Lessons

Lesson Info

Pitch Your Business

we ended by talking about putting our client first. We ended by talking about the value of premium services, premium pricing of setting boundaries and not trying to appeal to everyone. Remember, one of the things I said was in a world of infinite choice, if something is not made for me, I'm gone. And we want to emphasize that now we want to get really specific. So instead of saying I'm a web designer, we talked. We went through that whole exercise of how you pitch me, how you pitch a photographer. We're gonna do what I call idea tear downs, and I'm gonna take your ideas, and I'm going to actually show you how to break him down and improve him and pitch them in a little bit of a better way. So what I want people to do is now, start writing out there ideas or here in studio pitch your best pitch of what you do. I'm a wedding photographer or whatever it may be, get as specific as you can, and then we're gonna actually walk through how to improve that both the way you describe it. Remember...

how I used to? I told you how a split tested I work from home. I work from a home office and I got massively different results. We're gonna split test, uh, the way you actually introduce yourself and then even your pitch. So this is ideas, tears, own idea, tear downs. Let's take people from the audience first, and we'll get people from the Web in a couple of minutes. Who's got their idea, Their business, their pitch that they wanna put up for a tear down my idea. And then we can sort of work through the shirt. Okay, so right now I'm working in online marketing and I write for whatever my client wants me to write about. My dream, I think, would be writing for a lifestyle magazine for sort of hip urban women in their twenties. And that's sort of the audience that I would want to be writing for. Okay, So what is the first thing that a client who is your client my client would be the editors of these publications even online, Or, um, I'm not sure if that matters as far as, like, nation down online or sort of sure everything matters, but let's just say pick one online. What do they think when they hear your pitch? I think that they think that I am a commodity, that I'm someone who is going to put words on the page. Are you a commodity? I would like to think that I am not. I mean, that's sort of a strange question. Why, um, are you asking? Am I a commodity right now in the way in a Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And how about your pricing is a commodity pricing? Um, yeah. Okay. You want to get above that? You want us to transcend that so that you can charge a premium price, really spend time on amazing premium value and then get known as someone who is a specialist in this field. Right. Okay. When I think as an editor, when I think about someone coming to pitch me for some lifestyle thing, I think exactly what you said. I think you're right on the money. Okay? She's just gonna fill up my page. And what what is the point of putting content on the page? Why do I want content on the page? I think that you want to sell what it is that you like, have online, right? So you want to be known for having exceptionally good content for this audience? Um, okay, maybe. Why the Why? Remember, I'm an editor. What? What is my boss breathing down my neck about, um, sales as far as competing with other, either sites. And how do I make money selling ads? Correct. So what do I care about in terms of the content, you have to be good enough to to sell toe to sell ads, my customers, not even the reader, its advertisers. So that's very, very important to realize if you're sitting around saying I need to make amazing content But this this magazine that you're pitching is online magazine is selling ads. They don't really care how good you are. You just need to be good enough so they can keep those pages going right. Makes sense. So you have two choices. One is you can try to write material that's gonna get tons and tons of page views okay to you can sidestep the entire game and find people who do not make money through ads who make money through other engaging ways. What might What ways might those be? I've been struggling to figure that out. Well, I don't sell ads. You are selling products, Correct? The site. Uh huh. And what do I need to do in order to keep people engaged to continue? Teoh sort of turnout is a bit of a crude word, but to continue to have engaging content, correct. So I'm just one example of someone who has a business. I don't sell ads because I just don't care about it. But I want to create amazing content, like 98% of my stuff is free. It's engaging. You sign up for my newsletter. You're gonna find better stuff there than you find in most magazines. At least that's I hope so. Are there Am I just an equals one or are there more people like me? I'm sure they're more people like you, perhaps. Yeah, perhaps. People who are in the young women space. So what could you do if you now we've kind of narrowed it down to who could this person be? We know that they make money through different ways besides adds product ization or whatever and they need a way to engage. What would your pitch be Now? Let's say I'm a 34 year old woman of a 20 something online magazine making money by selling products. What's your pitch to me? So I understand the based on your business model your am I correct in assuming, based on this is my perception of your business model that you're making your money through selling X y and Z products three of site. Yeah, Great. Um, having read your site for, you know, a long time and looking at your readership through comments and various things, I've noticed that your readership really appreciates X, y and Z. I think that continuing to sort of hone exceptional content around these areas would help you to continue to engage these people so that when you launch your next move on your are you telling me stuff? I already know I'm way smarter than any random picture. I'm an editor of this already. Know all this. Tell me what? I don't know. Um, that I am a person who can deliver this content based on my past history with magazines in the space X, y and Z. Good. All right, so So you're going with the experience route. OK, fine. So you just told me. You didn't show me what I would do to show me and say, Actually, let me show you these three of these articles, you know, the average readership for articles in this magazine is 1000. Mine averaged 9000. And here's why. And you really want to get medication, Say, like, you know, I took I took a different approach instead of just writing about common things, actually took a very polarized approach. Now it's not right for everyone. But for this audience, I knew that it would be really resonating. And so I did that. And as a result, this one article got 18,000 views, which was the number one shared article ever on their side. So you're showing me you're not telling me that's something that most creative do terribly like. They tell me all this stuff they don't show me I'm like, prove it or just get out of here. The other thing is, I think that so I'm the editor And what what are my hopes? Fears and dreams. I think you're hoping to continue to have this product that then sells sort of like paid materials. Um, I think that you fear one looking silly in the space. You know, being known for producing sort of subpar content content that's not hip or sort of with it. Um, and also losing readership and sort of going from being in a good place to sort of good. I'm also fearing, having to deal with some new freelancer, that I have to train all this stuff. I deal with them being not good at writing, not missing deadlines, etcetera. I deal with having to pay you a lot of money. How would you assuage my fears? How would you pitch me on saying so? Let's assume that I've agreed. Yes, I have this problem. Yes. I want to create engaging content. What are you going to pitch me specifically to get your foot in the door? Um, That I will have things and before deadlines, Know what else? Um, everyone gets everything like saying I'm gonna breathe oxygen, right? Oh, totally. It's assumed that Yeah, of course you're gonna get it in before Denver, right? What else? Um, take my risk away. You know my fears. Take my risk away. That's a new song coming up. Your fear of working with a new person and just take it away. Make it risk free to me. Here. I will give you this article in front. Um, and then once can I do your whole thing where it's like, I don't normally do this. My rates of this. Um but since we're starting on a new sort of business relationship, I love to provide this article for you. See how it goes, track those results and then continue with other things. So we're gonna get into spec working a little bit. Spec work or free work can make sense in certain cases, much to the anger and chagrin of creatives everywhere. It actually can make a lot of sense. I've done a lot of free work. People who work for me have done free work. World like masters have done free work, but they don't just willy nilly give away free work for anybody. And I'll teach you how to distinguish between those. If you know that to an editor, you are considered a commodity. But you need to prove that you're not a commodity. You need to do a few things. First of all, I would start off like say it a C tier 123 Tier three and I would start, like, get really amazing pieces for my writing portfolio. I would be able to show that my articles get 10 times the views of other people's, and I would also just becoming more interesting person, right? If you want to write about lifestyle for women's stuff, you could be doing crazy fun stuff. So I do that. Then I would have to time be building up my own personal brand because when you go to an editor, you look I have 35,000 Twitter followers. I will be pointing them all to these articles, a k a. More page views or higher engagement. Whatever. Um, then as you come to the tier one editor or tear to you say, Look, I did this. I did that here. The results probable. Listen, my normal rate is X, but we can discuss that later. I'm really like what you're doing. I've done all this work, but I'm ready to take it to the next level. And so if you permit me, I'd like to actually write one article. I believe that it will triple your click through rates. I believe it'll x y z your revenue. Whatever the numbers, you discover our. If it doesn't work, let's walk away. No hard feelings revisited, then one. Yeah, exactly. But we can discuss the details later. Everybody see what what just happened there? So in that short exercise, we discovered Who's the client? What their hopes, fears and dreams fears, especially. And then you found a way to do what's called risk reversal. You took all the risk on yourself. A lot of people are really uncomfortable with this. Why should I take all the risk? A little. That's the name of the game. The editor can choose you or anybody else. And especially when you're competing in a highly commoditized field, which you are, you really do have to take the risk on yourself. Improve it over time. Your goal is to separate yourself from everyone else who's charging, you know, x cents per word and be able to almost dictate your fees. But to do that, you have to think creatively and understand the people, your clients and their business models. Very good