Pauline Martin-Brooks, Author at Pauline Martin-Brooks

About the Author

Pauline Martin-Brooks is a multifaceted individual. She is passionate about efficiency and evolution. She routinely learns and implements anything that helps her achieve this for both herself and the entrepreneurs and teams she works with. As such she is both an Ontraport (CRM) Certified Consultant and Trainer who helps people with the Ontraport platform or thinking about getting the Ontraport platform to manage the automation in their business. She is also a trained therapist in both NLP, Rapid Transformational Therapy and Hypnotherapy. She focuses on improving Productivity, Concentration and Memory, and Removing Procrastination for Entrepreneurs so they can achieve their big hairy audacious goals. From 2003 to 2015 she worked with Fast Growth companies in a variety of sectors from Personal Development to Property and Finance and then onto 2 of the largest Entrepreneurial Training organisations. Her specialty in those companies was to source Strategic Partnerships to fill events and allow for massive expansion. She has used this strategy to bring in millions in revenue. She now works with a select number of small generally service based businesses to show them how to identify, approach, close and nurture the most important relationships in their business. She has growth hacks to help you get results fast, to utilise different members of your team including offshore admin staff, saving you both time and money.

Jul 08

How A Lead Magnet Can Help You Grow in 2018

By Pauline Martin-Brooks | Lead Magnet

What are your strengths?

So I’ve been sitting here thinking about my strengths, you know the ones that everyone else knows you have but sometimes you doubt yourself. Well, I started thinking about lead magnets, I’m a marketer and that’s just where my thoughts go sometimes – I mean you think about lead magnets too right, otherwise you wouldn’t be interested in this post right now 😉

Anyway I digress, it hit me like a hammer and I thought holy crap this is it, over the last 12 years my focus on a daily basis has been about building Partnerships, you know the ones people call Strategic Alliances or Joint Venture Marketing opportunities etc. The type that skyrocket your business – those ones!

The importance of Lead Magnets!

Well every one of those conversations that I’ve had has led me to either download a lead magnet, create a lead magnet, tweak a lead magnet, send a lead magnet, read someone else’s lead magnet, find typo’s in a lead magnet, help with the layout of a lead magnet, build the marketing funnel around a lead magnet, edit a lead magnet or adjust the call to action in a lead magnet and you know what I like to do in my spare time…you guessed it… download lead magnets!

So clearly I’m a lead magnet freak or as I call myself “A Lead Magnet Strategist” and I feel like screaming it from the rooftops… why you ask?

Because it’s a lead magnet that has lead to the insane growth of all of the companies I’ve worked with.
People call me a rain maker, the Partnerships Queen, but I couldn’t do what I do without the humble lead magnet!

In fact as I’m sitting here having had this light bulb moment I started reminiscing about the very first critical conversation I had about a lead magnet, which was probably around 2008 (from memory). I was dealing with a lovely keynote speaker (Siimon Reynolds actually), and he was telling me about his keynote and I asked him about the next step, how was he going to capture people’s details? What was he selling? What did his funnel look like?

Well ,I was stunned to learn, that at that time, he just did his keynote (which was exceptional I might add) and walked off stage!

What a missed opportunity and how inefficient – efficiency is a BIG value of mine. Anyway needless to say I sat down with Siimon that very week and we started to map out a bit of a funnel so he could really capitalise on the opportunity at hand but more importantly, he could continue to add value to those that liked what he stood for.

So I sit here nearly 10 years later and it’s obvious that this ‘lead magnet’ phenomenon isn’t going anywhere soon!

In fact if anything it’s gaining traction, which I think is remarkable considering that the lead magnet has been around in one form or another since the 1940’s, possibly earlier!

Now if you’ve read this far and still don’t actually know what a lead magnet is then, thank you for waiting this long and more over let me explain!

What exactly is a lead magnet?

So in it’s simplest terms a lead magnet is a downloadable file. It could be a document (PDF) or it could be an audio (MP3) or a video (MP4) or a series of video’s like a free course for instance. Generally it will fall into one of those 3 categories, it could also be a template that fits into a particular software and as a result, would have a different file extension but I’d say at least 90% would fall into the above 3 categories. Though your lead magnet could be a free event but I would still recommend having a lead magnet into that which is a downloadable.

Now what do you put into a lead magnet I hear you ask?

The answer is up to you, well up to your clients really.

You see the best lead magnets contain the answer or answers to your clients most pressing issues.

Think about the top 5 things that you get asked all the time, or think about a cheat sheet that you could create to help your potential clients. I would recommend that you also consult google keywords tool or other websites that can give you an insight into what people are searching for.

Perhaps you could give them a quick audio to help them with one particular issue, maybe there’s some hints and tips you could offer on how to save money when considering your product or service. It could be a swipe file that you’ve pulled together or a checklist or even a spreadsheet template…basically anything that will add value and provide a short cut for your clients.

So your first job is to stop and think about that right now… insert thinking music here:)

I hope you’ve come up with a few things.

If not ask yourself these 5 questions and record your answers:

These are the 5 questions:

What am I known for or what do other people think I’m an expert in?
What are 5 things that I know about my specific industry or niche?
What is keeping my clients up at night?
What is stopping my prospective clients from spending money with me right now?
What is a quick win that I could leave my potential clients with?

Great, now that you have an outline you are well on your way to creating your lead magnet.

Keep it short, brevity is one of the most important things. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve downloaded a lead magnet or an ebook and it’s just under 100 pages! That’s a short story not a valuable piece of content that I can easily digest.

The other issue I see and I’m guilty of this one myself is putting too much value into your lead magnet, so once you have some ideas run them by someone close to you in your target market… hopefully they will tell you if you have bamboozled them or given them so much value that they don’t need you anymore. Neither of these outcomes is what we are aiming for here!

It’s also easy to assume people know as much as you do about your topic, well guess what? They don’t and that’s why they are coming to you in the first place. So yes you do need to teach your prospective clients the absolute basics most of the time – I know it seems like it’s not the right thing to do and of course you can preface it by saying if you’re a beginner you may not know that …(blah, blah, blah)

I can tell you though, you can’t assume that your prospective client has even the first clue in how to do what you do, so break it down into bite sized pieces for them.

Once you’ve sat down and really thought this through, you should start thinking about a snazzy title for your lead magnet. Anything with numbers usually converts well as people want something measurable.

So think along these lines:

3 tips to..

The 5 things you didn’t know about…

How to save money in 5 easy steps…

The 20 point 1 page checklist to teach you…

Then once you’ve worked all that out, you will need to put pen to paper.

Ideally, by the time you’re done, you will have something that you can read whilst having a cup of tea or coffee (without it going cold).

Ideally, it has plenty of value. It should leave your reader thinking wow this person really knows their stuff and it should have a logical next step – this is called a CTA or Call To Action.

A good Call To Action should be a very simple instruction, just one clear instruction – not 2 or 3! Just ask your reader to do one thing now that they’ve read your report. So what would you like that Call To Action to be?

Is it to download something else? Is it to give your office a call? Is it to opt in for a 15-minute consult? Is it to sign up for a webinar? Is it to catch up for a coffee over Skype? Is it to click and join a community on Facebook?

Depending on the type of business that you have and how scalable it currently is, you need to choose wisely here. At the end of the day we live in a share economy, so if I get something cool then I’ll share it with my friends and I’m sure you’re just the same.

So what happens if you offer a 15-minute consult and get inundated with responses? Could you manage that? I write about that in one of my other blog posts so I won’t go into detail here.

So by now you, have a title, a call to action that makes sense for where you are in your business journey and you have an idea as to what you are going to offer your prospective clients.

Now comes the fun part, well it’s fun for me – for you maybe not so much.

You will need to have the content proofread, I can’t tell you the number of typo’s I’ve found in lead magnets and it instantly makes me think a little less of the company…that’s probably very judgemental but it’s what happens for me at least. On the flip side when I call them to let them know, they are usually very grateful and it is a wonderful way to open a conversation with a potential partner.

Anyway, once it’s been proofread, you need to either hire a graphic designer to lay it out for you into a PDF, if you’re going with the document style or you can attempt to do this yourself using free software like canva.com (believe me this sounds much easier than it actually is. I’ve definitely lost more than a few days in Canva attempting to create a report) or you could shell out up to $600 hundred dollars for a piece of software that can make this easier for you, but let’s face it do you really want to a)Pay for a new piece of software and B) Spend your time learning a new piece of software?

For me I try to limit my software purchases, otherwise, they can become a very costly distraction in terms of both money but more importantly my time.

The best place to kick off your Lead Magnet creation is by downloading my Lead Magnet Mind Map Below

Download Lead Magnet Mind Map

Jun 28

Hustle or Connect?

By Pauline Martin-Brooks | Partnerships

How Does The Word Hustle make you feel?

Does it make you cringe a little?

For years growing up in this somewhat ‘male-dominated’ world I continued to hear the words, ‘you’ve just got to hustle Pauline’.

For a while, I believed it. I felt that if only I could reach more people, have more conversations, listen to more problems and solve them, that all would be well in the world.

Now, remember for most of my working life I’ve been creating Strategic Partnerships to fill large-scale business/branding/marketing type education events. The challenge with events is they have a very clear deadline…and if you haven’t hustled then the room isn’t full and that’s a horrible feeling that you have to own.

As you can likely appreciate doing this for more than 12 years added it’s fair share of stress into my life!

So let’s take a closer look at The Hustle….

Firstly, what’s it’s ultimate purpose? If you chunk it up high enough it’s about making sure you’ve got clients, which of course is the fuel for any business. But what does that actually get you?

As a business owner, it ought to get you to your goals which could be either lifestyle related or heading you towards “World Domination”.

This will depend on your values in life…so what are your values?

Identify Your Values

There are so many exercises for determining your values but I like this ‘2 question method’ the best because it gets to the truth.

Q1. What are you currently spending your money on?
Q2. What are you currently spending your time on?

If you take a look at your activities and your bank statements you’ll get a pretty clear picture of what your values are right now.

That could come as a shock to you because we all like to aspire to values and we may even think we are living them but if you’re not spending money and you’re not spending time then chances are that you’re also not directing focus or attention either.

So guess what?

In order to get a different result and move towards some of those aspirational values, you’ll need to shift your resources of time and money. Pauline Martin-Brooks #pmb

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But all is not lost…

Now that you know what your values are and how to take action to re-align them, let’s take a quick look at what I like to call Hustle or Connect…

The Hustle Mindset

Now if you’re in the Hustle mindset, chances are you are in the World Domination category and my personal opinion is that it’s not sustainable. Sure it will work for short stints but in the end, you will most likely burn out unless you have a team that likes to hustle as much as you do.

The challenge with Hustle is that it’s such a push force on the Universe, it takes a lot of energy and time. I personally feel it’s a very masculine energy which is challenging for a woman to mimic for an extended period of time. In fact, it’s challenging for anyone that doesn’t have a never-ending supply of testosterone – including some men!

Now don’t get me wrong I do believe in a short fix hustle if the Strategy and Preparation haven’t gone quite as planned.

Connect and Collaborate Strategy

My preference by far and away (which could seem a little Utopian to you) is to take the time to build the right Strategy from the outset. Then with the right planning and implementation, the only thing we need to do, to truly drive our business using Strategic Partnerships is to Connect and Collaborate.

There’s a different energy with that word Connect, isn’t there?

It’s more nurturing, softer, caring, feminine. It has a drawing force, not a pushing force and luckily for us, it’s something we can do naturally when we are grounded.

Think of how you feel in your heart just measuring one word against the other.

HUSTLE…. Tight, constricted possibly even frantic
CONNECT…. Calm, soothing, genuine, considerate

So as an ex-Hustler and converted Connector let me share a few insights to help you.

Firstly, part of the Strategic Partnership Strategy I teach is to get someone else like a virtual assistant to do the legwork. So you are left with a list of qualified potential partners and their direct phone number.

Assuming you have this in hand the Hustle versus Connect could look like this.

Hustling In Action

As an extreme Hustler you think of your pitch for your product or service, pick up the phone to call the person – whilst it’s ringing, load their website, scan it for the important stuff, when they pick up, you make small talk, qualify them further with some pre-planned questions. They generally want to get you off the call as soon as possible and to be fair you have other calls to make so you end the call agreeing to send something over to them and pray that the email template you’ve sent 50 of today does the trick….eeew!

Take two.

Connecting and Collaborating in Action

As a Connector, you take the time to check out their website, social profiles and any videos they might have on youtube. You get a feel for the person first, you find something that you can genuinely compliment them on, you might even help them by letting them know you found a typo or a broken link. You may even be connected to them already so it’s worth mentioning that person if you know them well. Then, when you make the call you’re not thinking about you, you’re thinking about them and how you can collaborate.

That’s what makes all the difference, it becomes about them and not you and your product or service. Sure you need to explore and find a win-win scenario if it’s possible but if it’s not, you are much more likely to end with a referral if the other person has felt truly connected to you.

As a Connector you’ll likely use rapport to become more in sync with them, not sure how to do this then head to the Work With Me page to find out more about my free short video course.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, have you been Hustling or Connecting?

Jun 28

Need Help Getting Stuff Done? Try this technique!

By Pauline Martin-Brooks | Productivity , Systems

Do you ever wonder what on earth you should be focussing on next?

Well, you’re not alone. I hear this often when I’m speaking with clients, even my husband tells me on a regular basis that he has no idea where to even start!

Which led me to explain the following concept to him last weekend and now to you, lucky you!

So here goes….

Many years ago I learned of a technique which I call Blueboard/Whiteboard…super technical name right?!

Well, I’m guessing you know what a whiteboard is, but what’s a Blueboard I hear you ask?

Use A Dumping Ground For Your Ideas

We all have a myriad of things we want to do. So when you think about all the things you want to do, that you haven’t even started on AND all the things you’ve started on but haven’t completed…

Well now you have yourself a pretty big list and you know what happens next – Nothing – well nothing productive at least because our brains go into overwhelm and all of a sudden it becomes much easier to pick up the remote and see what’s on the television or sit down and scroll through Facebook. I know… I’ve done it, so has my husband and I’m sure you’ve been guilty of it a time or two yourself.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with tuning out because your brain is fried – I get that too.

How about helping yourself so your brain gets fried less often?

Which brings me back to the Blueboard…

Let’s say we dump a whole lot of ideas on the Blueboard – they could include things like:

Create an online course
Build a landing page
Launch a new product
Hire a VA
Use a support ticket system
Build a chatbot
Create a lead magnet
Build a funnel
set up a nurture sequence
Do some youtube videos
Publish a blog

If you work online like I do, the list is endless and there’s a ridiculous amount of software and tutorials that you could get lost in for years – believe me I’ve done that too.

Anyway as you can see there’s a whole lot of little projects on there.

Pick One Thing!

Now once you’ve done this for yourself you need to find the project that is the easiest to get done.

Let’s think of this as the low hanging fruit.

In this case, we’ll pick Publish a blog because that’s what I decided to do. Now we move Publish a blog over to the Whiteboard. So everything else sits on the blueboard and only Publish a Blog sits on the whiteboard ALONE…that becomes your One Thing!

Now we need to break up Publish a Blog as a project and think about what goes into it.

So we could either just write what we feel like writing about, which is what I’m doing right now. Or a better approach would be to do some keyword research first and write to the Key Phrases that people are searching for so they find your blog.

Do The Research!

If you write what you feel like writing, you should still do the research to see where you can add some keyword phrases to improve the rank!

Now we can also just write straight into WordPress, or we might create it in notepad or google docs or some other software and then if you’re lucky hand over to your virtual assistant:)

Then we need to spell check it and find images and upload it and format it and SEO it – so you can see how one little project becomes quite a big one.

This is why it’s key to drag the item onto the whiteboard and then map out what needs to happen with that project… simultaneously ignoring all other projects! I repeat DO NOT start to map out any of the other projects!

So Publish a Blog could include things like this…

Do keyword research to find key phrases
Decide on the journey you want the reader to take ie what’s the call to action at the end? If any..
Write a blog post around Key Phrase
Find/Create an image
Brand the image for social
Upload to WordPress or Blog Website
Format with subheads and pull quotes etc
Add feature image
Add a call to action – this could include an external link (Make sure that works)
Is there a download PDF/MP3/MP4 etc?
Is there an opt-in page created for it?
Is there a relevant email sequence?
Ensure blog and images are SEO friendly
Check readability
Have someone proofread it
Publish the blog

And Voila!

So there we have one project that we’ve taken from the Blueboard and added to the whiteboard and seen through until completion. Now we have to market the blog, but I hope you get the idea about how it works. In this instance, I’ve chosen to leave this blog without an opt-in but I may add one later..so watch this space.

Actually, do me a favour and let me know what would be useful to you?

– A Video on the Blueboard/Whiteboard technique
– A checklist of exactly what you need to do before you can publish your blog
– Something else you need help with around this topic

Need some help to get your Project Managed? Click here to book a session today.

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