Aug 22, 2018
PODCAST
Tom is brilliant at creating relationships with influencers and using that as leverage to have incredible results with launches. And he does this time and time again and it just gets more and more impressive and innovative every time. He's going to share a lot of the secrets on how he gets these amazing product launch results and he is going to share them and they are going to be great for you whether you're just beginning, you're just starting out as an amateur or if you've got a thriving business and just want to drive more profit.
Key Takeaways
[3:12] How Tom started his sustainable business as a launch expert [4:36] Tom’s insights on what a successful launch is [8:11] Why the person just starting out has an edge in launching [10:11] Different launches for different products and industries [13:34] Long game strategies for various launches [19:49] Tom explains his three secret details to a successful launch: Collaboration, Bundles, and Bonuses [30:12] How to leverage collaborations/partnerships for a prosperous launch and more revenue
Tom Morkes Information
Tom Morkes Website Tom Morkes Books The Art of Instigating Notes From Seth Godin’s Revolution Conference More Books by Tom Morkes Launch Hacks (free copy) Facebook LinkedIn John Lee Dumas Freedom Journal Neil Patel - Hustle: The Power to Charge Your Life with Money, Meaning, and Momentum AppSumo Ash Maurya
Transcript of Podcast
Kyle:
Hello, everyone and welcome to the
Story Engine Podcast. Today I have Tom Morkes. Tom, thanks for
joining us on the show today. Tom:
Kyle, thank you so much for having
me, man. It's a pleasure. Kyle:
It's really exciting to have you
because over the years now I've known you, you've always had some
exciting big launch on the horizon with a really cool person and a
really cool name behind it. I think I would love to know and I
think the listeners would love to know, how did you find yourself
in this position as being a launch expert and tell us what that
entails for some people. Tom:
Yeah, so my story, I think it just
starts by doing one thing at a time, like starting with that first
product. I guess that's where it began was just with my first, my
blog and my podcasts and the first book that I wrote, then the
first author that I published when I started my publishing company.
So, I side hustled some of this when I was still in the Army and
then after I got out, I just started doing it full-time. I wasn't
sure where it would go but I wanted to see if it was possible to
like build an online business, you know? It was back in 2013-2014.
In fact, I think that is when we ran into each other for the first
time, back in 2014. So we were kind of like both on this path
together and well, similar paths, different trajectories in terms
of what we were pursuing but very similar, too, cause you were in
the contents base. I was dabbling in that at the time, too. So a
lot of what I have done is just experimentation, what are different
things I could do online to generate revenue or profit and how do I
do that sustainably. Tom:
It started with just my own
products, then I started to collaborate with people so working with
a lot of different high profile influencers, brands, businesses and
stuff like that. Collaborating at different capacities sometimes on
an original project together. Other times, it evolved into
essentially being hired by many of these people to kind of run
their campaigns around a launch for a product or a service or
whatever it might be. And so, as you mentioned, John Lee Dumas on
the "The Freedom Journal", so we did big launch on a campaign and
set a Kickstarter record. Neil Patel, we did a New York Times Best
Selling Book launch. Ash Maurya, Wall Street Journal bestseller.
I've worked on a number of launches for a number of clients from
courses to membership sites to books to physical products and, I
guess, like everything in between and in a bunch of different
industries. Not just in marketing but in real estate and health and
finance and really have run the gamut, honestly.
Tom:
And so that's how I got started.
That's how I became kind of what you're describing as a launch
expert. I don't know if I think of myself that way but I do think
of myself as somebody who is proficient at what it takes to launch
something. It was just fundamentally, kind of going to your second
point of that question, what is a launch and what does that entail.
It's really a means of getting people's attention is kind of how I
look at it. And so a launch is conceptually, I look at it how do I
put something out there so people actually pay attention and are
interested and want to buy. That's the bottom line, I think, a
puzzle we are all trying to solve. Tom:
Sometimes, launches, quote-unquote,
can get a bad rap and there is definitely like a generic sequence
when people talk about product launches and stuff like that. I'm
not really talking about that. Everything I have done is custom
concierge and it's approaching each problem as its own unique
problem, right? Because trying to get somebody's attention in a
different space, different industry, different product, well that's
going to dictate what we do to get people's attention and in a way
that's not obtrusive and that will actually help us generate profit
for the short term and the long term. I think that is an important
and crucial point of this cause there's plenty of ways to use
click-bait style tactics but I think that is the kind of thing that
will burn bridges and that's not good for brands over the long
term. So I think anytime I work for clients for myself, I always
look and say, how do we create value now and in the future for
yourself, for your company, for your employees and for your
customers and clients. Again, now and in the future.
Tom:
It's an interesting dynamic in
terms of trying to weigh this, weigh these various criteria or
analyze them and figure out, okay, so how do we do that. How do we
actually get in front of people in way that they are attracted to
what we are doing and they want to buy what we have to
offer? Kyle:
That's really impressive and I just
love that you've found trends or you have found a system that can
work in many different niches and many different industries and for
many different types of products and services out there.
Kyle:
What I would like to hear now is
maybe starting at the beginning in terms of a launch. What kind of
person or business or situation do you want to be in where its like
it's time to do a launch and what types of products or things do
you want to launch. What makes a good idea? What kind of results do
you want to be looking for in terms of what you want to see in
the long run? Tom:
Sure, so the first question is who
should consider a launch in a manner of speaking and who is it for
is maybe a way to think about that question. The answer would be I
think obviously it depends to some degree because I think you can
launch from nothing and you also launch something when you are
already well established. And there are plenty of businesses that
use this kind of launch framework or launch methodology to generate
millions, hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars. A great
example is Tesla. I love using them as an example. We'll see, they
are going through some changes right now but in the past I think
what they have been remarkable for is this idea of rolling out
pre-orders where people have to put a thousand dollars or more down
on a vehicle that, it might come out in the next year or two, which
is so wild and they generated literally hundreds of millions doing
that. It's not that they just put out a statement saying hey, the
vehicles are available. There is a whole process, there is a whole
thought process that goes into rolling out that preorder. You can
also look at product launches with other well-known or iconic
brands, things like Apple and how they roll out new
products. Tom:
You see it all around you. So,
those are for established businesses. Going back to the person who
is just getting started, a little bit tougher. You have obviously
less resources to leverage but if you are going from zero, what's
cool is, especially if you are bootstrapping and let's say you are
side-hustling, and so you have a full-time job or something like
that and you are just trying to get something off the ground,
what's cool is you actually, the benefit that you have that a big
company doesn't have is, at this moment in time when you are trying
to get started, when you are going from zero to something, you have
very minimal overhead, you have no, we'll say, creative debt is how
I would describe it. As in, you haven't been established enough for
people to expect something out of you so you are free of the
liberty to do whatever you want, to test anything.
Tom:
And there is something exhilarating
about that. My life is different now in terms of what I do for my
own business and stuff like that. I have to be a little more
cognizant of things and I kind of reflect on the past and realize
when I was just getting started it was kind of fun because I could
literally do anything and there was no expectation of who Tom is
and what he is about because I just wasn't known.
Tom:
Being an unknown quantity is kind
of fun and exhilarating and it also is an important edge because a
lot of people won't take advantage of certain tactics or strategies
cause they have already developed a model that works for them. And
hence I think where a lot of the negativity towards this idea of
launches might come from because people are already set in their
ways. It's like hey, we are already using paid traffic to the sales
funnel and it's generating this kind of profit for us so that's
what you should be doing. It's like, that's great but there's also
room for launching. Tom:
So I think that answers your first
question. And let me see if I can remember the second question was
... what was that one about? I think it was about like what do you
do - Kyle:
What kind of products do you want
to ... what kind of products launch well. You mentioned a couple of
books and journals but can you launch any kind of product or are
there certain kinds of products that you want to launch
with? Tom:
Yeah, for sure. I think, broadly
speaking, I think anything can benefit from a launch. If it is
something that can be sold, then it can be launched. And then the
question is well, what does that launch look like? And so if you
are doing B to C type stuff for mass-market consumables, physical
products, like absolutely. Some of the examples I gave you for
bigger brands. And when we a dealing with people who are starting
from scratch or starting much smaller with physical products too,
then we will leverage something like crowd-funding campaign to get
that money in the door early so we can produce that thing, right?
So a lot of it just like these variables we have to look at.
Tom:
I think any product can actually be
launched. Then I think there's well, what industries work better
and at what capacity? And I'll tell you what, that's where the
nuance is. So it's like when I have worked on say a book, a book
launch or the book launches we have worked on. Sometimes I work
with people who are gunning for the New York Times, Wall Street
Journal bestseller lists. They are being traditionally published
but I've worked with over two dozen business owners, entrepreneurs,
brands that self-published a book and wanted to use it to generate
essentially new traffic leads and sales through something like
Amazon or through some other routes. They didn't care about the New
York Times or the Wall Street Journal sales and we had a lot more
flexibility because they were self-published. Tom:
Then we look at and we say, okay,
how do we roll this out in a way that will get people's attention.
What you might notice why I talk about something like that, it's
like, wait a second, so we are launching a book but that's really
not the end state here. That's like one piece of the puzzle. It's
maybe a major component of it but we have to think through the
whole thing. You have to play it through. Start to finish, what
happens, what are we trying to accomplish here. 
Tom:
But we have done it for membership
sites, we've done ... and one of the things I don't often mention
when I talk about launches, I'll define it as event-based marketing
campaigns and I don't know of a better term to describe it and I am
still working on that. I found that kind of articulates what I am
talking about. When I am talking about an event based marketing
campaign, event means there is a start and there is a stop. There
is a beginning and an end. So that is event based. It also by its
nature, it's time-based. Then there is a marketing campaign that'll
really set. You can do that from a product that doesn't even exist
using like a presale type launch strategy. You can do it with
products that are already established and you can launch everything
from digital to physical products. Kyle:
So you hinted at this and back to
my ... or kind of my third question just a second ago when you said
that when you are launching a book, you are not just launching a
book. You want to see the thing all the way through. And so what
are some of the end goals of a good launch. Again, you were saying
an example of somebody maybe didn't want a New York Times
bestseller but they wanted something on Amazon that would drive
traffic and perhaps have more downstream benefits than just the
initial kind of sugar rush style traffic Kyle:
Sugar rush-style traffic and leads
and sources that come from a big launch. We can't just focus on a
launch just for whatever number we're going to get at the end of
the launch. There should be hopefully something a little bit down
the line, or at least that's what I'm assuming. What're the
long-game strategies beyond just the launch that people should have
in place? Tom:
Yeah. I would look at that and say,
"Where are you starting, and where are you trying to go?" If
somebody's starting from scratch and, say, has no audience, no
nothing really, just considering doing something like this, maybe
he's a professional who's looking to get into building something on
the side or somebody really just going from scratch, it's like,
"Well, if you have no audience, you have no reach. I think it's
worthwhile to consider that that should be one of your major
objectives, like your first objective." Maybe that's the thing you
want to aim for. That's the puzzle you're trying to solve, both
with your launch and post-launch, as in use the launch as a way to
expand your reach, grow your reach, build your audience.
Conversely, if you're established, I think most established
businesses, maybe there's a time and a place where reach is what
they want. 
Tom:
You would see this all the time,
like any time large corporations, large companies are trying to
move into new territory, and whether they spend a ton of money on
new TV ads or something like that, although that's pretty archaic
at this point but still works, they put a big emphasis on moving it
to, say, new, physical geographical locations, like new countries
or new states or something like that. There's a lot of money that
comes into rolling those kinds kind of things out, and they're
going for each without ignoring profit. We have to understand that
I guess profit is the thing that you underline. I think any launch
is ultimately about profit, but I think profit is one of these
things that is slightly nebulous. What is profit? Is it the amount
of money that you take home and you put in your pocket, or is
profit the amount of money you take home today, tomorrow, next
year, 10 years from now, and at the same time continue to compound
that profit over time? To me, that's real profit. [bctt
tweet="Profit is the amount of money you take home today, tomorrow,
next year and 10 years from now while at the same time continuing
to compound that profit over time. -Tom Morkes"
username="kylethegray"] Tom:
When I'm playing this through, I'm
saying, "Well how do we organize this launch? What are aiming for?"
I want the launch to be successful, and I think it's important to
be able to establish the criteria that we intend to measure. I
think you should never exclude profit from that, unless you're just
like, "Hey, all we care about is just traffic" or, "All we care
about are opt-ins" and maybe something figured out on the back end
you don't care about or maybe that's how you make a profit, like
you're selling ad space or something like that. Even as I talk a
lot, nobody who successfully runs a launch ever excludes profit.
That's the thing you're trying to solve for, and then in terms of
like, "Okay, well what do you do particularly," I think it's a
matter of, "Well, what's your reach? What's your audience? Is that
something established or is it relatively small? Is that where you
should put the emphasis for the launch so that, again, you can
increase your profit over the long term; today, tomorrow, next year
kind of thing? Or, do you want to make this launch all about really
a profit-driven launch? Were you just going for sales and revenue,
and of course, a healthy margin?" Tom:
Those are for people who are
established. It's like, "Hey, we have this product, we have the
service. It's already selling. How do we generate this big boost in
sales? How do we do a 10X-er or something like that?" I work with a
lot of software companies, and they'll be doing a certain amount in
MRR or ARR, and it's like, "Hey, we do a launch. Why? Because we
want a spike in that MRR." We want to increase their multiple on
what they could sell their company for by a million bucks or
something like that. You can do that with a successful launch that
gets a spike in new users, new subscribers that are paying
consistent monthly or annual amounts. That's an example in the
software space, so we’d be gunning because the products there are
already established, we have users, it works. We have a sales
funnel that kind of works. Now, all we need to do is actually get
traffic to the page or to whatever. Well, run the launch, which
includes traffic, regen, and then the sales conversion process.
That's if you have a proven product on the back end. It's like, of
course, just gun for sales. That's a worthwhile goal for certain
organizations, companies, and people. Kyle:
That's cool. What I really like
about a lot of this is you've discussed angles and strategies and
tactics and important details that aren't usually the things that
you see on the big headlines about big launches. You'll see
seven-figure Kickstarter campaigns that actually, maybe still the
owners are actually in debt because they didn't consider a profit
or they spread themselves too thin in this area, or they've been
manufacturing, or even the fact that you may not always want to be
going for the biggest number ever if you want to create traffic or
create a brand. I think that's really important, and there are a
couple other details that we talked about just before we hopped on
the call, about three key details that maybe is one of the reasons
why your launches are so successful. These are kind of more
micro-detail tactics to do within a launch that'll be exciting to
discuss. These are bonuses, bundles, and collaborations. Could you
dive into each of those for us and explore how they fit into a
launch and why they're so essential to the success of your
business? Tom:
Yeah. I'll start with, I think, the
most overlooked aspect of that. I think that is sorely overlooked.
It's something that's missed because it's not really sexy and it's
really hard to, I think, wrap your head around, which is the idea
of collaboration. It's that third point you mentioned. The way I
got into doing what I've been doing and this process that I've
developed and has evolved over time, like over the last five years
or so, it was always about, "How do you get as much leverage as
possible?" Then there's some nuance there like you don't want to be
over-leveraged because there's a point of over-leveraging. Anyway,
we can maybe get into that idea, but conceptually speaking it's
like business, entrepreneurship, whatever thing you're working on,
whatever you're trying to achieve. In order to achieve it as
efficiently as possible requires leverage. A leverage is, well it's
a lever that you pull and allows you to lift much more weight than
you could lift on your own. A lot of people who are side-hustling
are trying to do everything themselves, and it's tough. It's a
tough road, and I think it's worthwhile because you can learn a lot
when you do it, but you do have to look for points of leverage. I
think the number one point of leverage is collaboration.
[bctt tweet="No matter what you’re trying to achieve, to do so
efficiently requires leverage. -Tom Morkes" username="kylethegray"]
Tom:
Why try to be an army of one doing
everything yourself when there are numerous, dozens, maybe hundreds
of people who could be great partners, who could be great joint
venture partners, affiliates? People, who support you from a PR
standpoint? Anything like that, but then you could also even talk
from a business sense, like people that you might want to team up
with collaboratively on a project. That's number one, is who's
already out there in your space doing what you want to be doing
that you could maybe connect with in some way, shape, or form?
Again, that's really broadly speaking. I'll give you two examples:
one might be if you're in a space and you're getting started. You
don't really have a product, you're trying to grow an audience, and
maybe eventually you have an idea for a product. Yeah, one option
would be, grow your audience, grow your list. Try to sell that
product. That's pretty standard; everybody teaches that. Another
alternative would be, say, who's already out there selling
something that's worthwhile, and how could you work with them in
some capacity to help them market that, sell that, or grow that
business and get a piece of the pie for yourself?
Tom:
A third alternative would be, who
would you team up in the space that maybe has a built-in audience
but doesn't have a particular product or service in what you're
envisioning that would be useful for their audience so you could
tie right into it. An example would be, recently I ran a campaign
and we were doing a bundle. This is where bundles come in, and
we'll talk about bonuses. The bundle, conceptually speaking, is a
bunch of products combined together and sold at a discount price.
There's a lot that goes into running one of these things
successfully. I've seen a lot of people crash and burn trying to
run these things because there are so many mistakes that could be
made. It's not good enough that you just combine things and try to
sell them together, but if you do it the right way, what you're
able to accomplish is this huge point of leverage. Now all of a
sudden, you don't actually need a product; you could just find
other people's products that make sense, bring them all together,
and then sell them. Tom:
I recently worked on that with a
coaching client, and we did close to a $100,000 launch; I think it
was like $75,000 to $80,000 in revenue with a really nice net
revenue, so pocketed a good third of that or more. It was really
solid, and that went from zero, from scratch to that, which is just
wild. That was over a two or three-month period, but really the
hard work was in a one-month period. It was just ensuring that the
people he was collaborating with would be the right people to
collaborate with. There's some nuance there, but that's really
important. It's like, "What are we putting together here?" That's
why I say the foundation is collaboration. It's like, who could you
work with and in what capacity where everybody would benefit? Where
this could be a win for you, a win for the person you'd like to
collaborate, a win for their audiences, and beyond that? Another
great example is like AppSumo. I love Noah Kagan and his work. He
cracks me up; I think he's funny and really interesting, and
AppSumo's such a simple business model that has grown to, it's
definitely I think eight figures now. Tom:
All they do, they're more of a
Groupon model if you will, but they'll take software that normally
has an annual fee and they'll make it a one-time-only price, so
lifetime access, at a much, much-discounted price. They were just
doing one of these at a time, but conceptually speaking the bundle
we ran, imagine doing that for a bunch of different products and
then having one major discount price. The point is, what's great
about that is it's kind of no-frills, and that's a profit-driven
strategy to do something like that. It's like really, you're just
looking at the bottom line there. I don't know if you can really
build an audience around discounts. Groupon obviously did, and I
think kind of tanked because of it, but it's still a reasonable or
even a valuable or good tactic or strategy depending on what you're
trying to accomplish. It's like, look at your market. Who's out
there? What are they selling? Is there a place where you can just
jump into the mix and combine things? Be what Seth Godin calls "the
impresario," the person who brings people together. Well, do that
in a business context. How can you bring people together? Not just
for an event, but maybe you can bring people together in some form
or fashion to help everybody generate more sales or grow their
audience together. 
Tom:
Tying into bundles, we kind of
talked about that. I'm happy to go in more depth about that. I
think that can be used in a number of different ways. Once you
actually hear about this, I think you'll start seeing it
everywhere. What I mean is that, and I think this is a trend right
now. I really do believe we're maybe in the middle of early to
mid-stage of this trend, and presumably, we might have several more
years where this will work effectively because these things come
and go. Sometimes they come and go faster than other things. It's
weird that we live in a day and age where there could be a strategy
or tactic that works really well for like a year that could be gone
in three years. Maybe it's going to expedite in the future, so I
don't know about that; it's hard for me to predict the future.
Right now, this is definitely happening a lot, and if you look
around you'll see it: it's people who are selling products, but
they're combining additional products into that product that
they're selling, and they're selling it for at or below the price
that, say, any of those products would go for or whatever the core
product would go for. Tom:
It's like, "Okay, well that's a
no-brainer." Really, what that is is that's bonus strategy, but if
we're using this idea of bundles, it's like, "If you have a
product, can you combine it with maybe two or three other products?
Instead of just selling your product alone, you sell it with all
three or four of those products, and you do it at a discount." It's
like, "Well, in what capacity? Why would you ever do that?" Well
maybe because it would give you a huge influx of new sales. If you
do your math right, hopefully, there's some money on the back end
because you have that figured out. That's why I see people crash
and burn with something like this. It's very obvious how it can it
fail; you discount something below the cost of production, say, or
distribution. It's like unless you have a really sophisticated
back-end model, that's probably not going to work. For people who
are boot-strapping or going from scratch, I wouldn't
recommend. Tom:
Not gonna work. So for people who
are bootstrapping or going from scratch, it's like I wouldn't
recommend that. So be careful about how you do this, don't just
haphazardly put things together and then discount them or something
like that, I don't think that actually benefits anyone in the long
term. So you have to think about the long-term but I think there is
value in thinking about, hey if you have a product to service, what
could you bundle with it, what could you include as a bonus,
additional pay products that would increase the perceived value of
what you're selling because people have done this for a long time
... You've seen this where people will sell a course or something
like that, courses are the best for this I think, the best example
is where your audience is might be already familiar.
Tom:
So you look at the average courses
being sold and when you get to the sales pages, is it ever just the
course? No, it's like the course plus there's a bonus template,
plus there's bonus resource, plus there's a bonus swipe file, plus
there this bonus group program, plus there's this bonus support,
plus there's this blah, blah, blah, blah ... That's been around
for, geez the last few decades, really since the dawn of like the
internet and anybody selling anything on the internet because it
increases the perceived value. Tom:
And you also see this in like those
TV ads late at night or really early in the morning selling ... you
know those are a great resource to look at and see how they kind of
package and sell what they're offering. It's a rarely are they ever
selling just one product, they always include bonuses, additional
products with a perceived value that ... we'll say with a retail
value that increases the overall perceived value of what you're
selling. So those are kind of how those three things kind of
intertwine and I'm happy to go deeper into any one of those but you
let me know. Kyle:
So I'm just like getting all kinds
of ideas and inspiration as you're talking, and one of the cool
things lights that came on as you were talking about both
collaboration and bundling, is the idea of not just bundling your
own products and services together but perhaps bundling your
services with that of another partner or JB in the case of a
course. If somebody wants to offer their products to the email list
that you've built up, and then use it as a way to support them and
to sweet the deal for your audience, throw in your own course or
something like that, and I really love your perspective, and I
think this is one of the places where we really resonate with each
other on but just building, and I agree with you that the fastest
way to grow your business or grow your opportunities, no matter if
you're looking to get more traffic in content marketing, whether
you're trying to land high-value clients or have a successful
launch is by making connections with other people.
Kyle:
And you can do that, it takes more
effort and you have to be very smart, and very subtle sometimes
compared to a lot the almost brute force strategies for outreach
that you see online these days but it can be incredibly rewarding,
and so I'd like you to kind of close out on some of the ways that
you build those relationships, and how somebody just starting out
or in the early stages, how can they leverage relationships so that
they can have these launches or at least grow their businesses
quickly. Tom:
Yep, great question and you know
one thing before I answer that question is you said, it is harder
to do what I'm describing and that's true to a degree. I also think
in the long term it's easier and that's because partnerships done
right or collaboration done right can be profitable now and even
more profitable in the future. So all of a sudden ... and it can
expedite what you do.
[bctt tweet="Partnerships and/or collaborations done right can be
profitable now and even more profitable in the future. -Tom Morkes
" username="kylethegray"] Tom:
So it's like, yeah it might be
harder to organize something like this, so it's harder in the
moment but then all of a sudden it's going to sell better, you're
going to get more sales, you'll probably more traffic, more sales,
higher conversion rates, that means more revenue, hopefully, more
profit if you line it up the right way like higher margins.
Tom:
I mean there's all sorts of
benefits to it. So even if it takes a little bit longer to organize
or you have to work through some kinks to do it, it's like actually
long term probably a much easier strategy. So just want to make one
clarification on that piece, and then in terms of like how you
might organize this in terms of how you might organize what you do
to take advantage of collaboration and partnerships. So number one
is start like a Google Sheet or Excel document, like create some
sort of tracker, like some document that you're gonna look at,
we'll say daily if you will, and that you're gonna keep your notes
on these kinds of collaborations and partnerships or prospects and
you start with that. Tom:
The second thing is do some Google
searching. So what industry are you in or do you want to be in.
Search that term and then search blog. Search that term and then
search podcast. So search content marketing podcast. You'll find
Kyle. Content marketing blog and you'll find Kyle right and there
are others too. You'll find a big list of them and pick whichever
industry and look at those because the people who are blogging and
podcasting, as just two examples, there are others but that's the
simplest one, the low hanging fruit. Tom:
You'll find on the first page of
Google, like so many examples. Like a lot of these things when you
search you'll find a lot of other people have already done the hard
work and they'll have like top 100 content marketing bloggers, top
100 content marketing podcasters. So all of the sudden people have
like actually already done the work like curating these people for
you. So then combine them and put that into your tracker. Into that
you will say Google Sheet that you're using as a tracker, that
first thing I said, told you to set up. Tom:
So that process should maybe take a
couple of hours because you should be able to flush that out, you
should be able to have hundreds of potential prospects on your
tracker within an hour or two of doing that very simple search and
I think, you know it's just a no-brainer. Okay so then what happens
next? Well, then what you want to do is actually go back
through. Tom:
So that first piece, don't spend
too much time on it. Just get as many names on that list as
possible, then go through them one by one. This might take you ...
So I have a system set up and when we've done this for clients and
stuff like that, we've been able to get it down to like maybe like
two or three minutes per contact, sometimes even less and there are
tools that'll help with it. Tom:
But I approach this, and I guess
maybe I should make a piece of clarification here, the process that
I'm describing to you, it is not a cold email process, it's the
opposite of cold email. A cold email does not work for what I'm
describing because I'm trying to build relationships. I'm not just
trying to get a sale, so I want to build relationships, I want to
actually collaborate with people, which means it takes a little bit
more time to look at each outlet that you've planned to reach out
to. Tom:
So you want to look at each one of
those outlets, you want to fill in that tracker with the relevant
information. Who's the owner of that blog, who writes for it,
what's their email address if you can find it, there are lots of
tools you can use to find it or at least a contact page. What is
that blog or podcast about, and why is it a good fit for whatever
you're planning right. That's a variable there and it depends what
you're trying to do but like at a minimum you can put some ideas
down like if you were trying to do, just a collaborative type
bundle or I'm going to be rolling out my product and I want
additional bonuses or you know what I'm just looking for somebody
to collaborate with and I could provide this value.
Tom:
So that's the third piece. The
fourth piece is, now what I do is, I want to stalk them on social
media to some degree. Like I want to follow them on Twitter, I want
to retweet and share their content, I want to sign up for their
newsletter, their email list, I want to download their podcast or
sign up for their podcast and I want to leave a review on their
podcast, I want to leave a comment on their blog post or a few etc,
etc. Tom:
So all of a sudden it's like, now
I'm doing this for the people after I've looked at their websites,
I'm like yeah this could be a great partner to have, now or in the
future, and so I'm taking the time to get to know them better, and
to hopefully maybe do some things where they might notice what I'm
doing because successful people get solicited all the time, and if
you come out soliciting you'll probably be ignored with good reason
but if you take a little bit of time to get to know the person, to
comment on their blog, most people don't get comments on their
blog. Tom:
So it's wild when you comment on
the blog, the person is gonna see you and if you do that a few
times, they're gonna really start to notice you except the biggest
names okay. So we're gonna exclude that but for most, it works, and
for podcast leaving a review, it's like a lot of podcasters don't
get podcast reviews, that's really helpful. Then if you sign up for
their newsletter, you could send them an email and say, hey I just
left you a review on your podcast. That's a very nice thing to do
because guess what, they probably get that email and not a lot of
people email them. Tom:
So I'll do this over the course of
like 30 or 40 days, and I'll do this for everybody on that list,
and all of a sudden I'm like in ... I've turned a cold contact into
a warm contact. That person kind of knows me now, and I'm tracking
this on my tracker, and I'm paying attention to what their
responses are and how people are reacting. If somebody is just
totally blowing me off, that's fine I'll just make a note of it but
if somebody responded, replied, said thank you or something like
that, that's now a solid warm contact. Tom:
So now, I can now start the process
of saying, hey maybe I can reach out and see if there's something I
could do for them besides what I've already done, which is usually
sharing on social or something like that. That's where a podcast is
really worthwhile if it makes sense in this context, bring people
into a podcast it's a very useful thing for other people to do,
like to bring somebody onto a podcast is useful for them but maybe
there are other things you could do. Tom:
And so I might reach out with
something like that, what can I give first and how can I connect
with them in a way that's not transactional. Does that make sense?
So like it's like, I'm just gonna do this for you kind of thing. I
think if you do all that, you set the stage where if you then
wanted to reach out to them you could say, hey this is the thing
I'm working on. 
Tom:
Now, this could be expedited by the
way, like this process and now all of sudden you're thinking, oh
man that takes like one to two months, it's like worth it. That's
why you start it now, and you spend about 20, 30 minutes a day
doing this, and all of a sudden it just becomes part of your system
of retweeting, of sharing things, of replying to people's
newsletters and all of a sudden like a month or two or three months
you'll have a ton of people who already kind of know you, and
that's when the stuff starts to compound over time.
Tom:
So you can expedite this process,
and again this is where the nuance comes and there's exception and
things like that. So if you had to expedite, you could probably
expedite it but I think it's a reasonable system and process and I
used it to recruit literally a thousand plus, affiliates,
influencers, partners for all sorts of campaigns, and I continue to
try to do it to this day, I've just systematized a lot of it but
I'm always looking for new people to connect with, see what I can
do to share theirs, connect with them in a way that's
non-transactional, and that's helpful and then before I ever get to
an ask or what I'm pitching. Tom:
So does that answer your question
Kyle? Kyle:
Absolutely, I think that's a really
beautiful way to frame that up, and that was a very actionable and
clear description of a system that you could use to make those same
things happen every day, and it's something I'm doing but I feel
inspired to do it even more frequently and yeah, maybe just have a
half hour blacked out every day for it now. Kyle:
So I think that, that is an
excellent kind of cap on the beginning, middle, and end of how to
have a great product launch. So Tom, tell us where if somebody
wants to learn a little bit more about you, you've got a blog,
you've got a great podcast and all kinds of other amazing resources
to share with people, where can they learn more about you?
Tom:
You know what I'd love for people
to do, is just head on over to your show notes, and check it out
there because I know you'll link this up, and that's the best place
to find me is just go through Kyle, check out you know, more of his
podcast too but go there, go to the show notes and Kyle will get
you hooked up with everything you need. Kyle:
Sounds good, yeah we will have
links to Tom's podcast, Tom's books, Tom's blogs and many other of
the resources that he has available. Tom thank you so much for
spending some time with me today, I really appreciate it and it's
always a pleasure speaking with you. Tom:
Kyle I love what you do man.
Obviously, a big fan, follower, a proponent of what you do and
friend and I'm glad to have you in my corner and just love the work
you're doing. Love this podcast, so keep going. Kyle:
Thanks, man. Let's collaborate
again soon. Thanks for listening to the Story Engine Podcast. Be
sure to check out the show notes and resources mentioned in this
episode and every episode at the storyengine.co If you want to tell
better stories, and grow your business with content marketing and
copywriting, be sure to download the content strategy template at
conentstrategytemplate.com This template is an essential part of
any business that wants to boost their traffic, leads and sales
with content marketing. Kyle:
Thanks for listening and we'll see
you next time.