How to Build Influence – In Just 7 Minutes with Brian Basilico

Resources/Links:

• www.baconpodcast.com
• Best Note Taking App | Organize Your Notes with Evernote

Summary
 
Brian Basilico is an award-winning, internationally recognized author and speaker (and a self-professed geek). He’s the founder and president of B2b Interactive Marketing Inc., an award-winning marketing consulting and production company in Aurora, Illinois.

In this episode of Marketing the Invisible, Brian shares how to build influence by building an authentic relationship.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 00:45 – Brian Basilico’s professional background as ‘The Master of Marketing Sizzle!’
• 02:07 – His ideal clients – a business that has a 20-year-old as their receptionist marketing person and the owner is about 50 years old and they know that they need to do online marketing. And they say you know what. I know nothing about this I don’t want to learn it.
• 02:58 – The lead generation problems he helps to solve through creating relationships
• 03:27 –The symptoms his clients experience when trying to achieve the lead flow and sales conversation problem
• 04:47 – The mistakes his clients do when trying to solve their leads and conversation problems
• 05:22 – Brian’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): Learn how to use the 3 kinds of posts when you’re dealing with social media: engagement post, content post, and a sales post
• 06:55 – Brian’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Best Note Taking App | Organize Your Notes with Evernote
• 07:51 – What’s the bacon about? Bacon is an acronym. B-uilding, A-uthentic, C-onnections, O-nline N-etworking

Tweetable Takeaway from this Episode:

“The biggest problem with most marketing is people are so into selling they don't understand the nature and the benefit of developing relationships.” - @bbasilico Click To Tweet “If you develop relationships you have a long-term client for life.” - @bbasilico Click To Tweet

Transcript:
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: Hello everyone. A very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible.

Tom Poland:My name is Tom Poland and I live on the sand a Little Castaways Beach in Queensland Australia. Joined today all the way from where the heck you hanging out, Brian?

Brian Basilico: I’m Hanging out in Aurora Illinois which is right outside of Chicago Wayne’s World Party on excellent.

Tom Poland: Well you can’t really get two more different parts of the planet. I mean you’re in the darkness. I’m in the sunshine. You’re not like I’m on a little beach and yet here we are with modern miracle of the internet web thingy.

Tom Poland: Let’s rock and roll.

Tom Poland:For those of you don’t know Brian. He is an award winning internationally recognized author. I mean he really is not like the other people who say that so there is a global speaker. He’s a self-confessed geek which you probably tell by the special effect lighting is got happening there.

Tom Poland:He’s a founder of B2B Interactive Marketing Inc. It’s an award winning marketing consultancy and production company in Aurora, Illinois founded in 2001.

Tom Poland:The part I want to get in here because the rest of his bio reads like Warren pieces that impress you. Also that long but I want to get in here is that he’s got this damn shirt to broadcast is one of the best I’ve come across that is called The Bacon Podcast nothing to do with anti veganism. It is a twice weekly show includes tips and tricks. Guest expert interviews and I can tell you from personal experience Brian is a incisive interview that holds his guests feet to the fire to extract maximum value for you, his beloved listeners, and in fact Bacon Podcast has been rated as one of the top 35 outstanding podcast. It’s chosen by Inc magazine which is pretty damn clever.

Tom Poland: So Brian, drumroll, our seven minutes starts in a tickety boo. Our subject today is how to build influence. And we’re going to tell people how to do that in just seven minutes of time does start now. Question number one who is your ideal client?

Brian Basilico: My ideal client is a business that has a 20 year old as their receptionist marketing person and the owner is about 50 years old.

Brian Basilico: And They know that they need to do online marketing. And they say you know what. I know nothing about this I don’t want to learn it. So what they do is going to hand it off to the 20 year old.

Brian Basilico: And the 20 year old goes, “OK I can do that.”.

Brian Basilico: So she goes on Facebook and she goes LOL , WTF , How are you today?Check out my puppy. You know and she’s talking to 50 year olds in Oregon.

Brian Basilico: What the heck is this? So my clients are the perfect client that needs to understand how to market to their audience.

Tom Poland:And probably hopefully just aren’t smart enough to know how dumbly our digital marketing and that they want to hand.

Brian Basilico: Exactly.

Tom Poland:So question two, six minutes 10 seconds left. What is the exact problem you solve for them?

Brian Basilico: he exact problem I solve is I help them get their message out in a way that generates leads.

Brian Basilico: And that is through creating relationships. The biggest problem with most marketing is people are so into selling they don’t understand the nature and the benefit of developing relationships.

Brian Basilico: They want to hit that easy button that’s all they want. I want to hit the easy button I want to sell stuff but the big thing is if you develop relationships you have a long term client for life.

Tom Poland:Amen that brother. So what are some of the typical symptoms that people experience before they get to to work with you?

Brian Basilico: Very simple. It’s usually B Sauce which is bright shiny object syndrome. They go to a seminar, they go to a conference and some guy stands up there and says. “Facebook ads do Facebook ads… that’s all you’ve got to do is Facebook ads and you could sell and make a million dollars today,right?

Brian Basilico: Well they do. They go home they learn Facebook ads and they do it and they fail.Twitter you’ve got to be on Twitter you know. And they go through Twitter and they feel like LinkedIn I can give you my million dollars strategy I’m going to get you 10 15 thousand dollar clients in 25 minutes and they go do that bail.

Tom Poland:Yeah.

Brian Basilico: Because the principles they don’t understand the core principles so that’s what I bring to the tables help them understand those.

Tom Poland:You might have answer partly question four which is what are some of the common mistakes that people make when trying to solve the problem of the lack of leads.

Tom Poland: Clearly they go off and chase bright shiny objects and do stuff that they aren’t really you know to be honest frank and competent in perhaps.

Tom Poland:But are there any other common mistakes they make in trying to get lead flow happening apart from hiring the 20 year old receptionist and following the bright shiny objects.

Brian Basilico: Yes, they we all over themselves.They Yeah. In other words what they do is they constantly talk about themselves. We do this. We do this. We do this. we Do this. And so that’s where they don’t understand how to get the other person involved in the conversation.

Brian Basilico: They’re so busy trying to sell themselves set themselves up as the experts since the company to do business with that they forget that a whole concept is about the other person so that’s the biggest mistake they make.

Tom Poland:They wee on themselves. Thank you. It doesn’t sound nice.

Tom Poland:Question number five,can you give us three minutes,39 seconds left so no pressure.

Brian Basilico: One Variable Free Action that an audience member could implement that’s gonna help them solve the lead flow problem.

Brian Basilico: Yes there are three kinds of posts when you’re dealing with social media and I’m going to stick with social media for the time being. OK.

Brian Basilico: There is something called an engagement post. There’s something called a content post and there’s something called the sales post.

Brian Basilico: Engagement post is to your broadest possible audience. An example of this is I do a caption contest every single night and a quote of the day every single morning while it creates an incredible amount it literally takes five minutes a day but it creates so much engagement from a very broad audience that it raises me up in the algorithm so more people see my content.

Brian Basilico: Then when I post my podcast I post my blog I do something which is educational content. More people will see it. Not everybody who is going to be in the caption contest is going to be interested in it, but the ones that are will actually click on it and listen to it and read it and consume my content.

Brian Basilico: And then that gives me the audience that will eventually get on my email list will pay attention to my podcast where I can actually get them to a webinar and tell them about how I do what I do and that’s the sales content, So I can do a sales pitch inside of a Facebook ad. I could do a sales pitch as a just that post and say come to my webinar I can do all of those things but I have to earn that. You can’t just go right for the sales bit so that’s the basic concept of how that works.

Tom Poland:That is incredibly powerful and valuable. Thank you. You’re two minutes left two questions left one valuable free resource that we can direct people to that’ll further help them with the LedGen problem.

Brian Basilico: My absolute favorite tool that is free is Evernote.

Tom Poland:And the reason I love Evernote is because you can have it on like for example on my watch. All right. I’m out walking my dog. I come up with an idea for something that I want to do. I hit the watch I make myself an audio note. I come back and type that up and now I have that content safe. I can also use it for free to go in and do clippings of web pages. They have a plugin that goes into Chrome that will allow you to save research. So you’re not constantly looking for things. Number one it’s a time saver, idea generator,and it’s something that’s going to help you become better at communicating with your audience.

Tom Poland:With a smartwatch. Cool. And so question 7 and one minute and eight seconds left. What’s the one question I should have asked you but I didn’t?

Brian Basilico: What’s bacon about.

Brian Basilico: Bacon is an acronym. It is first and foremost the two most year things on the internet. Number one are kittens. Number two is bacon. Period. In that order.

Brian Basilico: Bacon is actually an acronym I worked for AT&T Arthur Andersen large corporations. It stands for B-uilding, A-uthentic, C-onnections, O-nline N-etworking, So the whole concept is you online to build relationships with people. You would not walk into a networking event. Hand somebody card and go around the room and do that. You don’t do the same thing online. You build relationships. Those relationships are things where people get to know like and trust you. And that’s how you grow your business.

Tom Poland: Perfect. Brian Basilico, Thank you so much for your time.

Brian Basilico: Thank you sir.

Tom Poland:Thanks for checking out our marketing the invisible podcast if you like what we’re doing here. Please head over to my tunes to subscribe. Write us and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www. FiveHourChallenge.com.