The Virtual CMO

Meetup Groups and Pitching Your Irresistible Message with Patrick M. Powers

October 29, 2020 Eric Dickmann Season 3 Episode 4
The Virtual CMO
Meetup Groups and Pitching Your Irresistible Message with Patrick M. Powers
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Patrick M. Powers.  Patrick has developed a unique way to connect with his customer with emotional marketing, which helps him evolve his process to create the 3 key components that every business should implement to craft a unique and irresistible message. 

 Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and his website https://ericdickmann.com

Patrick M. Powers can be found online on Twitter @Patrickmpowers

Episode Summary: The episode summary can be found at https://fiveechelon.com/meetup-groups-pitch-irresistible-message-s3e4/

If you'd like to contact us with feedback or guest inquiries, please visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/podcast

For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com

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The Virtual CMO podcast is sponsored by the strategic marketing consulting services of The Five Echelon Group. If you’d like to work directly with The Five Echelon Group and receive personal coaching and support to optimize your business, enhance your marketing effectiveness and grow your revenue, visit Five Echelon.com to learn more and schedule a free consultation.

Eric Dickmann:

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. This week, I'm excited to welcome Patrick Powers to the show. For over 20 years, Patrick has been teaching entrepreneurs and leaders how to create more freedom, success, and happiness through applying advanced principles and tactics of influence to their marketing ads, presentation, leadership, and social interactions. He's obsessed with creating irresistible messages that stand out, create trust and compel people to action, to maximize influence and profit in their sales funnels. As founder of the world's second biggest meetup group with over 27,000 members, he is one of the most connected business people in London. Please help me welcome Patrick to the show. Patrick welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.

Patrick Powers:

I'm super excited to be here, Eric. Thanks for having me.

Eric Dickmann:

Hey, you're welcome. I first wanted to start out and learn a little bit about this meetup group that you created in London. Talk to us a little bit about the Genesis of what that is and what it is today.

Patrick Powers:

Sure. So now it's second biggest business meetup group in the world. We're just over 27,000 members. And, I started at a very. Very curious time in my life, where I was literally afraid of my survival. So start a meetup group. I had no money and very few connections in London, but because of my copywriting skills and my networking skills, and actually also events, running skills. it, it took off and it started growing fairly well. And after three years, I've tested a little bit of, Facebook pay-per-click and, got a little bit money from one of my friends to start putting into Facebook. and then it just blew up. literally from one a month to the next, we doubled our attendance from around 65 people to the events, to about 125, literally overnight. And as they say, the rest is history. So we became the biggest in Europe. And, now we're the second biggest business meetup group in the world.

Eric Dickmann:

is this similar to like a BNI network group where people get together and exchange expertise, or is it more of a training group where you actually you're our training people on specific skills?

Patrick Powers:

it's both actually in it, but, I would say we're very different. our energy of the events have very different and we try to be as much different from BNI as we can, and not anything bad about them. But for me, they're a little bit boring and they're very like stiff format and all that kind of stuff. We try to be exactly the opposite and attracting a younger crowd of entrepreneurs. and in fact, some of our early campaigns would say the most on boring networking event in London.

Eric Dickmann:

Oh, that's good.

Patrick Powers:

because that we have an incredible energy, at the events and. I would say the only, complaints we've had throughout the years, I think we had three or four was always from people over 55. So I realize is relatively quickly that I'm not going to advertise for people over 55. We don't because they don't like our energy. The younger crowd loves her energy. So what we both do, networking, managed, just purely networking events. Would you say. Hang out and have fun. And then also talks, with top entrepreneurs. And sometimes we do like light workshops, but it's not any heavy trainings.

Eric Dickmann:

I know you talk about the fact that we are living in an era where we are bombarded by messages. We've got all these channels that we're dealing with. We walk around with our phones attached to our bodies. We are just seeing messages, advertisements, promotions, nonstop. What's really happening inside our brains, as we are trying to filter through all of these messages.

Patrick Powers:

That's a great question. And it really is become brutal to stand out because what happens in our brain is that we would just become numb to almost everything we become used to seeing new things all the time that what we need to do is really be. More new if that makes sense, we have to do something that completely stands out from the competition. Because the way the brain is constructed is that we actually don't really pay attention to something that is the same as we've always seen. Or if something is still if you imagine our. primitive brain, if we're going like 10,000 years back in a field of grass and there's really nothing going on around us, we can relax. But if there is something moves from something moving and we have to pay attention. that's how a brain is constructed is that it pretty much only pays attention to things; the shifting. if it's familiar, we don't need to pay attention. We might pay attention to it, but we don't have to. But if something that we haven't seen before, we have two biologically, literally brain has to pay attention to it. And that's why, for example, If you want to create a video and, you would take one video where we just standing or sitting and explaining your stuff. as opposed to you put a camera in a car and say an exactly same thing. You get way more engaged in the car because there's more movement. Alright. so that's just one aspect that the eyes and the brain want to pay attention to something. when there's movement. The only other way is if you are just. Like by yourself and talking is that you have changes in scene where you shoot in and out every three, four seconds or something like that, so if you want to produce the media, for example, either you do it with a lot of movement in the video, or you do have to do a lot of changes in this scene afterwards to create that shift constantly to keep the attention.

Eric Dickmann:

That's a very interesting point because I think some people wonder why when they're watching a YouTube video or something on television, why even if somebody is just sitting there talking to the camera, there are all these cuts. Even if they're very small, they're all these like cuts to break things up. But that's exactly why they're doing it. It's not necessarily a stylistic choice. It's because that's what it takes to keep the brain engaged.

Patrick Powers:

Literally. Yeah, absolutely. The same thing applies with voice, right? So I was so frustrated I have the best content. Like, why are people not buying? And I just couldn't get it. And then I got this voice coach and it was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. So if you have a monotone voice, same thing, people won't pay attention. It just becomes boring. So you have to vary your voice all the time. So that's five things, new voice you actually have to bury. one of those is most people would realize his pitch. You go up and down and you have to do, they have a song. but that's also Tembo and stops like that. constant variation.

Eric Dickmann:

I think that actually segues well into the next question that I had, which was really about when businesses craft messages. I feel the two often the message is a fact based message. And it's not a story, or it's not something that appeals to emotions. emotions are really what drive behavior, right? Not facts, but too many businesses focus on the facts.

Patrick Powers:

Yeah. Com. Completely. There might be a few exceptions where you have something that is. Such a unique and new feature that you want to lead with that relatively early in the marketing, but it's the exception. and I would say 95% of the cases that I see. People are not using emotion nearly enough emotional, or I should say stories. The stories are very powerful as well. so yeah. people make decisions based on emotion. I'm not based in facts.

Eric Dickmann:

That's probably one of the keys to Instagram success is that when you've got that visual image, that evokes an emotion. and I think that's why the stories feature in Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and all those others have been so successful as well is because it allows you to package up a little bit more of a story. Obviously the name and that drives more emotion. That drives more engagement. And I think we're going to see more of that. And that's one of the reasons why maybe there's more engagement on a platform like that. Then let's say a Twitter. That's mostly text-based.

Patrick Powers:

no doubt. And you have to master video marketing. You literally, if you don't get on board with video marketing and I don't have a video marketing agency, I'm not here to pace. I've been saying this for years and years. But I sit in way before I even started moving into that space myself. so if you don't get involved in video marketing, you're going to be toasted and four or five, six years, literally you will be toast.

Eric Dickmann:

I completely agree with that point. And I want to drill down into one of the things that you talk about, which is around business messaging. And you talk about three must have things that you need to have for your messaging. And the first that you talk about is having that big idea, drill into that a little bit more and talk about the big idea.

Patrick Powers:

Okay. So the big marketing idea is something that will make you completely stand out. It could be your USP, but it doesn't necessarily have to be because it's more about your. The uniqueness of your marketing campaign. So for example, my new book, the New Marketing Manifesto. The big marketing idea for the new marketing manifesto is that. There is, that the way that we make decisions is completely irrational. Okay. and therefore, unless you know how the brain. Makes irrational decisions. You're not going to be able to market effectively to the brain. Okay. So I could have said, I could have said, Oh, just the secret to marketing success or whatever, how to attract more customers and blah, blah, blah. But that would just be the sameness, something completely sane.

Eric Dickmann:

So you have a big idea. And then the idea is that once you get this idea, you have to create some sort of a, an irresistible message around that idea. Correct?

Patrick Powers:

Yeah. so basically it's Like in this example you might know a lot about marketing, Perfect. Get all about that because now there's a new thing and it is that you have to understand irrational marketing. You have to understand the rational brain that becomes the new, big idea for that creates a foundation for why you need this marketing book and not other marketing books.

Eric Dickmann:

No, I think over the last couple of years, especially we have a Russell Brunson to thank for this is that people are talking about funnels. Nonstop talking about funnels and creating a funnel to drive sales on your website. And this has obviously been big for a lot of soloproneurs who are creating courses who are doing specific work, but it's true for businesses do as well. they need to create a logical funnel for people to progress through in order to make their sale. What's your thought about how to create a funnel that actually converts.

Patrick Powers:

first of all, there's so much money left on the table from people that don't have a funnel and don't think about. Extending their funnels. It's like just one example. It's like when you send out, if you send out a physical product, I can't tell you how many times I get something nice. Especially these days. Where do you shop more online? I get a product in. Okay. There's the product. And then there is nothing else. I'm like. They are completely missing an enormous opportunity to sell more. How about having something in there that says, Hey, 10% off our next. Your next order, if you subscribe to our newsletter. So if a funnel is basically just a series, instead of just trying to sell to them once is trying to construct a chain of products that fit together logically. Okay. And also, and this is the biggest error people make in general, in business, I believe, especially in creating funnels, is that. most companies just don't have a funnel. They just have type of web site and said, this is what we do. Okay. But nobody will buy from you, any significant amount of purchase if they don't know you. That's why most businesses. And I see so many times I asked him, where do you get your clients from? it's mostly from referrals. and I look at their website. It's like no wonder, because. Nobody will go to website from somebody that he don't know that don't trust and buy something from them. again, unless they were referred by someone. So what do you need to do is you need to prove your worth first, not trying to sell something, or at least not try to sell something off of a high value, but give something away for free or, a very cheap trial, like. one,$1 trial or something like that. Because we have built in resistance, extends to buy and everything were skeptical, right? So we want our suppliers to prove to us that there were the, before we make a serious bind decision, that's why you should start with something free or very small, and then gradually build it up as the trust builds in that relationship. it's so funny that people completely understand the logic behind that in the store. Social world. You wouldn't go into a, a bar and walk up to someone and say, Hey, you look like a really nice girl. Do you want to marry me? That's just, it's insane. People understand that in the social world. We have to, have a chat first, get to see if we like each other, pay it, then, we offer a free drink and then we go out and have a dinner together. And then. Goes further and further. it's gradual process yet in business. Most businesses things. Seemed to think they can make that big sale. They can ask. They can ask, for the marriage right away. But it just doesn't work.

Eric Dickmann:

So it's really understanding the life cycle of the sale, understanding what stage that prospect or customer is in and being able to deliver the right message at the right stage of that sale cycle. Correct.

Patrick Powers:

Totally. Totally. Absolutely.

Eric Dickmann:

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO onsulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. where are businesses failing here in terms of their messaging? When you sit in front of the television or you get on social media and you start to see some of the messages that are going out there. What comes across to you over and over again, as ways that businesses are failing with their messaging.

Patrick Powers:

first of all, don't lead with something that is, That is safe enough for people to try out, write something for free. Okay. Let's give away something for free. they basically asked for too much, it's too unsafe for somebody to make that choice. That's the first thing, but the worst errors are being too bland, not being bold enough. We've got to be bold. We gotta be different. You got to come up with something that is just more, in some ways more creative stands out. and it could be the smallest things. It doesn't have to be huge things. I'll ask you to give you one example. the headline put more romance into your life. Was improved and improved by 300% increase response rate by putting, or they just, by changing one letter in that headline. and it's putting an S at the end to put. So it becomes, puts more romance into your life. so sometimes it can be very small changes that yields enormously big results. But typically people are just too bland and they almost try to copy. What they see competitors are doing. and I understand the logic is if we see competitors being successful, I said, if they're successful with this, let's do the same thing and we'll be the same. But that's just not how things typically work, because if you competitors out there with a message, That they're doing well with. Then why would people buy from you? If you have the same message. They wouldn't, especially if you're the newbie in the market. If you newer than them people will buy it from the more established ones. if you are newer in the market, you've got to have a measured, the stands up, be bold, be specific as well. it's just unbelievable how many messages or see that is completely generic. Like how to increase your sales. Oh, wow. I've never heard that one before. It's Come up with something more unique, right? Just, this is a kind of a bad example, but you'll understand it. And then from just increase your sales to, new sales method increases your conversion by 53% in S in six days. it could be the exact same strategy. And in fact, I've. Work with many people. When I started digging into it where they said something like increase your sales and I start digging into it. And found out, wow. you have something really unique here and which has proven to create these incredible results in a miserable, in a, in a finite amount of time. It's like, why not say that? And Oh yeah, I guess you're right. And then just. making that small twist and you will just see response rates go up by 50. 100%, sometimes 200, 300%. That's amazing. So being been through. Bland being too generic. Also not putting your personality into it, put your unique personality. And so too many smaller companies, again, try to emulate big brands and being like very corporate because they think, Oh, we will look bigger. And that's. It's such a big mistake you want to be personal instead. So just to give you one example, for example, my email send off. Is, most people just, okay. thanks for contacting us or have a great day or something like that. I say, I have a brilliant day and may the high conversion be with you? Right. So that's. Okay. So first of all, it solidifies what I'm really about is increasing conversion in marketing campaigns, but also it is actually a bit of humor. And that's just, I'm not saying that you should be Humira humorous, but I'm saying you should be putting your personality into your marketing. And that's just my personality. I like humor. I like those kinds of people in working with those kinds of people So put more personality into your marketing as well.

Eric Dickmann:

there are a number of good things that you mentioned there. And one of the things that I couldn't agree more is that I think far too many businesses spend so much time and money generating leads, but not necessarily converting those leads. The money goes out the door in terms of advertising and, trying to develop awareness. And then they get people's interests. They come to the website, but they don't convert them. And some of the simple things that you talked about, adding, an s to the word puts, changing your email headline, changing the text on a website. I had a guest on a couple of weeks ago, talking about conversion rate optimization, and it's sometimes the smallest little things that can have a measurable impact and you move the needle one, two, 3% on your conversion rate for some businesses that could be a significant amount of money.

Patrick Powers:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It could be the difference between a marketing campaign that bombs and the one that succeeds. And also, because you have multiple steps. If you just add 1% here, 5% there and you. 8% there certainly you have a massive difference in the outcome. And then I'm also shocked about how few people test their results. They just don't test anything. It's just, yeah. it's incredible.

Eric Dickmann:

What about sales letters? I think that sales letters are often an element of your marketing approach and there needs to be some science behind what you do with a sales letter. where do you see fault with a lot of the sales letters that you've seen? I know you help coach people in terms of writing those. what direction do you give people?

Patrick Powers:

That kind of same thing being, just to blend general headlines. Or here's the classical one, having the name of your product or surface as the headline. if you're a small company, people don't care about your name. so where people go wrong is going to try to emulate big business marketing, but big business and small business market is to completely, oddly different things with big business. What are you trying to do? Basically marketing apart from getting attention? and building desire, you try to create trust. is one of the biggest elements and the ones that are actually, overlooked the most. Because small businesses don't understand it. That the big business, the way big business create trust is they have big budgets and they plaster their brand and the name everywhere. So when you've seen it enough times, you get a feeling of familiarity and trust. But we don't have the luxury of small business owners. We gotta get people to take action right now. Because of that. you've got to make it easy for people to make a decision thereby in the beginning. Give them my way, something for free. And it has to be unique. So again, the classical example that put the, your name as the headline. Nobody cares about you name. It doesn't have any effects. It has to be a promise, right? That's another thing I was, I was doing a training a couple of weeks ago for an organization. And I was doing some research to explain to them the difference between what most people do and what you shouldn't be doing. And I used the example of a business coach. I was looking for business coaches in London. And even the top ones that came up and even the ones that I could see there were there, were you using paid advertising? Their headlines was some something to the extent of just either just a name, that personal name or business coach. But. I don't care about their name or business coach, but if somebody said. proven way. Guarantee you double your lead flow. In two weeks. Or your money back. Now, this is a promise. You have to give promises. People only take action. If they're given value and business, coach is not value. You name is not valued, but w lead flow in two weeks or it's free. That's a promise. That's a value that somebody's offering me something of value that I could be interested in. At least I might not be, but at least I could be interested in that value. Therefore you have to lead with something really valuable. In the beginning.

Eric Dickmann:

it absolutely. It makes sense. And I think if you look to old school marketing, right? When you had a air conditioner, repairman or a plumber, it was very common for them to have their face plastered on the side of their service ban or the car dealership that would run an ad during the evening news every day. And you had these goofy characters on TV that you would slowly get to know over time or Real estate agents that would put their pictures on their business card. All of these were techniques to build trust. And I think now we're moving into an era where businesses have to use tools like video to start to personalize their brand a little bit more. And I've talked to a number of business owners that have been very camera shy that don't want to get out and do that. But they said once that they moved past that initial hurdle of just getting over the discomfort and starting to attach a face to a brand. it, humanizes people a little bit more, and that's where that trust

Patrick Powers:

started

Eric Dickmann:

to get build

Patrick Powers:

Yep. It's so important per the personal trust is so important today. Like again, with small businesses, people more and more these days want to know who's behind the brand. They buy in the person, not the brand. They want to know what are these people stand for? Can I trust this person? and it's so funny, I get this all the time as well that people say, Oh, I'm not really comfortable on video as well. Are you comfortable being broke? I comfortable going bankrupt. Which one are you least comfortable with going broke or being on camera? because there is no other choice. Like you either you learn to be good on camera or you go broke, maybe not happening that happened this year or next year, but it's going to happen. There's going to be a point where you just have to, you have to show your personality.

Eric Dickmann:

I think one of the positive upsides of the COVID pandemic, if there is any, is that it's forced a lot of people to remote work. Now people are doing video conferences like we're doing right now. television news anchors that are reporting from their living rooms. sometimes the sound quality. Isn't great. Sometimes the video breaks up sometimes the cat walks, behind you in the picture. And I think what it has done is it's lowered the bar, right? It's lowered people's expectation of what that video experience has to be. And I think all of a sudden people are getting a little bit more used to letting people into their homes or just Posing their personality and realizing they don't have to be perfect. That sometimes those little funny quirks, the thing that you have on your wall or the dog barking at the mailman, that's all. Okay. Because that's just life.

Patrick Powers:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So right in any really is not about having that perfect thing, right? It's show your personality, be you. and that's one of the best tips I can ever give you and then get on video and become comfortable with. And also you will suck, if you haven't done media before. It's not possible. To not be bad. You literally will be bad. The first 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 times. But you just, it's just learning experience. It just is. You are to issue and to become good at it. Because one, one day it will start to flow. It will be more natural for you. And then suddenly one day you will wake up and you'll be really good at it.

Eric Dickmann:

Patrick. I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about your book, The New Marketing Manifesto. first of all, congratulations, it's an effort to put a book together and to get it out, understand that. So tell the audience a little bit about it and also where they can get it.

Patrick Powers:

Sure. It was interesting actually. I mean in lucky situation because of my network, I've never really actually needed a proper lead magnet because almost like my meetup group is actually my lead magnet do that, if that makes sense, because the comes to, they become members of the meetup for free. and then they come to a very cheap event where they can meet other people, including me. And so that's where that's beginning trust. I wanted to develop something I can do more online. I started writing this report and I thought it was going to be like 9,000 words and suddenly it was 14 and something was 17. And I was like, wow, this is turning into a book. and that would never happen. on this, I was in lockdown. I just found himself to be credibly creative, actually being locked away from other people. So that was interesting. And, um, as we talked about before, he really is about all the quirkiness of the brain of how we make buying decisions. And people can go and get a free sample of the book is not completely done, but they can get a free sample with three, free chapters on patrickmpowers.com. Patrick with a CK and then M like mother powers.com. it's right there on the top of the page. Just click on the link that says get a free sample. And one of the chapters, they're all good. But one of the chapters is seriously. Seriously. Good. An actually about how do you stand out? Even if you do in completely the same as your competitors. I give you a completely and totally the same as you competitors. How do you actually stand out for them too? Look like you are completely fresh and new in the market. Not necessarily new in the market, but you're doing something unique.

Eric Dickmann:

Patrick. I think messaging is so important. And I think, I will go download this myself and take a look at what you've got there. I'll make sure to link up that in the show notes so that everybody has access to that. So I, it sounds fascinating. And I thought you had some really insightful tips on messaging and what businesses need to do to stand out, especially not trying to copy their bigger, larger competitors, but have a personality. build that trust. Patrick. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show today. And like I said, I'll make sure to have all your social links and everything in the show notes so that people can find you online.

Patrick Powers:

Brilliant. It was a pleasure, Eric. Thank you for inviting me.

Eric Dickmann:

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.