How to Build an Audience of Your Dream Customers (with Rich Brooks)

Angela Frank: 00:00:00

Welcome to The Growth Pod.

Today on the podcast we have Rich Brooks, who is the founder of Flight New Media and a nationally recognized speaker on entrepreneurship, digital marketing and social media.

He is the author of the Lead the Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing, a book that helps entrepreneurs and marketers reach more of their ideal customers online. Rich has appeared in Inc. Magazine, The Huffington Post, fastcompany.com, c CNN.com, the social media examiner, and many others.

Rich welcome to the podcast.

Rich Brooks: 00:00:31

Angela, thank you for having me.

Angela Frank: 00:00:33

I am so excited for our discussion today. You're going to be sharing how we can build our audience and find more of our ideal customers.

And with that, you're also going to be sharing how we can attract less bad customers. But before we get started, can you share a little bit about why you're the expert that we should be listening to on this topic?

Rich Brooks: 00:00:51

I hate to say that I'm the expert on anything, but I have been doing this for quite some time.

Flight New Media, I started 27 years and we've worked with thousands of businesses over the years on all elements of their digital marketing and including branding. So why people should be working with them, what makes them stand out or be remarkable.

And I also like you have a podcast, the Agents of Change we just dropped episode I think was 537. So I've been doing podcasting for over a decade interviewing other digital marketing experts. So I've been around and I've seen a few things.

Angela Frank: 00:01:26

Amazing. I am even more excited now for our conversation today. The first thing I want to ask because our conversation is going to focus around content.

How can we create content that people even read in the first place? I understand the value of creating it, but what happens after I create it? How do I get people to read it?

Rich Brooks: 00:01:47

Great question. And I think the first thing is that you're not writing for everybody. You're writing for a very specific person.

So you know, a lot of the upfront work that anybody should be doing, even if you're just starting out, you're not exactly sure who your ideal customer Persona is, is that you should kind of imagine who that person is, get an understanding of them. If you do have a little bit of experience, start to pull from your current customer database, ask do surveys, ask questions.

You know, what were you going through when you first chose to work with us?

You know, what were you looking to accomplish all these sorts of things and then continue to create the content, whether it's written word, podcast, video, what have that addresses the pain points of that specific person, that's going to help a lot.

And I do believe that, you know, whether you're driving traffic to your content through search engine optimization or social media or digital ads or some other format, that the more you focus the content around a specific person's pain point, the more likely it is to get seen, get served up by the search engines and that get shared by like minded individuals.

Angela Frank: 00:02:56

Yeah, I think it's so important what you said. Even if you don't know who you're speaking directly to, try and create an idea.

And I think this is something that people really overthink in the beginning, but it's something that you refine over time. You're not necessarily going to know straight out of the gate when you're starting your business the exact type of person that you're talking to.

But like you said, by having a general idea, you're able to create content that's more relatable and will bring the right type of person in. And then over time, possibly you can refine your message and really find where you know your sweet spot is.

Rich Brooks: 00:03:34

Yeah, and you may move up market over time. You know, you may start with, you're just working with, I don't know, mom and pop shops.

And then at some point you realize that you can do better work for people who can invest more in their marketing or invest more in whatever you're offering. And so you start to move up market and that's totally fine. You can take some of your old content and actually repurpose it for that audience.

You can be aspirational for the person that you're writing for.

Angela Frank: 00:03:58

I love that.

So I think we all kind of understand the importance of creating content, but how do we go about building an online presence that turns these people who are visiting our written content into paying customers?

Rich Brooks: 00:04:14

That answer has evolved over time. And even if you'd asked me a year ago, I might have given you a slightly different answer.

You know, SEO search engine optimization has always been something that I've kind of focused on over all my years.

And all the challenges changes because I know from looking at my analytics and my clients analytics that SEO and organic search tends to drive the highest amount of conversions. The people who are more likely to fill out a contact form or click on a Buy now button, what have you.

So I think that in the past I would have said let's definitely focus on creating better content for your blogs, for your content.

But as I've realized over the past few years, and maybe this has been a shift, is you're really going to get more bang for your buck on what I might call your sales pages or your service pages. So you can't just rely on your service pages.

There's a lot of other benefits to blogging, and when I say blogging, it could also be a podcast, could also be videos, but you really want to optimize some of those service pages, because if you look at your analytics, your GA4, and you've set up things like, you know, conversions or goals, which I recommend everybody do, then you can kind of go into your website, see where your traffic's coming from and what has the highest conversion rate.

And I'm guessing that what you'll find is that the people who landed on your homepage or one of your service pages converted took whatever that desired step was at a much higher rate than people who read your blogs. And so that may make you feel, why do I need a blog then? Why don't I just create the world's greatest service pages?

And, you know, it's going to be like banking money. But to get people to your website in the first place, you have to kind of build up some momentum.

And I think that's where blogging and similar content creation can really help. It may not immediately lead to sales, but it does kind of help you show your expertise.

It could lead people from your blog to a service page and then to your contact page.

So you need to do both of these things, but you might want to focus on really optimizing those service pages to address the pain points of your audience.

Angela Frank: 00:06:20

Okay, that's interesting.

So when you're building out a service page, I think people who are listening are probably familiar with the landing page and obviously like the key components of a website. But how does a service page differ from what we would think of as like a stereotypical landing page that would.

You would use as like, you know, for your paid ads or for a sales page, for maybe a course you're selling. How do the service pages differ?

Rich Brooks: 00:06:46

Well, when I. When I create a landing page, one of the first things I almost always do is strip out the navigation, because like you said, it is very specific job.

So I'm sending somebody from paid ad, a paid social ad, paid search ad, or maybe an email campaign, what have you. And all I want to do is get them into that page and then out through the other side.

When I'm thinking about a service page, that's one of many pages people may land on or visit while they're on my website, moving through my navigation so conceptually, a lot of the content might be the same. But what I want to do when I'm thinking about a service page is first of all, I'm not going to list all my services on one page.

That's what I see a lot of businesses doing and that's a mistake.

So, you know, for a company like ours, which is a digital agency, we might have one page that talks just about SEO and what we do, another page that talks about just about Google Ads and what we do, Facebook ads and what we do. So branding and what we do.

And what I'm doing on those pages is I'm trying to address some of the pain points of my ideal customers who have I helped in the past. What were they going through and writing that content to kind of address those pain points?

Because people don't want to get sold to, but they do want to learn a little bit about it. So I'm going to try and answer all the questions they may have.

I may also include some things like testimonials on this page because they want to see people who maybe also had problems with SEO and that they were struggling and then they worked with our company and suddenly they were getting much better results and generating leads and sales. So they want to see testimonials that that's social proof. So that's something that would go on a landing page, but also should go on a service page.

And then also another thing that could go on a service page is authority or badges.

So if you've been certified, you know, maybe you're an H Vac provider and you've got certifications from the state, or maybe you're a restaurant and you got Best of Boston last year and you want to put that, those are badges that kind of also show that I've got authority in this area too. That can also reduce some of the concerns somebody might have coming to your website.

And again, these are also excellent things to put on the landing page. But there's also.

The landing page is so straight and narrow, just like a tunnel where a service page people may move from place to place on your website.

Ultimately, my goal as a website creator is to get them from my service page to my contact form, whether it's at the bottom of my page or whether I link off to a specific page that has a contact form on it.

But those are some of the key elements that would go towards creating a service page that's really going to help you convert visitors into prospects and leads.

Angela Frank: 00:09:17

Amazing. And if somebody is a product based business Instead of a service based business, do you recommend product pages or PDPs?

Take the place of the service page. And how do you display your service pages in the nav?

Rich Brooks: 00:09:30

So for the products, I think I'd probably treat them similarly. If I had, you know, 10 products or five products that I was selling, I would definitely have a page free each one.

I want to create something that's as narrowly focused as possible, that addresses it. And you know, obviously different types of companies are going to have different types of products.

They may be very similar, they may be very different. We're talking to a customer right now that has an ecommerce site selling awnings.

Some are fabric, some are aluminum, and those are two different needs, those are two different pages. And then you can kind of break it down from there on the different styles and things like that.

So you're never going to have too many pages likely on your website. You do need to have a certain amount of content per page, but you never have to worry about having too many pages really.

So that's one approach that I would take. And as far as the navigation goes, I would probably try and be as descriptive in my primary navigation as possible.

So I try to avoid words like services, offerings or products and be really specific. Like it might be in this case aluminum awnings and fabric awnings would be a.

The probably the two primary navigation items that are in there and then either using a dropdown menu, if it's only a few items and if it's a lot of items, then I might go with what's called a mega menu where that menu expands across the screen and there might be multiple columns through that and then people can navigate within that. I try and keep my navigation as simple as possible.

I try and keep the number of choices on my website as minimal as possible because the more choices, then all of a sudden we get into the paradox of choice. People get, you know, overwhelmed and they just hit the back button and go back to Google and look for your competition.

But in general, I do like to be as specific with my keywords in my navigation so people know what they're getting before they even click on those links.

Angela Frank: 00:11:15

I love that.

I think it's so important what you said about bringing the keywords into the nav so people are understanding the type of category that it is and also focusing on what's most important instead of trying to overwhelm them with options from the beginning. Because like you said, they'll just leave back to Google and look at somebody else.

If it's too confusing, people, when they're on your website, their attention spans are so short. So I think that's really key.

But I want to take it back a step and understand how you think about the customer journey and how some of these elements that we've discussed play into that.

Rich Brooks: 00:11:52

So whenever I'm working with a client and we're talking about, like, you know, I. People call me up and they're like, I need Facebook ads. And I'm like, maybe you do, maybe you don't, but let's figure this out.

And some people talk about the customer journey, some people talk about the sales funnel. They're very similar. It's just the perspective. I prefer the customer journey.

I recommend that we, as marketers and as owners really try and understand what was the pathway that led people to choose us in the first place. And then it may be more than one pathway, so we need to be aware of that. And so what are the searches that they may have done?

What might they do on social media or Reddit or Quora websites to ask some questions and start their customer journey that's ultimately going to lead them to our page? And once we've kind of figured that out, there's a lot of models out there for the customer journey. I like to keep things simple.

So I just like the simple three steps of awareness, consideration, and decision. But whatever model works for you. And so then I start to work my way back and I'm like, what are those triggers for awareness?

When does somebody know that they need a new H vac system, or they need an awning over their window, or they need email marketing services? And so what would they do in those situations? Are they going to go to Google? Are they going to watch a video on YouTube?

Are they going to ask their friends on social media? Will they check out, review sites? And whatever I can kind of discern is the most likely pathway.

That's where I'm going to set up my roadside attractions and my information booths to really direct that traffic towards me if it's the right kind of client for me.

So by creating these pieces of content along the way, I can help direct people, but I can also inject my own personality and my own perspective and my own approach into this so that people can kind of say, I like what Rich, or I like what Angela is saying here. That resonates with me and I want to do work with them. Or they might say, that's crazy. That'll never work.

He doesn't know what he's talking about and then they'll go find one of my competitors. And I'm okay with that, too.

Angela Frank: 00:13:55

I love that. I think that leads us really nice into this next question.

So obviously not every customer is going to be the right fit, or not every prospect will be the right fit for your business, as you just alluded to. You often discuss the concept of using content to repel bad customers.

Can you tell us a little bit more about how we can make sure that we're attracting the right customers and turning away the ones that aren't going to be the best fit for us?

Rich Brooks: 00:14:23

Yeah, and this is something that you kind of learn a little bit by doing. The more experience you have, the better you get at spotting those red flags along the way.

But anybody who's been in business for any length of time has had those clients. I don't want to call them bad clients. Let's just say that they're not good fits, they're not in alignment with us.

And so that's a really critical thing. So you need to decide what are the type of. And this is like a good exercise to do is looking at your favorite clients, your best clients.

What is it about them? And if you've had some bad client experience, what was it about those clients also that made them bad fits for you?

And so then you can start putting into whether it's your kind of like marketing content and blog content, which is more on the educational side, or on your service pages, and even in your proposals, like all of that should go in there. So, for example, for us, one of the things we've realized is we really need somebody who is going to respond to us in a timely fashion.

Like, every project that that has gone poorly in my history is usually because the client has gone MIA for a while. So we talk about that and the importance of showing up for meetings and the importance of committing to this process and doing these things.

And we talk about how it's going to be a lot of work in certain areas. And these are certain things that you need to be aware of.

And by doing that, I know that we're pushing away certain people who are looking for a different type of solution.

Or another thing we do is when we talk about digital ads, like, everybody wants immediate, you know, or not everybody would love it to work immediately. But the truth is digital ads can take quite some time to really start returning a positive roi.

So we write about the fact that you've got to be patient and it's going to take time, and it's an iterative process.

So if somebody is looking for a get rich quick solution, they're not going to choose us, which is great because then we're not going to disappoint them because we don't believe in get rich quick solutions. And whatever it is that you believe in, you can put it out there. And it could be also things that are in alignment with your politics.

You know, years ago, Ben and Jerry's came out with an ice cream flavor called Pecan Resist. And they took the first hundred thousand dollars of profit and put it towards four progressive organizations.

Now, there were people on the left who thought that was brilliant and went out of their way to buy more ice cream. And there were people on the right who thought that was horrible and decided they were never going to eat Ben and Jerry's ice cream again.

But it kind of helped them show where they were politically and it attracted more of their right type of clients. And you know, if you don't like my liberal leaning example, you could also take a look at MyPillow. Right.

So nobody buys a MyPillow pillow these days because they want a good night's sleep. It's because they either agree with the guy who's in charge of MyPillow or they don't.

So you can attract people based on some of your other criteria as well. Even if you could have gotten that business, you may want to think about, are these the kind of customers that I want to serve and support?

And so by sharing more of your philosophy, whether it's political or not, it doesn't have to be, but that can attract more people who are going to give you the benefit of the doubt, who are more likely to be advocates for your business in the long run.

And also to push away some of those people who might be crabby about things will be the first one to run to Google review and leave you a one star review. Really? Because they had the wrong set of expectations.

Angela Frank: 00:17:31

Yeah, I love what you said about the review because it's not just repelling the prospects that aren't a good fit for you, but it's also thinking about how down the road these clients are going to be taking your time. You might need to be babysitting them, they might be leaving you bad reviews.

And so all of these things are not only attacks on you, but the other people involved in that process as well, whether it's client management or what have you. So I loved what you said about, you know, just making sure that you're putting it out there.

The type of person you're trying to attract and that will naturally repel the people who are not a good fit.

Rich Brooks: 00:18:09

Right.

And one good example, and this has happened many times, we've worked with clients who, like, they're, they're not the least expensive option out there.

And so, you know, just talking the other day to one of our clients, a new client who's a general contractor, and he doesn't want to take on a home building project for less than $1 million. And for a lot of people, that's way more money than they're going to spend on a house. But he is working on the coastal properties.

He does really high quality work. So one of the things that we're doing is as simple as on that contact form, one of the questions is, what is your budget?

1 million to 1.5, 1.5 to 2, so on and so forth.

So if you're less than $1 million, you've immediately realized that this is not the home builder for you because he's not even going to return your calls. That saves you time and it saves him time as well. It's not elitist.

It's just saying that we work with homes that cost this much money to build, and if you're not willing to spend that, then we're not a good fit for you.

So there's a lot of these small little things that you can do along the way that will continue to pull in the right type of clients while also sticking your hand out and avoiding those bad fits.

Angela Frank: 00:19:12

Yeah, you're like nudging them either in the right direction or you're politely kind of showing that you're not the right fit for them. It's not something that you have to do in a rude way. It's something that can be really naturally built into your funnel. Absolutely amazing.

So, Rich, you are a published author, a recognized speaker, you're running a successful business, but I'm curious, what's next for you?

Rich Brooks: 00:19:36

What's next for me? Well, right now, AI is consuming almost all of my thinking.

I'm doing presentations on artificial intelligence, and I'm working it in right now to the SOPs that we're doing at flight and trying to get some consistency with me and the rest of my marketing team on where and how do we use AI Because I feel like it's got to be a critical piece of everything we do going forward.

And I just want to make sure that we're doing it in the most ethical way possible and understanding where we use AI and also even more importantly, where we're not using AI, especially when it comes to content creation. So probably the next six months to a year is just going to be a continuing journey about how AI is going to impact us and all of our clients as well.

Angela Frank: 00:20:17

Very interesting.

If anyone is listening and they're interested in keeping up with that journey or just anything else that you have going on, where's the best place for them to do that?

Rich Brooks: 00:20:27

Well, since they probably already like podcasts, I'll recommend that they check out my podcast at theagents of change.com and also if you want to just get in touch with me, I love talking about businesses and marketing plans. I am the Rich Brooks on every platform, but I spend more of my time at LinkedIn, so that's a great place to reach out and connect with me.

And happy to answer any questions that people may have.

Angela Frank: 00:20:50

Amazing. And everything you just mentioned will be linked in the show notes.

So if you're listening at home and or you're on your commute or something like that, it'll be there for you when you get safely out of your vehicle. Rich, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation today and I know that I got a lot out of it and our audience did as well.

Rich Brooks: 00:21:09

Me too. Angela, thank you. Great questions from beginning to end.