Ep30 Marketing Tools to help grow your Business

Speaker 1: 00:01 Welcome to Marketing Show, the 20 to 30 minutes of marketing magic that will help you connect the dots, with all the digital, social and old school marketing and sales options available today. Our aim is to give you practical, effective tips and ideas, so your business or professional practise can get more prospects, and nurture those prospects to becoming long-term customers. The show is sponsored by The Marketing Strategy Company, who help B2B organisations develop winning marketing strategies, and sales and marketing automation systems. To turn their sales and marketing efforts into new customers and dollars through their marketing. Check out The Marketing Strategy Company’s planning and marketing services at themarketingstrategy.co. That’s themarketingstrategy.co.

Kym Heffernan: 00:40 Hi, and welcome to today’s Marketing Strategy Show. The Marketing Strategy Show is all about getting the right marketing for your business. In our episodes, we pull back the curtain with an expert on a specialised topic, with someone who has great experience with the topic. Now we all know having and implementing a strong marketing and sales strategy is a lot easier said than done. With the multitude of tools available to business owners and managers, implementing your marketing and sales strategy can be much simpler than it was in the past. How do you choose the correct tools, programmes or services, in a sea of hundreds that are all offering similar services? Well, to help sift through those tools today and find the right ones for your business, we’ve got Ben Fewtrell, back from MaxMyProfit. Ben and I are going to take you through some of the tools we use and our clients use. Hey, Ben, are you there?

Ben Fewtrell: 01:37 Yeah, I’m here, mate. Thanks for having me.

Kym Heffernan: 01:39 Great to have you on board again. Welcome back.

Ben Fewtrell: 01:41 It’s a pleasure. I must have done something right.

Kym Heffernan: 01:45 Always great to have you on board. Always great to have you on board. Look, it’s a really interesting topic that we talked about here, because I think before the podcast I reckon we probably got about 60 or 70 different productivity tools we use. We’ll try and narrow it down, I think, hey? Before we jump into that, just for people who may not have heard the earlier podcast, give us a bit of background on Ben and MaxMyProfit.

Ben Fewtrell: 02:09 Yeah, so I’ve been in my own businesses since I was 18. I’m now 45. Even though I don’t look that, I look much younger. That’s what I reckon, anyway.

Kym Heffernan: 02:17 44, at least.

Ben Fewtrell: 02:20 At least 44. Over the last 20 years, in particular, I’ve been working with business owners, starting off as a business coach. Then developing different programmes towards these business owners, to make their life easier as they navigate that path of growing their business. That’s how the company MaxMyProfit was born. It’s the tagline, if you like, or our purpose is to help business owners build the business they imagined. That’s because most people, when they go into business, they imagine something that’s going to be much better than what they end up with.

Ben Fewtrell: 02:49 For example, you’ll imagine, “I’m going to go into business for myself. I’m going to make more money. I’m going to work less hours. Life’s going to be easier, and I’m to have this great asset I can sell down the track.” Very few business owners actually get to that, whatever it was they imagined. We do coaching as part of what we do, but it’s not the only thing we do. I guess that’s why even today’s podcast is really relevant, because we do teach people how to use what is available technology-wise. There’s a huge amount. Like I said, how many did we come up with before you hit the record button? There’s a plethora of tools, so we help people just shortcut to the best possible solutions.

Kym Heffernan: 03:24 I think the really cool thing, I mean, I worked with small businesses, same as you. I think the really cool thing is, all these little help small businesses these days do what the big guys would do before, which is what I love about them.

Ben Fewtrell: 03:35 Yeah, and so much easier. I mean, you think about what it would’ve cost for a company to have a customised CRM, some 10, 15 years ago. Now you can get a CRM you can customise to your business for, some of them for free. It’s ridiculous.

Kym Heffernan: 03:51 Yeah, it’s absolutely crazy. So why don’t we jump into them? We’ll try and work through some categories, I think. Why don’t we start with lead generation, because that’s the beginning of the sales and marketing process. What do you guys recommend for clients for lead generation? What tools do you use? It might be processes too.

Ben Fewtrell: 04:10 Yeah. Look, there’s tools and there’s processes, but I think the key thing with lead generation is not just generating the leads. There’s a lot of aspects to that, by the way. It could be that you have to create ads, so it might be using a tool like Canva that helps you create ads. It’s got built-in templates, a lot of stock images you can use, et cetera. It could be the Facebook ad builder, for example. I mean, one of the things that Facebook did in the last few years that was really good from a lead generation perspective, was they did a partnership with iStock photo. When you generate an ad, you can just grab their photos and stick them in. It could be the fact that you’re using a CRM, or something for marketing. So if I think about marketing, when you say lead generation, it’s a large gamut of things. I think, at the very minimum, every business should have some sort of email marketing programme. Maybe we could touch on a few of those.

Kym Heffernan: 04:59 Sure.

Ben Fewtrell: 05:01 One of my favourites for people to start off with is MailChimp. MailChimp is an amazing tool, and you can get a free version to kick of with. I know you’ve got a bit of experience with MailChimp, haven’t you?

Kym Heffernan: 05:12 Yeah. We run a number of client programmes with MailChimp, and also Constant Contact. They both have their pluses and minuses, but I agree with you. You’d be crazy not to start with MailChimp, rather than trying to do it yourself. I think a lot of people see some other tool that’s better than MailChimp, or better than something else. To me, you’re always better off going with the industry leader, aren’t you? Because lots of people have used it, there’s lots of support out there if you need it, lots of useful videos on how to use it. It’s much easier to start with something that’s well-known.

Ben Fewtrell: 05:41 Yeah. I think the other thing is MailChimp have been very progressive in making sure that they can integrate with other things. Not every app has done that. If you’re choosing an app, that’s one of the things I look for. Is this app something that is connected to a lot of other things? You can quickly find out with a search, is it able to be connected with my CRM, or with something else?

Kym Heffernan: 06:06 [inaudible 00:06:05], website, or whatever it might be. 100%. Yeah, so email marketing, definitely MailChimp or Constant Contact. Now, in terms of research for lead generation, I just want to come back to that. I get what you’re saying, in terms of the spiel of lead generation, the area. What about in finding out the contacts? I mean, I love LinkedIn Sales Navigator, for example.

Ben Fewtrell: 06:26 Yeah, well LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s a great tool. I think a lot of people don’t use LinkedIn to its potential. I always tell people in marketing, LinkedIn is the most up-to-date database of people you’ll ever find, because it’s each individual updating it.

Kym Heffernan: 06:40 Well, that’s exactly right. The other thing I say to people too, it’s great if you have their email address, but what if they leave that position? Their LinkedIn address stays with them for life.

Ben Fewtrell: 06:50 Yeah. Yeah.

Kym Heffernan: 06:51 Typically, most people don’t set up a second profile. The other thing, you mentioned some really cool ways to use LinkedIn as well, to find other potential prospects.

Ben Fewtrell: 07:00 Yeah. One of the things I teach people with LinkedIn, so LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s awesome. If you don’t know much about it, essentially it’s a plugin to LinkedIn that you buy for an additional monthly amount. It gives you the ability to find people, sort them into lists, save those leads, and see what people are doing, without having to be connected to them. Then even start to interact with people without having to be connected with them. It also gives you some InMails, what they call email credits, where you can directly mail people. What I find works well, if you don’t want to go to that added expense of getting an extra plugin with LinkedIn, you can actually just go to anybody’s profile. You can actually look at not just who they’re connected to, but who do they follow? What companies do they follow?

Ben Fewtrell: 07:37 You’ll find quite often that they’ll follow companies that are related to what you do, or what you sell. So that’s a great way for you to think about other prospects. If you’re thinking about, “Who else am I going to sell to?” It’s possible that your best customers are connected to your next best customers. You can use LinkedIn to do that research, which is really powerful. You can also look at what groups they’re in. There’s a lot of information you can get from their profile, that you can use then to be able to find more customers, even the people that have done recommendations. If you notice that one of your contacts has got a recommendation from another person who you’d like to sell to, you know that they know that person pretty well, so you can ask for an intro. There’s just so many ways you can use it to generate leads, that it’s totally under-utilized. Totally under-utilised.

Kym Heffernan: 08:21 Yeah. It is a fantastic tool. Look, one of the things I find useful, if you’re in B2B, is just going to trade exhibitions. Because just walking around the stands and seeing people, that exhibitor guide, that’s a fantastic prospect list, or even a connection list into an industry.

Ben Fewtrell: 08:38 Yeah, absolutely. You know that the people that are there are a decent sized business, because you’re not in an exhibition unless you’ve got a few bucks. So you’ve probably got a good contact base.

Kym Heffernan: 08:50 100%. 100%. Okay, so we’ve got some lead generation tools. What about CRM? Now CRM’s a big, big area, isn’t it?

Ben Fewtrell: 08:59 CRM, and I think a lot of people get overwhelmed with the whole CRM world, because it is a big area. I think it’s exploded in the last, probably 10 years even moreso. There’s just so many options. There’s very big, comprehensive solutions, like Salesforce, or Infusionsoft, or even HubSpot now has a CRM, don’t they?

Kym Heffernan:                    08:59                       Yeah.

Ben Fewtrell:                         09:24                       They’re big solutions. Then there’s very small, easier to use solutions that are free, as well. I know you have a couple that you use with clients that are free. I find that, for most people, they’ve got to find one that’s going to work for their sales process. There’s a lot of CRMs out there, but they all work slightly differently.

Kym Heffernan:                    09:44                       Yeah, that’s right. I think starting with the process and what you want to do first of all’s the most important part. Then finding a tool that’s actually flexible enough to do it. Because I’ve had some experience with other CRMs, Zoho for example. It’s not quite as flexible as Pipedrive, which is a fairly low cost one. You can have different pipelines, different sales stages, link everything to it. It’s just so much easier. I know Zoho has got a lot better since then, but you want something that’s flexible and easy to use. I mean, surely, right? Because if you’ve got a sales guy, or you’re trying to do sales yourself, the last thing you want to do is spend hours trying to put data in.

Ben Fewtrell:                         09:44                       Yeah. Yeah.

Kym Heffernan:                    10:25                       The CRM’s only as good as the data that goes in there, right? So if you only put half the data in, it’s not going to be much use to you.

Ben Fewtrell:                         10:30                       The whole idea is to be able to go back and just look at that data. So there are some good solutions. I think Google’s got a free one as well, and their Google Contacts that you can use. I think HubSpot’s now got a free one, haven’t they, that you would know all about?

Kym Heffernan:                    10:39                       They do have a free HubSpot CRM as well. I think also, as you said, think about the process, but it can make life so much easier for sales and marketing. Because if you have a template of responses in there, not canned responses, but it saves you all the hard yards. You call it a template, change something specific to that client, and then send it off. It’s a one or two minute job, as opposed to half an hour drafting an email. Just simple things like that make a massive difference to what you do in sales. I think tracking your sales progress, right? I mean, I have clients, and I’m sure you do too, being that you ask, and they go, “Well, what’s your sales goal for this year?” “It’s X dollars or X number of years.” “Well, how’re you going to get there?” “Well, I’m going to sell more.”

Ben Fewtrell:                         11:25                       Yeah, I think what stops so many people, and you’re right, it is all about being able to visualise the pipeline. Where is everybody in the pipeline? The other thing a good CRM will do is remind you when to contact someone. If you’re a person that thinks you can remember when everything’s happening, I can tell you now, you won’t. You’ll always forget at some point. So having a CRM is a better way of managing each prospect. Some CRMs, not all of them, but the higher end ones, will actually alert you when certain activity is happening. If people are opening emails, clicking on links, you can actually set them up so they alert you.

Ben Fewtrell:                         11:59                       The one thing I will say about CRMs, is you will have to spend some time setting them up. Don’t think you can just buy one off the shelf and it’s going to work for you. It’s very difficult to find a CRM that just works off the shelf, where you just put people’s names in and it’s going to give you everything that you need. You’ll need to spend some time getting it up and running. Some of the ones that I think are really good, that I’ve seen clients use, is Insightly. It seems to be working well. ActiveCampaign is another one.

Ben Fewtrell:                         12:26                       I’d steer clear of Infusionsoft unless you’ve got someone with a bit of development experience, or experience around using software that’s a bit harder to use. I think the other ones that I’ve seen that are on the higher end, like I said, Salesforce is really good. The other one that’s cheap, which was free, it’s open source software. Once again, you need a bit of knowledge to set it up, it’s SugarCRM. I used that for several years, and it’s very effective. Once again, depending on what your needs are in your business.

Kym Heffernan:                    12:53                       I think that’s an interesting point you raised. I often try to think about CRMs as sales CRMs and marketing CRMs, and make a differentiation between them. Because I think a lot of good marketing CRMs will actually claim to be sales CRMs, and they’re not really.

Ben Fewtrell:                         13:12                       No.

Kym Heffernan:                    13:13                       They’re [crosstalk 00:13:14] information products. Sales CRMs need to be able to map out an approach, and that’s Salesforce or HubSpot Sales, or one of those. You need to map out the process, where a marketing CRM is all about automation, and easy to set up emails to send them. So I think I’d be really careful about that differentiation between.

Ben Fewtrell:                         13:32                       Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well we touched slightly on MailChimp before. I mean, MailChimp is really good for people, for your email automation, and for automated sequences, based on where they came into your funnel from. So that would take care of all your email marketing.

Kym Heffernan:                    13:46                       100%.

Ben Fewtrell:                         13:47                       Yeah. Then you just need a CRM that will connect with that. The good thing is, and I don’t know if I’m going to mention as an app out of order One of the apps that I use, that is absolutely phenomenal, is Zapier. Zapier will allow you to connect things together. For example, if you have MailChimp, and you have another CRM product that doesn’t have a natural connection, quite often you can use Zapier to connect the two together. It’s works really, really well.

Kym Heffernan:                    14:14                       Yeah, I think Zapier’s a wonderful thing. If you’ve got two different apps, you’re getting frustrated with how they work together, Zapier is fantastic to do that. The other thing I want to move onto is websites, as well. I mean, there’s so much talk these days about being mobile ready. I guess some of my clients, up to 70% of their businesses are from mobile. So it’s not just mobile ready, it’s site speed, a whole variety of things. I love a tool called Website Grader, website.grader.com. You go on there, and it gives you a rating out of 100, on four or five criteria. Security, how fast it loads, et cetera. The thing I love about that is you can take it to a website guy, and say, “Here’s what this is saying. Tell me what you think.” I’m often a bit worried about people who brief a website guy, or any consultant for that matter, they don’t understand what it is that they’re actually briefing them on.

Ben Fewtrell:                         15:05                       Yeah, and I think that’s when they get frustrated, isn’t it? Because they just go, “Here’s my website, fix it.”

Kym Heffernan:                    15:09                       Yeah, [crosstalk 00:15:10].

Ben Fewtrell:                         15:10                       That’s where, if you can analyse what’s going on, you’re getting a much better result.

Kym Heffernan:                    15:14                       Absolutely. The other thing too, I use a tool called SEMrush, S-E-Mrush to do that, as well. There’s a free version and a paid version, but that’s much more detailed and more technical. The other thing that people always look at is, what are the keywords people are looking for? That’s a big thing, people often don’t know where to start. I’m sure you’ve seen it with different Google campaigns, and even SEO campaigns that people run, they just don’t know what the keywords are. So there’s a great tool called keyword.io, which is a fantastic place to start. You can put in, “Business coach,” for example. It’ll give you 50 variations of business coach, so you don’t have to think of those things yourself. They’re starting points for doing that, because often that’s all you need to do. They’re two great website tools that I use as well.

Ben Fewtrell:                         16:00                       Yeah. We use keywords.io for a lot of our article headlines, so I can second that. Then we recommend it to a lot of clients, because it is such a powerful tool. The other thing that’s really good, if you’re looking for keywords or what’s ranking really well in a particular category, I find is BuzzSumo. BuzzSumo’s like a content aggregation site. If you go to buzzsumo.com, you get a free account, and you put your keywords in, you’ll get to see what articles are ranking really highly. They’ll just give you some ideas as well.

Kym Heffernan:                    16:29                       Yeah, that’s a fantastic tool, BuzzSumo. I love BuzzSumo as well. Let’s talk a little bit about content creation. Where do you go to for content? Well there’s BuzzSumo, obviously. Where else do you go for content ideas?

Ben Fewtrell:                         16:43                       Yeah. BuzzSumo’s definitely one of the areas you can go to, because when you put that keyword in, it’ll come up with all the top articles. You can get ideas from that. I use the keyword tool that you just mentioned before, keywords.io, to create content, because that tells me what is popular. Then the other thing that I look at is frequently ask questions on competitors’ websites. So if I look at a competitor’s site and they’ve got an FAQ section, quite often their FAQ will be something that I can write an article about. That’ll rank really well, because I know people are asking the question. You can also find the same thing in forums, so you could look in a forum or a business group. This is one of the reasons why I’m quite active … Well, I join a lot of Facebook and LinkedIn groups. I don’t actively post, but I watch a lot. I watch what the questions are. If I see a question coming up a lot about a particular topic, well, then that’s another way to create good content.

Kym Heffernan:                    17:39                       Yeah, if people are asking. Mine’s fairly specialised, but I look at forums like Flying Solo and other ones, and see what questions people are asking. If there’s a lot of people asking about Facebook, we’ll create content about Facebook. That’s exactly what you’re saying, right?

Ben Fewtrell:                         17:52                       Yeah. The other thing that you can use is Google predict, it’s sort of like the keyword tool. It’s using Google’s prediction, is go to your Google search and type in, “How to,” then start whatever your service is.

Kym Heffernan:                    18:06                       Oh, right. Yeah.

Ben Fewtrell:                         18:07                       You might, for example, put in, “Is it worth getting a marketing,” and then just see what comes after that. Because then it’ll give you the words that are most popular, or being typed in the most. For example, I’ve just put the word “Is” into Google. It’s got, “Is heating oil legal to use?” “Is this website safe?” “Is website down?” “Is Facebook down?” So straight away, “Is this website safe?” You could write an article, let’s say you were something to do with website security. Straight away you’ve got an article there, how to make sure a website is safe.

Kym Heffernan:                    18:38                       Yeah, 100%. These days, search is not based on keywords as strongly, it’s more detailed than that. Having a complete hub around about the keyword, for example security, and then security for IT companies, security for this, or is this website secure? Which is leading back to that key content piece, is really important. That’s a really good point, in terms of doing that. The other thing I like too is, we spoke before about exhibitions. Look at what the presentations are at the exhibitions, look at what seminars people are running. They’re doing that because there’s demand for it as well. So getting out there, which leads us nicely onto events as well. I like looking at things like Meetup for events, but you mentioned Eventbrite as well.

Ben Fewtrell:                         19:27                       Yeah, I find Eventbrite’s really good. We actually use Eventbrite ourselves when we’re running events. It seems to be very active in the B2B space. Lots of people will book into a webinar, or a seminar, on Eventbrite. I mean, the other place for events is Facebook. Now if you Google a word on Facebook, it brings you up all the results for each of the different sections. So you can isolate just events that have that keyword in the name of the event, as well. I think there, that’s an easy way to find events. Like I said, it’s also an easy way to find content. Because if you look at one of these, like Meetup or Eventbrite, and you find an event that has got a lot of people that have registered interest for. Then it’s likely that’s a good subject, and you could write content on that as well.

Kym Heffernan:                    20:10                       Yeah. No, 100%. I guess the other thing too, in terms of planning. Thinking about marketing planning, business planning generally, we discussed a number of things with that. I like mine, mainly because I’m a visual person. I think the thing I found with the mind mapping of stuff is if I’m certain is going to be across all your devices. Then I don’t just want that as an app on the phone, or it works on a desktop. Find something that’s transportable as well. Because then when you’ve got five, 10 minutes to kill before another appointment, or on a bus, or whatever else, you could be on your iPad doing it. When you get to the office, you could be using on your desktop, right?

Ben Fewtrell:                         20:44                       Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of the key things with these apps. I think what we’re talking about today is about increasing efficiency in your business. Everyone, we live a busy life here. It’s not unusual to hear people say, “I’ve run out of time. I wish there was more hours in the day. I’m just so busy.” Everything you do to win a bit of that time back is important. So I’m in a big agreeance with you, find apps that will sync across the cloud. I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy, so I’ve got the iPhone, I’ve got the Apple watch, I’ve got the iPad, I’ve got the MacBook. Everything syncs across every device, which means that it’s very easy for me to create things.

Ben Fewtrell:                         21:20                       When it comes to planning, for example, I use a few different tools. My main tool in the beginning is Wunderlist. I use, it’s W-U-N-D-E-R, Wunderlist. That’s just a to-do, or a task list. All my planning just starts with ideas, so I like to put down ideas. The good thing about that app is that I can use voice to text, or I can actually make a voice recording on my phone if I come up with an idea. Once again, it’s all about being super efficient. I don’t know how many times this has happened to you, Kym, where you’ve thought of a great idea. Then the next day you’ve gone to write it down, you’ve gone, “I can’t remember what it was.”

Kym Heffernan:                    21:55                       I’d be retired, playing five days a week, if every idea I’d thought of, I’d written down.

Ben Fewtrell:                         22:02                       I like apps that give you that ability to do it straight away. So Wunderlist is a starting point for me, Evernote is another one that I know. It’s a very popular app, a lot of people use it. It’s not just for planning, but I use that to keep everything under control and managed. Then if we are planning something in particular, where we need to set things out in a timeline or some sort of an order, I use Trello. Trello is a free tool. I can’t believe it’s free. Every time I use it, like, “How can this be free?” Because it’s just so good. You can customise what each step of your plan is, and then there can be a checklist in there. You can set it up however you like. You can share it with team members, you can share it with people outside of your organisation, you can make live changes. I just find it’s really good.

Kym Heffernan:                    22:49                       Yeah, it’s an amazing tool. We use it for project management, or all projects for clients, et cetera. What I love about it, that idea of taking your [inaudible 00:22:58] is so important, isn’t it? You’re out somewhere and you think of something. To be able to voice record and then to type it up, or do whatever else, is really the key to it. Because capturing the ideas is important, but you can go back and review them later on, right? You’ve got to capture them to start off with. The waking up in the middle of the night, or you wake up in the morning and you’ve got this great idea. By the time the shower’s over it’s gone, right?

Ben Fewtrell:                         22:49                       Yes.

Kym Heffernan:                    22:49                       So I-

Ben Fewtrell:                         22:49                       It doesn’t take much.

Kym Heffernan:                    23:21                       No. No, that’s right. So what I do, that I find really useful, is I’ll actually think of something. I’ll type it into a phone, or I’ll take a photo of a webpage on that phone. Upload it straight away to a Trello list that has, “Things to look at later on.” I’ll go back to it once every month or whatever, and look through it, and different ideas. So it’s just a great way of tracking it. If you’ve got a team working for you, if you upload it, they can do the research for you, right? So it’s a fantastic way to do it.

Ben Fewtrell:                         23:56                       Yeah, it’s a straight up [crosstalk 00:23:58]-

Kym Heffernan:                    23:57                       The other app I like on the phone is-

Ben Fewtrell:                         23:57                       Oh, sorry?

Kym Heffernan:                    24:02                       The other app I like on the phone is called TapeACall, as well. Very often I find when I’m creating content, or trying to create content for clients, sometimes you have a phone call with someone to do it. TapeACall actually allows you, and you’ve got to declare that you’re taping the call of course, with people. It’s not free, it’s about 20 to $30. If you’re doing a phone interview with a client or with yourself, and you’re doing a testimonial, trying to get a testimonial, for example, you can actually record that phone call later on. Because sometimes, when you’re on a phone call, you’re busy taking notes and you miss half of it. The tape recorder records the phone call, so you can get it transcribed with any transcription service. You’ve got that to listen to later on. I think it’s a fantastic app, that I love.

Ben Fewtrell:                         24:42                       Yeah, that’s brilliant. I use something similar, but not for a call. I just use Rev. Rev is an app where you can dictate to the app. It then goes off to a transcriber, and for a dollar a minute it gets sent back to you as a transcription. Same thing is, if I have an idea, a lot of my blog posts I will do using that app. I could be in the car, or just I’ve got a little lapel mic plugged into my iPhone. As I’m driving, I’ll just blurt out. I’ll start, usually I’ll write down some key points. I might have 10 bullet points, but then each of those bullet points I’ll talk about. Then I’ll just get them transcribed and sent to me. It’s a really super easy way to make a blog post. I’m not the type to sit in front of a computer and type for hours, it’s just not my thing. So when you talk about recording, I think that’s a good app.

Kym Heffernan:                    25:29                       Yeah, a lot of people do that. Even if you do it as a recording on your phone, or record a phone call with someone else, I mean testimonials are things that people often struggle with. I’ve seen them, that they don’t get testimonials. So just ringing up a client and giving it over the phone, saying, “Look, we’re trying to get some testimonials. What do you think about the project?” Just delve deep into the questions, out of that will come the testimonial. If you send an email off to them, saying, “Hey, we’d love a testimonial. Can you give us a testimonial?” You’ll never get a response. They’re too busy doing other things, right?

Ben Fewtrell:                         25:59                       Yeah, absolutely. Well another app that you can use to do that, which just came to my mind, which we mentioned earlier, is Zoom.

Kym Heffernan:                    25:59                       Yeah, of course.

Ben Fewtrell:                         26:05                       Yeah. Zoom, you can’t do it over the phone, you need to have an internet connection. Well actually, you can do it with a phone. They do give you a dial-in number as well, but it works best as both. Most people would be familiar with Skype. Zoom is similar to Skype, but I think it’s a bit better. It’s very easy for you to record your Zoom conversations. You’re not just recording the audio, but you also can record the video. For a client testimonial, that would be perfect. Say, “Hey, do you mind sitting in front of your webcam? Let’s set up a time. I’m just going to ask you a few questions, and record it for my website.”

Kym Heffernan:                    26:39                       The other thing I like about Zoom is, too, I think it helps with client training and induction as well. If you’ve got a new project, or you’re showing a client something, or you’re going to create a new business. For example, you go through a debrief with the client, both log onto Zoom. Both record the client’s comments, instead of trying to take them down by hand and listening to them. You’ve got a video, then you record and play later on. The training, the starting, it’s a fantastic tool. I can’t believe it’s like $20 a month or something. Whereas, you used to use something like GoToWebinar, which is very slow to load, and it’s $150 a month.

Ben Fewtrell:                         27:18                       Yeah.

Kym Heffernan:                    27:19                       It’s just crazy.

Ben Fewtrell:                         27:21                       How things have changed, hey?

Kym Heffernan:                    27:23                       Absolutely. The other thing I think I liked, that you talked about, was the apps on your phone to scan things as well.

Ben Fewtrell:                         27:30                       Yeah, so I’ve got an app on my phone. Yeah, I did have to pay for it. I think it was $3, so it’s not going to break the bank. I’m not sure. I’m just trying to find it in the app store, actually, to see if that’s right. I think it was very cheap. It’s called Scanner Pro.

Kym Heffernan:                    27:42                       Yep. Scanner Pro, yep.

Ben Fewtrell:                         27:44                       Yeah. What was happening was I had, sometimes I’m out on the road. I’ll get some paperwork filled in by a client, and I need to send it back to the office to be processed. I was taking photos of them with my phone and sending them. Now, there’s two problems with that. Straight away, it’s an image, it’s a photo. The second thing is getting a good, clear photo of a form with handwriting is very difficult. I found this thing called Scanner Pro, and it’s amazing. It’s actually, when you take a photo of the document, it flattens it out. It makes everything super crystal clear to read, and it looks like you’ve actually photocopied this thing. It was three bucks.

Ben Fewtrell:                         28:15                       So I would recommend it to anybody who’s out and about, who needs to scan something, and send it somewhere for somebody else to decipher. For the few bucks that it costs, it’s going to save them a lot of issues and mistakes. We were getting mistakes with things like a phone number, an address, or even a credit card number, because it wasn’t clear on the photo. Scanner Pro works really well. The other thing is, you can make one document out of several forms. So you could have a document that’s 10 pages long. I can take a photo of each of the 10 pages, and it turns it into one PDF, that I can then send.

Kym Heffernan:                    28:45                       Wow. Because otherwise you’ve got five photos that you’re trying to upload and send in a row, which is very frustrating.

Ben Fewtrell:                         28:51                       Yeah. Well, the other thing with Scanner Pro is you can synchronise it with other cloud services. I use Dropbox, so mine’s synchronised with my Dropbox account. I have a folder on there, and it allows me to create new folders within there. Let’s say I’m dealing with you all of a sudden, Kym. I’ve come out to see you, you fill in some paperwork. I can now scan all the paperwork that I’ve just spoken with you about, put it up into my folder. I could create a new folder called Kym, and I’m done. I can access that from my PC, and could print then, when I get home. There’s all sorts of things that you can do.

Ben Fewtrell:                         29:23                       So I find that these tools are not just about getting the scan done, but then the way they work after that is paramount to how efficient they are. I always look for apps that are, like you said, I’m with you, they’ve got to be cloud-based. They’ve got to have some sort of up-side at the end of whatever task it is you do. Whether it’s putting a contact in, whether it’s scanning something, whether it’s creating an image. It’s got to be easy after that too. It can’t just be easy in the beginning.

Kym Heffernan:                    29:49                       Yeah, that’s right. Exactly, and we talked about some of the business card scanners. I mean, although I see business cards declining more and more these days, having a good business card scanner that links with your CRM is critical. I mean, you have one you mentioned, mixed with Infusionsoft that you use. I have one mixed with HubSpot that I use. If you just Google any app store, or search the app store, or go to Chrome Store for apps that links business cards and CRM, you’ll find they’ll pop up.

Ben Fewtrell:                         30:18                       Yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s one called Business Card Reader Pro that I bought as well. Because if I don’t want to put the contact into Infusionsoft, then I will use that. Because I don’t want to carry business cards around, who does?

Kym Heffernan:                    30:32                       No.

Ben Fewtrell:                         30:32                       It allows you, it is like putting business cards into a big, I don’t know, like a Rolodex. Keeps a picture of it, allows you to search, it reads the text on them. So just, it’s a really good app. If you have got something like HubSpot or Infusionsoft, the Infusionsoft one’s called Snap. The good thing with the Infusionsoft one is you take a picture. Then a real person actually transcribes it, or whatever that goes through, and puts it into Infusionsoft for you. Then tells you when it’s ready. It takes a few minutes. The thing I like about this, and this is where this CRM automation comes in. Once that person’s in my CRM, I can then use my phone to then apply a tag. A tag can trigger then an email going out to that person.

Ben Fewtrell:                         31:11                       So let’s say I meet you at a networking event. I scan your card. A few minutes later, I get a little notification saying it’s been uploaded. I could then apply a tag, and you get an email from me before we’ve even left the networking event. Going, “Hey, Kym. It was great to meet you at such and such event. Can’t wait to meet up with you next week,” or whatever. At our agreed time, I can put whatever, merge fields in. So if I have set up an appointment earlier, you’re going to get this really customised email. It just impresses people. People go, “Wow, that person’s really on the ball,” but it’s really simple to do.

Kym Heffernan:                    31:37                       That’s the biggest challenge when you meet someone, isn’t it? You want to get back to them as quickly as possible, but then business gets in the way. A few days pass, and then, oh, next week you remember it. This just makes it so much easier in terms of process. It makes you look more efficient too, doesn’t it?

Ben Fewtrell:                         31:53                       Absolutely, which is a good thing. I mean, people want to deal with people that are on top of the game. They don’t want to deal with people that are sloppy.

Kym Heffernan:                    32:01                       There’s a couple of others we mentioned as well, in terms of pictures and stock photos. Because images these days are very important on social media, and even on websites, so having good images is really important. That Facebook one was interesting. I didn’t know about that integration with iStock, which is great.

Ben Fewtrell:                         32:19                       Yeah. Well, it’s only if you create a Facebook ad. They don’t let-

Kym Heffernan:                    32:19                       It’s still [crosstalk 00:32:20], yeah.

Ben Fewtrell:                         32:24                       Yeah, but the reality is you’ve got thousands and thousands of professional stock images now that you have access to. You just put a keyword in. So when you’re creating the ad, instead of uploading a photo, you choose stock photos. Then you just put a keyword in. Then you can put whatever you like, “Stressed business person,” or you could put, “Kid having fun.” You just type in whatever, and it’s just a huge library. So I think that’s cool.

Kym Heffernan:                    32:49                       One of the best hacks I found with photos is because people tend to be lazy. So with Bigstock, iStock, or Fotolia, which I use quite often, I never go to the first page of that keyword. I always go to the end page, because people will generally pick the first few images. If you want something that’s not going to be used by everyone, go to the last pages and look through them, and work backwards.

Ben Fewtrell:                         33:11                       Yeah, that’s a great tip.

Kym Heffernan:                    33:12                       Because, yeah, people are lazy. They’ll find one on the first page, and couldn’t be bothered with the other five pages of photos. Go to page five and work back, they’ll be less often used.

Ben Fewtrell:                         33:22                       Yeah.

Kym Heffernan:                    33:22                       The other thing, that’s really in terms of time as well. I mean time, as you said, everyone’s busy. We’re all trying to do so many things. A lot of these tools, I think, are designed to help us be more productive. That’s means we never switch off, right? So RescueTime, I think, was one you mentioned. Was that right?

Ben Fewtrell:                         33:40                       Yeah. I’m a Mac user, so I use an app called RescueTime, which gives me the ability to track what I’m doing on my Mac. Then you can categorise your apps. Now it automatically categorises some things, for example it will put Facebook in the wasting time sort of category. If you’re a Facebook marketer, obviously it means you’re working. Sometimes you need to tune it up, so it tells you what’s going on. The other thing you can do, is you can make it lock yourself out of certain apps when you’re doing something. Let’s say you’ve got to spend the next hour going through all your, I don’t know, inbound inquiries, and you can’t be distracted.

Ben Fewtrell:                         34:16                       You can actually set RescueTime up, where you just press one button and it will lock you out of things like Facebook or internet browsers. Anything that’s typically very distracting, and make you focus on what it is you’ve got to focus on. At the end of the week, at the end of the month, you can look at a report. It’ll give you the percentage of time you’re spending at each thing. It’s quite scary. So when I first put it on, Kym, I didn’t realise how much time I spent in my inbox. Using RescueTime made me then go, “you know what? I really need to streamline this process.” I actually started a second email address that my assistant gets, so I don’t get all the emails anymore. Sometimes it can just alert you to a problem.

Kym Heffernan:                    34:51                       Yeah, so the tracking thing. The old thing we used to do was, for two weeks, just sit down and track everything you do, but people forget about it, right? This is a more efficient way, and accurate way to do it. Also, the sort of thing where you’re billing for certain clients at different times, or even just working on your own stuff versus client stuff. It’s a good way of actually tracking that, isn’t it?

Ben Fewtrell:                         35:13                       Yeah, absolutely, because it can help you know where you’re spending your time. I think that’s paramount. No matter what you’re doing, you want to know, don’t you?

Kym Heffernan:                    35:22                       100%. I guess the last one I wanted to touch on was outsourcing platforms. I mean, it’s great that we’ve created more time, but sometimes we need more help for projects on an ongoing basis. I mean, my personal favourite I’ve used for years is Upwork, it’s called now. It used to be oDesk, and Elance before that. Have you used the others? What success have you had with other platforms?

Ben Fewtrell:                         35:40                       Yeah, so the main one that we use is Upwork now, because of the quality. I think that you get a better quality there. Having said that, you can get good quality out of Fiverr. When Fiverr first came out … Fiverr, by the way, is F-I-V-E-R-R.com. When Fiverr first came out, I used it a lot. In the beginning, it was quite cheap. Everything was only $5. That’s how it started, and it was easy to do, to give the job to six people. Then it would only cost you 30 bucks, and you just had to take the one you liked the best.

Ben Fewtrell:                         36:13                       Now what’s happened with Fiverr is that nothing’s five bucks. It’s still called Fiverr, but nothing’s five bucks, and the quality is very questionable. I mean if you want something done, the way I recommend on something like Fiverr is go, and when you’re looking for something, put your keyword in. Let’s say you’re looking for a graphic design to be done, or maybe you want an image to be created. When you do the search, make sure you sort the results by best rated. Because then, if they’ve done a thousand jobs and everyone’s giving them five stars, the likelihood is they’re going to do a good job.

Kym Heffernan:                    36:47                       Yeah, and that’s 100%. The same thing I think applies when you’re using Upwork as well. Yeah, I obviously look for people with good English skills, number one. Also, two, how many jobs they’ve done. I appreciate you need to give everyone a chance, but I don’t like being the guinea pig. I usually look that they’ve completed a reasonable number of jobs in that area as well. You need to think about whether you want to use an agency or a person as well, which is the other solution.

Ben Fewtrell:                         37:14                       One of the limitations with a lot of those, with Upwork and with Fiverr, is most of the people on them are not in Australia.

Kym Heffernan:                    37:20                       Oh, absolutely.

Ben Fewtrell:                         37:21                       So they’re in other countries. The other app that I use, and I have a lot of my clients that I know are using it as well, is Airtasker. The good thing with Airtasker is you can get local talent. You can find someone who is local, who can come into your office, and will do some work for you. Let’s say you’ve got a campaign you’re running, and you want someone to come in. Maybe you’re doing a direct marketing campaign, which I know sounds weird, but it’s actually becoming more effective. You might have someone come in for half a day and stuff envelopes. You can find someone on Airtasker to do that as well. That’s where you can’t do that with Upwork.

Kym Heffernan:                    37:49                       100%. That’s an interesting point, because Airtasker when it first started, was a bit more of a let’s do the gardening, or handyman type stuff. It’s obviously changed a lot since then.

Ben Fewtrell:                         37:58                       Well, you can still get that. You can still find someone to wash your laundry or mow your lawn. What I discovered on it, was you can find somebody to do some of the things that I don’t want to do, like you can find somebody on Airtasker. The good thing with it, is you can put any job up you like. Then it’s up to them, the people, to bid on it, that think that they’re interested in it. You might have something that needs to be picked up from the city, taken across town, to be given to somebody and swapped for something else, and then delivered to you.

Ben Fewtrell:                         38:22                       Someone on Airtasker could do that. You don’t have to ring a courier company anymore. It could be that you want someone to go to the shop and pick up something that you’ve bought, and bring it to you. When you think about becoming more efficient as a business owner, and Airtasker has a phone app. You just, you have an app on your phone, and you could be anywhere. You just jump on there, and you nominate how much you’re willing to pay. Somebody says, “yeah, I’ll do it,” and you get your job done.

Kym Heffernan:                    38:44                       Yeah. That’s great, because it’s got that secure payment for both the person doing the job and the person requesting the job, the same as Upwork does as well. I think that they’re both great apps, but I love that Airtasker suggestion for Australia as well. I don’t know how many we’ve gone through there. It’ll be interesting when we type up the show notes, and see how many there are. There’s just so much there, where do people start with this? You need to look down those different categories and say, “What is my biggest pain point?” Where do people start?

Ben Fewtrell:                         39:13                       You know what I’ve started doing, Kym, is I ask other people now. I used to go to the app store and do a search, but it’s overwhelming. Overwhelming. Same if you do a Google search. If you do a Google search for best time management tools on Google, you’re going to come up with so many. Find somebody who’s good at what you want to get good at. Ask them, are they using software? What’re they using? Do they recommend it? For example, I use Infusionsoft to run my business, but I don’t recommend it to most people, because it’s a big beast. I do have enough knowledge to be able to say, “You know what? Get yourself MailChimp, get yourself a free CRM to get started, and off you go.” I think if you ask somebody that you’ve already got a relationship with. You know that maybe they’re efficient, or maybe you see that they’re getting these people, they’re outsourcing all this work. Then you can just leverage off of their knowledge. I can tell you, there’s a steep learning curve with it all.

Kym Heffernan:                    40:07                       Well, that’s a really good point. A good place to start is Facebook forums, I think, Facebook groups. There’s lots of good business Facebook groups out there, and even forums like Flying Solo [inaudible 00:40:16] as well. It will tell you what they’re using, and what their experience is.

Ben Fewtrell:                         40:22                       Maybe we need to create an app that has the best apps.

Kym Heffernan:                    40:25                       That measures how long we spend using it.

Ben Fewtrell:                         40:29                       Yeah.

Kym Heffernan:                    40:33                       Right. Thanks again so much for your time. If people want to connect with MaxMyProfit, and learn more about you. You run a number of events where people can learn how to run their business better, I’d like to give you a chance to talk about those as well.

Ben Fewtrell:                         40:45                       Yeah, absolutely. The best thing for people to do is go to maxmyprofit.com.au. The team will help you build the business you imagined. Not everyone likes events. We do run a lot of events, but there’s lots of freebees on our websites. You can download a business planning template, you can download a marketing template. We also have some blog posts about apps that we use to be more efficient. So you can head across there. The other thing, because you’re listening to a podcast, it tells me you love podcasts. I have a podcast called Business Brain Food, that we now have over 180 episodes. Been going for a few years, very popular, some great episodes. To suit just about anybody now, we’ve got that many different topics covered. So that’s another great way for you to connect with me, and go to businessbrainfood.com.au.

Kym Heffernan:                    41:27                       I highly recommend Business Brain Food. There’s some fantastic content across those 200 odd episodes, and a whole variety of topics. Actually, that’s a really good point in terms of learning, which is one thing we didn’t cover off. I think podcasts, I just love podcasts. Obviously because I’m running one, but I just love listening to them. I listened to radio when I was a kid. It’s just a wonderful medium when you’ve got time to kill in the car, or if you’re walking, or even just time to listen. You pick up so much from a podcast. I mean, when you-

Ben Fewtrell:                         41:56                       Yeah, absolutely.

Kym Heffernan:                    41:58                       When you’ve got to sit down and watch [inaudible 00:41:59], or a YouTube video or something, it’s not quite as easy. It’s not as personal. I think this is fantastic.

Ben Fewtrell:                         42:05                       Yeah. I agree 100%, mate. Couldn’t agree more.

Kym Heffernan:                    42:09                       I’m glad you’re very agreeable. Bend Fewtrell from MaxMyProfit, thank you so much for your time today, and we’ve got some wonderful tips there. We’ll get those show notes out to people, and help you become more productive. Thanks, mate.

Speaker 1:                               42:23                       Thanks for joining us on this episode of Marketing Show. We hope you got some practical, effective tips and ideas, so your organisation gets more prospects, and nurtures those prospects to becoming long-term customers. Just a reminder, the show is sponsored by The Marketing Strategy Company, who help B2B organisations develop winning marketing strategies, and sales and marketing automation systems. To turn their sales and marketing efforts into new customers and dollars through their marketing. Check out the show notes for this episode, and The Marketing Strategy Company’s planing and marketing services, at themarketingstrategy.co. That’s themarketingstrategy.co. Until next time, happy marketing.