Brian Johnson: Really Big (I’m Talking HUGE) Marketing Mistakes. How to Repeat Them and How to Avoid Them. It’s All Up to You

Brian advises some of the largest companies in the world to improve their profitability and overall performance.

In this presentation he discusses, among other things:

• Business cycles, and what should take place within each cycle for the business to succeed
• Planning: how to create bridges from where you are to where you want to go
• Vision and Values: How to use them ethically to move the business forward
• Meetings and Rhythms: How to plan meetings that are effective
• Hiring: The processes he uses to isolate the best candidate for any job
• The proper way to do split testing
• How to maximize the attendance and conversion at webinars
• and much more…

Million dollar advice for any business person.

Brian works with major corporations, showing them how to turn their businesses around.

Objective: Give the 60,000 ft view of many topics so participants can pick those that apply to them.

9:56 Business first: Most businesses concentrate on tactics and wrap their business around a tactic. Have to understand their vision and the strength of their team. They must have passion for their vision.

Mudt understand their own strengths and the strangths of their team.

Resources: Need to have resources in place.

12:45 Business cycles:

Formulation:

• Anticipate
• Plan
• Hire
• Create
• Coordinate
• Test
• Prepare
• Marketing foundation
• launch plan

13:47 Don’t spend too much time perfecting everything because you don’t know what will work until your product is launched, and only then should you make adjustments. Some companies spend years perfecting the product and never get started 80% marketing, 20% product development.

At this point there should be a dry run. You can even start marketing the product before it is perfect.

16:50 Concentration

Phase 1

• Listen
• Adjust
• Test
• Market
• Improve

Chaotic stage

Phase 2

• Organize
• Develop procedures
• Hire
• Build out
• Marketing plan
• Grow
• Prepare

This is where preparation meets opportunity (PMO)

Most companies don’t make it past this stage. They may take off and then die.

19:17 Momentum:

• Hyper Growth
• Must react quickly Work toward stability
• Do not revamp (change product, vision, etc)
• Focus on stabilizing

This is the stage where businesses grow quickly.

If you don’t do the preparatory steps you won’t be able to grow.

If you have to revamp you have to back up and go to concentration again.

21:03 Stability

• Business Development
• Expand into verticals
• Massive multichannel integration
• Split testing
• Sand off the edges
• Invest and grow

22:25 Planning

Need to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to go. People develop an unrealistic plan.

Building the bridge:

• Need a strong foundation
• Leverage resources you have availalble.
• Be prepared to evolve
• Be flexible to changing environments.
• Be sure it can handle the traffic

You need clarity to get the confidence to move forward.

26:36: His 4-step planning process

28:22 Vision of values:

A lot of companies don’t use their vision or values in their business. They create them as a marketing statement but don’t live them or create a culture around them.

You should use them in your decision-making process.

32:28 Checklist for a powerful vision statement:

• Is the vision statement future-oriented?
• Is the vision statement likely to lead to a better future for the organization?
• Does the vision statement set standards of excellence?
• Does the vision statement clarify purpost and direction?
• Does the vision statement inspire enthusiasm and encourage commitment?
• Does the vision statement set the company foar apart from teh competition?
• Is the vision statement ambitious enough (best in the world)?

34:00 Performance plans

5-7 major initiatives

Meetings:

• Regularly scheduled management meetings
• Whole team meetings
• Special situation meetings

37:13 Delegation Checklist (slide in resources)

38:22 Brian reviews the steps they have for hiring people, and shows a chart that shows how they identify the good and bad employees.

41:00 He explains how to find the root cause of a problem using a “current reality tree”. Most businesses get this wrong. They apply band-aids instead of digging for the cause of the problem.

• Cause of problems usually comes down to:
• Poor management
• Lack of Leadership
• No planning
• Lack of clarity

42:55 The Golden Thread is a metaphor for the decisions, data/analytical processes, technology, and behavior that link strategy and results.

Each bend, twist and cut of teh thread reduces the quality of the gold delivered at the end of the process.

The thread to a sale should be as short as possible.

He gives an example of how companies confuse the process and send the prospects away.

Testing

45:55 Monkey business illusion video which shows why you may miss important insights when testing.

48:22 Split testing: Write your hypothesis out up front. Otherwise you may be testing the wrong thing or may not understand your results.

49:09 Verify the data: Run more than one test because sometimes Google’s data may be off.

Must do your own testing. Don’t accept the results from others.

Accept the reality. If you have valid tests, accept the results. Make sure your traffic is pure for each test.

Baseline: Must be statistically validated. They raraly do multivariant testing. More variables means that the results may not be accurate.

59:30 2 simple changes they made that increased email conversions for several of their clients.

1:01:20 He shows changes they made in Precious Moment’s email to increase conversions and talked about the thinking behind the changes and what they tested.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Most marketers don’t maeasure the impact of email click-throughs to company profits

1:04:46 He explains a simple webinar process that they use, what they measure at each step, and what metrics to focus on when trying to increase conversions.

1:07:21 Automated campaigns: 200% higher conversion rates and remain effective for a longer period of time. They free you up to work on other aspects of your marketing.

1:08:46 Positioning of the webinar. Called it a strategy session.

1:11:03 He tells what copywriters should focus on when script-writing…not just the script, but the other factors.

1:12:27 He shows the first 3 minutes of a powerful video they created for a company that specializes in marketing for chiropractors. They call it a documentary and it leads into the strategy session

1:16:25 Life cycle vs lifetime value: Why life cycle is more important.

Only 2 things you can do with a customer: increase the life cycle or how much they spend during the life cycle.

Trace the life cycle and identify deflection points. Focus on how to keep them a customer. It is harder to get a new customer than to keep a current one.

1:20:22 More Automation = more attendees. Shouldn’t be more stuff.

Building automation priorities.

Key areas:

• Registered
• Showed
• Stayed
• Sales Page
• Purchase

Don’t build for every contingency. Just those that can move the needle.

1:23:47 The formula’s been amended to The MECLABS Conversion Sequence Heuristic, and add to resource links that they can find it here: https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/15-resources-repeatable-process-for-cro

1:26:25 Direct mail is working really well.

1:26:51 He spends 10 minutes explaining how Precious Moments is changing its marketing. He gives a lot of tips about making marketing more social.

Social media: Used to support the direct mail campaigns. They use interactive QR codes.

They are moving more to a social/sharing model, which is how they started.

1:32:50 Optimal number of form fields: 7

1:35:15 Best time for them to send email: weekends

Cut 1:36:45 to right before the end where he signs off.

1. Analyze your business’s resources and your team and fill any voids that you identify. You can use the suggestions in the Speaker Q&A panel to help hire the right staff.
2. Determine what business cycle your business is in right now.
3. Are you concentrating on the correct elements of your business, as described by Brian, for the cycle you are in?
4. Map out a strategy to move your business to the next cycle.
5. Implement.

There are no resource links for this video.