How Radical Marketing Puts Bums on Seats for High-Ticket Coaches

[Steven] (0:00 – 0:07)

To kick things off, I’d love to hear a little bit about your professional background, a little bit of introduction to yourself, if you wouldn’t mind.

[Terence] (0:07 – 0:27)

Sure, Stephen. So I guess in relation to marketing, going back, I started having a passion for marketing back when I was like 16 years old. And I, for some reason, my dad bought this book like Marketing Warfare and Positioning by Al Rees and Jack Trout. I’m not sure whether you know of that book, but it’s one of those classics,

right?

[Steven] (0:27 – 0:35)

It is. We’ve got a copy on the desk that the team have their lunch and stuff like that. So, yeah, we’ve got one lying around the office.

[Terence] (0:35 – 1:11)

Yeah. So it’s a great book. It just fascinated me when I was 16 and I’m just still in high school,

right?

And I just started reading book back and front, back cover to cover. And then from there on, I decided I want to be a marketer. And so I finished my high school, got into a marketing degree.

That wasn’t good enough. So I did a master’s and an honors just for the heck of it. Why not?

Right. And yeah, at that time, I think the whole thing was that the Internet just started coming

This was back in the late 90s.

Right. So I’m totally revealing my age here. That’s fine.

Nobody cares anyway.

[Steven] (1:11 – 1:12)

You and me both.

[Terence] (1:12 – 4:07)

Don’t worry. So, yeah, at that time, the Internet was just coming up and like there was a strong demand for Internet marketing knowledge. And so the university lecturers told me, hey, why don’t you teach the subject? So I start teaching Internet Marketing. And this was back in Brisbane in the late 90s. Right.

So I was at various universities. I did stints at University of Sydney, Queensland University of Technology. But my main home campus was Griffith University.

And I did that for five years. Right. To cut a long story short.

Then I kind of like had this itch to go like, okay, academia is fine, but it’s not satisfying my entrepreneurial itch or the itch to actually, you know, do something with all this knowledge.

Right. Sure.

So I decided to come out and started a printing business. I don’t know why. I just saw the ad in the newspaper and I thought, well, why not?

Right. Negotiate the price, got into printing and also at the same time got into the whole property development stuff. And yeah, I kind of got distracted, I would say, for those few years there.

And really, I did marketing, of course, I was doing like for my printing business. I was into Google ads back in, I don’t know, 2003, 2000. Yeah, about 2002, 2003, we went to Google ads and yeah, we were getting like seven cent clicks, you know, back then, which was super awesome because nobody was using it.

And I remember back in 2007, I think I created a VSL funnel without knowing that is actually a VSL funnel, which is actually a video on the landing page. Right. Yeah.

So, yeah, from there on, I think, yeah, I just eventually property business subsided and I got sick of doing the printing business. So I started a marketing agency. So coming back to Full Circle and that was when I moved to Malaysia in 2012, when I first started my marketing agency.

So it’s a brand new start. And yeah, that’s where we got into like Facebook ads and all that stuff, which was just starting off. So just riding the trend again.

And a well, it was a cousin of mine who introduced this client to me, who was doing seminars, right? I’m going, how do you get bumps and seats? And they’re like, oh, we just advertise on in the newspapers and direct mail.

I’m going, oh, have you tried this thing called Facebook ads? And they’re like, no, I’m like, why don’t you give it a try? So I persuaded them to give it a try.

And, you know, back then there was like no competition and it was like crazy. We’re getting super cheap leads, super cheap attendees, and they were really happy with it. And that was the start of my bumps on seats, marketing agency, so to say.

Yeah. And yeah, I guess for the past 10 years, that’s what I’ve been doing, getting bumps on seats for seminars, webinars and challenges and what have you.

[Steven] (4:08 – 4:21)

Get into a little bit. What was the inspiration behind setting up Radical Marketing then? You mentioned that you had this, this one client and you could help them with the Facebook ads, which was kind of something new and innovative for that sector at the time.

How did that then develop into the agency?

[Terence] (4:21 – 5:34)

Yeah, it’s kind of like by accident. I mean, it’s, it was like a lot, one person referred another person, people found me online through SEO, you know, saw some of the results and, you know, especially in this industry that I’m in, the benefit is that it’s quite a small industry, right?

There’s probably, I don’t know, probably like 200 people in total in my region anyway, advertising their webinars or seminars, even less probably.

Right. So they kind of like know each other and kind of talk to one another over time. And over time they, yeah, people talk about us and then we kind of like pop up in the conversation and people come to us or they find our website, right.

And they kind of like, and we produce a lot of content constantly. Like we have our own podcast, YouTube channel, blog posts and all that, which, you know, we’ll put links to all of those in the show notes as well. Yeah.

Great. So yeah, it’s mostly organic. We’ve tried paid traffic and honestly that hasn’t worked for us because the, I guess the target audience is so small.

Yep. LinkedIn outreach has worked somewhat for us, but we don’t really focus on that, but maybe cold email might work for us. We, we have, we’re considering that at the moment.

[Steven] (5:34 – 5:47)

And so what does the, what does an ideal client look like then? How, if somebody wants to set themselves up as a coach or a speaker or a mentor, what, you know, and they should come to you, how can they set themselves up for success from a marketing point of view?

[Terence] (5:48 – 7:31)

Right. I’ll say if you’re asking, the first question was about our ideal target audience. Our ideal target audience would be people who already do seminars or webinars and they’re doing it relatively successfully.

They’re just looking for someone who really takes care of them and just goes, brings them to the next level, whether in terms of getting the numbers or getting a cheaper cost per signup, that’s where they come to us. Because usually what happens is that the common complaint I get is like their previous agency didn’t really care about them after a while. And so they kind of like are looking for someone new.

That’s usually the ideal audience that we want to work with. We do get some startup coaches who want to venture into this. And I’ll say this, like having webinars and seminars, it’s a pretty like high risk, high return game, which you know, you have to spend money in order to get bumps on seats.

And then you’ve got to make sure you convert at a higher rate than what you spend. Right. So it’s not something that for newbies to actually just jump into it without any experience.

So for those people, I would recommend you kind of like work with, you know, you have promoters out there, like, you know, there’s like people like Success Resources that will bring you on to their speaking gig if they think you have a chance of succeeding. But the downside, obviously, is they take a huge chunk of your revenue, but it de-risks everything for you. And then, you know, if you kind of like, oh, you convert pretty well, then maybe you can go out on your own later on.

That’s probably a less risky strategy to start off with. Yeah.

[Steven] (7:31 – 7:46)

Interesting. And personal branding then for the individual speakers must be quite a key thing to sort of coach them through as well for the one of a better expression. They must be focused on, you know, having their own personal brand that’s going to start resonating with their target  audience as well.

Yeah.

[Terence] (7:46 – 8:41)

And you’re right in saying that, Steven, because like the brand is like so important. And I’ll be honest, most, even most of our clients don’t have a clear understanding of what they stand for, what are their brand stands for when they come to us. And the challenge sometimes for us as well is when we’re advising on the brand, they may not like the direction that we suggest as well.

And many times they end up, even some of our clients end up being sounding too vanilla like for lack of a better word that, you know, they try and play it safe, but in playing safe, it’s actually a riskier game rather than you try and stand out and appeal to just a certain segment of the population. They’re trying to be too mass market. And as a result, they sound like everybody else. Yeah. So that is definitely a challenge that, you know, for most people in this industry.

Interesting.

[Steven] (8:41 – 9:23)

So I’d love to now just move on and let’s focus a little bit on radical marketing. You said you set up the business in 2012. What sort of, I’m interested in, there’s two aspects, I guess.

The first thing I’m interested in is your day-to-day role now. So obviously you were the founder and set it up, but you’ve grown your team. So what’s your day-to-day role in the business?

And then I’d love to hear kind of what a typical client journey would be. So if I was to come to you as someone who’s done a few webinars and seminars and built up a bit of a following, how does the kind of methodology you guys bring to a bear? So I realized that was two really long questions in one go, but let’s just start with the first one that you like, let’s, let’s go from 2012 to now and how you’ve grown your business and what’s your role.

[Terence] (9:23 – 10:49)

Okay. So the, I actually started in 2014. I moved to Malaysia in 2012, started in 2014.

And I guess my role back then was like, I did everything right from writing the copy to building the funnels to, you know, coming up with graphics and everything, writing the emails, sequences and all that, and all the automations and stuff. Yeah. It was just a one man show.

Then I started realizing, Oh, look, I can’t do all this myself. So I can, I need to hire someone, but I can’t afford someone full time. Right.

So I went on the, one of those like work sites, old desk, I think it was back then and hired a freelancer to help me out. And eventually I got to the point where I could hire staff and team members. And now we’ve got about in total, about 16 team members, I think.

Yeah. So, but I am still trying to let go fully of a few things. Like for example, the strategy and even some of the copywriting, I’m struggling to let go of that.

It’s not that I’m too precious about it, but every time an ad goes out, I feel that our reputation is at stake. Right. So I’m just like, so hesitant to like, just let everything, okay, you guys take care of it and I’ll do nothing.

So maybe that’s just me. Right. So, uh, yeah.

Or I just need to train better people.

[Steven] (10:49 – 11:24)

You know, I think some of, I completely hear where you’re coming from and that sometimes I think it’s the fun stuff as well. So some of the client facing work and you, you get into a, an administrative or management role within an agency or in a business and you don’t really get to do the fun stuff for the clients, which is what you got into it for in the first place, right. When we, when we got into the industry. That’s right. So take me through then, the sort of the methodology, if you like, or the client journey. So somebody comes to you and signs up, what’s the first stage?

Are you auditing the social media presence? Are you auditing their personal brands to begin with? How does it work?

[Terence] (11:24 – 13:36)

Okay. So we really focus on, you know, the events, right? So that is the main thing, main part we focus on a little bit about the personal brand.

If like, so we want to figure out how it stands out and you know, really what is the value that they’re offering at the events and whether the value is going to resonate with the target audience. So the first stage is a lot market research, like David Ogilvy, you know, the famous guy who he was writing for Rolls Royce, right? And I spent three months doing market marketing research before he wrote a word.

We don’t have that luxury of three months, but we get about maybe three days, but we do as much market research as possible. And I think once we have all that down pat or the messaging down pat, the next thing we do is we have a process which we name blitzvertising, right? We call it blitzvertising is because we, instead of like most people would just like run maybe like four or five ads and, you know, hope something works. We start off with like 20, 30 different big ideas or angles. And we see what the market tells us, like all the market research in the world, because all the market research in the world can, you know, it’s only market research, it’s only knowledge, but until you have money getting spent on ads, then you can really verify what actually works. Right.

So that’s where the rubber hits the road. And out of like 20, 30 of them, we might pick the best two or three, and then we test it further. And we have the whole process to test it with different audiences, different creatives, until we find that control or that winner.

And then after that, once we have that winner or control, we try and beat it every week with new copy, tweaked copy to try and beat it every week. So that’s the process in general that we use. And also, of course, that applies to all the landing pages and all that, which we tweak and test all the time.

Because sometimes it’s the landing page that is the issue where you just change the headline and your conversion rate might go up like 50%, whereas you could write 10 ads to get that 50%, whereas one headline could just give you that 50% increase. And yeah, when you get that, it’s,like, whoa, great feeling.

[Steven] (13:37 – 14:00)

So you and your team must have that laser focus on the analytics then and the data that’s coming through so that you can make those rapid changes as you see fit. And I guess that’s sort of the big difference between somebody trying to market themselves or market their own event and then having specialists and experts like you guys who can add that return on investment, that impact, if you like, that most individuals couldn’t do for themselves.

[Terence] (14:00 – 15:00)

I don’t understand how people can do it by themselves. So even if they have like hire one or two marketing guys, it’s just quite impossible to do it themselves because like all the data you need to scan and analyze, that itself, like after every event, we analyze the data that itself takes hours to just compile and analyze and to figure out which ad actually brought in not just the cheapest leads, but also the sales. You could have an ad, for example, that gave you a hundred leads for like five bucks and you’re like rejoicing, super happy.

But then at the end of the day, there’s no sales from it. Whereas another one might cost you 50 bucks, right? But it brought in like five sales for this event.

Are you going to spend more of your budget on the $50 ad or the $5 ad that brought you no sales? Of course you’re going to spend more on the $50 ad per lead ad, right? So all these things, I know it sounds like a bit geeky, but yeah, that’s what we do.