MBS972 - Be A Media Mogul (Million Dollar Principles)

In this episode, Matt shares some practical tips on how to leverage the media to boost the credibility of your start-up or organization.  
 
From using third-party media outlets to employees resharing content listen in as Matt shares these important million-dollar tips and more.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hi guys, my name is Matt Brown. I'm a serial entrepreneur and over the last 20 years I've built and sold multiple million dollar businesses. And in this series called the Million Dollar Principles Series, I'm going to be sharing with you some principles that I've used in my entrepreneurial journey to be successful when it comes to building a million-dollar business. And million dollars is important because if you can do that, you can really start to build a life of financial independence and freedom for yourself. And also, just for your information, you'd be in the top 10% of all businesses in America, listed or non-listed. Then that's quite a thing. So if you'd like to be in the top 10%, stay with me. Uh, in this episode, we're going to be talking about your next principle, which is called be a media mogul. Now, you may be saying, Well, I'm not a media mogul, Matt Brown. You're the host of the Matt Brown show. You're a media mogul. Um, and that may be true, but the principle is really powerful in that if you as a startup want credibility, you have to know how to work with the media. So be a media mogul is all about knowing how to work with the media. So I'm going to share with you a quick story. So, digital kung fu, when we were a startup, we were working out of my cottage. There was only five people, and then we went to 10 and then to 15, got an office. And in this kind of uncertain period, we were very much trying to survive. And when we chose to niche into the technology sector, we didn't have any credibility. No one, there was nothing that you could find online that said, Oh, digital kung fu is uh is like the Africa's leading pipeline generator for tech companies. There was literally nothing. And so what we needed to do was uh create credibility in the market. So what we did was um we relied heavily on digital PR. So digital PR is essentially a strategy that leverages third-party media, so not your LinkedIn page, third-party media, um, which are essentially publishers of content. So they have a lot of um customers that are essentially paying them for press offices and things like that. And digital PR is digital public relations, essentially. Um, and so what we did was uh we leveraged these channels that we didn't own, but that if we were present there, in other words, if our story was there, we would have credibility. Um, and so the insight here is that you can tell a prospect how great you are all day long, all day long. But if you are not published in the media, your successes did not happen, and you should assume that you are invisible. So, as an example, if you know, if you win a new client, so let's talk about exactly how do you do this. What exactly do you put into the media and what don't you put into the media? So, what you put into the media are things like client wins. So, as an example, we landed Microsoft. So we PR that digital kung fu secures uh Microsoft account. Um, you know, anything around um, you know, the the total number of net new customers you've added in a year. Digital Kung Fu increases its uh customer base by 67% in um in one year. Uh like anything around client wins that shows you are growing and that the market is consuming your uh your products and services is key. And remember, perception is reality, right? So it may not be you know fundamentally true, exactly true, but you want to create a perception that you are winning. And the way that you do this is by, as I explained, you know, sharing data about your story and what's happening with your startup. As an example, uh, we won Africa's best tech startup award. You must know IP odd that to death, right? Because you don't win Africa's best tech startup award uh just every every every year. Like you win it and that's it, you're done. It's like uh it's like a BAFTA or an Emmy or an Oscar, right? It's very hard to win it again. Um and so when we won this, I remember I put out the post on LinkedIn and it was a picture of me holding uh the two uh well the two awards. We had just won that. I was so pumped, it was a huge, huge huckoo for us and a huge feather in our cap. And I published that on LinkedIn and third-party media, right? So it didn't just do LinkedIn, third-party media. Um, and on LinkedIn alone, the post got organically over 30,000 views in only seven days. It was ridiculous. And then, of course, you put the press release on Biz Community, which was another example of um of using our digital PR. And this gave us credibility, like you cannot believe. We even took the Africa's best tech startup award, put it on our email signatures, put it, put it everywhere. We were telling customers about it on the phones. Um, so if you can win an award, you shout that shit from the rooftops. This will all give you credibility. Other areas you can digital PR is your products and services news. So, for instance, we developed a technology platform called Tech Lead Bay, and in partnership with SAP, one of the world's largest uh ERP companies, we launched Tech Lead Bay in Kenya. The headline or digital kung fu launches Tech Lead Bay in Kenya in association with SAP. Uh, other things like um any IP that you've developed, PR that. So we developed IP called the Lightning Strike, and it evolved over time to become a sales transformation uh proposition. So we PR that stuff, like every time the product or the service evolved from you know standard lightning strike to lightning strike direct to the lightning strike sales transformation system, every time the product evolved, digital PR. You put it in the media, um, and it's very important that you do that because it gets you attention. And without attention, you cannot commercialize stuff. Also, if you phone a customer or one of your sales team's uh members phones a customer, people are gonna Google you. And the first thing that comes up on a Google search is the news about your company, not and your website, right? So those two things, and I think even the news comes up before your website. So it's like news about digital kung fu, and then there's your website. So this is very important to not just do once off, but to do it all the time. Um, we also um uh you know spoke about how the lightning strike creates value for customers, so education is really important, not just awareness, you have to look at things as being a holistic intervention in the context of public relations, right? So it's awareness, education, and conversion. And even in our digital PR strategy, what we did was we always integrated a way for the customer to uh contact us. So inside the article itself on the uh publisher's website, we would include a lead magnet with the form, a type form where people can fill out the form. They didn't even have to leave the website. And so this is really important to generate uh you know awareness, education, and conversion at the same time, not awareness in month one, then education month two. It doesn't work like that. You do it all at the same time, and that should be your goal. Other things that you should be digital PRing are new hires, right? So uh digital kung fu hires, you know, Sapiwe Shabalala, the head of creative design for blah blah, or you know, whatever it might be. It can be a developer, you know. If digital kung fu hires Colin Amos as the CTO for Black Swan Technology Holdings, you know, um, whatever the case might be, but profiling your people and even getting your people to share content in the media or thought leadership articles about um, you know, what it is that you're doing as a business or maybe problems that your customers might have and how they can solve them. All of these things drive equity in the market. And without equity, in other words, trust, uh, you it's very difficult to convert. Other things to consider are market insights. One of the key things that we were privileged to be sitting on was a lot of data. So we knew as an example how much it uh the cost to acquire a lead, how much it was, and how much it was increasing over a period of time. And we learned because we had over you know 90 brands or campaigns in our system, how much the average customer was paying to acquire a small business lead on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on all these other channels. And over time, we were able to benchmark how this increasing cost um was going to impact our customers. And so this is an example of market insights. So we were demonstrating that we were the leaders by sharing market insights that the market didn't know about. It's very, very, very powerful stuff. So cost per leads were doubling every six months. So if our clients' budgets weren't increasing by the same amount, inevitably there's going to be a train smash, right? Um, and so other things you can do are things like annual media uh and campaign spend. So anything around what's the average customer spending on solving this problem? What's the average customer spending on solving cybersecurity problems or whatever your particular sector is? Um and then talking about that, right? So, and how does a customer solve that? You know, the average customer spends $15,000, uh, you know, um, and returns are dwindling because of COVID or whatever the case might be. Um, and so the the final thing that you can also PR is account uh insights. So how Microsoft can solve pipeline problems with the lightning strike. So you can literally talk about you're not talking about results or anything confidential, you're you're using it to get into that account, and that's exactly what we did. And as an example, when we acquired Microsoft, we actually reached out to them on the phone first and we found out what matters to them. And what mattered to them was increasing something called Azure consumption revenue, which is cloud revenue. Um, and so when we knew that, we spoke about how Microsoft can increase their cloud revenue with the lightning strike from digital kung fu, put that in the media, and sent that not only to Microsoft, but to all of their channel partners as well. Do you think we got a lot of attention? Like, yeah, we did. We got a hell of a lot of attention. So all of these things really do add up to creating how a strategy that will position you as a media mogul. It is a very, very, very powerful principle. And I would encourage all of you as startups, as founders and entrepreneurs to get comfortable by leveraging the media. Because remember, if it's not in the media, you should assume that your customers think that it didn't happen. It's not enough to have your successes on your website, it has to be in the media. If you like what I had to say, guys, please like, comment, and subscribe. Hit me up on Twitter at Matt Brown ZA, and I'll see you all again soon. Ciao.