Offline Marketing: Local Seminar Success. Tim Castleman

Transcription

1 Offline Marketing: Local Seminar Success Tim Castleman Tim Castleman: Hi! Tim Castleman here, 30minutepostcards.com here with my buddy HK here to talk about Offline Marketing: Local Seminar Success. He approached me and said hey man, I m trying to get into the local market. Would like to kind of get some ideas and suggestions as far as how you would go about running a seminar, getting people to basically come to you in a venue and as a result of that hearing people talk on different topics maybe it s on SEO, maybe it s on internet marketing, maybe it s something completely and totally different but with him, what he would like to do and I think this is really smart is organize an event. Have people there that are selling their products and services and then take a cut of what they are getting. Is that pretty accurate about what you re trying to do with this? HK: Yeah that s what I m thinking so far. Tim Castleman: Yeah and I think that s really smart I mean, again you can be a gatekeeper and get paid for that. If you ve ever attended and Internet Marketing Seminar, you know what that s how those things run basically. A guy is nice enough to put the event and have all these well-know speakers come. Well, he s not just doing that for charity right and he only gets a percentage. And usually it is a pretty large percentage, 50 % plus for that. So I kind of thought about that, I spend most of the days thinking if I was in that situation or I wanted to do that for my offline business or any business, I wanted to hold a local seminar kind of how will I go about doing that? So that s what we re going to talk about today. I m going to run to the presentation then we re going to answer any questions that we have. We re actually going to do some critiquing basically an of that through together that really kind of punch it up and make it work together and basically just take you step by step. So follow along with us and let s get started. So obviously the first thing that I thought about was you got to have a target area. And since you re working in the local market, I stand to be correct; it s going to be most likely be in your local area. When it comes to that, you kind of have a few things to think about. Are you going to go for just a town? Are you going to go for a whole city? Are

2 you going to go for an entire state? Where I live in Texas, I have a small town that I live in about 200,000 people but we have a ton of businesses so maybe that s enough for me. Obviously if I live in Los Angeles where you ve got probably you know millions of people in town, then maybe you re just going to do a certain part of the town. You re not going to do the whole city and obviously you ll be nuts or a millionaire if you do the whole state like California. So with that basically what you re looking for is the number of businesses in your target area. Now HK doesn t know I did this but I spend a little time and I found them on Twitter and I found out that he lives in Greensboro. So I went to my super secret top database and I found every business that this database has for businesses there in Greensboro. Take a look at this and you can see it on the screen here and hopefully it is big enough. Look, you re going, you re going, you re going and you got over if I remember correctly what I mean it was 1,000 and 2,000 and 3,000, it s coming up here. And the great thing about it is, as I move that there, if you go all the way to the bottom and we re talking 6,000 businesses that he s got in his town. Now how big is the town that you live in? HK: Well Greensboro, around 200,000 but the tri-area is about a million. It s Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point. Tim Castleman: Gotcha. Okay so if you look at this in his little city of Greensboro of 200,000 and I have 200,000 in my city and his got close to 7,000 businesses 6,697. If you go to the entire state of North Carolina which is what this list is, I mean you re talking of hundreds of thousands of businesses. So this just goes to show you that in his area and I obviously maybe the business area that you live in maybe it s smaller or it s bigger but even in this 1 city and he said it s only 1 of 3, he got over 6,000 businesses. So obviously it would be cost prohibitive to be honest with you as I go back to here to go and try an approach to all those businesses. So what I would do is very simply this. I would obviously check the local number businesses with 6,000 I think his probably got plenty to bring in a few dozen or even a hundred businesses in his local area. But what I would do with that step is I would start laser targeting businesses. And what do I mean by that? I mean like take internet marketing and offline marketing for example. If I want to deal with businesses, instead of trying to attract all 6,000, what I would do is I would focus on a set number of businesses. Now that number is going to be determined by your budget, by your ability to reach them, by your time, all those things are going to come into factor. But there's

3 no way I would try to go over 6,000 and to be honest with you, I probably would not want to go after more than a couple of hundreds. So if I m doing a service say I m going to do to people to do their websites redesign, what I would do is I would laser target those businesses. I would laser target the ones that already have websites that need redesigning. How would we determine that? Well we can go website by website by website. We can do that or I don t know if you saw that but if you didn t, that s okay I m going to take you back here just for a second. This software actually allows you to see the business that already have websites and that is what the crazy thing is. If you go up here, and it s not perfect software, I ll be honest with you. I d been depressed on it more times than I ve been impressed on it when it comes to websites and you ll see all these businesses, do you think oh man, not all of them have websites. But I know even though it s a crappy software and it probably only has 40% of the websites, its showing me that over a thousand businesses or close to a thousand, 963 have websites in the area. Now you do have obviously you ve got some big chains and stuff like that but I guarantee you, even with those thousand businesses you could go through and pull out 100, 200, 300 different businesses that have websites that are pretty crappy. Let s go I could totally go and a fly and just blow up on this. But let s check this out and let s see what this website looks like. See if it needs help because I bet it does, mobile disc jockey. How much do you want to bet this thing probably yeah perfect. Man I didn t even planned this but look at how perfect is this. Take a look at that crappy website. I mean seriously look at how, it s black, it got red letters, it got under construction probably from I mean but if you look at the website that you could think wow I could totally redesign that website so they would get put on my laser targeted list for doing that. Now I know you do want to make a seminar in your local area. Kind of tell me what type of businesses or what type of services are you looking to provide to them? HK: You know I was thinking to keep it general but maybe you know we need to target it down and do separate businesses. So you have a seminar for photographers, you have a seminar for restaurant owners and so on. What would you say the better ideas to have it made there at once? Tim Castleman: Well what I would do, what I think would be the better idea would be finding something that you can hit them all with. So I would have different areas, different businesses, if that doesn t matter,

4 HK: Yeah but they all need the same thing. So like for instance we talked about having all the businesses in there that need to have a website redesigned or any businesses that have websites and basically focused to that meaning all you guys have website and they need to teach you how to do better SEO, how to do better keyword research, how to do better article marketing, how to have your website redesigned. That s kind of what I would do and I ll explain to you why I think that s a great idea a little bit. But I like your idea and you can definitely do that with photographers you can definitely niche and that would be no problem and you can take it anyway that you d like to. So let s just say we went to the whole list and say alright, these are going to be the couple hundred or the couple thousands but these are going to be the couple hundred businesses that we want to target. The next thing I definitely want to do once you had that laser targeted list is I would answer this question. How do you find out what people really want? It s pretty really simple, you just simply ask them. Now a lot of people miss this step. They go from step 1 which I ve got a market to step 2 or actually step 3 in this case, I ve got a product. They never stop to think, hey does the market want what I offer. I guarantee you as being a copywriter, I guarantee you HK gets approach all the time with people that have this great new widget or product for training or something like that and they ve never, ever, ever stopped to ask anybody. Hey, is this something you want, need, want to like to buy? I guess that happens to you pretty regularly? Tim Castleman: I mean people do that. They think man, I want it. I like it. I need it. That means other people are going to do that so what I would tell you is to conduct a survey of your target market. So I would actually take those couple hundred of businesses and as best as possible you don t need to do all of them but it will be good to get a different cross-match. So say you have 200 businesses, maybe try to get 5 to 10% so we re talking 10 to 20 businesses and survey them and basically what you want to do is you want to find out important answers to the questions you want and you can do it anyway you want to. You can do it in person. You could do it over the phone. You could do it via fax, metrofax.com, that s what I use. I get thousands faxes a month for like 13 bucks and you can even do surveys. Survey Monkey, I use it all the time from my online list but I leave a central for my offline people and they responded to surveys but basically what you want to know is what you want to ask. All you want to ask on those things is anything you want to know about that

5 business right? Hey, what would make you want to attend the local seminar? I mean to me that is pretty important because if someone tells me or if a market tells me there s nothing that would make me want to them or need to attend the local seminar then maybe that s not what I need to be putting my effort in. But if they tell me hey, I need X, I need Y, I need Z well then, you know what's it going to take or attend. The second thing is what topic, when it comes to X, would you like to learn more about? So again we re going back to the offline example. What topics when it comes to websites for small businesses would you like to learn more about and maybe they don t know, maybe they ve got a couple of ideas, maybe they know their website were crap and they know it getting redesigned or maybe you want to do offline stuff, business stuff like when it comes to offline mail like postcards, newsletters, flyers, things like that, what would you like to learn more about? But basically asking that question and then what is the best day for you to be able to attend? Most of businesses especially in my area, they re running 6 maybe even 7 days a week. Most places here, Monday to Saturday, they re closed on Sunday. And a lot of these mom and pop shops maybe is 1 or 2 people, maybe they have an employee. So it s really important that you ask them. Hey look if you could get away and if you re interested, what day work best for you because there's nothing worse than setting up your appointment and your seminar when it s convenient for you but it s not convenient for anybody that you want to attract. And you can save yourself a lot of headache I mean if you survey 20 people and they tell you Sunday 3 o clock is the best time and then obviously you want to hold it Sunday at 3 o clock. And finally what would you be willing to pay to attend? Now this is going to ignite the whole debate. Do I make it a free seminar? Do I make it a paid seminar? Now I tell you I run my own test online and talking with offline people relates to that. If you make it free people don t bow you free. If people just don t bow you for whatever reason, subconsciously consciously they have nothing to risk, nothing to gain so if you make it free, you have a chance of getting a lot more people to sign up yes but you have a bigger chance of people not showing up. I mean I think about online and did a webinar totally free. Had a 175 people sign up and 64 people actually show up. So what I would recommend and what I have seen done successfully is charging a small nominal fee. I m talking like 20 or 30 bucks. Now again, you can go into different pricing structure. Maybe you want to make higher end event, maybe you want to make it $200 to make it on the door. Again,

6 your market, your area is going to determine that. But I will try to persuade you against offering it for free and you can tell them look, it s only 20 bucks. Why $20? To make sure you have something invested in this because I guarantee you if they have some money on the line, they re going to show up. In fact one guy does this and it gives the money back when you come to the door, he just wants to make sure that you show up. So with that what can you offer them? Now you know you market. Now you know what they want which is more important than what you want, then you can figure out what can I offer them myself? Maybe you can do services. HK is a great copywriter; I m a horrible one so he d be the one that you want to do that. Maybe he s great at web design; I ll outsource all that stuff. Maybe he s got offline stuff, cards, newsletters and things like that, that s all services that you can provide them. Contacts Maybe I m not talented right but I can get him to come to my seminar or I can get this expert or that expert or this guy or that guy. Maybe you re a good contact person within your local community. You know people that can get things done. People will pay for that stuff. Information People will pay for information, they don t know what you know and as a result of that, they re willing to pay you for it. And then finally as it comes up here you can be in a Toll Position basically that s exactly what it is you are in the middle so maybe and this is what s HK is talking about in his seminar. He s going to be in that Toll Position. I kind of bring the experts to the people and as a result he s going to be paid on both sides. He s going to be paid from the side of the business person that s attending and also the person that sell it so that s a great position to be in. So now we know this. We know the target market. We know what the market wants and then now we got to focus on giving it to them so again it s going to depend on what you got to offer them if you want to target local businesses and a niche, if you want to target as a whole. What I would recommend for anybody to do it is now you know this stuff, I pick a date and a location and the reason is pretty simple. If you can pick a date and a location then I know what s going on. Meaning I can when I m calling for speakers instead of hey, I m holding this seminar. I don t know when it s going to be or anything. I can say look hey, the seminar is going to be on March 30 th at the

7 Crown Plaza here between 5 and 6 pm, would you be able to come and speak on this? That way you can lock in those people. You can lock in speakers and you can also lock in the business people when you start promoting it. Again, nothing worse in getting people excited about something and they go oh man, I definitely wanted to attend but I don t know what date is. I don t know what time. I don t know who s going to speak or anything like that. Now I know a lot of people do hotels, you can get meetings that are pretty cheap. In fact I m doing a seminar in Vegas and we re getting a room for 400 bucks. Now again you take 400 bucks. What that means is 20 people at $20 right that pays for at least the hope that s right and my math is right on that. HK: (laughs) Tim Castleman: Lounges -- I office at a private cigar lounge at the time, it s really cool if I have a small list I could get people come in and do that. Third one, conference centers. This is like a YMCA or something like that. A lot of places just have a small building that just have conference centers. Public facilities, the library will rent you a room here for 25 bucks. Yes it s not grandiose, it s not this, it s not that but for 25 bucks with a one and a half people it s like a one person and a little person to show up and you earn the money. And the virtual seminar people were training on the internet now. I mean we re doing a webinar here. A lot of people, a lot of companies, a lot of businesses are going to that webinar-based model. The great thing about this is at the end you can record it and send it out so public facilities are a great place and again, this is also going to depend on you and the image you want to perceive. For instance, if you re inviting top lawyers, you got a 100% lawyers and all that stuff and you didn t want them to go to the public library. Maybe you d like to find a nice hotel that relates to it. So sometimes you kind of think about when it comes to that. Now setting an agenda again, this is so wide and so vast I m not going to cover it huge. I m just going to tell you plan for a month away. Take what people wanted and say around it. So if they want to learn about website redesign, have a guy that. If they want to know how to get better internet rates or local media, have a guy from that. Whatever they want to learn around, then find speakers that are going to come around and do that so if they want to learn whatever it is then find a speaker that s going to talk about it. You can contact speakers locally. You can contact them nationally. Heck, I ve even seen guys contact them internationally so it s just something kind of crazy with that. And again, start contacting businesses to attend. So once you figured out

8 what you re going to have, you re going to start having speakers then you want to start contacting businesses to attend the event because that s where your money is really going to come from. Now when this comes to getting butts in the seats, you have to be aggressive. You absolutely have to be aggressive because if you re not aggressive then people aren't going to do it and you cannot rely on a single method or attempt at contacting business owners. You just cannot do it. If you wait for one way, one method, you re going to miss a lot of people. You send out 1 and no one respond, I m having this seminar well,. That s bad for you. You should really rely on multiple methods to make this work. Now here s 2 things that I ve always done online and offline that are huge for me. There must always be fewer chairs than there are bodies. You always want to have an inverse funnel where I ve got a hundred people and 10 chairs. Any business I ve ever done, I always do that. And I know it sounds crazy. People are thinking this guy s nuts but it s not because it puts a higher value on those chairs. If I told you hey we got enough room, enough space, doesn t matter when you come. It doesn t matter who comes. It doesn t even matter if you show up, you re not going to care. But if I say to you hey look, there's 10 people, there s a hundred people and there's 10 chairs and you got to do it well then obviously, few chairs more bodies that s a good thing. And then there must always be compelling reasons for people to attend in the first place and we ll talk a little more about this but my favorite things are free gifts and stuff because people just love stuff. So when I talk about getting aggressive, being aggressive about putting butts in the chairs, I talk about when you plan a month away, then you must make no fewer than 3 contacts in each of the target businesses on a weekly basis. What do I mean by that? Pick something or everything on the right-hand side there. You got . You have postcard/invitation. You have letters. You got phone calls. You got video. You got CD. You got a newsletter and you even have an in person visit. I mean, pick 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, pick them all I don t care but you got to pick 3 at a minimum on how to contact them. So let me show you kind of what this looks like on a calendar. So here, March 27 th we ve got the seminar here. So Monday the 1 st, you re going to start ing businesses. Why ? Because it s cheap and it s free. They don t respond, all you have is a little bit of time. The next week, maybe you re doing postcards and invitations to local businesses so you do that and the week after that maybe you letter or fax to local businesses and then the week after that, phone call or an

9 in person visit to local businesses. So you could do all that and have an RSVP date on the 26 th and then the seminar on the 27th. Again, we re not relying on one method. One way to do that we re relying on multiple methods, multiple channels so maybe they don t respond to because they never get a dozen spam. Now they got a postcard in their physical hand then they got a fax and they got a letter and then worse and the best thing is you got a phone call and you got a phone call and they can t deny about a phone call. They re calling you and I m telling you, referencing hey look I sent you an . What about the postcard? What about the letters? Now guess what I ve got my phone call. To do something like that would be a great way to send it up in a month. Now again, is totally free. Postcards totally cheap even invitations. I mean you can go to office depot, get the invitations, get them printed up, mail them yourself, and we re talking pretty cheap. A letter, that s going to be a little costly but you can also fax to them as well. Again, check your local areas because I don t want you getting accused of spamming or anything like that but then a phone call or an in person visit to local business again, that s huge. You can do that. That would have a maximum impact but you have to save that til the very, very end. So keep them up with the butts in the seat. You CANNOT rely on a single method or attempt to contacting business owners. Here is why. Business owners are stressed out and busier than ever or worse they re stressed out because they ve got no business coming in. I mean the recession, bad economy, bad products, bad expat, why whatever it is not to mention that businesses owners are also lazy. They are just regular people. The last thing they want to do is have to do something they don t want to do. They don t want to learn. I mean think about kids. They don t want to go to school. I mean they don t want to. I don t want to. I don t want to so you have to give them compelling reasons to do that. Multiple contacts = multiple people. Same thing with online, you send one you get a few sales. You send 2 s you get a few more sales. You send 3 s you get even more sales. Why, because you re hitting people at different points. I forget the market set-up but people are in a moving parade. Where you re at today, you re not going to be there tomorrow. So in order to do that, what you need to do is you need to keep them as they re moving along this parade. Keep them going with that. There must always be fewer chairs than there are bodies. Why? Again because nobody wants what everyone can have? If in told you it s no big deal, show up if you want if you don t, no big deal more bodies than we got unlimited seating and

10 unlimited this and unlimited that, no one really cares. There would be no reason for me to attend. It s a whole scarcity thing. Another thing is fear of loss is greater than the possibility of gaining something. Think about how many times you bought something just because you did not want to miss out. You wanted to be a part of it and you re like again maybe, maybe, maybe man I just don t want to lose this. It s not that I really want it in result, I just don t want to lose it. That is why people limit stuff all the time, limit 2 per customer, limit 37 spots here and I just personally sold out a coaching program where I limit it to 12 people. The guy asked me on the webinar why you limit it to 12 people. My honest answer and the answer I gave everybody is to get you off your butt and to get you doing something coz if I told you there s 50, there are a 100, there are thousand slots, there s no reason to do that. But if I tell you look, there are 10 chairs, I m sending this out to 354 businesses, they re getting the same or letter or postcard the same time you are then that s going to compel them to action if they are remotely interested in it. And finally people want other people to suffer loss not them so one of the things and you ll see this on the that I kind of had typed up. Look this is not only going to up other businesses and a lot more that we have a room for but it s also going to your competition. Now I want you to think about that. Think of someone in your world that you hate, that you despise, that you wish bad things about. What if someone came up to you and say hey, you want to buy this? And you go uh, I m not really sure and you go great, I m going to go tell that person about it too. You re thinking whoa, don t do that, I ll take it. Not because you want it so bad but definitely because you don t want your competition to have it. I mean who would want to have their competition and give them the upper hand? So there's some kind of stealth ninja, on-crack whatever techniques you want to talk about. Those are some of them that really worked well for me offline and online. And there must really be fewer chairs than there are bodies continued. Let them know seats are limited, let them know about that. Let them know that their competition is getting the same offer as them. That s huge. It s really funny to see business owners totally changes their thing when you tell them hello, this is going to you and your competition and let them know only one of them can win. When I talked about limiting chairs, tell them there s something else they can do. Instead of 12 people, you say there s 12 people and I m limiting 1 per business type meaning there's only going to be 1 plumber, 1 accountant, 1 lawyer and 1 of your business. So not only can you get in but you can lock your competition out of this seminar so it becomes you re creating this race. You re basically creating this race. Who can

11 get to the phone faster? So here we go now most of the time, it s their day off, let s be honest most people don t want to be there so how can you give them a compelling reason to attend in the first place? You want to give them tons of free gifts and stuff. People just love stuff, they absolutely love it. I ve been to seminars where you come home and my wife goes, what did you get? And I go oh, look at all this stuff. I got this notebook. I got this folder. I got this DVD. I got this CD. I got this post it note with this guys information. I made these contacts. Now you want to have that or do you want hey what did you get at the seminar? Nothing, they wasted my time. So find a way to give them free stuff. What are we talking about? Talking about door prizes, think about prizes after every speaker. Prizes at the very end of it kind of a survival thing, stuff to take home with them and after internet prizes. So let me give you a couple of examples. If you have other speakers coming to talk at your event and it s just not you and you can do this if it s a party of 1 you can do that you just have to have door prizes. If you are offering website redesign maybe you offer some gift certificates to free website critique or maybe a partial redesign or an SEO package or something like that. Things that have a high perceived value to the people you re giving them to. I remember 1 time back in my hypnosis days, I ran 1 like this and I gave away pedometers that cost me like 2 bucks and people are like really why, because they have a high perceived value who you re giving it to. The next time I did it I had a DVD package, pedometer and it cost me 10 bucks a package but it looked like it cost me hundreds of dollars. You want to find stuff that has a high perceived value to the people that are checking it out. What about this, a prize after every speaker? So after I made it to the back of the room, made a purchase to down and here you go because people will stick around to get prizes. We ve got like everybody else and there's one storm kicker that does this. Every hour on the hour they give away free gifts and its crazy coz I ve been in there, they give away free gifts. Some of them will win and people are sticking around. They go hey man, can I help you? Hey sir can I help you? And people will tell them no, I m just waiting for the next free gift. People will stay there not because they care about the package or the event or the speaker, they want that free gift. I mean, I ve seen casino s use it. I ve seen real business use it. I mean people do it all the time, prizes at the end. Again, give them and if you have a big mega package tell them, look you ll get it at the very end of the seminar and you must be present to win. Again, you force people to sit there and comply with you and say look, instead of doing this, instead of listing 1 person go, I will use this mega whatever package and you got to stay til the very end. You have to be present to do that stuff to take home

12 with them. And again this does not have to be huge, expensive stuff. What about worksheets? What about this? What about this little package, that little package? I mean if you could think about all the stuff that you can generate for free and just give them a big pile of it to take home so just like me I can go home and go hey, look at all this stuff I got. Check all this stuff I got. Look at all this. I mean people just love stuff. And after event prizes, this is kind of sneaky but I like it and that s probably why I like it coz this is kind of sneaky. Years ago when I signed out, I was a kid about 8 or 9; it s a great marketing lesson. I signed up for this free taekwondo class. If I won, I got a year of taekwondo for free and I was so excited and I signed up and then I completely and totally forgot about it. About a month later my dad gets a call and says hey, Mr. Castleman here s the deal, your son did not win the free taekwondo class and oh okay but he did win a free month. So we can t give him a year but we can give him a month for free and we ll even give you a free uniform if you signed up by this date. Well guess what? A week later, I was on taekwondo class. Why, because they very sneakily did it to every single person that has signed that out. So you can do the very same thing. Hey look, I notice you left early. I notice the mega package but how about this smaller package in exchange for doing something for me. Hey, would like this many package? Great, why don t we set up a time to meet? I can drop it off and talk to you more about my services or hey look I know you didn t buy this package, what about this package at a lower price with even less stuff? Again, it s kind of different and sneaky and tricky ways to get people to comply with what you want which is to come to your seminar so they got a reason to attend coz they re getting and you know you see people do this piling on bonuses. You get $12,000 worth of bonuses for $37 and you re buying it not because you want it but because man I want those $12,000 bonuses. They stick around coz they know you re going to get prizes throughout the day. They got a bunch of stuff so that when they leave, it s not like they feel like they didn t came for a reason. They got all this stuff to show to people and then at the very end you give a mega prize and if you don t get that mega prize then you can follow-up with them for the smaller prizes. So let s talk about like I promise alright and again this is totally on the fly. It s not perfect by any stress of the imagination. I kind of wrote up a little letter, just a 1 page letter that I would possibly send out to a prospect. So I m going to go over it and we ll going to go over it together and we ll going to get some examples, some critiques and he could tell me where to improve it. So let me find that right there. It s a very easy, very simple letter, nothing too fancy and again you can

13 change it however you want. I just want to make sure can you see that okay? HK: Yes I can see it Tim Castleman: So we start off like we do everything else Dear Business Owner and if you want to personally address it, you can definitely do that. I know you re busy so I get right to the point. I want to spend a few hours with you on March 30 th so there's the date. And show you how to save up to 20% of what you re already spending on marketing your business. Now this is huge. It tells them the date so if they replied to it they can make it and you show them the benefit. Look, it s not like I just want you to come spend a few hours with me, I want you to come spend with me and I want you to spend up to 20% off or save up to 20% of what you re already spending and that s huge because business owners will tell you, hey look I want more customers. I want people to spend money. I want X. I want Y. I want Z but I don t want to spend any money to do that. So you tell them look, you don t have to spend any more money; we ll talk about what you re already spending on marketing your business. Again totally off the fly, who am I and why should you care? These go a little bit of your background. I ll let them know hey, I m not some guy who s living in a far away slum. In fact I live right here in Lubbock. I make a little reference in every dollar I save and spend, get spend in Lubbock. I m going to tell him look, I m not some guy like this is some Nigerian scammer. I m a guy who lives in your hometown and I want you to know any money I save or spend is going to stay right here in Lubbock. For the past 5 years, so you did a little credentializing. I ve helped small businesses like yours save hundreds, if not thousands off their marketing cost by using the internet to get and keep new customers. So okay now they know what I do. So again, if they keep reading and they are interested. Again, what s in it for you? That s what you have to remember through all this. People only care about what's in it for them. They don t care what's in it for me. They want to know why am I going to give up my Saturday or my Sunday or my night to basically what's in it for me? So I tell them right there hey, if you spend your time with me on March 30 th, I ll show you how to use what you already have meaning you don t have to spend more money and get a better return in your investment than your Yellow Page, newspaper, radio and TV ads. So that s a big benefit. I m telling you look, you re already spending this money, I want to show you how to get a better return for that money. Go ahead

14 HK: Tim, and you re target market most probably people who are already spending the money so you re not even worried about the people not already advertising, would you say that s accurate? Tim Castleman: Yeah I would absolutely say that and again I m talking about when you go to that laser target selection, I would definitely only spend money with people that are advertising. If you re already advertising, I can convince you to spend that money in different ways. But if you re not advertising, you don t want to advertise, you don t care about advertising, I can t convince you. So again for this example we re going for people that already have websites. They already know the importance of having a website. They ve already spent their money on it. They get their monthly hosting so again that s a great tip and I m glad you brought that up. If they are not already advertising, I mark them off the list completely. I m going for low hanging fruit here. If you want to have hard and difficult, you go right ahead I just don t want to do that. I want to talk to people that are already advertising, already spending money and already doing the things. Now we just want to shift it just a little bit more so I want to show you how you can save money on the Yellow Pages, your TV, your radio and stuff like that and then convert that to internet to where money is at and that s where I come in and that s where I make money so that s something that s huge to do that. And also I have this benefit in addition just for attending; I ll give you a bunch of cool stuff. Now why did I say a bunch of cool stuff? Because I ve got no idea what we ll give at this point but you can take home with you and share with your friends and family and staff. Again, you need to understand it s important. Now they know this guy is going to show me how to save money and like I said I m going to get a bunch of cool stuff that I can take home with me and share with people because if you know anything about people that buy stuff or tend stuff, they don t want to be the fool. It s like going to a time share meeting; it s like oh I don t want to be the idiot that leaves with nothing. I don t want to just waste my time that s why you always get a free knife set or something like that and you can go oh yeah I went to this time share meeting and people will say you re an idiot. And you will go oh; I got this free knife set out of it. So this is huge psychological stuff and people that way they didn t go back and go woah. They have that nagging spouse or that idiot employee and what you do in that seminar. Look at all this cool stuff they gave me. People really do

15 resonate with that and I mean that s why it worked so well because that s what people want. Why you need to attend? Again I m telling you in addition to showing you how to save your money on your current advertising; I also lined several guest speakers. This is where you simply put out your speakers who they are, why do you want to listen to them. And then tell them hey, this is what happens if you don t attend. Let me be clear. I m sending this to you along with 342 other business owners here in Lubbock. So again getting them to think instead of just oh God there's unlimited seating, I tell them you re not the only 1 getting this . We only have room for 19 business owners to attend this event. Why 19 because 19 seem like a good number. Now you may have real room limitation, you may have small room that can only fit 7 or 12 or you may just want to have that perceived scarcity and tell them look, I got 342 people, only 19 of you are getting at. And I tell them right here, you do the math. So they can do that math. Wow, I got 342 people but 19 businesses are on here, that s not good. In addition to the 342 business owners we are also limiting the amount of like businesses attending. Meaning there will only be 1 plumber, 1 attorney and 1 business, that s why I always read copy out loud. And 1 business like yours so if you pass on the opportunity chances are your competition won t. Think about that I m telling look, if you pass on it, that s fine. Your competition won t. Not to mention that by you attending, they can t get in and you get the upper hand. So think about that. Think about what we just told them. There's a limited number of seats. In addition to being a limited number of seats, only 1 business like yours can get in. If you don t get in, your competition will and if you get in then they don t then you get to lock them out. I mean that s a huge paragraph but it really makes people act. I mean I m telling you, I did nothing more than those 3 things when it came to selling a coaching program. I once sell a cheap coaching program for 200 bucks, zero refunds and I sold out all 12 spots in like 3 days just doing this, just doing nothing more. That should be some food for thought but again people will really think that and I tell them this could be the best $X and again whatever I d charge the event there you go. I promise to respect your time and ensure that you will leave with the knowledge and information needed to improve your business because of the limited spaces it is a first come, first serve basis and remember if you re competition beats you to the punch you lose, not them. So there's a little reminder what happens if they don t take action.

16 For only $X you get access to some of the sharpest minds in small business marketing. You also get a ton of free stuff to take back and share with your staff and family so again, benefit, benefit, benefit. To ensure your spot at the event, send $X (money orders or cash no checks) to and then you put your information and if you want to set up a PayPal button you could do it. I mean lubbockbusinessseminar.com, rhileybusinessseminar.com, greensborobusinessseminar.com, I mean in your local area you could do that and that s the great place to get people get more information for doing that. Thanks for your time. I look forward to seeing you March 30 th and then your name and stuff like that. So again, just a real simple down and dirty, non hype just telling you I want you to come hang out. This is the benefits if you do. Here s the punishment if you don t, here s some more punishment, here s some more punishment. Here's a reminder of the good stuff you ll get. Here's a reminder of the bad. Here's where you ll send your money. So now, this was probably written about 20 minutes so I don t expect it to be world-class so I m ready. Tell me kind of what you would change and you think you would do different with an or a letter like this. HK: I think you hit on some good points. The things I like is the lock-in idea of locking-up the competition. That kind of seems like one of the biggest hot buns for small business owners when you think that s one of the biggest issues that tends to come up over and over again. Tim Castleman: No that s it HK: When we talk to small business Tim Castleman: That s it I mean a 100% well I know you re teaching me this but what about this? Are you going to teach my competition? I always tell them look, you have the option to have an exclusive contract. Look again like we talked about, people fear losing more than they do want to gain. So if you can show them intangible things that look you re going to miss out. You are going to miss out. You will miss out. If you go to my training thing right now and it s sold out, sorry you missed out because that s what happens. So if you could tell people look, you re missing out and I m going to lock out your competition. Now this doesn t mean forever either. I mean you could run these seminars once a month and the thing is hey you get first tips. So yeah I locked your competition out this month but next month they may get in and here's what you re doing, you're building up on that. Once people understand that your serious hey, that Castleman guy he only lets 19 people in, 1 business type and so on and so forth.

17 Then when they get that the next month says hey, you missed out and here's your chance to get back in. They re going to jump at the alternative because they know that you re not messing around. So let s talk about this letter a little bit more. What would you add? What would you change? Don t spare my feeling. If there's something you thought man, we could do this better, tell me what you think we can really improve to make people jump up? HK: When you get more specific on what you ll going to be covering, that s something you can give a taste with bullets or whatever. Get more specific on the information you re providing. What's that going to do for the attendee? Go ahead what are your thoughts on that? Tim Castleman: Well no I think that s great. I think if you really make it about that and you make it about them and that s the thing, it s not all about you. It s all about them, what they stand to gain not what you stand to gain. Look, everyone knows you re not doing this out of kindness of your heart. You don t need mocking about that but you tell them look, this is what you gain. This is what you need to do. This is why you need to do it. And I think that s smart. I think that s really, really smart to say hey look, these are the benefits you re going to get. If I knew specifically and again this is just a dummy but if knew specifically what I wanted to cover there, I might even give a little bit free away and tell them hey look, here's one thing. Maybe talk about marketing, why it s so good. So doing something like that I think will be huge, it credentializes you and because something else I does because if you can make the people see the benefit from 1 small thing, then they can see it for the big thing too. So I think that s huge to do that. I think that s a great point. HK: You know the other thing that occurs me is some type of guarantee. If you re charging for the event, how can they be reassured that this is right for them? It might even be somewhere where you can get this is a good place where you can have a strong guarantee will be very effective. If you don t learn something then I ll give you double your money back guarantee or something of that nature. Tim Castleman: Yeah I think that s great. Now here's the thing, I hate guarantees. I don t have one in any of my products because I don t want people buying this stuff and then taking it off. In the offline world, I think it could work and you could do something real simple. Hey, if you think by lunch time on Saturday whatever, you haven t got $20 worth of ideas come to me and I ll quickly and quietly refund your

18 $20 plus you got to keep all the bonuses for that day. You could do something like that or even love to double your money back thing. I know a guy that really does well online and he basically says hey look, if you don t like this product, you don t think its worth of your time, I ll give you a hundred bucks for your trouble. So not only will I refund your money but I can give you a hundred dollars. And I think you bring up a great point and that is people do not want to look foolish. Above all, they don t want to make mistakes. They don t want to have to spend a lot of money and above all they don t want to look foolish. So if you give them a chance and you guarantee it, you basically say hey, I guarantee you that you re going to learn at least that and if you don t, then I ll give you your money back. That s huge. I think that s great and you re right I don t even think about a guarantee but that really, really could strengthen up your position because when they think there's no risk. Look if I got to get my 20 bucks back plus I got to keep all the stuff. HK: And you know something else that occurs to me just is this person he maybe kind of or probably is scared of the internet. He s scared of you re going to be selling them something that he doesn t need. So if you can address some of those concerns that this person has. What is it that s going to prevent him from attending the meeting busy, worried about that he doesn t really need to be concerned about. Tim Castleman: Yeah I think that s great and you know you can uncover that stuff is in that survey coz people will tell you I don t need to go there. I don t want to be sold like if everyone told you hey, one of the biggest things or the reason I wouldn t attend this is because of extra why. Look, I wouldn t attend because I m afraid I m going to be sold this or some guys going to rip me off or something like that. If you keep getting that reoccurring trend, I m not going to attend because this problem X and it s the same problem after problem after problem, then that s something you're going to address in that letter. Look, I know you might be thinking that I m some flip back guy with the cheap suit and a fancy car coming to steal your money. Nothing can be further than the truth in fact I m a local guy right here in the community and really address those fears and I think that s smart to do that and I think that s another key point that can be added and strengthened in this for sure. HK: Exactly. I mean I really like how you introduced yourself there and I can see that in a really key where you say I live right here in Lubbock, Texas (go Tech Football) and every dollar I spend gets spent in Lubbock. It just lets people know a little bit that you re a real person

19 and you re not going to be there just to tell them or offer them something that they don t need or not provide value to them. Tim Castleman: Absolutely HK: That you re a real person Tim Castleman: Yeah I think that s great and that s a way you can do that because that s what people are worried about and here's the other great thing about that when you position yourself like that, then you already are doing better than your competition. Meaning, if they go well this guy can build me a website for 200 bucks, where is that guy located. Well, he is in New York. Well guess what? If your server goes down and your website goes down or you re going to get on the plane and go to New York and find that guy well no. Well, guess what? If you website goes down here you drive 2 blocks left, there's my house over, you knock on the door, I m going to answer and we ll get your problem taken care of. It s really smart because you re letting them know hey, I m a local guy but also if there's a problem, guess what? I m also local and I m a phone call and 2 blocks away. I mean there's nothing better than that. I mean that guy maybe 10 times cheaper for me but guess what if there's a problem and you re losing money because of it, who s going to be able to take care of you quickly? If it s in the middle of the night and you got issue, I mean this guy is not going to answer his phone. I live within the community. I mean this is what it comes down to, do you think I m really going to screw you out of this because I m in your community and I know that s going to affect me. The guy in New York doesn t care if he screws you but you going to tell the people in Lubbock and that where we lives because I work and I go to church and people in this community, that s a big thing for me and people also think wow, if something goes wrong, I can slam this guy locally and he would really feel the pinch over some national company that they don t care about. HK: What would you say are some of the, when you talk to small business owners, what are some of the key things that kind of get some excited. You already mention the first thing was saving money out of their existing advertising. What are some of those other things that they look for? Tim Castleman: Well I think that s big because if you can show them how to save money, that s great. The other thing is being able to contact their customers for cheaper than before coz I talk about and here's a real world example. A full page Yellow Page ad here in Lubbock, Texas