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Intro: I’m Paul Higgins, an ex-corporate executive turned business owner who, for five years, struggled to grow a cloud Consulting business whilst battling a chronic disease. With the help of mentors and experts, I got the business model right, built a sales and marketing engine, and developed a high-performing team that ended in a successful exit. I received a kidney transplant from a mate, and now on my second life, I dedicate my time to helping other Cloud Consultants go quickly with less effort to enjoy life. Detecting an accent, I'm an Aussie working globally from Melbourne, Australia. I interview successful Cloud Consultants sharing their scaling story to give you inspiration and practical tips. I have dedicated experts for Cloud Consultants on the show to save you time and money by working with the right people. If you want to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

Speaker 1 (0:57): Imagine this, you know you have to do marketing, but you don't have any formal or informal training or experience on marketing and you know you can't afford someone else to do it for you and you probably can't hire someone full-time internally. What do you do? Hello, I'm Paul Higgins and welcome to episode 498 of the Cloud Consultants Show. In this podcast, we're going to explore ways for you as a cloud consultant to thrive by avoiding common pitfalls and embracing best practices. Our guest today is Louis Gudema. He's a fractional CMO for B2B startups and growth stage companies and he works across many industries and mentors at startups and also MIT. He's a frequent speaker on marketing and since the publication of Bullseye Marketing, he also has a side hustle as a ghost writer for businesses and marketing books. He's a fantastic guy and you're going to love this interview with Louis Gudema. Great to have you hear, Louis.

Speaker 2 (1:56): Hey, Paul.

Speaker 1 (1:57): I really enjoyed looking at your 27 chapters in your book, which we're going to talk a lot about. You know, I just kept thinking, you know, what, he’s covered that as well? He's covered that as well. And I know this is the second version, but there's a lot to cover in Bullseye marketing. But why don't we just kick off with, you know, who the books are for and what problems it really solves for them?

Speaker 2 (2:22): Well, thanks for having me on, Paul. And the second edition, one of the key differences between the first and second is that second edition is just on B2B. And the first edition was B2B and B2C. And it's a good example of one of the things that I recommend and started to practice myself better was to focus your market. And several years ago, I realized I wasn't doing that. You know, they say that in business, if you are everything to everyone, you're nothing to everyone. And so by focusing your market, you really become much more identifiable as the expert in that space. And I was mostly doing B2B marketing. And it's what I know best, it's what I'm best at. And so I thought, well, you know, that's how I should identify myself, that's how I should market myself. And that's what the new edition of the book should be about. So for people like the cloud consultants listening to this podcast, this is really spot on for them. This is all about how to grow a B2B business.

Speaker 1 (3:22): Yeah, and you know, it is like an encyclopedia of this is what you do. You know, I was reading through it and just thought, yes, well, there's so much here that I try to help my clients with the cloud consultants. And you know, you're listening to Louis here probably thinking, you know, like marketing is not a topic that let's be honest, a lot of cloud consultants love, you know, it's they've either been burnt in the past, they tried it themselves and it hasn't been work and when I say burn, they've been burned by agencies, we've probably all gone down that path, where we've, you know, someone's promised us that they're going to get us high quality leads is going to flow in, you don't have to do much and unfortunately, it doesn't often work. And then the worst case scenario is where you just get so frustrated, you don't do anything, right? So you're probably sitting in one or if not all of those buckets, and that's why I wanted to bring Louis on to help us with that. And, you know, like I said, there's 27 chapters, we've got 30 minutes, so we can't cover them all. But the one that I think, you know, I would really like to dive into is referrals, right? So, often people talk about the fact that the only way they get clients is through referrals, but often that is through their partner platform, or it's done in an unsophisticated way. And I think in the book, you know, you bring more sophistication and more process to it. So just tell us a little bit about the background as to. It was referrals in the first edition and if it's not, was it in the second and then talk it through?

Speaker 2 (4:46): It really wasn't in the first edition. It was one of the omissions that had to be fixed in the second edition and it was a big omission. And one of the things to understand you've mentioned, that there's 27 chapters in the book, but my bullseye marketing framework is divided into three phases and referrals part of the first phase. And so for people who have been burned by marketing in the past, the first phase is a set of eight or ten tactics and programs that are very inexpensive to do and typically have good results in three months, you know, maybe six months, but they're not high risk and you shouldn't be spending a ton of money on them. And one of those, the center of the bull's-eye tactics is about taking advantage of marketing assets you already have at your company, but you're not using. It's kind of like having money stuck in a shoebox under your bed rather than really using it well. And selling more to current customers and getting referrals from current customers is one of those center of the bull's-eye tactics, which don't cost you anything, but can be highly profitable. So it's certainly much more profitable to sell to existing companies than to go out and try to attract new customers. And so if you can do that and follow up and have a more sustained customer success and farming kind of or land and expand as it's sometimes called programs that can be a great way to generate more revenue. And then referrals, as you said, for a lot of cloud consultants, they're probably getting a lot of their business from referrals. And from partners, perhaps, you know, companies that they're reselling and implementing the products of. But referrals are typically the highest converting types of leads. And in fact, some companies have a problem moving off of referrals because they don't convert as well. And they say, well, you know, those referrals are a lot easier to close. Yes, but in the long run, you will do better if you supplement referrals with other programs as well. And referrals to me is a pretty straightforward, simple undertaking, which is that you identify who your best customers are, the ones who are happiest with you, the ones who you understand are pretty satisfied with what you're doing, and you reach out to them and you say, we would love it if you would be a referral for us. And that could take one of a few different forms. The first is you can ask them, maybe you know that they know these people or these companies through LinkedIn or through conversations you've had with them or otherwise, maybe they're a partner for that company. And you ask them to reach specific people to introduce you to. So don't just generally say, you know, can you introduce me to anyone? But rather say, you know, I'm trying to reach out to, I would love to be connected to or work with, you know, one of these two or three people, you know, can you connect me to them and introduce me if you're comfortable doing that? And make that, as you were saying, for a regular part of your program. Another thing that you want to do is customers tend to be much more interested in the voice of the customer when they're considering vendors than in the voice of the vendor. They believe other customers more than they believe vendors. I don't know why that's true, but that's just the way it is. So if you can do, say, a testimonial story from them, and it shouldn't be all, you know, balloons and roses. You know, you should touch on, you know, what were some of the challenges along the way? What did you have to work through? Because that makes it real. You know, people know that in business, everything isn't going to be simple and easy and perfect. So knowing that you could work with a client and overcome challenges along the way, that can be really great too. Those can be video, which for a number of years earlier in my career, traveled all over the world, including to Australia, to Melbourne and Sydney, for IBM, shooting customer testimonial videos that were like 3 minute stories about how these different companies were using IBM software and services. They can be text. And they can be on your website. You can use them in a lot of different ways. So those are two of the ways, and from the interviews you do for those, you can get testimonial quotes also to put onto your website. And those make your website much more credible. Those are all ways that, you know, those are all different ways that you could use referrals to help build your business.

Speaker 1 (9:21): Yeah, and I think it's, you know, one of the key points that I was thinking as you went through that is just the consistency factor. I think we'll talk referrals and, you know, referrals say from our SaaS partner, whether you're a Salesforce partner, HubSpot partner, Zoho, whatever partner you're from, you've got some consistency there around those leads, right? You're always working with the AEs to get those leads. But I think when it comes to your best clients, I think that often, you know, just gets put into the, we're going to do a one day bucket, right? It's not the too hard bucket, like you said, it's not hard to do, but it just gets into the, you know, not to do bucket. And what I highly recommend is that you actually create an SOP and then get your team to do it, right? So your team can actually act on behalf of you. So it becomes a cadence for them and it shouldn't be up to you as the owner to ask for those referrals. I think that's a great suggestion and this being very specific like when I first work with a client, I'll talk to them, well, who are you linking connections of your ideal client that you recommend your niche down? Who is that? And then who are they already got connections of and yes, be very specific. I think that's a great point. And now with LinkedIn, you can see their mutual connections, which is great. But also if they're there, LinkedIn is blue, i.e. their mutual connections is blue. You can actually go through their whole connection base, right? And it's incredible that you can go through and see people that are very much like your ideal client and then yes are. So I think that's fantastic advice. And as far as the video, like where you talked about creating these three minute videos, where are some of the best places to put those videos? Give some examples of where we could use those videos in our marketing.

Speaker 2 (10:58): Well, certainly you can pepper them around your website. And so just as you can have testimonial quotes, you can have testimonial videos on your website, you know, people talking. And you might use those at certain points if it's relevant to closing a particular account. So if you have a video on a particular topic that deals with a particular objection that maybe comes up, that video may be on your YouTube page, but you can send links to those as part of the sales process to people to talk about those.

Speaker 1 (11:27): Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Like often, you know, follow up. You know, I'm just bouncing this up to the top of your inbox or whatever those sort of tacky scripts that are going out there are used. I think using video is very relevant to them within that referral process is great. And the other one which I really like, Louis on your LinkedIn profile. You've got the featured section of your LinkedIn profile. Why not have your story there and also have one of your client testimonials there. So once again, if you've found someone through LinkedIn through that mutual connection, that can do some of the heavy lifting for you.

Speaker 2 (12:03): One of the other things Paul is, you know, we all get these LinkedIn anonymous outreach emails through LinkedIn. And to the point where I've changed my privacy settings, so I don't get them anymore. You know, they're anonymous. You know, they haven't even looked at your profile and so forth. When you have a one to one introduction, a referral from someone that you and the other person knows, you know, your orders of magnitude ahead of some random outreach that, you know, no one has ever heard of you before. But at the same time, just, you know, in the book, in Bullseye Marketing, I mentioned a research done by the Hinge Research Institute, which does an annual report on professional services firms, the marketing by professional services firms. And, you know, they make the point that they all get business from referrals. But the fastest growing ones go beyond that. You know, the fastest growing ones have the full robust marketing program, and they grow, you know, considerably faster. In my own research on B2B companies, I found that for SaaS companies that have the most robust marketing programs grow five times faster than SaaS companies that have kind of single channel marketing programs or very little marketing. And so we're talking about a potential huge difference in how faster company grows if you do marketing well.

Speaker 1 (13:28): Totally agree. I think that's the brilliant thing is, you're starting off with referrals because there's low hanging fruit, there's always like to go warm to cold. So you're already starting off with the warm introductions and I know it sounds a little old school but those things still work. You think when the last time someone said, hey, I think you should speak to this person, nine out of ten times you do it. Like you said, they're high converting, it's going to happen. So I think it's something that is easy to simple strategy but it's not always easy to do. So go to that one first and then like you said, then build your marketing off the back of that. And I think the other one, just quickly on it, is often if we love to reciprocate, right? So if you refer someone, so if you go through a conversation and you know that you can help someone, if you refer someone that can often then make it a lot easier with, and I'll say, hey, who could I refer you to? Right? So if you move first, then that makes it easier for them to ask the same question, which is just, as you said, it's human nature and a lot of marketing and the fundamentals of marketing hasn't changed right? It's still human nature. So we've got referrals right. So the next one is around building your brand like, you know, what else do I do once I've got referrals right as a cloud consultant? What's the plus one? What do you recommend that I don't do then, Louis?

Speaker 2 (14:43): So what I talk about in the book is there's a famous marketing research consultant in Australia named Byron Sharp. And he's with the Aaron Bird Bass, I believe it's called Institute for Marketing Science. I may have those words, you know, in slightly the wrong order, but that's about it. So Byron Sharp wrote a great book about a dozen years ago called How Brands Grow. And one of the things he talks about in that book is the idea of mental availability. And mental availability is the idea that it's more than awareness. It's that the person will think of you at that point where they're ready to buy something in your category. So 95% of your market, Paul, isn't looking to buy from you today. They don't need a new cloud consultant today. They either think they don't want to need one at all, or they have one that they're happy with. And they're just not looking to change. No matter what you say to them, they're not going to buy from you today. But by building mental availability, you are top of mind when they are ready for a new cloud consultant. And so what that has to do with is, let me give you an example. I had a marketing agency for a dozen years, and I sold it about a dozen years ago. Then I became a VP of business development at a different agency. We were selling to big companies. And I remember the very first call that I got as the VP of business development at this agency. And the guy says, I've been following you for the last three years. I read your blog. I really like it. I've seen your CEO speak. I really agree with your approach. We're finally ready to do something. So let's talk about that. That's a perfect example of mental availability. Someone who we had no direct contact in terms of one-to-one conversations during that whole time, but they were seeing the company's content and and growing that mental availability so that we were top of mind when they were you know ready for our services. And and that's where you get the lift because so much of the business in any industry and any B2B industry happens without most vendors knowing about the opportunity because the customer has one or two vendors that are top of mind. They reach out to those one or two, they get proposals, they make a decision and you never knew about it. And you want to be that one or two. And so building your brand, building the awareness, but beyond that, building your mental availability is just a huge long-term benefit to your company's growth.

Speaker 1 (17:17): Yeah, great. And you're probably listening to Louis saying, I get it. That makes sense. I think everyone sort of knows roughly the quote of 3% of people are ready to buy it any one time. We've all sort of heard that kicking around. So how do we build that mental availability, Louis? What are some ways to do that?

Speaker 2 (17:31): Well, one of the key ways is through what's called share a voice. You want to be active in your industry. You want to be holding events. You want to be sponsoring. You want to be writing materials and perhaps targeting them to your specific customers. So, for example, let's say you have a blog post that really resonates with your customers and your potential customers. One of the things you can do on LinkedIn and on Facebook and some of the other platforms is that you can upload an email list and have a very targeted list of people that you're going to show ads to. And that might be 100 or 200 people. But the ad in this case is promoted content. So let's say you have a blog post that's really good. You post it to your website. You then post that to LinkedIn. And then you advertise it to make sure that the people in your company's private list that it were have an opportunity to see it. And as people get to know you, you know, when you promote your videos that way and you promote your events that way and other activity. You build the situation that we had with that customer at the company I worked for where you know two years later they're like yeah, you're the company I want to work for 

Speaker 1 (18:48): And what platforms are we doing these ads on?

Speaker 2 (18:51): The social media platforms. So linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, you can do a month on Google too. And those are platforms where you can upload those lists and target very well.

Speaker 1 (19:03): Yeah, great and you know just to remind everyone we're listening to Louie Gudema and he's the author of Bullseye Marketing and it's bullseye marketing, the second edition. I recommend you to get both of those. But you know if you want to know the detail behind all of this because you know like I said it's 27 chapters Louis got and gone to a lot of length to really put in the detail of the tactics there. But today we're just giving you two broad concepts of the book to help you with your B2B marketing and ultimately help you generate more revenue in your business. And there couldn't be a better time in 2023 when you know the easy revenue is a little harder to get at the moment. Let's let's be honest. So just on the building and creating these these assets, so some people say, look, I'm just not a content writer or I just, you know, I'm too busy. What are some ways that you've seen to make it easier for people to create these assets in the first place?

Speaker 2 (19:58): Yeah. And one of the things I'd say, Paul, is the book is 27 chapters, but there's an introduction and an overview, you know, chapter one. And then there's just a couple other chapters on the second phase of the approach and the third phase of the approach, Chapter 13. And those three or four chapters will give you a good high level overview of this approach and how to go from, you know, the fast, inexpensive to the longer-term ones, but the longer-term ones do tend to have also the greatest longer-term benefit and I explain why that is.

Speaker 1 (20:35): Yes, so creating the content. So, you know, you've given us the pipe. You know, what are some great ways to be able to create that content? What have you seen with best for B2B business owners in creating content?

Speaker 2 (20:47): Yeah, you know, there are a lot of talented people out there. And so if you're not a writer yourself or you just don't have time to do the writing, you certainly can hire freelance or contract writers designers, video producers, people to manage putting together podcasts or webinars or events. It's all available in a way that like it's never been before. You don't have to build a huge staff to do this. I as a consultant use a service called Upwork, which is a global community of creative contractors. And so for my book, which is self-published, the designer for the book is in Spain. The designer for the cover of the book is in Pakistan. So I don't have to have those people on staff, of course, and I just got a review from publishers weekly, which in addition to giving the book a very nice review, grades, the writing, the editing, the cover, and the interior design ,and gave all of them a's. And so those designers, I got through Upwork. And so there are other services as well. This is not a paid advertisement for Upwork. But there are other services as well. Or you've got local people in your market who can do the job, I'm sure, very well. So just like you wouldn't do everything in your company in the technical roles, and in the customer service roles, you don't have to do everything in the marketing either.

Speaker 1 (22:11): Yes, spot on. And I think that's a key point. I think today's age, you have to be generating great content, but it doesn't have to be done by you. So it's a bit like the referral program that we talked about before. So you take the strategy from Louis, and then you can get your team to go and implement it with an SOP. So that doesn't have to be you. The content's the same. And I don't know if you know, had a chance to talk much about chat GPT or versions of AI generated content, did that get into the book or was the book sort of released before that sort of really hit the main stage?

Speaker 2 (22:42): It was just happening and it, you know, in the first edition of the book at the end of each chapter, I listed some of the top software programs for that particular chapter and I took that out because now there's over 10,000 vendors who offer marketing software programs. So I couldn't possibly review and be, you know, truthful about that big of a data set and most of them are good. If you look at the, you know, the software review sites, most of them get pretty good reviews and chatGPT and other AI programs are exploding on the scene now. And I knew, you know, that whatever I wrote about it would be out of date within three months. So I couldn't write about that in a book. My feeling is at this point, copy written by CHATGPT is basic. It's not at a high creative or skill level. And I actually saw one marketing agency that said they were working on a campaign for a client. So they asked CHATGPT for ideas. And those were the ideas that they would not use. Those were the obvious ideas. And those were the ideas that they said, we have to, you know, do better than that. We have to show our value by doing better than that, which is sort of like a college professor I was talking to who was saying that a lot of students in his class, CHATGPT could pass the test. And I said, well, then you need a different test.

Speaker 1 (24:08): Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And I think it's right. Like if, if you want to be the same as all the information out there, chat GPT will get you that right, because that's what it's drawing on. It's drawing on the information that's already out there. If you want something that is new and different and creative and has a point of difference, well, then that's got to be generated by you. But what I will say just quickly on chat GPT is like, I believe I know you, a cloud consultant fairly well. So I did my version of the cloud consultant ICP’s.. I've created an avatar and you know, I do that with all my clients and I'm sure you've got one yourself and it's mentioned in the book. Then I got chat GPT to create one and it actually did have some points that I hadn't considered. But a lot of it was also there. So there are specific times when you should do it. But ultimately, there's a tool that's to help you do all the research. Right. So if you, for example, you know, want to write a sales playbook, give me an agenda for a sales playbook. It will give you the agenda or the outline, but then you've got to fill that bucket. Right? You've got to fill the bucket on your content. So I think that's the way to do it. But look, as I said, Louis has got a fantastic second edition of the book, Bullseye Marketing. And this second edition is for B2B businesses. And it really fits beautifully with professional selling. So I highly recommend you go and get that and we'll have the links to it in the show. But now what we're going to do, Louis, go through the rapid fire and ask you four questions and get four rapid responses. Are you ready for that?

Speaker 2 (25:32): I was ready as I'm going to be.

Speaker 1 (25:34): Great. So the first thing, what are some daily habits to help you scale your business?

Speaker 2 (25:38): I would say it's being active on LinkedIn. I engage with people a lot on LinkedIn. And so I have a lot of awareness. People know me as a professional with a point of view. And the other would be writing. I know not all of your listeners or writers, but I am.

Speaker 1 (25:55): Yeah Yeah, and where do you get knowledge on how to grow your business?

Speaker 2 (25:59): You know, I always hate this answer when I get it when I'm interviewing people and I ask what industry events do you attend? What do you read, what blogs, what websites. And people say oh Twitter or LinkedIn or something like that? It is true. I'm fairly active, you know on social media. So they are my news sources but I do occasionally read great marketing books. This one great marketing podcast is Marketing book podcast, you know, and there's great ideas that come out of there. So even though, you know, I just wrote my own marketing book, this is always something to learn.

Speaker 1 (26:34): Yeah, brilliant. And if we could grant you one wish to your business what would that be?

Speaker 2 (26:38): I guess, just a smidgen more work. 

Speaker 1 (26:42): Not too much. Just a little bit.

Speaker 2 (26:45): I'm going to become a digital nomad in September. My wife and I are setting off on a one year trip in an RV around the United States visiting a lot of national parks and things of that sort. But I do plan to have a Starlink satellite internet connection. I do plan to keep working with clients, but not full time. And probably just having the right balance of work and vacation and travel would be a good thing for the next year.

Speaker 1 (27:14): Wonderful. And we've sort of covered this a little bit. What are some of the things that you wish you had of known in the first book that you now know in the second edition?

Speaker 2 (27:22): Yeah, I think certainly the mental availability. So the framework, the bullseye marking framework between the first and second editions does not really change. But what I realized from reading Byron Sharp and other people who I got stirred to their research and writing, is that there was a whole underpinning research that just confirmed The bullseye marking framework. And so that made me feel good when I picked up the book nine months ago or so and said, should I put out a second edition and I read it and I saw it. I did okay, but I can deepen this and I can add the research and so forth that I didn't know last time and kind of make this a little more authoritative.

Speaker 1 (28:08): Brilliant, well look, you know, this is your Bible of B2B marketing and you can get it. I'll read out the website so it's Louis Gudema, it's L-O-U-I-S and then it's G-U-D-E-M-A.com so that link will be in the show notes and then that will take you to the Bullseye Marketing Second Edition book but Louis, fantastic having you on the podcast today and thanks for sharing your wisdom on a topic that, you know, often we struggle with that let's be honest, we need out our heads around because that's the only way we're really going to scale our cloud consulting businesses to get our marketing right.

Speaker 2 (28:44): Well thank you for having me Paul, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (28:47): That was a great interview with Louis and I really loved how we talked about referrals and a different way of looking at referrals and you've probably heard before. So why don't you share what you learned from Louis on LinkedIn? He'll love that for you. Also want to share it with your peers. They will get great value and they’ll think you're a rock star for doing it. Check out our solo shows and why don't you take action to help you grow your cloud consulting business and live the life that you really want.

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