Key Points

[ 04:41] What does relationship marketing mean for an ads manager?

[ 06:48] The three steps to getting started with relationship marketing and winning clients

 [09:52] The psychological phenomenon you can leverage that is the simple way to win at business

[14:11] How do you keep track of the different types of relationships?

[21:21] My secret strategy to instantly create new relationships

[22:06] How to get immediate access to Laura’s relationship marketing toolkit with tools and templates to be intentional with nurturing valuable new relationships.

Jody: [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of Online Confidential where we’re going to take you behind the scenes to build your ad management business with today’s topic, “Relationship Marketing”. So today I’m very excited to introduce you to our special guest, Laura Meyer, who is an expert on building relationships that just naturally and organically lead to new clients.

So welcome, Laura. It is so great to have you on the show!

Laura: Thank [00:00:30] you so much. I feel like my introduction has an extra pizazz to it when you say it with an Australian accent. I really do appreciate it. 

Jody: Well, that’s good. I’m glad. I’ve been in the Smithsonian surrounded by Americans and heard another Australian talking and it was like, is that what we sound like? Really!?

You guys seem to like it though, but that’s good. 

Laura: We do, we do for sure. It sounds warm and welcoming and yeah, I think there’s a lot of positive connotations to sounding like [00:01:00] an Aussie. 

Jody: Awesome. Okay, well, we’ll keep that going and I’ll try and make it as Aussie as I can! So, tell us about your journey, you are a relationship marketing expert.

You just have such great skills and knowledge about marketing and consulting for marketing as well. You’ve been in the trenches for years, but you know, we don’t often start off in this journey. So what’s been your journey to get you to this point so far? 

Laura: Thanks so much for asking. So for the last 20 years I’ve been an entrepreneur. The last [00:03:00] four years I’ve been a growth strategist and consultant.

I also train people who have a marketing background in how to become growth consultants. And I have a pretty busy consultancy as well. Prior to being in the consulting space, I had a brick and mortar chain. So, as I like to say, while Mark Zuckerberg was filling out his Harvard application, I was running a business and it was all at that time based on relationships and relationship marketing and partner marketing and affiliates and [00:03:30] joint ventures.

I mean, it was, it was the only way that we really could grow before social media and before paid advertising was what it is today. I mean, at the time there was Google and Google ads and things like that, but nowhere near to the level of sophistication that exists today, right in the market. And so when I made the switch to brick and mortar, so I had a brick and mortar chain that I franchised and grew to multiple locations and then exited it, which brought me to the consulting career I have today.

A [00:04:00] lot of people, we met in a mastermind, and a lot of people in that mastermind and in other circles would say to me, Laura, like, how do you have, you know, how did you have this particular client as a client? Or how did you grow the business that you have? And, for me, I had to really kind of think back to what made me successful in my brick and mortar and how I’ve translated it to today’s online, fast based online entrepreneurship.

Jody: Right. And I love that you mentioned [00:04:30] that because so many of us just are caught up now, its like digital marketing is our only way. We need to run some Facebook ads to get new clients. And while yes, I’m a hundred percent for Facebook ads, it’s getting out and doing that old school sort of strategy, right?

Of meeting people, getting out from behind the computer, making those connections that can bring in some of your best clients. So like just in what you said there, you referred to ‘oh my gosh, how did you get this person as a client’? Right? And it’s getting out, making personal [00:05:00] connections.

I’ve been talking with some international brands lately and it’s because of seeing them face to face and connecting with them. So, relationship marketing, tell us a bit more about that. How do we even get started? What does it actually even mean to you to say relationship marketing? 

Laura: So relationship marketing can mean a lot of different things depending on the type of business that you have.

So speaking specifically to ads [00:05:30] managers, and I’m a purchaser of ads management services. All of my clients have ads managers. I understand how that typically works. And as funny as it is, people who specialize in ads management typically don’t get their clients through ads. They typically get their clients through referrals because of the kind of business that it is. 

If you’re selling a one to many offer or e-commerce, ads make a lot of sense. If you’re selling a high touch offer where the relationship is a huge part of [00:06:00] what they’re investing in. And they’re investing in the trust. They’re investing in the expertise and the credibility of the person that’s going to be representing their brand online or spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on their behalf.

It’s really important that happens through somebody that they both like, know and trust. And that’s typically where the introduction takes place. So when it comes to relationship marketing, I like to think of it as any type of relationship that ends [00:06:30] up mutually beneficial for both businesses. What I would call a win-win is relationship marketing.

Relationship marketing can look like a referral partner. It can look like a business bestie. Like we all need those too, right? It can look like a joint venture, an affiliate, or it can look like something that we’re doing right now, which is a collaboration, which is one of my favorite ways to get started in relationship marketing.

So it can look like a lot of different types of tactics. But the [00:07:00] overall overarching strategy really comes down to creating those win-wins. 

Jody: Awesome. And I love how you’ve mentioned like what we are doing right now, this sort of, collaboration kind of thing. Because that was going be my next question.

Well, how do you get started? How do you find these people? And you mentioned you get them via referrals. How do you get to that point where you are talking to someone and you do get that referral? What’s your recommendations there?  

Laura: So it’s really a three step [00:07:30] process. And I have a book coming out that we’ll talk about in a little bit, and I go through this in a lot of detail in my book, but the first step is credibility.

And I think a lot of people, particularly in the online space, want to fast track credibility building. But credibility building is something that happens over time. There are ways to make it more efficient and accelerate the process, but most importantly, when you’re meeting somebody new, one of the first things I try to do is establish credibility. 

In fact, you and I [00:08:00] met, I remember, through our mastermind, but also through another time that I was speaking at an event and you happened to be in the lobby of the hotel at a different event. And at that time I was really just trying to establish credibility with that group.

Like, how can I help, provide value? There was somebody that you were with that was trying to build a similar business, I immediately was like, ‘here, here’s some of my tools, if you would like them, call me’. And [00:08:30] I wouldn’t do that in every situation, but because I knew that we were at a peer to peer level, I felt confident and comfortable providing those resources and really being generous with what I know.

Because when you’re generous with what you know, and you serve from a place of abundance and not scarcity, it is a credibility builder. And those are ways in which I think we can immediately just try to be useful, helpful. Whether it’s an introduction to maybe somebody we know or [00:09:00] a letting people know how we might be able to assist them.

Not in a salesy way, but just in a generous way that builds credibility. Then there’s visibility. So I can’t remember if it was before or after that, but you were on my podcast, right? And we made a connection. I can’t recall exactly how it went, but you came onto my podcast and then we made a nice connection and that increased your visibility.

And having a podcast just in general increases mine as well, and we started to develop a [00:09:30] connection, a relationship. Then you saw me posting about my book and you reached out to me and you said, why don’t I have you on my podcast? And I was like, ‘that would be great! I’m actually on book tour right now’.

Those types of dynamics, first, having credibility, because I don’t let just anybody on my podcast, and I’m sure you’re the same, you know, and there has to be some level of credibility there that the person knows what they’re talking about, that they have a specialty, that they are a legit expert in their field, and that they have an interest in [00:10:00] creating value for others.  That’s the credibility building. 

Then, there’s visibility, then you want to start getting into exchanges and visibility opportunities, and that helps to create this multiplier effect where people continue to build up that like, know, and trust factor over time. And there’s something called the Mere Exposure Effect.

Have you ever heard of this? 

Jody: I have not. 

Laura: Okay. So it’s Mere Exposure Effect. And it’s a psychological phenomenon where the more that you were exposed to something, the more that you [00:10:30] develop a preference for it. So if you’ve ever heard a song and you’re like, I don’t know about this song, the first time you hear it, right?

And then the 10th time you hear it, you’re kind of tapping your foot and singing along. That’s the mere exposure effect. So the more visibility that you have over time, with the increased collaborations and partnerships, the more people actually develop a preference for you and your offer. It’s really interesting.

So you can simply win at business just by showing up more. It’s kind of fascinating. 

 

The third piece is community. That’s when you start seeing those referrals coming in. Once one collaboration turns into another, and you create this really great momentum in your business of referrals, collaborations, and partnerships that build as a result of credibility and visibility.

Jody: Awesome credibility, visibility, and community. And one of the things I loved with that, and I hope you’ve all noticed these because I was like, oh, there we go. [00:11:30] Laura actually highlighted some examples that we had with those interactions. So I think that goes a long way. I don’t want to making it sound silly at all, but its a relationship marketing strategy.

And it’s being authentic with it all. So she recalled these times where, we met there in Florida, and then I was on her podcast. So, that’s kind of the stuff that when you are catching up with people you do a bit of research. So before you’re going to have a call with [00:12:00] people, you go, okay, what do I know about this person?

Go and look at their Facebook profile, right? Because if you’re going to be getting on a discovery call with someone and you’ll say, ‘oh, how was your weekend?’ ‘Oh, well, my dog died and my cat got run over’. You want to know these kind of things before you get on a call. So, do the research and then after a call take notes, then you’ve also got an excuse to follow up and say, oh, how, how did your Florida trip end up?

Or, whatever it may be, so that you are building those [00:12:30] relationships. And a quick example here was, I just had the amazing experience of going on a Ferrari drive day. At the start of the year, if you’d have told me I’d be in this half a million dollar Ferrari on a drive day, I would have said, I don’t know any Ferrari owners, you’re mad.

But again, it was relationships, it was going out, getting to events, connecting with people following up, and then just, you know, it’s also just to get the advantage of making new friends. So, you never [00:13:00] know where connecting with people is going to go. And in this online space, you can hear some amazing stories and meet some amazing people.

So paying attention to them, listening to them and being authentic in those relationships just goes like a long way. So those three things, credibility, visibility, and community. Laura, that was awesome. 

Laura: Yeah, and here’s the paradox, right, is letting go of outcome. That’s the paradox, is not to go into the relationships with any [00:13:30] particular agenda.

I think over time what happens is you learn to trust that if you do this enough, it will come back to you. You don’t have to control it, you don’t have to micromanage it. You don’t have to be upset if every connection doesn’t turn into a visibility opportunity or every visibility opportunity doesn’t turn into a client.

It is the collective effort in, and the collective output out that turns your business into a relationship marketing machine that [00:14:00] fills your pipeline. It’s not the tit for tat interaction, right? To a certain degree, it’s not a direct response marketing campaign and a Facebook ad. It’s different. And I love a direct response marketing campaign and a Facebook ad.

There’s something really magical about that. This is a different type of business development effort. 

Jody: With that, again, that’s where we really want to emphasize that authenticity. And you’re not just going into it to see what you can get out of it. So like you said that [00:14:30] letting go of the results, and then if you come from a place of giving service, bringing value like you said, I remember you saying, ‘oh yeah, I can share this with you, I can share that with you’.

That was amazing and it’s not coming from that place of fear and scarcity. You give with this abundance mindset, which a lot of it all comes back to, and especially with ad managers, we can have a bit of a rollercoaster, we can be inundated with clients.

We’ve got all these clients and then we lose a couple and it’s like, oh my gosh, [00:15:00] I’ve got no leads, I’ve got no leads. And then I’ll say, we end up with commission breath. Because we feel like everyone we talk to, we’ve got to close. Whereas if we’ve been talking to people and just establishing these relationships with them, they can just flow in.

So, as you go about this and you’re very strategic about it, just because we’re building these relationships, we’re not leaving things to chance at all. 

Laura: Right. 

Jody: How do you keep control of things? [00:15:30] Do you have like a roster or a system where it’ll be like, follow up with this person in three weeks time, make sure you like their post.

How do you then manage to maintain these relationships? Because otherwise we know how fast 2022 has gone and I was like, oh my gosh, it’s been six months since I said to this person, and now I need lead. So how do you nurture those?

Laura: I think it’s really important to recognize that there’s different types of relationships that you’ll have on your ecosystem.

Some will be leads, and if you have [00:16:00] a lead that doesn’t work out or the timing isn’t right, I’m always a big fan of keeping track of your leads, saying like, absolutely, I totally understand. Is it okay with you if I check in every month and just see how you’re doing? And that’s really important is to continue to follow up and to continue to touch base and not just assume that because somebody is a no for now, that they’re a no forever. So that’s one kind of relationship. 

Another kind of relationship are people in your audience, and you may find that if you have a platform like myself or like Jody, that over [00:16:30] time people will send you messages and they might not even want to pick your brain, or they might want to get some ideas on how they can get your help with doing what it is that you’ve accomplished, and that’s somebody that you want to be generous with, but they’re not necessarily somebody who you’re going to collaborate with, right? They might be somebody that you say, absolutely, let me know your question, and if it’s a good question, make a podcast episode about it or a YouTube video.

Then send it to them and say, Hey, it was a good question. I made this for you. [00:17:00] I hope it helps. And then next time you get that question in your inbox, you have a piece of content. That’s my favorite way to handle that type of request without being rude or sending them an invoice or something crazy like that where, you know, that ends up getting around that that’s the way that you treat your audience members. 

But more be helpful without necessarily feeling like you have to get on a call with everybody who wants to pick your brain. And then finally, a different type of relationship will be a collaborator. And a lot of [00:17:30] times those collaborators are people that you’re going to want to keep in touch with.

I personally keep an Asana board and for people that I’ve collaborated with that I think are probably people that would be a good business development partner, whether it’s a referral partner or a JV partner or somebody like that, I will every month or so, you know, just touch base, see how you’re doing, send them an inbox message, looked at their LinkedIn or their Instagram, and not just comment, but send something to their inbox and say, oh my gosh, [00:18:00] I saw you got a puppy. That’s amazing. I hope you’re well. And just keep in touch with them. 

Putting more emphasis on the people who are more likely to be collaborators and partners and referral partners. And less emphasis on people that you’ve met and that you just really like and that you like keeping in touch with. And those people are great to keep in touch with too, because you never know what a lot of times those connections will turn into.

What happens is, is that when we have this pipeline that we’re maintaining, [00:18:30] we will reach out to people and they’ll say, oh my gosh, Jody, it’s so good to hear from you. You know what? I’m working on this thing that you would be perfect for. Thanks. Thanks for popping at the top of my inbox. That’s happened to me more than once. 

So that’s why it’s so good to keep in touch with people and just reach out. Again, in the online space with ads, we’re used to creating a direct response click and wanting that to turn into business.

But truthfully, this type of business development work is what [00:19:00] guys have been doing on the golf courses for decades. You know, this is business development, like the OG way to grow your service based business. And the reason why it’s been around since the inception of business is because it really does work.

Jody: I love that and I love that reference of the golf days, getting out and being with people. Like I said, I went and I paid to go and do a drive day, and that’s where, I met my Ferrari friends. [00:19:30] So it’s getting out and being in places where you’re intentionally wanting to meet people and going to places, like golf, you know, I think that would be a more quality place to go to. So if you’re looking for a new hobby and you need to get outside a bit. Yeah, maybe try taking some golf lessons. You never know who you would meet on the field. Right?

So that’s awesome. Thanks for that recap and yes, and not everyone’s going to be a client but keep those collaborations, keep those personal connections.

We do, we [00:20:00] love our ads, we love direct response. But yes, it’s so often where, for myself and many of my clients have said I’ve been following you for months, or years, because they’ve been on that side following and building that one-sided relationship with you, so it can often take time for those good quality ones, but that can be sped up with that face-to-face process or the intentional relationship.

So tell us about your book. You’ve been writing that, it’s taken you about a year, you were telling me beforehand, and it’s coming out [00:20:30] in December. 

Laura: Yes, it’s coming out in December 6th. The book is called Win-Win, and it’s all about how to grow your business through relationships. And I use examples from my own business and many of my clients and peer examples in the book that highlight the different ways in which you can grow your business through relationship marketing.

And the one thing I really hope that people take away from this book is the relief of not feeling the pressure to chase fans, followers, and likes. [00:21:00] That you don’t have to have an Instagram reel go viral to have a legitimate business. And I think for many of us, we are conditioned to, I feel like it’s a popularity contest and what I really want to encourage everybody who’s listening to think about, is how to not worry as much about being popular.

And worry more about who they’re connected to and the relationships that they have and how [00:21:30] often they’re nurturing those connections. 

Jody: That’s such valuable advice because recently, I think it was a reel that I did and we went for dinner with my daughter’s birthday and I used some trending audio and then I was just getting all these views coming through. It’s okay, well that’s fun, but now they’re in my retargeting window and they’re not my ideal client. 

So yes, you certainly can get caught up with all those sort of vanity metrics for sure. But [00:22:00] you know, it’s that intimacy. It’s those quality ones because you really don’t need a million followers to make a million dollars. Right? 

The value of the product and the offer that you have, you can do it with a thousand people, which is not that hard to achieve. Right? If I break that down, that’s about 300 a month, and with lead gen sources you can do that. And then you nurture those quality leads, nurture those people that are looking at your premium offers.

One thing that I [00:22:30] like to do, is if people click a link on an email, giving away one of my secrets here, but this is if we’re giving value, click a link on my email. I get a notification. I send them a personal bonjoro video, and that’s one way of opening up this ‘Oh wow. It’s a real person. You said my name’.

Then starting that relationship, and quite often they reply and then we can start and have a conversation. We can have that call like you were talking about and ‘Okay, let’s circle back in 30 days’. I love how you said that earlier. Can I circle back with you or touch base [00:23:00] in 30 days and just see where you’re at? It doesn’t have to be so I can pitch you on the next offer.

It’s like, if you show interest in them, they’re going, ‘oh wow. And then they go, well yes, you’ve shown this interest to me. I really appreciate it’. So that’s awesome. 

So where can people get your book? 

Laura: Yeah, so they can go to createyourwinwin.com. and you’ll be able to click on the Amazon link there.

And for those of you who are listening internationally, [00:23:30] you can order it on your Kindle, in any country where you have the Amazon app available. And that’s in pre-order at the time of recording. I have a pre-order bonus that’s a relationship marketing toolkit. So if you order, pre-order the book, come back to the website, put your order number in, you’ll get immediate access to our relationship marketing toolkit with tools and templates and my Asana template that I had actually described in this podcast episode where you can keep track of your connections and see exactly how [00:24:00] I do it.

So that’s our pre-order bonus. And then if you’re listening after December 6th, just go to createyourwinwin.com and you will see the link to order the book once it’s published. 

Jody: Awesome. So that would be some great information guys, because there’s no one way to get leads and make sales while there are frameworks, et cetera try testing other things.

 And that’s what some of the ad managers do in my Clique who get the best results, they’ll take some information and then they’ll run with it and then they’ll go and explore. 

[00:24:30] So, head over and check out Laura’s book at createyourwinwin.com get ready to start some real, authentic conversations with people. You just never know where it may lead. 

So Laura, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate you being with us and I know it’s late for you Eastern time. So thank you once again. Thanks for sharing your expertise with the community here.

Thank you everyone. 

Laura: Thank you for having me. Great to see you and thank you very much. [00:25:00] 

Jody: Anytime. Anytime. I’ll just say, I just love the calmness and the peace and the way that you talk and you communicate all of this. And in that as well, that just really emphasizes to me you’re an authority in it, right?

It’s like, yep, I know my stuff and the genuineness that comes through. 

 

So thanks everyone for being with us today. Bye for now.