Mark Douglas is a Meta Blueprint Certified Digital Marketing Associate and the Founder of The Digital Marketing Agency The Mental Marketer.
His agency builds simple systems for Business owners and Online Entrepreneurs that generate thousands of qualified leads and sales for their business every month, without huge followings or huge budgets. He works with businesses all over the world, helping them achieve their goals in generating income and creating lasting change in their organization as well as the communities they serve. He has a passion for sharing this knowledge and has a Private Facebook Group Funnel Building 101 in which he teaches and shares this knowledge on a daily basis to thousands of online business owners.
He has an Associates degree in Accounting from San Antonio College and a Bachelor's degree in Marketing from The University of Texas at San Antonio. He's a veteran of the U.S. Army and he has an insatiable thirst for knowledge, which means he never stops reading and consuming content on sales, communication, leadership, and marketing. Mark likes to spend his free time working out, cooking, reading, traveling, an occasional round of golf, or trying an interesting international dish at one of the varieties of cultural restaurants in Houston, TX.
[Podcast Transcript Using Artificial Intelligence]
Umar Hameed 0:01
Are you ready to become awesomer? Hello everyone! My name is Umar Hameed, I'm your host on The No Limits Selling Podcast, where industry leaders share their tips, strategies and advice on how you can become better, stronger, faster. Just before we get started, I've got a question for you, do you have a negative voice inside your head? We all do, right? I'm gonna help you remove that voice and under 30 days guaranteed, not only remove it, but transform it. So instead of the voice that sabotages you, there's one that propels you to much higher levels of performance and success. There's a link in the show notes, click on it to find out more. All right! Let's get started.
Umar Hameed 0:41
Hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of The No Limits Selling Podcast where we talk to industry leaders on how they grow their people, how they grow their revenue, and how they add value to the world. And just before we get started, I wanted to tell you about the Happiness Project, there's going to be a link in it on the show notes. And what the Happiness Project is, is where we ask people to share what makes them happy. And the idea is when somebody watches your video, that they get inspired to go, oh my god, I could do that right now. Because happiness is everywhere. And people are so busy looking at the shadows, they missed the light that's all around them. So today I have the pleasure of having Mark Douglas with us today. He's the mental marketer and by mental you know, in England, it means you're nuts, but he's not nuts. Mental as an it's the mindset of marketing. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Douglas 1:26
Why thank you, Umar. I appreciate that gracious introduction.
Umar Hameed 1:32
Brilliant. So one of the things that I hear from a lot of salespeople, and a lot of companies is you know, when we get to talk to customers, were fabulous. And our close rate is off the charts. And it's amazing. But we just don't get enough bats, we don't get enough conversations. So I thought today, why don't we focus on how to generate leads, how to get people that want to talk to you to talk to you, so you can actually help them and bring revenue into your company and feed the kids and the school and get a mistress on the side?
Mark Douglas 2:01
All of the above all of the above? I agreed. Oh, yes. Oh, my goodness, lead generation is one of the lifeblood of any business. Because if you don't have leads coming into your business, then you don't have the possibility of having a relationship and having a relation to having that relationship turning into a customer and even more importantly, a lifetime customer. So I'm really excited to to share my experience. And some of this the success that I've had in my lead generation efforts on being an online business owner. [Garbled]
Umar Hameed 2:15
So there's two things there. Number one, companies spend a fortune on marketing. And a lot of times it does not work. And then they put more people on it more money on it. And on the other side, you got sales. And if sales do not have enough leads coming in, they have to go find their own leads, which is you know what salespeople do. But if we could get an automated system that got people that want your service that have a need that put up their hand and they self identify, it would make the use of your salespeople is so much more effective, because they spend more times on the phone, talking to people that need help and converting them from prospects to customers. Rather than hunting out. They're looking in hopes of finding a trail of someone. So what's the first thing people need to focus on when they want to build a lead generation system?
Mark Douglas 3:38
Ah, that's a very, very great question Umar. And I just wanted to, before I talk about the number one thing that people should focus on when generating leads, I own a digital marketing agency. And that's what we specialize in is generating leads and sales and putting their lead generation process on an in an automated process. And nice. And what what I see from General, big, big mistake that a lot of business owners are making out there, there are a couple of things, but I'll just talk about the mistake. Let me just ask you a question because you made a point there about getting people to raise their hands and actually say I'm interested. So let me ask you, if I would ask you in the vast world and majority of people out there would you say there are more people that know about you or more people that don't know about you?
Umar Hameed 4:43
I'm hoping that's a rhetorical question because most of the 8 billion people don't know who I am. Don't even know if that I exist.
Mark Douglas 4:50
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And the mistake that most business owners are making is because when you're A stranger and you know absolutely nothing about the other person, the person is more likely to trust a person that is moving them away from a danger away from a pain, then a person that is trying to move them towards a positive result. So for for, for example, you'll, you'll see people out there in their lead generation efforts, make big promises, I promise how to make six figures in 90 days how to make seven figures in 90 days, they're leading you to a positive outcome, right? People will pay and people will trust more if you move them away from a danger. If I'm a stranger, and I'm on the street, and I approached you, and I'll tell you here, let me lead you to the hospital, you're way more skeptical, as, as opposed to me being a stranger. And I say to you, hey, the bridge is out up there, avoid that danger. That person that doesn't know me has never seen me before, was more likely to trust me if I'm moving them away. That Okay, first, that is the first mistake that business owners are making in their marketing messages, generating leads? And if...
Umar Hameed 6:45
So, go back to the example. So it's like, Hey, I'm going to help you earn a ton of cash in the next 90 days? Isn't the thing, then? What would be an example of saving them from danger? What would that be like? So we are talking to the same customer, we're not going to help you make six figures, but we're going to help you do what or avoid why?
Mark Douglas 7:03
These are the these are the five mistakes to avoid, if you want to see your business succeed. These are give me an example of one that was five, five Mistakes Business Owners are making that killed their sales. So if you making a report, you can you want to give a number, there's a lot of other optimizing parts of that. But you want to give up five mistakes to avoid killing your business without spending money on ads, but you want to make it a in a way from a danger and not towards a pleasure or towards reward.
Umar Hameed 7:51
So how do you balance the like if I had 100 people in the room? And I asked them, you know, because there's two kinds of people, people that go towards pleasure and people that avoid pain. Yeah. And so people that avoid pain, you're going to be talking to them? Absolutely. 100% is like, Oh, my God, you're speaking my language. But what do you do the people that are actually drawn to so for example, in a sales team, there'd be a group of people that, you know, hey, if you achieve this level of sales, you're gonna go to Hawaii and get the President's Club Award. And some people like, Oh, my God, I'm gonna go do that. And they'll be super enthused and go out and make it happen. Other people. I'm gonna do my best. But you know, if I don't get it, not a big deal, but other people would be super enthused with, if you don't reach this number, I'm gonna fire you at the end of the month, that fire and they'll go in for the people that are towards people, that threat will not be as effective because the towards people are not away from people. So how do you balance that in your marketing, when you've got the generally people do more to avoid pain than to get pleasure, but some people are hardwired for pleasure and attaining? How do you talk to them? Or do you think the negative message will still work with them?
Mark Douglas 8:56
That's a That's a great question. That's a great question. And the scenario that you mentioned, is a it's a it's an different stages of your communication. So you, you have different stages of communication. And the examples that I was giving was for cold audiences...
Umar Hameed 9:20
To get their attention, snap them out of their stupor, and holy shit, I need to pay attention to that.
Mark Douglas 9:26
Yes, and that's and that's when you can take a broad approach to get the best results. So on a broad approach, if you want to reach the greatest amount and have the best results, you want to start from moving someone from the negative and to the, to the to a positive. Now, for your example, in a room, these are not these should not be a cold audience. This should be a warm audience. If they're in the room, then that gives you some more information where you can, you can understand they're in that room for a reason. So and that, that at that time, then you're not really into more of a lead generation, but you're really more into selling, where you're, you're speaking to those people in that room, if you're in that situation, if you're in a, if you're in a situation where if they're in a room, then you've got a little bit more information about them to craft the right message you should have you should. And if, if, if you don't have enough information, then the odds are that you would reach more people with the the way from messaging. Now, unless you have, yeah, unless you have information that support it, that your audience is more reward based.
Umar Hameed 11:01
Yeah, so you will know the total strangers so you won't know who they are on a cold outreach. So a negative message goes further than a positive one at that stage. But then as we get to know them, we can actually go more be more subtle in what we do and more strategic and what we do, but the initial opening bell is get the reptile brain to trigger and go holy crap, this could be dangerous for me, I need to pay attention. So let's take Yes, Drill down to our business. Let's take my business. I do coaching for realtors. And so I'll ask you a question. How many realtors in the US Do you think this a large number? Have a guess?
Mark Douglas 11:35
Okay? Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna guess a number, okay. 665,000.
Umar Hameed 11:43
You're doubling what it is. But still a massive number about 300 Some 1000 realtors in the US, and most of them, don't follow me. So let's say we were doing the initial ads to get people to come into our landing page to give us start the relationship. Give us their email address, and maybe their phone number to get whatever. So A, how would we find them? And what would be the message you recommend that we send them? That would get them to go I need to pay attention to this?
Mark Douglas 12:12
Oh, you're putting me on the spot you want? You want actual tactics? Of course and why
Umar Hameed 12:18
Hallelujah! Yes. Here's why I do it for two reasons. Number one, it gives me clarity on my business. But you know, hey, Hallelujah! Praise the Lord. But number two, rather than being general, you know, hey, we're doing this and we're talking about all industries. This kind of hones you down, and people can go, Okay, if he's doing that for realtors, I am going after insurance agents, this is what I need. So he kind of focuses us in a very tactical way as opposed to a nebulous way. Let's generate it together. So what would you suggest would be the message and what we should offer them?
Mark Douglas 12:50
Okay, well, of course, this is just a quick demonstration or a quick, you know, just spitballing here. Yeah, just spitballing of social social media is typically a good media to, to search for leads because on on Facebook, you can target on interest based and you can also target based on profession. And there should be a distinction made between interest and profession. An interest in real estate is different than in being in the profession of real estate.
Umar Hameed 13:32
Profession. So we're going to select profession because want Realtors so we go on Facebook, can we say one on one realtors. And we pick the geographic areas, let's say being the US because we're greedy. And we went the whole shebang. So let's say we've done that anything else we need to do on the targeting? And then we'll talk about the ad we need to run.
Mark Douglas 13:49
Right, right. Yeah. Do you want to find any, any indication that might indicate that they are in the real estate industry? So you might even want to look for big names such as, I don't know. And in the Houston local market, there's a few people that have that follow these shows, like fix or flip or fix it, fix it and flip it or I think Chip and Joanna Gaines, our house. So there's you can put some broad targeting on interest for real estate, whether it's a Okay, so this real estate agent is are they commercial? Are they residential? Are they what is it multifamily housing. So those are all really broad, broad, broad categories. If you want to make your ads more effective and your messaging more effective, you want to really to niche down and to a specific realtor, whether it's a realtor that is new, then you want to you really need to find out what are their what are their struggles, what are their problems, what, what is it and I think with realtors, they, they want more appointments, they want more appointments. And they, they, they may be spending money on other channels for advertising that just aren't working for them at this time. So you want to deep, dig deep...
Umar Hameed 15:38
Hold on there for a minute. So let's say their challenge is they're not doing prospecting calls, they know they need to prospect every morning to get leads, because they get leads coming in from social media and they pay for leads, but if they don't call them is useless to them. So some people avoid the phone. So let's say that's the problem you want to talk to them about is if you don't make enough prospecting calls, you'll starve and you'll be tossed out on the street, maybe not that but let's say that's the issue we're going to solve.
Mark Douglas 16:02
Awesome, awesome, awesome. So then what we can do is we can we can plug this into one of a formula an old school marketing formula P A s problem agitate solution this is just one of the messaging formulas that are available for you. So you want to you want to state the problem or so you know what are you tired of trying of you just not not wanting to make these cold calling, you know, these calls to prospects that you are just not being interested? How does that how much time are you wasting every day with these calls? Well, what I've I've My name is Umar, my name is Umar and I'm a professional real estate coach with my program I have figured out a solution so that you can retain your leads without having to call these customers cold. So that's just as a really quick problem agitate solution.
Umar Hameed 17:18
Let me have a go at it. Okay, go ahead Umar, are you a real estate agent that knows you could be doing better if only you picked up the phone and you talk to your prospects and you're not doing it and when you don't do that for a while you don't sell them when you don't sell you don't bring them in the money and we know him bring them the money. A your team leader isn't happy, b You're not happy and worst of all, your spouse is incredibly not happy. If you don't fix this you'll be out of the industry doing something else. Real Estate gives you the freedom you need. If only you can pick up the phone, my name is Umar, I help Realtors overcome the anxiety. So they want to pick up the phone and when we do that, you get an extra 20 transactions a year.
Mark Douglas 18:00
Yes, yes. Have you practiced that before? Haven't you?
Umar Hameed 18:07
Well, we work with those clients so we kind of know what their pain point is and know what we can do for them and I'm just using your formula identify the pain agitate it and then what was the last thing?
Mark Douglas 18:16
Solution.
Umar Hameed 18:17
Solution?
Mark Douglas 18:18
Yes, problem agitate solutions that is a that is a simple formula that you can follow. But there are other other formulas that might work as well. Ai da formula, which is attention interest, desire and action. And those are your basic flows. Of course in in STEM selling we know we have to hit them emotionally in order for them to really come it's emotion is what really makes people take have attention a lot of facts and a lot of numbers they're good for most people but it's it's proven that it's emotion that that's what makes people purchase and the...
Umar Hameed 19:13
Brilliant. So we do this ad we do an ad around not calling or so which are the headline or the ABI you know what are messages or what should the headline media think?
Mark Douglas 19:23
The headline, the headline, oh my goodness, this is where this is the fun part. The headline is the fun part. You want to make a you want to make a statement and it really depends on what you what you're offering at the time. You know, okay, are you offering a lead magnet that is a PDF that they can download, are you offering a [garbled]
Umar Hameed 19:51
So let's say it is a training it's a free training on how to be fearless on the phone?
Mark Douglas 19:56
How to Be fearless on the phone. Okay, Are you? Okay? So we're gonna go with the simple, we're gonna go with a simple format, simple headline, with a simple opt in page. Because there's a lot of fun and creative things that you could do. Let's say for instance, you start off that page with the headlines such as I was a, I was a, I was a, I would say, I was a coward. And no, no, no, how this how this 30 minute training turned a coward on the phone into a sales superstar with a sales superstar with just two after 230 minute sessions. Hi, my name is Omar. And you may you may want to make a page where you're going to tell a the formula, you're going to have a headline, you're going to tell a story. And then you're going to place the offer at the bottom, that's where you can really have fun. And experiment and letting that person really, you're starting the relationship there, you're starting them to be attracted towards you. And that story is the opportunity for you to say, Hey, my name is Umar. And I was once that coward. I was once in your shoes, and I dreaded making phone calls. Because this one incident that I encountered that I saw, I had a list and you just tell a good story that the person can put themselves in and see themselves in. Now, because I have experienced this, I don't want you to experience the same things that I did. And that's why I have this training that you can opt in to that will totally transform the way you feel and the way you think about picking up that phone and making a call. Join me. Now, I have two spots left.
Umar Hameed 22:17
Right now that gets people to start putting their email address in and getting what you're sending them. So we send them training, and then how do we continue the relationship? Where do we go from there?
Mark Douglas 22:28
Okay, okay. You know, we've we've gone on a, we I have not spoken in detail about, okay, this is an actual website, this is a landing page. That's what it's known in the industry as a landing page. Landing Page is a special, you could call it a special website that's set up specifically for gathering a person's contact information. And you can gather their contact information. And from here, you can collect their email information, which is I say contact information because you can collect name, address, telephone numbers, and social media accounts. You can phone numbers, Facebook, messenger WhatsApp, so there's a lot of different collection methods that you can use to communicate with your potential customers. And that's what it's really about. It's about communication, and how what works best for your industry. What are your ideal customers? What platform are they on? How are they communicating every day, there's so many different avenues out there to communicate with people, you can't, you can be everywhere, but as a as a solopreneur. It's almost impossible to do it without a team. But you have to understand what's the platform that's going to where your customer is going to be. So you want to collect their information on that landing page and have a system to follow up with them. So my my one of my preferred methods to follow up and keep in touch with someone is going to be email, email marketing. So on those pages, I would collect emails, emails are one of the least expensive methods of communicating and it has upwards of a 400% rate of return. Meaning that for every $1 spent, you can expect to receive up to $300 back in return. And there are other methods of follow up text messages. I know I've I'm I'm in some text messages where I receive messages periodically, the Those text message fees can apply, that can get a little expensive. But if that's where your ideal customers are, that may be a good place. And because text messages also have a much higher open rate and a higher response rate, because if you take a look at my email, I've got 20,000 unopened emails in my inbox. But everyone reads their text message, they may not respond to you, they may not respond, but it almost always gets opened. There are a Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp also. So just lots of different methods to communicate, find the way that fits best with your ideal customers.
Umar Hameed 25:47
So one of the things that we need to do is we need to find our ideal customers. And the best place to find them is in your client base. You've got customers right now that are your ideal customers, and you have some ideas of who they are. So one of the things to do is to get one of your team members, somebody other than you to interview them, to really figure out how do they find you what they truly value in what you do. And what you want is their articulation of what you do. Because that's the articulation that will resonate with people like them, not the way you think, what you do. So think reminding that and getting an an avatar built, not who you think your people are, but interview people that you already like, as your ideal clients and go, Oh my God, these are the people that I want. You can also ask the people that you're already doing business with, where do you hang out? Is it Instagram? Is it Facebook? But what magazines do you read? What do you do? And I think it does two things. Number one, it allows you to a honor your customers, because somebody is talking to me saying, Hey, we're really concerned about what you're thinking, and how do we add value to you? It does two things. Number one, they articulate how you add value. But number two, they realize, oh my god, this is what Mark does for me. Like, it was in the back of my mind, I was in the front of my mind. And then also I would record these interviews, so you can actually get their exact words. And then just before you end the interview, I would ask this question, if you're telling a colleague, you know why they should work with Umar, what would you say? And when they articulate that, that is a kick ass amazing testimonial? Because yeah, your testimony, you know, for me is like, okay, more is XYZ. If you were recommending him to a dear friend, then all of a sudden it's gonna be warmer. It's like, oh, Umar, he's done it, and you'll get a more richer, more compelling testimonial. So talk to your existing customers to figure out who your target audience is.
Mark Douglas 27:37
And not only do you get a killer testimonial, but you get the words to say to them that they will respond to people like
Umar Hameed 27:49
them. Absolutely. You get the words to say to people like them that would respond immediately when they go, Oh, my God, I gotta be talking to Umar or mark or John or whoever. So all of this sounds good mark. But there's a problem in this cockamamie scheme that you've come up with only kidding, here's the problem is that sometimes you will go to do an ad that looks genius, who's just not getting the conversions that you want. So you need to tweak that to figure out to get your best ad to get the best response, and then the page you're sending them to the first time you create it is not going to be perfect, and you need to start tweaking that. Can you talk about the science behind getting the right ads, and then also optimizing your landing page? How do you do that?
Mark Douglas 28:34
That's a great question. That's a, that's a great question. It, you know, you say that, okay, that you've got a bad ad back.
Umar Hameed 28:46
But seeing that it's doing okay, but not great, but to do throw it away? Or do you tweak it? Like, how do you how do you make it better? How do you realize you have a bad ad?
Mark Douglas 28:55
Well, I think that when you when you look at whether it's about I wouldn't say it's a bad ad, I would I would say that maybe you're not showing it if you have if you have covered your bases, if you have done your research, if you know your pain points, and you follow the the process, which is paint problem, agitate solution, and you have created this ad that hits all of those points, then you want to make sure that you're putting it in front of the right people. Now, another mistake that a lot of people make is you get let's say 5030 people or 30 visitors to the page and no one clicks, no one does anything and that you want to make a change right away.
Umar Hameed 29:58
Alright, so hold that thought I paid you mean the landing page? Are you talking about the clicking on the ad itself? Clicking on the ad itself? Click OK. So we're coming to the ad and they're not clicking on the ad, or not many people are, then you know this problem?
Mark Douglas 30:12
Well, yes, yes, well, you'll know that there's some improvements to be made, there are improvements to be made. And it's the market and the message match the once you if if you have the, the message on your video on your ad, that is you've crafted it together beautifully. And it's it, and you're telling the Facebook or the social media platform, that's what I'm speaking about. Now, it's a Facebook ads, not any other advertising platform, but Facebook ads, and you're telling Facebook, okay, put it in front of these people. And then it's giving you these impressions. And it's giving you these clicks, and people are clicking through our first see if people are clicking through that Facebook is putting it in front of how many, how many people are clicking through. If it's if a lot of people are not clicking through from that, from that add to the page, then there's a problem with the targeting. And you may want to adjust the targeting. Try some different variations. And this is mainly the reason why when you run a Facebook ads, you should run with several audiences, you should run one campaign. And some people suggest four or five different audiences. And once you run it with these audiences, you'll see which audience performs the best, you decide which ones perform the best, and you take out the ones that aren't working. And it's going to be a steady optimization process until you have enough data from Facebook, and then Facebook starts to send you traffic. Yeah, Facebook sends you it's just pinpoint of all the data it has, it's going to send you those really great customers that are going to take the action that you want them to. But until you get that data, you're gonna have to optimize it with your best audiences that you can do on the interest based side. Okay, so then you've got an ad that's converting, okay, then we're gonna go to the landing page. And then we look at our statistics on the landing page. And we should always have tracking on that landing page also. And it's, we don't guess, you know, we don't, we don't make guesses, we look at the numbers, and we look at what the numbers are telling us. And that's how we're going to that's what's going to drive our decisions. We're also going to run split tests on that page as well. So we're going to test one component at a time, we may test a headline, we may test a color of a button, we may test a certain calls to actions, different phrasing and call to actions. But we should always be running tests. And of those two tests, because I can tell you that one simple, one sentence word that I've changed on one of my landing pages caused a 30% change in the opt in rate with one sentence.
Umar Hameed 33:49
Brilliant.
Mark Douglas 33:50
Sentence. One Sentence.
Umar Hameed 33:52
Brilliant. So we've taken them through the entire journey, which is starting from, hey, identify your audience, find the right target, find the right message, do the ad do the landing page. And once they enter into your system, then you have continual emails to nurture them from total strangers to customers. So Mark, where can people get a hold of you? If they need help doing this? Where can they find you?
Mark Douglas 34:17
Oh, you can find me on my social channels. You can find me on Facebook. My name is Mark Douglas. And I believe my official page is markdouglas.54. So I'm the 54th Mark Douglas. But...
Umar Hameed 34:35
.54, Mark Douglas I like that.
Mark Douglas 34:40
But I'm also on my digital marketing agency. Just look it up on Facebook, the mental marketer and I have an I run a private Facebook group called funnel building 101 And in funnel Building One on One is where I've got 1000s of entrepreneurs in there and every As we're learning, lead generation skills, we're learning how to market and sell our products online. It's a great environment. And I just love marketing across the board, when you talk about how are we going to communicate with them, I've got a, I communicate, probably with, oh, over close to 10,000 people in my community now close to 10,000, and a weekly newsletter. So I'm a, I'm an avid reader, I'm an avid not just a reader, but an implement, or a tester and several case studies of my students who are using some of the techniques and some of the tips that I am giving them and they're seeing real results, I had a student just the other day, reach out to me about, hey, I use that tip that you gave me when I'm presenting my offer. And I got three clients, so and then I have another client, just another student just the other day, who was in my class. Oh, my gosh, I had a class that I gave probably a month ago. And I just got a message from them saying that ever since they've been taking my class, they've seen a 50% increase in their leads and phone calls. So we just need Yeah, we just need to work on them getting the practice in those phone calls, to really overcome the objections. And you can reach me inside the group, I'm there giving support to everyone. Every day, it's where you find me and you can also sign up for my weekly newsletter there as well. And that that's called funnel building 101. It's going to Facebook in the search bar and you'll find it.
Umar Hameed 37:11
Brilliant. What we're going to do is put all the links in the show notes. Mark, thanks so much for being on the show. I really had a good time and learns a lot.
Mark Douglas 37:19
Oh, it's a pleasure speaking with you Umar thank you so much for having me.
Umar Hameed 37:29
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave a five-star rating. And if you're looking for more tools, go to my website at nolimitsselling.com. I've got a free mind training course there, that's going to teach you some insights from the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and that is the fastest way to get better results.