
So a lot of people are getting into it but without purpose and without understanding really how powerful it is. That’s one thing.
I definitely want to get into contests because contest implies prize. I like prizes. Lots of people like prizes. So is that the main thing that really draws folks into this…that there’s a prize or something that is a reward there?
Generally a reward implies that they have to take some kind of action to get that reward. Tell us how it works.
Nick: It’s really interesting. I’ll give an example and then I’ll dive into the psychology on it.
Just one of the niches that we are really successful with is local insurance agents. This is the insurance broker that sells auto and home policies. They’re in every town and every state here in the country. What’s cool about it is they do their business networking through referrals.
They’re always looking for new customers, right? So what we’ll do is create a contest page on their Facebook page. We’ll have them put together a video. The video explains how they enter. The entry method would be (1) writing them a review.
As you guys know, in local business getting reviews is becoming part of the new currency online for local businesses. So we’re getting them to write reviews. We’ve got a tool that actually shares them out virally to their friends – which is good. That’s one action.
The other action is we’re actually having them ask their network that sees the contest page to send in a referral.
We’ve got multiple actions here. Because we’re getting new traffic to the page, the Step 3 would be to get an insurance quote. What’s cool about that is when they email this out or they text or they call people in their network and talk to their customers they verbally explain.
They get their network to that page and when the video explains that process…what’s really cool is that it’s really not a raffle ticket for a chance to win an iPad that converts them. That’s not why they’re doing it.
The reason the whole process works is because the insurance agent (in this example) is doing what they should be doing with their marketing.
For example, they’re reaching out to their database so they’re following up. They have a video there that’s explaining how to write a review. It’s explaining how to send them a referral.
Imagine if you could take your entire database and you could educate them about how to send you a referral. That is absolutely invaluable because we get busy in business and forget to ask for referrals. Then if we do, people don’t even know how to give them to us.
I’ll never forget when I was a realtor my own brother was coming to town and he was going to use someone else because he was like: Well, I always thought you were so busy I didn’t think you needed the business. It’s like: What? So I just didn’t do a good job following up.
What’s cool is that process when you do a contest you’ve got a date, you’ve got accountability, you’re giving away a prize, and all the behaviors that are fundamental to a thriving business are in there.
So it’s the follow-up, educating about referrals, and then telling them how to send them in. Then what’s cool about the process is they go through it. They’ll get their chances to win.
What’s crazy about the social media on it is that you never know what to talk about on Facebook. Right? So if you’re an insurance agent you don’t really want to be talking about insurance. It’s crazy that you have to unlearn traditional marketing.
When you do a contest you just talk about the contest. Oh, we’re excited. We just got 100 new entries. Wow. Look at this review that someone wrote. Thank you, Mary, for sending in all the referrals. So your content becomes fun again.
On Facebook if you’re just building relationships with people and having fun, that’s how you’re going to get more business. So it’s really aligned with that. It creates great content. You’re getting the right behaviors. You’re getting referrals.
What I like is by the end of the contest you can literally look back and say: I got 15 referrals and that closed 9 pieces of business. Thank you, Nick Unsworth, for that.
There are so many other social media folks out there that teach you all this stuff but if it doesn’t make you money what’s the point? That’s the way I look at it and that’s the basics behind the contests.
Jack: You hit a good point, actually a couple of good points there, in the fact that a lot of people stay away from social media (particularly Facebook) because they can’t connect the dots of how this is going to bring them business or a new customer.
Then, too, you talk about insurance agents – but any business if it’s from referrals (I can’t think of any that don’t.) – this is a perfect vehicle or strategy for them to employ. When you say people don’t like talking about their business or you feel kind of awkward pushing your business but when you do a contest and you have that many people coming to your page and clearly they’re coming there on insurance, I’m sure they’re bound to ask questions around insurance.
Now all of a sudden you’re not forcing your information on them. You are now positioning yourself as that educator around insurance because people come and ask you questions on Facebook about a certain policy or ‘I have 4 teens that have had accidents. Do I have a shot?’
Now you’re an educator and you can also position yourself as that advocate for their success and the right insurance without even saying ‘Buy from me’, but ‘Here’s my suggestion for your situation.’ Then of course they’re going to want to turn into a client of yours.
That right there hits a lot because it’s not about Me-me-me…Look at me. I’m the best insurance agent…and all that. You’re having people come there from referrals which a lot of people are always trying to figure out how to get. (How do you get those referrals?) Now you’ve turned Facebook and connected the dots on how to make Facebook make me money because like I said, every business wants referrals.
Nick: Absolutely. I think that it’s the big switch between push marketing or interruption marketing where you’re just selling and out there trying to get people versus this way. It’s really an attraction model because you’ve got your own best customers and advocates referring people into your process.
The cool thing is if you do it that way and you’ve got a contest where you’re asking for reviews and you’re asking for referrals, you don’t need to have a big ad budget or anything like that because you’re only going to be asking people in your network. Your marketing is very low cost. It’s very simple and effective.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve run ads in Google and done a lot of different advertising and when you get cold leads they don’t know who you are really. The trust isn’t there and they’re price sensitive. For me they’re a pain to work with.
Whether it’s me doing business coaching now or back when I was a realtor, cold leads are cold leads. You take this model and you take your existing customers…just do a good job for them, come out with a contest like this, and tell them how they can support you.
It’s not just about the prize. You’re basically asking them: Hey, this is how I grow my business. If I add a dime for you, this is a way where you could help me out and I’d really appreciate it.
So when they write the reviews and send in those referrals these are so hot. We tracked the closing ratios in insurance and they’re closing between 50-70% of leads that come in because they’re ideal leads.
The way I look at business I only do consulting (one-on-one) through referral because I don’t want to work with people that don’t know me. I only want to work with ideal clients because life and business is much more fun when you have ideal clients.
Jack: Absolutely. Let’s do this. That sounds fantastic conceptually so let’s paint a picture, if you will, of how this would work. Pick an industry. We talked about insurance. Pick a chiropractor or mortgage company or something like that and paint a picture of exactly what this process would entail.
You are a business and let’s say I’m one of previous customers sitting there looking at Facebook or whatever. What’s the mechanics of how this works?
Nick: Alright, so we could do chiropractor, restaurant…you pick.
Jack: There are lots of restaurants out there and restaurants can certainly benefit from referrals so go ahead and let’s use a restaurant.
Nick: Okay. So if we drill down for a restaurant, in any of these scenarios the mechanics are more or less the same. With the insurance example…restaurant is a little bit different so let’s get the two perspectives.
With the restaurant their main goal is more people into the restaurant. It’s more foot traffic. So the mechanics would be deciding what the prize is going to be.
We’ve got one of our clients who has a barbecue restaurant and she’s actually been getting this huge award that’s a long story…but the social media is really kicking butt and she’s becoming known as having the best barbecue in her state.
A lot of how she’s doing it is that it’s kind of like a rolling contest. Anytime someone comes in she’s got little table tents up that say: Love our barbecue? Write a review right there and then and by writing a review you’re entering to win a cake.
No one thinks of her place as having delicious cake. It’s a barbecue place but she’s got this amazing cake and recipe, and now people are coming back to her place just to buy cake. When they’re there they’re buying brisket and everything else, too.
So she’s totally increasing revenues on a whole different line of menu that no one would even think about and her cost on it is very low.
So what’s cool is that anyone that comes in, you’re capturing foot traffic with window decals, table tents, and the servers just mentioning it.
It could be something that prints out on your receipts. Here’s a really important tip. It’s not saying: Give us your feedback. (Maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s bad.) It’s: Tell us why you love our barbecue more than anyone else’s in the world.
Jack: When you first said that – You love our barbecue? It’s not: Tell us what you think – or- Did you enjoy your experience? It’s: If you love us, tell us.
Nick: That’s the whole thing, and that’s what we train local businesses on because it’s all how you ask.
I don’t know about you, but if that’s my restaurant I don’t want people writing…It could be the best barbecue. It could be great but if that person had a raw experience…who knows? You don’t want to have less than 4 or 5 stars.
So it’s all how you ask and the way that you ask in a business that has foot traffic like that with brick and mortar. It’s verbally asking and in my case I could say something like: Hey, if you like this presentation go to Nicksfanreviews.com or Nicksgiveaway.com. Make it simple to ask. You’ve got the table tents, decals, things like that.
The mechanics would be… that page on Facebook there’s just a couple of parts. If you’ve got your contest in the case of that restaurant, every week they’re giving away a cake.
So it’s a lot of fun engaging content because it’s rolling. It’s ongoing and so all they’re doing is looking at anytime someone writes that review within a 7-day period all the reviews are time stamped. They take them and literally put them to little pieces of paper.
So literally they’ll take the entries and they’ll put them to little pieces of paper as raffle tickets, put them in a bowl, and make a video of her picking it out. And the weekly winner of the cake is so and so. That person has to come back to the restaurant (which is beautiful) and pick it up, and when they do that she takes pictures of them, too.
So now you’ve got content in what to say on Facebook over and over every single week.
Jack: And she’s got pictures to put on Facebook of happy customers. So are they writing the reviews online or are they writing it on paper in the restaurant?
Nick: Great question. The way we set it up is that there are different ways to collect reviews. For a restaurant you could actually have them writing Yelp reviews.
What I think is an ideal scenario in my case is to use this thing called Fan Reviews Application. It just ties to her Facebook page, drives traffic to Facebook (which is good), and shares to their friends.
The whole thing is that when they’re writing the review…to do it using that tool is key because if I write a review for this barbecue place and I write on Yelp and say: This is the best (expletive) barbecue I’ve ever had in my entire life. Everyone should try it. If you’re within 200 miles of driving distance you should come here and try it.
If that review is written on Yelp or anywhere else it’s going to end up on that site. The only people that are going to see that are people that are searching for barbecue that have that interest. There is some value to that, but none of my friends have any clue that I just had the best barbecue I’ve ever had. Right?
Jack: Right. So you’re talking about if you wrote that review on Yelp it’s not really shared out. There’s no viral aspect of that.
Nick: Exactly. It’s minimal and so the difference is using this Fan Reviews App is that when I write that review my personal friends on Facebook get to see that and hear about my experience. It ends up in their newsfeed. What happens is if I have 300 friends and 100 of them see that in their newsfeed the next time they go out to dinner they might think of that or they might ask me about it. It might create a conversation.
If you’ve got dozens of people doing that every single week …This woman has so many reviews going on so consistently that when she goes to a local Chamber of Commerce meeting or she goes anywhere people go: Oh! It’s Olivia! She’s like famous because everyone sees all these reviews from all these other people and it’s becoming this big thing that her barbecue has to be the best because everyone’s talking about it. It’s the most reviewed barbecue in her area and people see it on Facebook all the time so it’s creating that attraction.
Jack: And all it takes is she gives away a cake. I can tell you I’ve worked a lot harder to get a free cake before so it’s a great prize. So that really is a great way.
I tell restaurants especially it’s not just about getting new traffic and new customers. One of the quickest return on investments for restaurants is always to get your current customers to come back more often, spend more money, and tell their friends, family, and even strangers because this can go beyond just your friends. It gets shared and shared and shared.
It gives purpose to those decals, you know? When I talk to businesses and I see ‘Like us on Facebook or Go to our Facebook page’ and then you go there and it’s like…Why did you want me to come here? What do I do? So this has purpose and it’s something that isn’t really a chore for people to do if they really enjoyed the food.
Sure, let me tell people about it. That right there just because if it’s online and it’s on Facebook think about how much more powerful that is than ‘Fill out this form. Here, can you send this to your friend. Here’s a coupon. Spread it around.’
Right there on Facebook it’s instant. It’s digital. So you see something like a barbecue restaurant that’s seeing instant results from this.
How quickly did it take to ramp that up to where you implement something like that to where she’s actually seeing people come through the door as a result of that?
Nick: Yeah, that’s how the strategy was born. It just drove me crazy to look around and say: I just can’t accept that doing social media marketing. There was this expectation of people that you just do it because you should and it’s for branding and exposure but no one knows how to track and measure it. To me that was crazy.
What’s nice about this strategy is that if you’re doing a contest where you’re giving away a cake every week and in her case, she can just measure by just literally her weekly sales revenue and just look back at what’s historically happened last year versus this year. That’s a real rough way to do it but she’s seen a major upward trend just because she’s doing it consistently. She’s been doing it for 6 months. She won’t stop.
For the insurance guys the nice thing is that as far as their return on investment when you do the contest the great thing is that it’s like a 10-day promo. So it might take you a few days to set it up and really do your video and things like that, but once you do your 10-day promo you just look at that 10 days and see how many new pieces of business came in that 10 days.
What’s cool is we’ll take someone and inside of 2 weeks if they’re moving fast or inside the first month and you can track back real clients within a 30-day period that’s really cool. So it’s the instant gratification that I find.
For me to do coaching and Facebook consulting it’s vital to get my clients results fast then they start to question why they’re paying so much. Know what I mean? So my whole thing is the faster I can get my clients results the faster you justify what’s going on and the happier they become.
Jack: Well, yeah, and clearly when you see results like that it’s like ‘I have them on the front page of Google. Now what?’ So what do you think are the 3 biggest return on investment a business could do with Facebook. Let’s face it, a lot of businesses claimed their Facebook page and they’re at a position of Now what?. If you could think of 3 things they could do right away to get the biggest return and not just so they can say they’re on Facebook but actually get some activity and do something of consequence, what would be the 3 things you think they should do?
Nick: Okay. I would say that definitely putting together your first contest is a big one. It just creates (like we talked about) incoming action and referrals and leads.
The other thing is that running Facebook ads to your own network…I mean, there’s a really cool technique where you can upload your own email list and run ads to it. Again, having you be seen on Facebook on that right hand side, people know that those are ads and they see Mercedes there, BMW there and then it’s like: Whoa. My local chiropractor is in there. You assume it costs a lot of money, as a consumer. It’s just crazy.
It’s so hard to explain the brand impact of running ads. I’m talking you could do $100 as a budget and the next time you walk in that Chamber of Commerce meeting you’ll see what happens.
Jack: You become a celebrity.
Nick: Exactly.
Jack: That’s where you get recognized as that expert. You think back to the days of when it would cost you tens of thousands of dollars to get on TV in your local market and for nothing else but for people to say: Hey, that’s the guy from TV. Now especially as the younger generation is growing into those consumers with disposable income and have spending habits, I know my kids’ YouTube is just as impressive as being what I thought was on TV.
When they see your picture on Facebook there’s that psychology with it so that’s definitely something that I think a lot of businesses don’t even consider or think or have any idea of what the path is into there. That’s a great one, too.
So Facebook you have contests, you have ads, and anything else as far as …A lot of people worry about engaging. I don’t know if I want to spend a lot of time...what type of content is easy enough to put out there that you can keep active?
Nick: Yeah, the third one here I would say is a review. I like to think of reviews and like over-delivering and kind of all in the same process. We’re in a day and age now where it makes more sense to put more time and energy and effort and even dollars sometimes into over-delivering for your clients because that’s how you get amazing reviews.
I think about different examples of companies that instead of having a big marketing budget they’ve simply focused on ‘We’re just going to go so far and beyond for our clients that they’re going to be our marketing department. Our clients are not going to be able to help it. They’re just going to be talking about us.’
To have that attitude and to come at it from that way is really important. So with getting really good reviews that will help you in your content because when you think about what you’re going to say …for me or you or any business owner to be tooting your own horn on Facebook as a status update trying to profess why you’re the best at what you do is just awkward. No one likes it.
No one wants to see it or read it but if you were to take your best review and screen capture it and you shoot it out as a photo and people can see the text of the review…and then you just say something like ‘I just got this review from Jack Mize today. I totally respect him. He’s this big guru in the industry and look at what he said that made my day.’
For my friends and fans to then see that and my Likes to see that it creates the brand perception without you tooting your horn and being arrogant.
What’s crazy is that when someone sees that if you were to just send out a review once a week as a status update you have all these lurkers, right, all these people that don’t engage or do anything – they’re just creeping over there- but they see it and they see it and when they see you at an event or Chamber meeting or BNI, people will come up to you and say things like: Man, does it look like you’re doing well! Holy (expletive)! You’re giving away iPads. You’re giving away cakes and everyone just seems to be loving what you’re doing.
I get that all the time at events and it’s just a function of getting reviews and sharing those as content. It’s a killer. It’s awesome.
Jack: The way I put it very succinctly to my clients and customers is you want to turn your customers into fans. You focus on turning your customers into fans and you allow them to do the marketing for you.
Nick: Absolutely.
Jack: That’s what you’ve kind of put together in a really doable and achievable method of doing that. That’s fantastic.
What is the number one thing that you think local businesses are doing wrong…not that they’re doing nothing, but that they are actually set off on a path or maybe sent down a rabbit hole by someone who is telling them ‘This is what you need to do on Facebook.’
What do you think it is as the number one thing that they’re doing wrong that they should stop and focus on one of these other strategies?
Nick: I think it’s probably a lack of focus. I see a lot of local businesses where there’s just so many people selling so many different things and strategies and it’s like when it comes to social media I look at their business and they’re trying to do Twitter. They’re trying to do Pinterest and they’re trying to do Google+ and Facebook and LinkedIn and it’s just too much.
The way I think about it is I’m a Facebook Marketing Expert today and have been for the past couple of years because that’s where I can get the best ROI for me and for my clients in the social media industry, but if it were to change one day and Pinterest becomes the place to be, you can bet your (expletive) I’m going to be the Pinterest guy because we just have to stay focused on what’s working and what’s making you money because everything else is a distraction.
There’s only so much time in the day and if you’re a local business owner you are oftentimes the business and you don’t have a marketing department or the bandwidth so you just really need to focus and drill down in doing simple strategies that you can execute that don’t take up too much time.
Then having the strategy. There are so many people kind of like what you pointed out. They’re on Facebook but they don’t have a purpose. They don’t know what they’re doing.
So drill down and focus your energy on doing something and doing it well and the consistency in having a plan is going to just make you look good.
If you don’t…I’d rather someone not have any Facebook presence than go on there and just fart around and just look bad.
Jack: That’s exactly it. The point is I’ve talked to businesses that were sold this idea that ‘Here, I’m going to sell you a thousand clever quotes and you can just every day post these and people will think you’re just fabulous.’ Really it’s just annoying. Man, how do I get them off my newsfeed.
I’m sure you see it all the time where people just rattle off these weird quotes and it has nothing to do with their business at all but somebody sold them on this and they’re spending time. That’s a rabbit hole to me. I just think you’re diluting the power of what you could be doing when you post these crazy quotes every day.
You know, I can pretty much guess what your answer to this is going to be because I think I know what my answer would be on this, but what is that one thing, that X-Factor, that a local business can do to really position themselves as that educator, that advocate, and to position themselves as the local guru in their industry using Facebook? I think you answered it but I want you to put it down.
Nick: We’re just going to wrap a bow on it. It is the Facebook contest. You can even run a very small budget of ads to your own people to get them to it, but that contest will give you the brand positioning. It gives you the engagement. You can try tangible business and referrals out of it. So it’s got it all wrapped up into one simple strategy.
Jack: I think what makes that the X-Factor is the percentage of businesses. If you take all businesses as a whole how many businesses are even paying attention to this even being possible…that would even conceive that this exists? I think that’s what makes it the X-factor. You could probably be one of the few if not the only business in your niche or your industry locally that is doing this kind of thing.
Nick: That is such a good point because I teach this through group coaching and things and I’ll have people that are in the Internet “marketing industry”. It’s still new in that industry but when you bring this to the local business it’s like this is like – blows everyone away. They’ve never seen anything like it.
We talk about the X-Factor. That’s why this creates such a wild factor because it’s so unique. The cool thing is even if we fast forward two years from now I don’t think it’s ever really going to be saturated, but right now there is that sweet spot that is just so unique that no one is doing it.
Whenever you can be that person that stands out in your marketplace, man, forget about it. You’re going to draw a lot of attention to it.
Jack: Here’s what I want to find out before we run out of time here. What’s next for Nick Unsworth? What can we look forward to and find out what you’re up to?
Nick: Alright. So what’s in the hopper is I’ve been loving doing the Facebook group coaching. I’m starting a new website called LifeonFire.com. It’s going to be talking about entrepreneurs like Mr. Jack Mize.
We’re just going to have lots of cool people from local businesses, but really focused on online entrepreneurs. They’re just talking about how they’re building their business and really how they’ve built a lifestyle business and how to attract the right clients.
A lot of it is going to be focused on online marketing strategies that do work in the local market, too, but it’s primarily Facebook marketing strategies, videoing marketing and things like that.
So that is a big project and I’m really excited about it, but I’ve got nothing but love for Facebook marketing so I’ll always be doing that, too.
Jack: That’s beautiful. I want you to leave us with one last thing here. What do you think should be on the top of the local businesses’ reading list right now?
Nick: Great question. You know what I would say? I read Delivering Happiness by Tony (I can never pronounce his last name.) Hsieh. Tony Hsieh (Shay, I believe it’s pronounced.) So he was the founder of Zappos and Zappos is the world’s largest online shoe retailer. At the time no one thought that you could possibly compete with shoes. People have to try them on. They’ll have to return them.
What’s crazy about that book is it’s not only just a very engaging entrepreneurial story but the other thing is that the core message behind it is it’s really about, like I said, the over-delivering and customer service being the X-Factor for their business. They over-deliver and they would find certain ways to do that.
So for you guys in local business find one place in your marketing funnel to give them an unexpected bonus…not a bonus but maybe a card or a handwritten note that doesn’t come at Christmas or on a holiday.
It comes out of the blue and it just says ‘You want to know something, Jack? You’ve been a client for 9 years and I just wanted to say that I appreciate you and thank you for your business.’ Know what I mean? One of those things that just makes people feel good.
In Zappos’ case – they’re selling shoes so they would have anyone who buys their shoes the expectation was like 5 or 7 business days before they actually get them. When we buy something online we all want it like right away, right? We all want it like next day.
What they did was they figured they could wow people and create such a buzz by giving them free upgrades to VIP. VIP has a separate website to buy on. You get separate support. But you get FREE overnight FedEx shipping.
It’s happened to me too….buy a pair of shoes think it’s coming in a week… Freaking box shows up the next day. I’m like: What happened? It’s like…look at my email and I’m like: Oh, I was upgraded VIP and all this stuff. That is so crazy.
So they have literally built their entire business through word of mouth from their customers. In the beginning stages they didn’t spend any money on advertising. It was all driven by their customers. And to see that story and to learn all the different ways of how they built it and the culture of the business is just awesome.
I think if you’re a local business and reviews are important as they are for everybody, then that will give you a good frame of reference. Then just think of what’s that one thing you could do for your customers that’s out of the blue/unexpected that will get them to write you that ridiculous review. It’s awesome. Great folks.
Jack: It could be simple like you said. It could just be one of those: Oh, by the way, here. That’s fantastic.
Well, Nick, I want to thank you so much for coming on. You’ve given us some fantastic ideas. We’re going to throw some links underneath your post because I know you mentioned a lot of different resources and things like that. We’ll throw that on there and I’m going to have to have you back here in the future because you touched on some things that kind of sparked some curiosity for me on what could be a whole other conversation. So we will definitely do that.
Nick: Awesome.
Jack: Good luck with your new Life on Fire?
Nick: Life On Fire.
Jack: I can tell you if you want somebody who gets passionate about what they’re doing Nick is one of the guys. Just make sure you don’t confuse us because I know we look a lot alike. Alright, folks, that’s it. This is Online X-Factor. I think you’ve got some information that can give you that X-Factor so that you can become the local guru in your industry.
Until next time, see you later.
Nick: See you, guys.
Brilliant interview. Lots of ideas just overtook my brain.
Yes, brilliant describes it well. I will be implementing Nick’s strategies this week.
Thanks Jack and Nick for this interview. Awesome ideas. I am in the process of learning more about Facebook Ads. Signed up for the live stream on the 16th. Looking forward to learning more.