From Social Proof to Confetti Moments: 7 Lessons From 7 Amazing Women in Marketing

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Michelle J Raymond: Welcome everybody to the Social Media for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and as this podcast episode is going live, I'm gonna be on a plane heading back to Sydney. After spending a few weeks in the US. I got to speak on the stage at Social Media Marketing World. I can't wait to record an episode on what I saw, what trends were happening, what you need to know. Promise I'll report back in the next episode.

 So this episode is being recorded in advance, and I thought that I would actually go through my favorite seven lessons that I've learned from some of my podcast guests that have been on over the last, you know, six months or so.

[00:00:38] Michelle J Raymond: Now, I couldn't put everybody in there and that was probably the biggest challenge in making this episode. As I go through each of these lessons, and you are just gonna get a small taster out of that episode, I'm also gonna make sure you've got the full links to each of those podcast episodes that you can go back and listen to the whole conversation. Each of them are amazing in their own ways.

[00:00:59] Michelle J Raymond: The first lesson that I wanna share is about social proof and who I was talking to about this one is Nancy Harhut and she has an amazing book, if you haven't heard of it yet, it's called "Using Behavioral Science in Marketing: Drive Customer Action, and Loyalty by Prompting Instinctive Responses". This book is getting credits all over the place and winning an awards, and I can absolutely see why, because the principles that she shares in this book have helped me grow, have helped me write better content and do better marketing. And you can use the same as well.

[00:01:35] Michelle J Raymond: So I asked Nancy, what is social proof and why do we need to worry about it? So let's dive in.

[00:01:42] Nancy Harhut: Social proof is a a very common decision making shortcut. When behavioral scientists talk about social proof, they talk about this idea that when people are uncertain of what decision to make, they'll look to others, particularly others like themselves, and they'll follow their lead.

[00:01:55] Nancy Harhut: If you're not sure what to do, you look around, you see a bunch of people are doing something, you say I'm going to do that. It must be a good thing to do. We assume that those people know what they're doing. We don't think that they're as lost and uncertain as we are. We just make the leap that if a bunch of people there are doing it, they know something we don't.

[00:02:09] Nancy Harhut: So two things happen. We think if I do what they're doing, it'll be a good decision. It'll be a smart one, a safe one. I won't be disappointed. And we think if I don't do it, I might lose out. I might be missing out on something really good. When we're not sure of what to do, we very often look around and we see what other people are doing.

[00:02:25] Nancy Harhut: So from a B2B perspective, we want to let people know how many customers we have. How many customers in your vertical or in your area. We want to talk about our products. We want to talk about the ones that are best sellers. We want to talk about the ones that are expected to sell out, because those are other elements of social proof.

[00:02:40] Nancy Harhut: We want to use testimonials. Testimonials are a great way to demonstrate social proof, and I'm sure most of your listeners are aware of how powerful they can be, but I'm going to give you two tips that take a good testimonial and turn it into a great testimonial.

[00:02:52] Nancy Harhut: So the first one is you want the testimonial giver to be as close to the testimonial reader or receiver as possible. So if you're targeting CFOs, have your quote come from a CFO. If you're targeting people in the accounting vertical, have the quote come from someone who's in the accounting vertical. If you're targeting people in the Sydney area, have the quote come from someone in the Sydney area because the closer that testimonial giver is to the receiver the better it's going to be. The receiver is going to feel like, oh, that's someone like me.

[00:03:20] Nancy Harhut: And then the second tip I have for, uh, testimonials when we're using social proof also may sound a little counterintuitive. But it's this, you don't want to choose your most glowing recommendation. And you might say why wouldn't I? You know because if someone came along and said, I love Acme computers. They are fabulous. Buy one today. Hands down. Best choice. You would say, that is a glowing review. That is the one I want to use. That's just fabulous. But the thing is, when someone is going to be looking at your reviews, it's because they haven't quite committed yet, right?

[00:03:51] Nancy Harhut: And that means they're a little uncertain, or they have questions, or they're a little skeptical. Maybe they're wondering, is it worth the price? Is it any better than what I'm currently using? Is it as good as the company says it is? Is it better than the competition? Is it worth my time and effort to find out?

[00:04:05] Nancy Harhut: Whatever it is, there's something that they're not quite sure of. And that means if you can find a testimonial that starts where they are, and then concludes with Yes, the company's fabulous. That's even better. So if you found one that said, I wasn't sure if the Acme computer was worth the price, but I decided to give it a try. Oh my gosh, they're fabulous. You should go out and buy one. Hands down, worth every penny.

[00:04:28] Nancy Harhut: Now you've got a really good testimonial because the person reading it is gonna say, that's exactly what I was wondering. I was wondering if you know they were worth the price. They seemed a little expensive. I didn't know. I was wondering, but this guy thought the same thing, or this woman thought the same thing, but they gave it a try, and it turns out they liked it. So now I'm going to learn from them. They took the risk, and because they took the risk, now I can feel confident that this is going to be a good move for me.

[00:04:51] Nancy Harhut: It's tempting to use nothing but glowing testimonials. It's tempting to try to overlook the ones that start with, raising a potential barrier. Oh, are they too expensive? Or, are they any different than the competition? But, if we can start there and end up at the right conclusion, those are the strongest testimonials to use, and those are really good elements of social proof.

[00:05:11] Michelle J Raymond: So why is social proof so important when it comes to LinkedIn? Well, your whole profile needs to be updated to gather proof and really take advantage of all of the things that Nancy's just explained. So let's move on from social proof and move on to the second lesson, which is something that has stood out for me, and that was from a friend of the show, Ashley Faus and we were talking about thought leadership, and it's a word that gets used a lot when you scroll LinkedIn for more than five minutes a day, and it seems to be the new flavor of the month. I think if we go back a couple of years, it was all about personal branding. We've moved on from that onto thought leadership, but what is thought leadership and maybe what isn't thought leadership?

[00:05:53] Michelle J Raymond: So I asked Ashley to tell me.

 

[00:05:56] Ashley Faus: So I will start with what it isn't. It isn't quality content. It isn't executive content. It isn't how or why we made this product or service. It is not any of those three things. What it is, is content that builds trust. It's content that helps you change people's minds and inform a new direction and push them to innovate and to act and actually helps them do that. So there's a couple things in there, right? If we go back to the basic definition of each of the words.

[00:06:32] Ashley Faus: Thought and leadership, have thoughts, be a leader. And obviously there's some things in there where it's like, okay if we're going to have thoughts, what are those thoughts? Which gets at one of my pillars which we'll talk about in a little bit, but the depth of ideas pillars and be a leader implies that you have to have followers.

[00:06:50] Ashley Faus: And so if you're just sitting in your own silo thinking you're smart thoughts all by yourself, you might have thoughts, but you're not a leader. If you're just famous. You just have a lot of followers, but you're not saying anything useful, you don't have any thoughts. You're just being a leader. So you have to have both of those elements.

[00:07:05] Ashley Faus: And again, we'll talk about the inputs to those elements, but at its core have thoughts. Be a leader.

[00:07:11] Michelle J Raymond: Even in listening back to that, it still makes me laugh. I love my guests who call a spade a spade and come out a little bit hot and spicy. So I can't wait to have Ashley back on the show another time and I'm gonna move on to my next lesson that I learned, and I think there's a lesson for everyone out there who thinks that you need to have the best equipment, you need to have expensive stuff, you need to have highly produced content for it to be effective.

[00:07:38] Michelle J Raymond: And my guest was Laura Erdem, and she again was on just in December. And I wanted to bring this up because you know what? She and I both agree and both want everybody to know that making content doesn't need to cost a fortune. So over to Laura to explain some more.

[00:07:57] Laura Erdem: It does not have to be costly. Creating content on video is really cheap. If you want to have it perfect, then it's not cheap, but your eyes, when you're watching your feed on LinkedIn, stop at the content that is not perfect.

[00:08:12] Laura Erdem: If it is polished, if it is content, like you've got subtitles and all that kind of stuff. I scroll really fast through it because I smell advertisement. And when we have that conversation in a pedicab and it's half polished to have a little bit of a laugh and the sound is almost good, but it has subtitles, you stop for it because it's different.

[00:08:32] Laura Erdem: Like I have one guy we were supposed to meet in the same conference. I said but Scott, should we go for a walk on the street and film this? Yeah. So we literally walked on the street. I filmed half of the conversation. The other half was just walking back to the Times Square, where we just had a chat.

[00:08:49] Laura Erdem: And I shipped it, more or less on the same day after just cutting some of the pieces out. Not costly, it's easy, and people stop to listen to this because it's fun. You're there, you feel like you're in the conversation.

[00:09:02] Michelle J Raymond: Boom. Yes, Laura. That is exactly it. We do not ever want our content to feel like ads. And some of you might be thinking, Michelle, how is that a lesson for you? Well, I'll give you the handy tip listeners that no matter how long you've been creating content, and for me it's, I don't know, eight or nine years these days.

[00:09:21] Michelle J Raymond: If I think back to how I started creating content, I had a box underneath my laptop so that the webcam in my laptop was, you know, eye level. I had a $15 ring light that I'd purchased and that was it and that was more than enough. And as time went on and I did a lot of recording with my phone and simple things. I started to think, Ooh, I wouldn't mind this toy or that toy or upgrade my microphone, which was fine, you know? And I'm not saying, don't look for ways that you can improve your content, but don't use all of the fancy equipment as your excuse.

[00:09:55] Michelle J Raymond: And how this played out for me is when I started to create videos over my YouTube channel. If you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel @MichelleJRaymond is where you'll find it. But when I first started to create videos for YouTube and I was outta my comfort zone, I started to think I had to make those fancy YouTube videos.

[00:10:13] Michelle J Raymond: You know, one's where the screen changes every 10 seconds and they've got lots of fancy transitions and cool backgrounds, and lots of effects that are popping in and out. And the fact is that's just so far out of my realm of capability. And I'm not trying to be a YouTube star. I'm a LinkedIn coach who helps people to grow their business using LinkedIn and I happen to have a YouTube channel to show you how to do different bits and pieces. So it was a great reminder for me and one that I hope that there is a listener out there that is holding themselves back worried that they don't have all the best equipment. Trust me, you've got, if you've got a smartphone, it's more than enough to get you outta trouble.

[00:10:51] Michelle J Raymond: So don't let that hold you back. Let's move on to the next lesson now, and it is something that I'm really passionate about. I think if I could stamp out one thing on LinkedIn for people who wanna grow their businesses, it is the fear of sending cold outreach messages to people. And I had a friend on the show, Laura Khahil, and she just nailed it when she was on the podcast episode around what it's like for people, why they get stuck, and maybe how you can work around it. So let's have a listen.

[00:11:27] Laura Khalil: So the first thing I want to say is I really want to empathi se with everybody who has this fear. I never ever in my life expected to teach business development and marketing, ever.

[00:11:42] Laura Khalil: I am not a natural salesperson. I was also terrified of doing cold outreach and I lost jobs early on in my career because I would not sell. So I get it. I get it. And this is why we have, this is meant to be easy for you.

[00:11:57] Laura Khalil: So I first want to do a little mindset shift with everybody. Because you are all trained and we are all trained on the point of cold outreach being to make a sale or to get a meeting.

[00:12:10] Laura Khalil: I want you to put that thought to the side, okay? Your goal of doing cold outreach is not to make a sale or to set up a meeting. Just put that to the side. We have no agenda. By having no agenda, You will accomplish that agenda. This is like one of those crazy paradoxes.

[00:12:32] Laura Khalil: Your goal in doing cold outreach is this. It is to find cool people, to get to know better. I personally, as a business owner, I only want to work with cool people like Michelle. I only want to work with them. I don't want to work with people who drain me, who suck the life out of me, who are dour, who are, lousy, negative, whatever. Why would I want to work with them?

[00:12:55] Laura Khalil: So my goal when I do cold outreach and when I teach my clients, Is go find cool people on LinkedIn who are doing interesting things, who you want to get to know better. And that is it.

[00:13:10] Laura Khalil: And Michelle said, we don't even start at zero with trust. We start at like negative a hundred with trust with people because they're all waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[00:13:22] Laura Khalil: Everyone is waiting for you to be like, so can I tell you more about what I do? Everyone's waiting for you to get into the pitch. Everyone's waiting for you to try to push into a meeting.

[00:13:32] Laura Khalil: But what happens when we don't do that? What happens when we see someone, let's say, and this is how I do it, I see someone write something really cool. I see a cool comment. I see an amazing bio on somebody's profile and I will reach out and I will say, and this is how I speak. Okay.

[00:13:54] Laura Khalil: I will say home girl, I love your profile. I love this comment. This comment is lit and I will be put in the fire emojis. I'm sending GIFS. I am just like being a human being. I'm just being myself and that's what I'm doing. And if they vibe with my personality, I'm going to tell you something, people are going to respond.

[00:14:20] Laura Khalil: People respond to this because they're like, who is this bitch? What's happening here? And and because that's me, but that's my personality. So I'm not trying to say everyone else needs to be like me. You need to be like you. And this naturally starts conversations. Okay.

[00:14:36] Laura Khalil: I realise I don't have trust with them, so I'm not trying to push them into a meeting. How do I know I can solve their problem? I don't know what their problem is at this point. Like, I'm just trying to get to know them. So I don't know. I'm doing the mic drop right now. You're not trying to get into a meeting. You're trying to just meet cool people.

[00:14:57] Laura Khalil: Imagine, everyone at some point in their life has been single. You go to the bar, you show up, the person who, sidles up next to you and is Hey, can I have your number? Can I have your number? Can I take you out? You are going to run screaming. You're like, get the hell away from me. You're psycho. Okay.

[00:15:14] Laura Khalil: The person, however, who's sitting at the bar and who's Hey, that cocktail looks delicious. What are you drinking? I'm drinking this. What are you drinking? Neat. Okay, cool. What brought you in tonight? Cool.

[00:15:24] Laura Khalil: Y'all, if we're acting thirsty, okay, everyone knows this from dating. If you're acting thirsty, people are repelled. You cannot be thirsty. You got to just be normal. Okay. Just be a normal person. Okay. That's how you do it. But that's the basics.

[00:15:40] Michelle J Raymond: How much would this change things for you? If your only goal was to go and find cool people on LinkedIn who are doing interesting things that you want to go and get to know better, how much pressure would that take off you? Is that gonna free you up to actually start more conversations with people?

[00:15:59] Michelle J Raymond: I know so many people are anti-sales or don't be salesy. But the fact is, if you want to grow a business at some point you have to have conversations with people to tell them what you do, tell them how you can help them. Is how you generate leads on LinkedIn.

[00:16:13] Michelle J Raymond: They don't all happen inbound by magic. So I love that Laura always leads with empathy because I know that it can be overwhelming for people. I hope that this conversation has really given you a powerful context to start taking action.

[00:16:28] Michelle J Raymond: We've had two Laura's in a row and now we are going to move on to a big Swiftie fan and that is Jess Cook and she shared about confetti moments, but rather than me going to that, I'm gonna let her explain.

 

[00:16:43] Jess Cook: The genesis of this story was I'm a huge Taylor Swift fan. I went, she's amazing. I went to the concert and before I went, I didn't want to stand in a long merch line and I, so I ordered my merch before I went and when it came in the mail, I opened it up and I cackled with laughter because confetti spilled out of the the bag and it just felt very like Taylor.

[00:17:06] Jess Cook: It was bright and colourful and all these stars. And I loved that. And I just thought here is this transaction that I had with someone who I, really admire. I'm a huge fan of, and she, she obviously personally didn't deliver. I think maybe she did for me.

[00:17:19] Jess Cook: Someone on her team, put that in there and look, I'm talking about it now. I've talked about it multiple times, right? So if that hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't have shared the story at all. I think to go back to your question, the idea that we focus on value too much. Have we lost the confetti?

[00:17:35] Jess Cook: And I would say we need to dare to always do both, right? We need to be able to deliver the value, but in a way that makes it feel like we have personalised it or just added a little something that lets my audience feel like I'm talking directly to them.

[00:17:54] Jess Cook: And I don't think that requires you To do anything like physically putting confetti in a package, right? I think that can be sometimes as little as using the language they use. Going back to, sales calls and seeing how do they phrase this problem? And then using that exact language.

[00:18:13] Jess Cook: I think it can be as easy as, we've done this a couple of times now at Lasso, where we've had some product announcements and our kind of launch videos have been short, less than 30 seconds, first person point of view, quick storytelling moments, right?

[00:18:29] Jess Cook: Someone getting an alert on their phone that their gear has arrived. That's something this industry, the event industry doesn't have right now and needs, right? And so to see that first person and see that short story feels like a confetti moment, but I'm delivering product news, right?

[00:18:45] Jess Cook: So I think there's absolutely a way of doing this in tandem with value. It just means you have to get so close to your customers to know what those things would be.

[00:18:56] Michelle J Raymond: I have to say, when I heard Jess talk about confetti moments, I was like, yes, we are missing that. And I think a lot of content is becoming so AI generated, bland, blending in with each other, and I think confetti moments for me yes, we're talking about positive experiences and things that are different and things that stand out and make it memorable, but sometimes I think, I don't know, is there such a thing as a confetti moment that goes the other way and maybe just is a bit contrarian or something a bit different? An original thought, like original thoughts for me would be confetti moments, and I'm just missing that in my feed right now.

[00:19:37] Michelle J Raymond: How about you let me know, reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn if we're not already. Let me know what's your feedback. Maybe I need to mix things up a bit, but confetti moments, I think there's something we can all take away from that one.

[00:19:51] Michelle J Raymond: We're gonna move into the next guest that I had on, and Professor Jenni Romaniuk is someone who is based here in Australia, works for the Ehrenberg Bass Institute. They are basically marketing scientists, so they do a lot of research into marketing, and we were talking about distinctive brand assets, and I'll let her explain what they are and why they're important. The biggest takeaway for me is that distinctive brand assets are what protects your brand in the long run. So take a listen.

[00:20:24] Jenni Romaniuk: Distinctive brand assets is just a fancy name for anything that's not the brand name that you want to evoke the brand name. And when I mean anything, I mean, anything that your senses encounter. However, historically, we typically focus on things that the eyes and the ears encounter because taste, touch they require you to sort of co-located with it. You can't taste something unless you're actually consuming it. You can't touch something unless it's physically located with you.

[00:20:53] Jenni Romaniuk: And so we don't tend to use that as much. But definitely things our eyes see, things our ears hear are part of what make up distinctive assets. And so when we are talking about non-brand name things we're talking about things like colours, shapes, faces, all of these things in the environment that could be evoking the brand on top of our brand name.

[00:21:16] Jenni Romaniuk: They're not actually any more important in B2B than they are in B2C. It's just they're often neglected in B2B and they are more challenging in B2B in general, because they're typically built through wide reaching communications. And a lot of the B2B sector doesn't do that sort of marketing.

[00:21:38] Jenni Romaniuk: So that's why they've been neglected in terms of brand building. And they're often seen as more challenging, but remember distinctive assets are built in people's brains and B2B buyers have the same brains as B2C buyers. News alert, not sure if anyone's remembered that, but yeah, it's that same brain.

[00:21:56] Jenni Romaniuk: In fact, they use that brain to make B2C purchases. So we're actually doing the same processes and get the same benefits, but how we do it can be a bit more challenging in a B2B context.

[00:22:09] Michelle J Raymond: So come on B2B marketers, it is our turn to step up to the plate and really take what we can learn from B2C and let's do it better. The reason this was so important to me to share in this episode is that I just think that we are turning into the sea of same same on LinkedIn and brands, especially B2B brands need to start trying harder to stand out. And it might feel a little uncomfortable when you get started. You might not want to go straight in the deep end and you just wanna see dip your little toe in and that's totally fine, but we have to start doing things. And the last thing that you wanna do, as I say, every time I get a chance, do not give your competitors a head start. It is too hard to catch up with them.

[00:22:54] Michelle J Raymond: So why not lead from the front? Winners take action.

[00:22:57] Michelle J Raymond: We're going to go into another really important lesson, which I wanted to share from a friend of the show, Tanya Smith, and I wanted to talk to Tanya about her best tips for how do we get people who are stuck at the starting line and just can't get out of the gate to create content, especially video content, which she's a specialist in.

[00:23:18] Michelle J Raymond: Here's what she had to say.

[00:23:21] Tanya Smith: I really think that it looks a little different for each and every one of us. And, we were talking before the show about just life and the way that our lives are configured will be different across the board.

[00:23:33] Tanya Smith: So if I were to give just a broad brush answer about consistency. There's a couple of things that I do and I've adopted this mantra, gosh, for years. But if I were to give just a formula for success for business, whether it's content and you're trying to clip it or create something else.

[00:23:52] Tanya Smith: Act, assign and automate. So as much as you can put anything you're going to do, and that includes video creation, into 1 of those 3 buckets, you can get more done. But we have to figure out with intention and purpose.

[00:24:07] Tanya Smith: What are the parts that I'm going to do? What are the parts that I may be able to assign to someone else? And how can I automate this process of content creation? And with apps like ChatGPT and other different types of tools that are out there, we have it so good compared to years ago. So act, assign, and automate.

[00:24:28] Michelle J Raymond: Boom. There we have another one Act, Assign and Automate, and maybe this one is especially speaking loudly to me because that has been one of the biggest challenges that I have had as my business grew and scaled. I needed to make sure that I had the right systems and processes and ask for help when I need it.

[00:24:49] Michelle J Raymond: Are you one of those people that is held back because you won't ask for help and maybe that help looks like LinkedIn training. Well, guess what? I can help you with that kind of stuff. Are you someone that's held back because your LinkedIn profile hasn't been updated? Hello? I do LinkedIn profile writing services as well.

[00:25:04] Michelle J Raymond: Maybe your company page is ground to a halt and you're not sure how to kickstart it. Again, guess what? I do audit and strategy sessions that can really help you. I've just loved going back through the archives to pick out these seven lessons, and there were so many more. As I said, choosing was the hardest piece of this puzzle that I had to do.

[00:25:26] Michelle J Raymond: If you've enjoyed this, I've got a favor to ask. I want you to come across onto LinkedIn if we aren't connected already. Search for Michelle J Raymond. My details are in the show notes. If we are connected, I want you to reach out and send me a direct message and let me know which one of these lessons was the favorite one that you had that you really needed to listen.

[00:25:47] Michelle J Raymond: So I'm gonna get back to overcoming my jet lag now. Catch up on some sleep and then get busy working on next week's episode to bring you the full wrap up of what happened at Social Media Marketing World. I can't wait to tell everyone what the experience was like it, it's something that is just a bucket list item for me, so I'm so excited to have had it ticked off and even more so looking forward to speaking in Denmark at the Linked Summit in June, 2024. So if you're in that part of the world and interested in learning more about LinkedIn, then the summit is for you. So you can contact me and I'll share those details. Really hoping to meet up with some of my listeners that are from that part of the world.

[00:26:29] Michelle J Raymond: It, it's something that, this is just what is possible from LinkedIn. Not only do I get to meet amazing people and have them guests on the show, I get to meet people face to face these speaking opportunities. So my question is before we wrap up the show. What is your goal for your time on LinkedIn? Are you getting closer to that goal or does it feel further away? If your goals feel like they're moving away, why not? Book a 15 minute intro call with me and we can have a chat and see how I might be able to help you to get there. So, until next week, cheers.