Marketing - Casey Lewis

Why You Need To Survey Your Clients Frequently.

by Casey Lewis | Jun 14, 2016 | Career, Marketing, Small Business

If you’re going to operate a business that can be sustainable and serve your customer base well, you need to know who they are. Unfortunately, even though our business has existed for almost 7 years now, I have never taken a moment to ask my clients anything about how we can serve them well. I don’t know how they know us, what their specific needs are, or how they like engaging with our company.

So I have been operating on assumptions and serving needs where and when they would pop up.

About 2 months ago I started our first client and reader survey to find out more about who was engaging with the website, Facebook, Twitter, and overall internet presence and I was quite surprised at the results. I had made some poor assumptions about who I was serving and I was wrong.

Doing this survey explained a lot to me about why we haven’t been able to reach certain goals as a company and more importantly what we need to do in the future to serve people better.

If you’ve never questioned the clients that walk through your front door, or on your email list, or in your restaurant, or from your website, I think you’re missing a valuable opportunity to connect deeper with those you wish to serve. (ps. I’d love to help you do this. Reach out to me here if you’d like some guidance.)

We received about 800 responses from the people of the internet. Below are the results from my now annual reader and client survey along with my insights into what the info for 2016 is telling me.

Since this survey was primarily intended for the audience our company engages with online, this wasn’t a huge surprise. I wrote my first book in March 2016 and really started engaging with internet marketing and strategies about 24 months ago, even though I’ve been writing online now for 7 years.

There’s tons of value in knowing the age of your target audience. Knowing that most of the people that interact with me on the internet are in a similar life stage that I’m in is going to help me produce content that fits in with that same demographic. For example, I can write an article about the top 20 ways to pay for college on my own website and since 65% of those reading the article are between 25-40, they have no use for that article. It doesn’t apply to them. They’re either fresh out of college themselves or their kids are still 5-10 years away from college.

I shouldn’t create content about how to travel the world well when you’re retired because exactly 0% of those in the survey are in retirement age.

This doesn’t mean I can’t write these articles. It just means I should publish that article to a more select audience on a website where that article would provide more value to more people, because it doesn’t serve the majority of my audience that I’m connected with well right now.

I honestly expected a more 50/50 split. But knowing this will impact the other voices that I bring into our company. If I added another voice to the podcast for example, it’d be beneficial if it were a female that could help me relate to 70% of those listening.

Married women in their 30’s. That’s the demographic of who is primarily interacting with content I produce online. It’s not what I expected. It’s not who I’ve been developing content for the past 5 years. I honestly thought I’ve been producing content for young families and young men in the mid-20’s… because I was a young family man in my mid-20’s when I started all of this.

No surprises here. However this was a solid validation for me. Part of the company mission is to help people get out of debt. If those that were interacting with our content didn’t have any debt, that’d be silly for me to produce content focused on that area.

So we have a good chunk of people in the $5,000-$30,000 range, and another good chunk of people in the $30,000-$60,000 range. For average purposes, this helps me know what advice to give that can help most people.

Because as I’m writing an article, or recording a podcast episode, or creating a video series, I have a certain audience member in my head that I’m speaking to. More often than not, I draw from my own perspective when we had non-consumer debt and our number fell in the $100k+ range. That’s not what people that are looking to me for advice are experiencing. So now when I produce content I can say, “If you have $10k in debt, do this….or if you have $60k, do this….” It allows me to more deeply connect on an individual level with each piece of content.

As a side note, way to go 21.2% that are debt free!

The big 3. Student Loans, Car Payments, and Credit Cards. So when I’m creating “Get Out of Debt” products and content, I know that I can briefly touch on personal loans, 401k loans, and HELOC’s. But I need to spend my time focusing on the big 3.

This is a pretty good reflection of income ranges in North America. What did surprise me is that over 60% are making well over the median household income. It just goes to show that no matter your income level, you still need money help.

I expected there to be more Dual Income Earning Families. This was a big surprise to see it split so evenly. So now I know I can develop content for stay at home parents and that over 50% of people could benefit from it.

I wrote this book in 2013. Before I really started getting big on internet marketing. And clearly I’ve done a terrible job promoting it and giving a compelling reason why it can help. My writing style has improved drastically since 2013, but the value of the book is still quite solid. I’m still proud of it. But I’ve got to do a better job learning how to market books. That’s on me and something I can learn to improve.

55% rated themselves at a 5 or below. Again this is just validation and confirmation that people need help in this area.

If these numbers were reversed I’d be in the wrong business. I was actually surprised at the little sliver of “Not Really” but the vast majority of people that interact with my online content want to be debt free.

I’m an idiot. 68.7% of people that interact with me online trust me enough to exchange their hard earned money for a class, product, or software to help them with money and I haven’t created one yet. As a business owner, that’s a horrible feeling. People want something from me, I can benefit from it in the process, and nobody is being served. Ugh.

I was super surprised by the answer to this question. 34% of people love their career. Another 33% say they’re pretty happy with where they work. That’s completely opposite of a Wall Street Journal Study that says 8 out of 10 people HATE their job. I guess I’m hanging around pretty happy, awesome people on the inter-webs.

I had plans to develop curriculum and content that would help with working through transitions into a “dream” career. But with 67% of my clients and readers saying they’re pretty happy already, it doesn’t make sense. This one question probably saved me 3 months of work and money and marketing and promotion for a product that likely wouldn’t sell much.

On the opposite end however, people want to make more money. 79% feel they’d like to make a little more, a lot more, or making more money is a necessity. That’s something I know how to do well and can help with. There’s a need that I can serve that I’ve been missing and would’ve continued to miss without this survey.

Since the answers got cut off on the chart, they are: Knowing what to do with money, Accountability with money, Discussing money with your spouse, Managing a Budget, and Earning more money.

Again, I’ve been putting together some content to help people engage better in their marriage about money discussions. That’ll help 16% of people. I’ve been putting together content that teaches the “how-to” type stuff. That’ll help 15% of people.

What it looks like I need to be working on is Accountability groups, budget tracking and managing tools, and education for making more money.

I thought a larger percentage of people would be struggling in this area. That’s probably just me projecting my former issues onto my clients. But I’ve spent a lot of time and effort into creating content over the past few years helping people get on the same page with money with their spouse. That content benefits maybe 25% of my clients, while the other 75% are doing pretty awesome.

Again, I’m an idiot. 52% of my clients would pay me $10/month ($120/year) if I’d just develop some easy to use software. Another 30% would use the tool if I had a free version. As a business owner that’s tens of thousands in revenue being missed out on. As a person that wants to help people, they’re basically screaming at me to create something to help them and I haven’t…. yet.

This is kind of a new dream. I think we could host a pretty awesome conference that’s less “feel good” and more tangible action and equipping. So I was just curious if people had any interest in something like this. 37% said they’re likely in and over 85% said they’d interested. That’s enough of a response to really consider doing this thing!

Here are the answers: Getting out of debt. Boosting income. Relationships with money. Real estate. Investments. College planning. Small business. Marketing.

Boosting income and small business were the 2 stand outs in this group. They also are things I’m super passionate about. It doesn’t mean I’ll do less of the other stuff, but my focus may shift some so I’m helping people with what they’re asking for most.

So here is the shocker. As much as everyone says to have your own domain and website… the vast majority of people want to just interact with my content on social media.

That’s why if you go through the archives of caseylewis.com you’ll see that there hasn’t been a lot of new content published lately. But if you go through my Facebook timeline for the past few months, in between the jokes and pictures of queso, you’re going to find regular status updates that are “mini-blog-posts” on a very regular basis.

This is an indicator of a shift in technology and web design. I don’t know exactly what it means yet, but I know social media and mobile ready content is how I’m going to interact with people more in the future.

Still an idiot. More than 50% of people would pay me $100 to create a class about stuff I’ve personally done and know a lot about. And I haven’t created the class.

Yep. Idiot still. I asked a direct question if someone would pay me if I created something and they’ve overwhelmingly said yes. This is tens of thousands in revenue for the business, but it’s also providing extreme value to help people.

This was really the first big product I launched online besides my book. I’d say I did a better job of getting the word out. This was also valuable data to see because I know how many people purchased the Fit Money Challenge. I know how many people took the survey and I know how many people say they’ve heard about the challenge. That gives me a good ratio to know how many people will sign up for the next round based on the number of people I tell about it.

And speaking of the next round, 52% of those on the survey said they’d participate in a new round and they told me what price range they’d be willing to pay. This is great for the pricing strategy when we do launch a new round of the challenge.

I personally hate my wallet. I always have. It’s hard to use cash and carry a traditional wallet. I’ve been search for a while and been unable to find something that works so I personally want to create my own. I thought it’d be huge and that my clients would like it. But 67% aren’t interested or don’t even know what it is. It’s tough to create a product around those numbers.

I think this falls into the social media shift happening as well. I’m glad I asked this question because my thoughts were to spend a lot of time and effort on designing and creating an awesome website filled with specific content. But it doesn’t appear it’d be a go to source for the majority of my audience. I still may create it because it serves value for those that need it, but it’s no longer a priority.

So that’s what I learned from my first reader survey. What do you think? Could your business benefit from gaining insights like this?

I’d love to help your company survey your own client base. If you’d like help on something like that, just reach out to me here.

***I don’t currently publish content frequently on this site, however I send a weekly Newsletter email out that is full of money tips as well as links to other valuable money and career related content. If you’d like to receive the Newsletter and also a FREE copy of my 30 Days to Better Money eBook, you can sign up here.***

Tools You Need To Start, Develop, and Grow Your Business.

by Casey Lewis | Jul 13, 2015 | Career, Debt, Dreaming, Marketing, Money, Small Business

The more I talk about the need to increase your income in order to get out of debt and build wealth I find that the idea hasn’t crossed the mind of very many people.

Sure, we’d all like to earn more money. But have you really taken time to think about what you’d need to do to make it happen.

We’re at the halfway point of 2015.

Did you set an income goal for the year? If so, it’s time to check in and see if you’re on track.

If you didn’t set an income goal for the year, a great place to start right now is to total up how much you’ve made between January-July. Now, can you earn 10% more? What about 30% more? 50%? Double?

Once you set the goal, the next step is to come up with some ways to make it happen.

For many people, the fastest way to earning more money is creating, starting, or increasing your own business. And as a business owner, you need to know how to use some great tools to attract new customers.

Tonight, at 7:01pm central I’ll be giving a FREE live screen share presentation of the tools I use to attract readers, listeners, clients, and how my systems make my life easier as a business owner. It’s 100% free. I’m not selling anything. There will be no “pitch” that you’ve come to expect with webinars. It’s just me, hanging out with some friends online and showing you some awesome ways to build a business.

If you’d like to join me, register here. If you’re not available for the live screen share, sign up anyway. The replay will be available.

– Casey

How To Create A Side Income.

by Casey Lewis | Apr 22, 2015 | Career, Debt, Dreaming, Marketing, Money, Small Business

Besides living life on a budget or getting out of consumer debt, one of the best things you can do financially is to focus on drastically increasing your income.

You already work hard. You trade hours of your life for a paycheck from someone else and maybe they don’t offer over-time opportunities and getting a raise anytime soon is probably not going to happen. If this is you, and you’re wanting to boost your income you really have 2 options.

First, apply for new jobs that pay more than your current job. Who cares if you meet all the qualifications on the job description? Make your resume pretty and just go for it! You may just talk someone into a new position that pays you double what you’re currently making.

That may be a good option, especially if you’re working toward that type of job for your long term career. But maybe you just need a quick boost in income for a short time period to help you reach some other financial goals like getting out of debt, or building a savings account.

Here are the steps I would take if I needed to boost my income quickly. Substitute the business I use as an example for whatever you would like to do.

Create a simple business card for “Casey’s Lawn Service” and spend $50 to print 500 of them.
Go to an upscale neighborhood in my area and place my business card on the front door of 500 homes.

Let’s say I got a terrible response rate from this of 1%. That means 5 people call me to come mow their lawn. That would be 5 people paying me about $25 a week, for 6 months. That’s $500/month for the next 6 months! Not too bad for a few hours of work.

Now, if I really wanted to get a better return, I’d step outside of my comfort zone some and here’s what I’d do.

Create a simple business card for “Casey’s Lawn Service” and spend $50 to print 500 of them.
Go to an upscale neighborhood in my area and knock on 350 doors.
When they answer the door, I’d ask them “who maintains your yard and landscaping?”
I’d then let them know that I mow lawns in their neighborhood and that I’d love the opportunity to take care of their lawn and landscaping for them. I’d tell them that the cost is $25/week. If their lawn needs mowed while I’m there, I’d offer to do it right then for them.
If they say no, I would ask them “Are you not hiring me because of the price or is it because you prefer to take care of your lawn yourself?”
If they say that it’s the price, I would ask them “Is there a price per week that you would hire me to mow your lawn?” (There likely is)
Once they tell me they’d pay me $10 a week I’d say this: “Tell you what Billy, if you’d let me place a small sign in your yard each week when I come mow your lawn, then I’ll mow your lawn for the next month for just $10 a week. After a month if you want me to keep mowing, we’ll raise the price to my normal rates. If not, no hard feelings and we can still be friends. This will help me tell your neighbors that I mow lawns in this neighborhood and it gets you a great deal. Does that work?”
Billy will likely hire me. If he doesn’t at that point, I’ll shake his hand and move on to his neighbor.
Notice I saved 150 cards above. Every time I mow a lawn in the area, I will go to the neighbors that are immediately around my customers house, knock on the door, and tell them that I take care of their neighbors yard and ask if I can provide their lawn care service too.

In my sales experience from the past I know that this process is going to bring about a 20% response rate. That’d be 100 homes. At $25 a week. For 6 months. That’s a $60,000 a year business. As a bonus, all of the work is in a small serviceable area, so I don’t have to drive all over.

I probably couldn’t take care of 100 homes all by myself. I especially couldn’t do that many if I had a full time job as well. I’d need to hire some help, but that’s okay because I’m making an extra $5,000/month.

Sometimes businesses get accidentally started this way. So whether you’re looking to boost your income to reach a short term financial goal or you’re looking to start up a new project, it is absolutely possible to create more income with a little bit of effort.

What type of side income are you thinking about trying?

What’s So Great About Amazon Prime?

by Casey Lewis | Feb 23, 2015 | Marketing, Money

I’m pretty confident that the $99/year I spend on Amazon Prime is the best $99 I spend every year. When you look at what it is, it kind of sounds silly though. Basically you’re paying a company money for the ability to spend even more money with them faster. That Jeff Bezos guy is brilliant!

The tricky part with shopping on Amazon is that they can be a huge budget buster. The convenience of Amazon One Click, where you just click on the item and it’s automatically purchased and shipped, causes garages across the country to be filled with cardboard boxes from items you didn’t even know you bought.

Courtesy of Amazon.com

Amazon has amazing algorithms that track the items you might be interested in and then they strategically place those items in your email inbox, your Facebook timeline, and the Amazon homepage until you actually make a purchase. And they’re geniuses at recommending additional products you might be interested in. They know what you want before you know you want it, so much so that they make sure the warehouse closest to you is in stock with the items they think you’ll buy so the shipping is cheaper for them and gets to you faster.

From a marketing perspective, they are amazing.

So as a budget conscious person you have to be on guard for all the Amazon product placement tricks.

But, they usually have the best price on every item you need to buy. From toilet paper and diapers, to printers and TV’s and office supplies, they are pretty much a one stop shop… from the comfort of your iPhone laying in bed.

Why then do you need Amazon Prime? What is it?

Amazon Prime is a paid service that gives Amazon shoppers some great perks. From their website there are 5 Prime Benefits. Free 2 Day Shipping, Prime Instant Video, Prime Music, Unlimited Cloud Photo Storage, and the Kindle Library.

It’s a pretty great list of things for less than $100/year.

FREE 2 Day Shipping
Before buying Prime, if I wanted to buy a package of pens I had to leave my house to go to an office supply store, stare at the selection of pens they had, make a selection without knowing how good the pen is or if it’s the best deal, checkout, drive home… It’s a lot of wasted time if I’m just needing a pen. But shopping online for a pen before Prime meant paying $4.95 in shipping for my $5.95 pen purchase. Also, before Prime you could never buy something that weighed 200 pounds online because the shipping price would be huge. Not anymore. Prime now means I can take care of purchasing those little items, like toilet paper or laundry detergent, that we need anyway the second I think about it and it never gets missed on the grocery list.

Instant Video
You probably already have Hulu & Netflix and are spending just under $20/month for them. Prime instant video is a similar streaming service with basically the same library of shows and movies. The selection isn’t the best, but they do have some movies for free that you can’t stream anywhere else.

Prime Music
As long as you have internet access you have access to your Prime Music library. It’s thousands of FREE songs that you can put in your online library, build playlists, and more. The only downside is that you can’t load the songs up in iTunes or download them to your iPod. They’re only available for streaming from Amazon. But the selection is pretty great and growing.

Unlimited Photo Cloud Storage
Amazon has become a trusted source for protecting their customers information, so I’m not incredibly concerned with a massive hacking attempt to steal all of those naked selfies you’ve been taking. If you back your photos up to the cloud, this is a great solution that comes included with your Prime membership. And it’s UNLIMITED storage.

Kindle Library
As an author this is kind of a crazy idea. As someone who reads a bunch of books, this is pretty great. You get to borrow one book each month completely FREE. Just browse through the titles of over 800,000 books on any Kindle device. It’s a pretty great bonus!

You still have to be careful shopping on Amazon because they are fantastic marketers. If you don’t have a system in place for how you’ll purchase things online you may run into some spending trouble. But if you do spend money online, or are just tired of making trips to the store for a single item, Prime is definitely for you.

**Amazon doesn’t pay an affiliate commission for recommending Prime, but they will pay me a $5 bonus in Amazon credit if I refer you by email. If you’re not a Prime member and want to sign up, send me an email and I’ll have Amazon email you a signup link. **

Telling A Better Story

by Casey Lewis | Aug 5, 2014 | Marketing, Small Business, Uncategorized

If we believe what the 90’s sitcoms say about dads, we’d believe that being a good father involves walking in the door from a long day at work, sitting in a recliner, commanding a child to “bring daddy a beer,” having the other kid bring you the remote, and order our wife to get dinner ready.

Pop-Culture hasn’t painted us dads in a very good light over the years.

But I think we’re different.

Good dads help out. Their kids are their best friends. They show up at school plays and sporting events. They help with homework. And then go grocery shopping… with their kids.

And at the grocery store there’s an entire aisle devoted to a single product. You know when you turn the cart with your 6 year old and 2 year old in tow they will immediately beg for the sugar coated awesomeness of cereal.

There are hundreds of options available and usually the ones with cartoon characters on the box make their way into your basket.

But as the maker of cereal, how do you gain market share? How do you let people know about your awesome new cereal?

Do you tell us how filling it is? How much kids love it? How healthy it is?

Well if you’re like most cereal makers then yes. That’s exactly what you do.

If you’re like the New Peanut Butter Cheerios, you tell a better story!

Thank you Cheerios for telling dad’s every where that the arm-chair dad is dead.

Enjoy.