#313- Simple Marketing for Smart People with Billy Broas

Summary

Nonprofit Lowdown Episode #313: Simple Marketing for Smart People with Billy Brost

Release Date: November 18, 2024

Introduction

In Episode #313 of Nonprofit Lowdown, host Rhea Wong welcomes Billy Brost, a seasoned messaging strategist and founder of Five Light Bulbs. Billy discusses his newly published book, Simple Marketing for Smart People, focusing on effective marketing and fundraising strategies tailored for the nonprofit sector.

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Guest Background: Billy Brost

Billy Brost shares his unconventional journey into marketing. Originally a science graduate working in the clean energy industry, Billy nurtured an entrepreneurial spirit by teaching online beer brewing classes. This side hustle grew into a full-time venture, where he discovered the profound impact of messaging over other marketing tactics.

"I realized that not everything is created equal... rewriting a headline on my website doubled the signups to my online beer brewing courses."
— Billy Brost [01:16]

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Defining Marketing in the Nonprofit Context

Rhea and Billy delve into the essence of marketing, especially within nonprofits where team members may lack formal marketing or sales backgrounds. Billy emphasizes that marketing should be viewed as a tool to ease the selling process rather than an aggressive sales tactic.

"The goal of marketing is to make selling a heck of a lot easier and maybe even unnecessary."
— Billy Brost [04:58]

Billy references Peter Drucker’s idea, simplifying it to make marketing a preparatory phase that warms up potential donors before any direct ask.

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Content Marketing and Belief Building

Billy advocates for strategic content marketing, which he terms “belief building.” Instead of sporadically posting content, nonprofits should educate their audience to instill the necessary beliefs that make donations a natural outcome.

"Content marketing is educating your customer on how to better value what you're offering."
— Billy Brost [07:15]

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The Five Light Bulbs Framework

A pivotal part of the discussion, Billy introduces his Five Light Bulbs framework, a visual and structured approach to crafting marketing messages. The framework includes:

1. Current State: Understanding the prospect’s status quo and identifying any underlying problems or unease.
2. Alternative Options: Acknowledging other solutions without disparaging them.
3. Your Bridge: Presenting your unique approach or philosophy.
4. Your Offer: Offering various donation or funding options akin to product tiers.
5. Prospect’s New Life: Illustrating the positive outcomes post-donation.

"The five light bulbs... a checklist for your marketing collateral."
— Billy Brost [10:11]

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Narrowing Target Audience: Focus and Relevance

Billy stresses the importance of specificity in targeting. Instead of appealing to everyone, nonprofits should identify and focus on their “tip of the spear”—the most likely donors—to maximize resource efficiency.

"Start with the tip of the spear... acquire the financial resources to advance into those colder markets."
— Billy Brost [25:11]

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Implementing Content Marketing with Limited Resources

For nonprofits operating with limited budgets and personnel, Billy recommends prioritizing quality over quantity. By concentrating efforts on one effective marketing piece that resonates deeply, organizations can achieve significant impact without spreading themselves too thin.

"One content piece that hits on all five light bulbs can be the 80/20 of your marketing effort."
— Billy Brost [31:40]

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Measuring ROI and Testing Messaging

Addressing the challenge of measuring return on investment (ROI) in content marketing, Billy suggests a blend of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Tracking engagement metrics alongside the quality of donor interactions provides a fuller picture of marketing effectiveness.

"The qualitative side is just as, if not more important, especially with belief building."
— Billy Brost [38:19]

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Consistency in Marketing Efforts

Billy and Rhea highlight the necessity of consistent marketing. Billy shares a personal strategy of focusing on his strengths as a visionary while leveraging partnerships to handle implementation, ensuring steady content delivery without overwhelming oneself.

"Show up consistently with a purpose-driven framework like the five light bulbs."
— Billy Brost [35:23]

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Final Thoughts and Resources

Billy concludes by encouraging nonprofits to adopt a gradual, focused approach to marketing. He emphasizes the enduring value of human communication over chasing every new platform or trend.

"Take it slow, one step at a time... focus on being human in your communication."
— Billy Brost [39:57]

For those interested in exploring Billy’s strategies further, he recommends his book, Simple Marketing for Smart People, available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats at simplemarketingbook.com.

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Conclusion

Episode #313 provides nonprofits with actionable insights into simplifying their marketing efforts through strategic messaging and the Five Light Bulbs framework. Billy Brost’s expertise offers a roadmap for effective fundraising, emphasizing education, relevance, and consistent, belief-driven communication.

Transcript

[Rhea Wong]

Hey you, it's Ria Wong. If you're listening to Nonprofit Load on, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on the newest podcast episodes and then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up.

[Billy Brost]

Foreign.

[Rhea Wong]

Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong.

Hey broadcast listeners. Nurses, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today I'm excited to introduce my guest, Billy Brost. He is a messaging strategist. He is the founder of the five light bulbs and recently published his new book, Simple Marketing for Smart people. So today we are going to talk about marketing and fundraising and the nonprofit world. So hilly, welcome to the show.

[Billy Brost]

Thanks so much, Rhea. Hey, pumped to be here.

[Rhea Wong]

I we're excited to have you because I'm all about talking about how to get that money, honey. But before we jump into the nuts and bolts, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how does one become a marketing messaging strategist?

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, I never thought I would be one for one. I had a very traditional upbringing. No exposure to sales and marketing or anything like that. Total introvert, total nerd. And I have a science background and I worked in the clean energy industry as my career out of college, but had that entrepreneurial itch. So I started a side hustle while I was at that job and it was teaching beer brewing classes online of all things. So I had this passion for brewing my own beer, wanted to share with the world, and eventually was able to leave that job and run the beer website full time. Now in doing that leads us to how I became this marketing strategist. Messaging strategist. I realized that, and I'm sure your listener can resonate with this when you're doing marketing or sales, especially online marketing, there are a million shiny objects out there and I was just in the weeds of it. And I was fiddling with WordPress plugins and social media platforms and countdown timers, all these things, and I realized that not everything is created equal and some things just make a bigger difference than others. And at the end of the day, although I could fiddle with those shiny objects, I saw that I could just rewrite a headline on my website and double the signups to my online beer brewing courses. And so that took me into this world of messaging. And I just decided to focus only on that because I found that to be the biggest needle mover. And it makes sense. We change our words and we change our results.

[Rhea Wong]

That's such a good way to frame it. Actually, I just downloaded a book in addition to your very excellent book, this book called Very Good Copy. And it's so interesting how copy is a driver of growth. So can you talk a little bit about especially for folks in the nonprofit sector similar to you often don't come from a marketing background or a sales background. And they're just. Maybe they got in the work because they really love the program. I call it Hugging the Panda Bears. So can you walk us through a little bit of how we should be thinking about marketing? Because I also think that there can be a visceral reaction to the word marketing. Yeah, don't wanna do that.

[Billy Brost]

That was my reading. Yeah, totally. You have these, there's all these negative stereotypes associated with it. So you have like the bro marketer, he's like this 19 year old dude and he's got his rented Lamborghini behind him, right. Telling you how you can make all this money online. So we have that marketer, we have the, of course, the used car salesman with the slicked back hair and everything. And so when I realized that I came from the ivory towers of academia and I learned marketing, but my marketing class assumed that I was like the CMO of Walmart. And I had all these, those salesperson, those salespeople were doing the job for me so I didn't need to do it. Now I got to sell my beer brewing courses and I need to be that salesperson. And I felt very icky about that and was very uncomfortable. So the first thing for your listener that you have to realize is that those are just negative stereotypes. And it's always the case where the worst examples are the ones that pop into our mind. But there are good examples as well. And you buy, I'm sure, like you, Ria and me and your listener, we have a lot of products that are in our home right now that, that we love, that we weren't burned by and that the marketing that was done to us was generous and charitable and, and gentle and not heavy handed. But we forget those examples. Right? And that's the sign that it was good marketing. So it's tough, right, because we can't bring those things to mind. We know the bad examples. But that's the first thing I would say to your listener is it's normal to think of those negative stereotypes. But that's not what marketing has to be.

[Rhea Wong]

So it's an interesting question. How would you define marketing? And how does marketing relate to sales or, in the case of nonprofit marketing, relate to fundraising?

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, yeah, great question. So there's this famous management consultant, Peter Drucker, and I love his quote, and he says that the goal of marketing is to make selling superfluous. And I would say that's a complicated word for me. So I like to say it as the goal of marketing is to make selling a heck of a lot easier and maybe even unnecessary. So if you think about it as a spectrum, you want to think about your prospect, your potential client or customer or donor, in this case, as going through marketing first before getting to the selling portion. So a good way to think about this is if there's a spotlight that's hovering over that spectrum, and the first 75% of that journey, the spotlight is on the customer or the potential donor. And then only once they realize that. That you get them and that there is this problem or this opportunity for them, then you turn your language more to you and to what you are offering for them, and that's when you get into the sales portion. But the mistake a lot of people make is they jump right into selling. And without having taken that person through the marketing, now you're in this position where this person, they don't even really know who you are. They don't really understand what the opportunity is here. And so you face this resistance when you make your offer to them. Whereas if they would have gone through this process of marketing first, and we could talk about how to do that. I'm a big fan of content marketing and doing what I call in the book belief building through content marketing. If you do it that way now, when you present your opportunity to them, your offer to them, they're warmed up, they're ready to go, they're totally on board. So instead of you dragging them through the door, you just open the door, step to the side, and they gladly glide through.

[Rhea Wong]

Oh, that is so good. And actually, that's very resonant because I know a lot of nonprofits, they really struggle with fundraising or they struggle with getting the solicitation or whatever. And I think to your point, if we actually did a better job of marketing, we would warm up the audience. So by the time we get to the ask, it just feels like a natural next step of, yes, of course I would do that, because I've already gone through this process with you. I've gone On a journey. I understood what you're doing, et cetera, et cetera. So could you help us? Because I'm putting myself in the shoes of the nonprofit executive who has no marketing background. What do you mean when you say content marketing?

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, and I love how you put that. Yes, the sale, the donation is the natural next step. So that is the goal of the content marketing. And, and by the way, you don't, I have beef with content marketing because not everyone frames it that way. It's more like, hey, just put out a whole bunch of content and eventually it's going to come back to you in the form of money. And the problem with that is it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And so we need more of a strategy to it. And that's what I can provide your listener with. So content marketing, it's educating your customer on how to better value what you're offering. That's the way that I look at it. So if you think about that spectrum I talked about, you could jump right to the sales phase of that. And that's what a lot of people do. That cold calling it is a good example of that. And then that just becomes a numbers game, right? Like you're going to, you're going to get rejected a lot. And it's very uncomfortable. And I'm sure your listener, I don't like to do that. Again, I'm an introvert, I'm conflict avoidant. But that does work, right? So people who don't want to, who don't have the patience maybe and don't want or just don't know about this process of content marketing, you could just dial for dollars, but you're going to get rejected a lot, especially copywriters. You mentioned, I love that you mentioned that copywriting book. What they discovered is that's not the most efficient way to go about it. And so what you can do instead is instead of taking your personal time up because again, this takes a lot of time to cold call what you can do. Instead of doing this one to one thing where you're talking to people individually, you put out content. So this might come in the form of a, a PDF that you write. It could be a blog article. Think about the different mediums that are out there. The big three where you have written text, you have audio like we're doing now, and you have video and you have endless channels within those. So video, you have YouTube audio, you have podcast text, you have a whole bunch of options from LinkedIn to Twitter to blogging. Okay, so what you're doing, so that's your marketing. So now instead of 1 to 1, it's 1 to 10,000 or even 10 million. That's the beauty of broadcasting a marketing message. And that's what copywriters do. And so then what you do is through your content marketing goes back to what I said earlier, where you want to educate them so that they can properly value your offer, so that by the time you make your offer, they're warmed up and ready to go.

[Rhea Wong]

One thing that was rattling around in my brain recently is this idea of nobody cares about you, they only care about themselves. Which sounds very harsh, but I think the mistake that I see a lot of nonprofits and possibly businesses make as well is that they spend a lot of time talking about themselves. And it looks like newsletters or it's like, this is our new staff member and here's our new program. And without really thinking about what's in it for my reader. And so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about when we're thinking about marketing, how do we calibrate it such that it does the thing that we want it to do, which is to educate people and get them warmed up, so to speak, for the eventual transaction?

[Billy Brost]

Yeah. So I think here would be a good spot if I could to run through my five light bulbs framework, because.

[Rhea Wong]

I would, I would love for you to run to your five light bulbs. Go ahead.

[Billy Brost]

Yeah. So it's tough, right, because we get. We're so close to what we do. It's just natural for us to talk about, to want to talk about what we do, because it's so cool when we're helping people, but we know that we can at least lead with that. So I said, okay, we need to, I need a checklist to make sure that I don't do that in. My clients that I work with don't do that. So I came up with this fun thing called the five Light Bulbs. And. And I'm a very visual thinker and I, I think a lot of people are. So I, I had an illustrator create this whole world for it, and it really helps the concept sink in. So if your listener goes to 5light bulbs.com, you can see all these illustrations that we have for each light bulb. But to go through them, light bulb one represents where your customer or your, your prospect, your potential donor is now. So this is their status quo, this is their everyday experience, and this is where they are experiencing a problem, even if they're not hyper aware of it. It might be something a little bit subconscious, a bit of an unease, something. There's a longing there. And so what you want to do is give voice to that. You want to give voice. What we say is check the box on light bulb one. So that's not saying the words we, I, our company, we've been in business for 30 years. We've won these awards. It's saying the golden word in marketing, which is you, the prospect or potential. So that's light bulb one. And then, okay, so they have this. A problem or an unease, something more that they want. But are we the only game in town? Are we the only nonprofit? Certainly not. There's other options out there. And so that's represented by light bulb two. So light bulb two represents those other options that they have to solve their problem. And it seems counterintuitive, like, we don't want to talk about our competitors because our prospects might go with them. But now I encourage you to lean into that and to give voice to those other options that are out there and not like throwing rocks at them or anything or saying, oh, they stink. No, but laying out criteria and saying, here's what they focus on, and here's what we focus on. And in some cases, you might want to go with them, but in a lot of cases, I think we're the right choice for you. And so that leads to light bulb three, which if light bulb two are those other bridges that your prospect could cross to solve their problem, Light bulb three is your bridge. So it's your way of doing things. It's your philosophy, it's your focus. And then light bulb four is your offer. So this would be the different types of donations or funding levels that are available for your listener, which is really just a vehicle for your Light bulb three, the thing that you're focused on. It's good to have different options, just like there's different product options out there. You can, if you're working with Day and I do coaching and consulting review, you have a book as well. So you can, if you want to hire Ria, you can hire her or buy her book, Right? So that's represented by your light bulb for these different delivery vehicles. And then finally, you have Light Bulb 5, which represents your prospect's new life. So this is that other side of the bridge where the birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and you want to give voice to that as well in your marketing material, even before they buy with you or donate to you, because you want to show them what they get out of it. So Light Bulb 5 answers the question, what's in it for me? So those are the five light bulbs. And again, you can think about them as a kind of checklist for your marketing collateral.

[Rhea Wong]

That's so good. And actually, I want to talk in a second about the belief building that you talk about in your book. But the one thing that's coming up for me is I know that there are nonprofit folks, many of whom are in small organizations that are like Billie. I don't have a marketing department. I don't have a communications department. It's just me. And I think one of the challenges to your point is we're so close to the work that it's hard to see it. I usually say you can't read the label from inside the bottle. So how would you recommend folks if they want to follow this process or implement some of the things that you talk about in your book, simple marketing for smart people, that they do it without the benefit of department or even a marketing expert on their team?

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, it can be really overwhelming because there are, like I said earlier, so many shiny objects out there. There's all these platforms. We think you have to be on all of them. We see people posting so many times per day. But the remedy for that is really this idea of belief building and realizing that those are just marketing channels that are out there and there's endless channels and they come and go. And what's important is not so much the marketing channel that you're on or the social media platform, it's what you say on it. So you can get away just being on one platform. And I would encourage you to be on one where you can reach your ideal person. So if you. So at least pick one and think about where they might hang out, where they might read things or listen to things or watch things, what you really want to focus on is what you say on them and not just post randomly or throw spaghetti at the wall or anything. But in the book, we give you this focusing question, which is it was really a mind blower for me, so I'll share it with your listener now. And that question is, what does my customer need to believe in order to buy what does my customer need to believe in order to buy Another way you can create that is, what does my customer need to, or my potential donor in this case need to agree to in order for that donation to be obvious and just a no brainer? And that kind of gets your wheels turning. And that's really the remedy for this curse of knowledge that we all have where we're too close to it because it surfaces these assumptions that we're making about our listener. So I. I'm sorry, our. Our prospect. So for your listener, I would encourage you to ask that question now. What does my potential donor need to believe in order to buy? What do they need to believe is important? What do they need to believe about what happens if this problem doesn't get solved? And so in your answering of that question, there's all these beliefs that you're going to start to surface that then becomes the marketing content. So what then. What you then do is you address those beliefs. You are the one to instill those beliefs. So if there is a problem out there that your prospect just does not realize is important or urgent or worthy of their attention, you instill the belief that thing is important and urgent and worthy of their attention through your marketing content. And so that becomes your core message. And then you just pick the channel or the distribution avenue that you send that message through, whether it's YouTube, Facebook, blogging, email, et cetera.

[Rhea Wong]

As you're talking, it sounds so simple. Hence simple marketing for certain people. But I think it's one of these things. It's simple, not easy. And the thing that I'm thinking about is I work with lots of different nonprofits that are doing lots of different causes. And I think the challenge that I see a lot of them run into is, yeah, like, everybody should care about niche thing. Like, everybody should care about saving the pandas. Everybody should care about whatever. And so I guess I'm wondering for you is how do you. How would you counsel someone with that? Because I think there's a tension here between, yeah, there are certainly people in the world who might care about this thing and just are not aware of the plight of the panda bear. And then there's a whole bunch of people in the world who will hear about it and decide that's not the thing that they are going to spend time and energy and resources supporting. So help us think about how are we parsing all of the potential donors in the world versus actually the people who are for whom this is for.

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, so in the book, I give this example of carpet cleaning, which is. It seems like a trivial example, but something that's very relatable. And we'll make the point where there's this. There's this a guy named Joe, and he's well known now in entrepreneurial circles because he had this carpet cleaning company in Ohio, and all he was doing was just making offers to people so putting out coupons and discounts and things like that to the people in this Ohio town, Tobias. Carpet cleaning services. And. And no one was signing up with them, despite even the coupons. And if they did, well, okay, now he's discounting a lot, so he's losing all his profit margin. So what he realized was that they just did not realize how important it was to clean your carpet. So he switched from pitching and making these sales offers and coupons to educating. And so when you take this approach, marketing becomes education. And so people didn't realize that your carpets can be thousands of times dirtier than a toilet seat. They didn't realize that dirty carpets are one of the leading causes of asthma. They just didn't know these things. So he started to provide this through education. So he would send out these educational pamphlets and booklets in the mail talking about carpets. Yes. And also you would talk about the household health as a whole, of which carpets, if you have them, are a big part of it. And through that, people, one became educated, but two realized the importance of cleaning their carpet. And then who are they going to hire when it comes time when they realize, like, okay, I need to take care of these dirty carpets immediately, they're going to hire Joe. So for your listener, you're right. We know how important these issues are, but we still need to argue for them. And so that's why, like in the book, what I say is the best discipline or doing marketing is the discipline of. And not like a road rage, an argument, or like throwing your phone at the wall, but a rhetorical argument. Aristotle. Making a case like a lawyer would make a case to a judge or a jury. In doing that, you might make a claim. That's part of the terminology here. So if you're claiming, okay, the pandas are really important, we need to save the pandas, Then what follows a claim from argumentation? We know that proof has to follow a claim. And in the courtroom, we see exhibit A. Right. The lawyer will hold that up and then exhibit B. And so they're backing up their claim with proof. And for your listener, I encourage you to do the same thing with the claims that you're making. And in doing so, you will persuade your potential donor and the people who can help you with fundraising to realize, oh, man, this thing is really important. I'm on board.

[Rhea Wong]

Yeah, it's a really interesting thing, because the other. Other side of the coin, too, is I also think people should know, should maybe not waste an enormous amount of time and effort on people for whom this is never going to be their thing. Right. I always think about the Kevin Kelly and thousand true fans. Like you can build a very respectable business or non profit with just a thousand true fans. And considering the fact that there are what, 300 less million people in the US and was it 7 billion people on the planet, I don't know where we're at right now. Like you could find a thousand people who truly love what you do.

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, that's such a good point. You want to preach to the converted as much as possible. When I was doing the beer brewing courses, I made that mistake where I wanted people to. I know it's not the same as beer, but still I wanted people to care about beer brewing as much as I did. Fact of the matter is that most beer brewers, they're weekend warriors or not even that they might brew every six months or just once a year for their birthday. So how likely are they to spend a couple hundred dollars on my online beer tasting class or yeah, it was a beer tasting class actually, which teaches them all these beer tasting skills and advanced home brewing techniques. And so I would like, I'd be like, come on, isn't this cool? Don't you want to get more into this? And they're just like, nah. Now there were, but if I could go back and do it again, there was a small segment, small but passionate group of people, competitive provers especially, who were entering competitions because I was trying to please everyone. I really pleased no one. And if I go back and do it again, I would have spoken only to that passionate group and just forgotten about the rest who were never going to be as into it as I was.

[Rhea Wong]

Oh, that's such a good point. So the example in the book, as I remember, is that you were getting highly technical questions from that small, passionate crew. And I feel like in some ways it's analogous to what we see in nonprofits, which is sometimes people can get into very technical jargony language. Especially folks doing like advocacy work will get very technical in a way that feels that understandable or inaccessible to your average person. So I'm wondering, how does that fit within the five light bulbs framework?

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, that's really that curse of knowledge, isn't it, where we're so in the weeds with what we do, where. That's the example I was saying in the book about beer, where to me it's not just beer anymore or even the two big categories a lot of people know which are ales and lagers. I know 100, I can name 150 styles of beer. So when someone orders a beer at the bar, what are you talking. You can't just order it like that. You can't just say, I want a beer. It's do you want this or this or this? But we need to do simplified into these larger categories, which is very difficult. But that's what brings us out of the wee beads. Not dumbing it down, it's simplifying. And when something, when you simplify it in the way I'm describing, it's compressed, you can unpack it, just like I can unpack the word beer into 150 different words. So you want to think about how you can compress what you do into simpler language to meet people where they are. And then you can start to unpack that and take them more into the details. But if you lead with the details and all the technical jargon, you're going to lose them right from the outset.

[Rhea Wong]

And it's such an interesting point. I'm wondering, is there a tension between. Because you said if you could do it all over again, you would just focus on this super passionate people. And I think it seems to me these super passionate people really geek out on the technical stuff. And yet at the same time, you're also trying to build a funnel big enough to get the people who might be into the thing that you want to be into, but they just need more of an entry point. So are those two things in competition?

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. There were actually two groups of the technical people. So they weren't so much technical. They're more just avid homebrewers who were really into it, but they didn't necessarily know all the technical details. There were those and there were. And. And a lot of those I couldn't reach either, where they just. They were know it alls, to put it frankly. And I was selling courses and they're like, what can this guy teach? I was also a lot younger. I was in my early 20s. And most homebrewers, like in their, like dudes in their 50s and 60s. And I did. And I frankly, like, I did know more than them about a lot of things, but you can never convince them of that. Right, Right. So my, my sweet spot was really the people who were into it. They wanted. They did it a lot. They want to do it more, but they just didn't have that knowledge yet. So for them, that's who was really the center of my bullseye. And so I would say for your listener, you want to think about people. We have A desire to be consistent with our previous actions. And so you might think about people who have take actions that have been consistent with what you're asking them to do. Like the carpet cleaning example. Right? Like, that message only resonated to people who had carpets. So you want to think about relevance. And by saying, hey, you have carpets, you might be interested in this. That can be a lesson for your listeners to think to take and say, okay, who might have done some, maybe donated to something similar or taken an action that's in line congruent with what I'm asking them to do. And then you can bring them up and bring that up in content marketing and say, hey, since you did this, you might also be interested in this. And that's, that's where you check that.

[Rhea Wong]

Box on relevancy as we're talking gully. I'm thinking too about the, the importance of specificity and the importance of focus. Because at the end of the day, I'm guessing most of the folks listening to this podcast don't have endless marketing budget. Right. And they don't have the ability to spend money like Apple or Nike or something. And so I'm wondering, how do you narrow and get more specific about your point, the bullseye, when it feels so tempting to work for everybody, we want everybody to donate. But to your point, if you're for everybody, you're for nobody. And so I'm calling it recently, the woman in the sexy red dress. Like, how do you ignore the woman in the sexy red dress for those Matrix fans out there to really focus on the core of the people that you should be talking to?

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, okay, so I wrestle with this. I got a good solution for your listener here because we deal with this a lot. We have workshops and we have people come in, business owners who are like, I can serve all these people, but where do I start? And it's a real risk when you're just a one man band and you spread very thin. You have a limited budget. You, you can't, you don't have the budget of an Apple. You can't afford to target everyone at the same time. That doesn't mean that you can, you're saying no to those people for forever. So it's really a question of when you make your advancement into those slightly colder markets where it's not quite the center of the bullseye, the outer rings of the target. And so the concept that we teach is called the tip of the spear, and that's a pretty familiar metaphor. So you want to think about the Tip of the spear. So who can I start with right now? Who are the people who are most likely to donate to sign up right now? That's that center of the bullseye. And so that's going to be especially when you have limited resources, like I'm sure a lot of your listeners do, that's where you want to start because that's where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck. Now the drawback of that is that it's a limited pool of people. There were only so many of those avid homebrewers. And if I would have stuck with that business, I eventually sold it. But if I would have stuck with it, I would have exhausted that pool of people. But because I had started with them, I had the fin, I would have had the financial resources and your listeners will have the financial resources. If you start with these low hanging fruit, use that old cliche, you have the financial resources to advance into those colder markets, into those outer rings. Because this education based marketing approach that we take, content marketing, it takes money, right? Whether it's paying people to write the content or just your time, it takes money. But by starting with the tip of the spear, you acquire the financial resources to advance into those colder markets and reach some of those people that you can help. It just won't be on day one. It might be in year two or three, five or even 10.

[Rhea Wong]

It's funny, since our conversation and since reading your book, I created a Persona on ChatGPT and asked them about belief building and like what beliefs that they have to have in order to move themselves along the continuum. And it's actually, it's was a very interesting response, so thanks for that.

[Billy Brost]

Oh, cool. How did that go? AI by the way? Very. We're doing a lot with AI in our workshops now. It's a powerful tool to combine with what I'm talking about.

[Rhea Wong]

Yeah, it was actually really great. What was interesting to me about it. So I came up with a cool prompt and it generated a donor journey. Core of it, the kernel of it had to be based on real things. Right. And so I can't stress this enough, like you have to talk to your donors, you have to truly understand, like who are they, what are their motivations, what's the story that they have? And you can use it as an avatar. But I think a lot of people think that there's some way around just talking to people. And I haven't found a way to AI my way out of talking to humans.

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, that voice of customer we call it is so important. Can I give your listener a cool hack with that?

[Rhea Wong]

Yeah, please.

[Billy Brost]

Okay, so what you do is you have a call that you can record like this and you get their permission of course, to record it and ask them these questions. You try to surface these beliefs that they have. Ask them questions not about you or your product or anything, but around their day to day life about the things that they participate in, what their average day looks like and some of the problems that they're encountering and how that makes them feel and some of the negative consequences of those challenges that they're facing. And you record that and you're going to get a transcript and then you can plug that into these AI tools like ChatGPT and that's going to create this really rich profile for you. Because you're right, it's the old saying, crap in, crap out, where if you don't put anything good into ChatGPT, you're not going to get anything good out. But if you do this and you collect that voice of customer and plug that into the AI, then you get a very rich Persona. And then, then you can help that, you can use that to help you create your marketing content.

[Rhea Wong]

So let's talk about content marketing because I think in theory it sounds great. I think in practice, especially for the overworked nonprofit executive director who's running around trying to do all the things, it feels like a lot of work to be able to do it thoughtfully and be a slower rate of versus dialing for dollars. And I think the challenge is that we live in a very, I'll speak for the nonprofit world in general, like a scarcity mode of like survival. And we're always just thinking about the next quarter, the next payroll versus what I sounds like the long game is with content marketing because it seems like a slower build. So I guess my question to you is how do you make the time and the, and the investment to do this?

[Billy Brost]

Well, yeah, it can take a lot of time. It really can. And one thing I would say is if you want to make the most of your time. And so just by following this belief, leaf building approach and the five light bulbs are a great resource to use, it doesn't need to take that much time. And we found with the five light bulbs, for example, my co author on the book, he shipped in a few chapters and we use his business really as a case study and he went through the five light bulbs and he noticed that just by hitting on one light bulb that he had been neglecting, which for him was Light bulb one. He published one blog post on that where he went all in on that light bulb one, that empathy piece. And that just opened the floodgates. You'll find. And so your listener will find that often there is just like that one false belief that they have your prospects, your potential donors that is holding them back. Or if you give voice to that, it will open the floodgates and you'll see all these people now converting who are almost there. They were almost there, but they just need to hear this one thing. So that's one piece of advice I'll give is to. Once you start to hit on some of these beliefs, go through these exercises, if you go into the book, we have a worksheet that will link you to that will help you fill out those beliefs. The other thing I say is that you can think about it in terms of even just one. Like for him, it was one content piece and that was just a blog post. But you'll find that really the key to marketing success is saying the same core message and hitting it from a bunch of different angles. But that core message is something that you, you take on the road with you. You're going to be repeating it a lot, whether it's a talk that you give or whether it's a PDF that you write or whether it's a book. Book. It's a great example. So, yeah, I'm a fan of ongoing content marketing. I think it's smart, right? I like to post social media on a regular basis and everything, but often it's just that that one marketing piece that hits on all those required beliefs or all the five light bulbs and then, and then that's all really that you need. That's the, that's the 80, 20 of it. And so it doesn't need to be this constant slog of always putting out content.

[Rhea Wong]

Oh, that sounds great. The content beast is real. But let's talk about testing messaging and testing marketing, because I think the other thing is sometimes we create in a vacuum where this is great, this is gonna, this is gonna be amazing. Everyone's gonna love it. And then it falls flat. And then I think on the other hand, we can also get into the. Everyone gets, gets an opinion and it's like writing by, what's the term? Writing by committee, which is always the deal killer. So could you tell us, you know, very tactically, how you might recommend a small nonprofit start to. You use the five light bulbs framework of the belief building in a way that feels manageable, but also is testing along the way.

[Billy Brost]

Yeah. And your listener might be confused about the connection between the belief building and the five light bulbs. So essentially. So I don't mention the five light bulbs in the book. The book is really the underlying philosophy behind the five light bulbs. So the book goes into this idea of belief building. Ask this question, what beliefs do my prospects need to have in order to buy the five light bulbs? Helps you organize those beliefs. And it's really the easy button in implementing this belief building approach. It's a tool. So they go hand in hand together. And why I like the five light bulbs and other people do, too. And the way that they use it is it's helpful for testing, which was your question. So you might test it. You might put together a content calendar for the month, and instead of doing it the way that you normally do it, you might try this approach where you say, and week one, we're going to test light bulb one. We're going to put out some light bulb one messages, and we two is going to be light bulb two. And so you put the content out there and you see what resonates. And most things will not. That's just the. That's just how it goes. Most things will not. But just like venture capitalists, the way that they invest in companies, they'll invest in 10 companies knowing that nine will fail, but the one that succeeds will make it all worth it 10 times over. The same approach to your content where just know that out of the 10 pieces of content you put out there, nine will likely flop. Some will be some somewhere in between, but you, you will likely have one that just really strikes a nerve. And when you find that thing, don't do what a lot of people do, which is just say, oh, that was cool, and then move on to the next one. No, double down on that thing and start to. I promise you there's a whole world within that content piece and start exploring it from all different angles, put it into different formats. If it was text, make a video from it, make a podcast from it, because, man, once you find that gold, you do not want to move on.

[Rhea Wong]

That's so funny. I'm just laughing because I remember when I was in ED and that ice bucket challenge was going around on social, and I remember my board members being like, why don't we just create a viral ice bucket challenge? I was like, oh, okay, sure. Yes. If I could just create viral content when I'd be sitting here with you people a lot.

[Billy Brost]

It's funny you say that because I've been fortunate to be behind the scenes of a lot of online businesses and social media accounts and things like that. And there you wouldn't believe how many there are that have huge followings and just make zero money from them. Because there's a difference between going viral and racking up views and all that. On the flip side, I've been behind these businesses that don't even have a website and they're just. Or social media and they're just crushing it. So you, it's really, it's the quality over quantity argument, but when you take this belief building approach, you might have something go viral, but it's more important that you hit on these beliefs and you'll find that it leads to more sales, donation, fundraising, et cetera.

[Rhea Wong]

So let me ask you so many questions, but I know that again, stepping into the shoes of the time strapped executive director, development director, that the social media or the newsletter just feels like another thing I have to do. So can you speak to the value of consistency when it comes to marketing? That it's like showing up.

[Billy Brost]

Yeah, showing up. Yeah. And look, I struggle with this too. More of a creative type. I'm good at coming up with these ideas, but when it, it comes down to actually getting the work done, making sure that I hit publish every week. Yeah, not my area of expertise. I have an amazing wife that helps me out with that. So she's very good with the details, very good about implementation. So I think that's a lesson right there, is to know which one that you are. There's a book, I can't remember the title of it, but it's out there about the value of having these partnerships where you have one person who's typically the visionary and then the other one. I don't know if you know the book I'm talking about. The other one's.

[Rhea Wong]

Oh, I do. It's Gino Wickman. It's called Rocket Fuel. I love it. The visionary and the integrator.

[Billy Brost]

Integrator, yes. So I'm the visionary, Laura is the integrator, and. And we need both. And so I think that's a good first step is just being aware of that. Maybe not like I used to be very hard on myself because I couldn't get things across the finish line. But now I just realize that's just not my zone of genius. So I think that's a good first step is just realizing that and then if you need someone to fill that gap, finding that person for you.

[Rhea Wong]

And I think to go back to your point too, as someone who Was an executive director, now running my own business. Often I find myself thinking like, okay, what do I write this week? So it's really helpful to have a framework to know that it's not random, that you're not just deep thoughts by Jack handing the. That's for the old school people out there. That rather there's a purpose behind the content I'm putting out that's belief building and that it's really about the framework of the five light bulbs to help move people along this process with you.

[Billy Brost]

Yes. And I can tell you that's feedback that we've gotten from people who have done our programs where they were in that position, where they weren't being consistent. But often the problem is not the problem. You think the problem that you think is your problem is not the real problem. It's starting with the blank page and not knowing that what you're putting out there is going to bring anything back. And we find the feedback we get is that starting with this idea of belief building and having these light bulb ideas and things filled in, so when you sit down, you have all these ideas to choose from that often solves that problem of consistency.

[Rhea Wong]

Okay, last question. You know, I keep saying last question, but there's so much here. So with that old advertising thing, we know that 50% of our spending is bringing in the money, but we don't know which 50. You know what I'm saying?

[Billy Brost]

Like, yeah, like half works, but I don't know which half.

[Rhea Wong]

Yeah, exactly. So same question to you, because I again, I know people are listening and they're like, it sounds great, Billy. In a world where I could put out content and know that it will come back in some sort of donation, volunteer, whatever, that's great. But how do I know which 50%? And so I guess my question to you, and maybe this is a personal question, because, for example, I've been doing this podcast for almost five years and almost at three. By the time folks are listening, it'll be more than 300 episodes. And so how do I know the value of the content that I'm putting out? When it's the long game, when I get on the phone with someone and they're like, I've been listening to your podcast for years. That's the marketing. Right? So by the time you're on the call, I'm assuming that you have consumed this content. So what's my question? My question is, how do you measure roi?

[Billy Brost]

Oh, man, that is a tough one, isn't it? Yeah, everyone struggles with that one. Especially these days where you have. I think it's easier back in the day where you didn't. Before the Internet, where it was like either TV commercial or a newspaper. Right? Like, that's what they came in through. It was easy to ask them, easy to track. Now, like, with the different devices that everyone has, all the different platforms and everything, it's a struggle that even people way smarter than me when it comes to tracking in this, you know, whole field of analytics that they deal with. So I'm right there with you. I don't have a great answer for you. Now. The way I would approach it is twofold. I would say it's quantitative and qualitative where you, you try to track those numbers as best you can. I do believe in numbers. When I worked in the energy industry, I was in spreadsheets all day long. Numbers are very important to me. At the same time, especially getting more into the softer side with messaging and communication, more the human side of things. And it's this idea of belief building. I realized that the qualitative side is just as, if not more important. And when you have these conversations and one thing you'll find if you start to implement these techniques is you'll find these people coming to these calls more educated. Like, they won't. I think we all know that experience of talking with someone and yeah, we like to sell them something or get them to donate, but we realize that they just, they don't even know what they don't know. And like, that donation is like just miles away. But you'll start to finally start to implement this content marketing approach that they're right on board with you. Right? Like, oh, like they know the lingo, they have the beliefs and everything. They're ready to go. So start to look for that and then that's how you know what you're doing is working.

[Rhea Wong]

Awesome. Billy, is there anything else that we didn't touch on that you feel like folks should know about content marketing or anything else?

[Billy Brost]

Oh, I would say just take it slow, one step at a time. And it's easy to overwhelm yourself and to feel like you should be doing all these things, but just take one small step every day and it really starts to compound over time. And don't fall for that. Everyone wants you to believe that you need to be on the latest social media platform or use the latest software tool or whatever, but go back to our, the people who came before us, before the Internet and all these shiny objects, and I believe that they're better. That's why I studied them so much because they didn't have these things to distract us and it comes down to just being human and human communication. So focus on that and you can't go wrong.

[Rhea Wong]

I love that. So Billy, where can folks find you if they want to learn more about you? If they want to buy the book? We'll make sure to put all of the info in the show notes. But how can folks best connect with you?

[Billy Brost]

Sure. So go to the best place to start is with the book and that will and show you my marketing philosophy and you can decide if you're on board with that or not. And I think if you like this episode you will be. And it's great tools in the book and resources. So that's simple marketing book. Com and we have that in a paperback form. This is it. We also have an e book and then and we just recorded Thiago and I the the audiobook that was a fun experience. So if you prefer audiobook we have that as well.

[Rhea Wong]

Fantastic. I make sure to put that in the show notes and I'll put your LinkedIn profile if that's okay. Folks want to get in touch with you that way. Billy, thanks so much. This is super informative, even personal.

[Billy Brost]

Love it. Thanks Riya. You were great. Thank you.

[Rhea Wong]

Take care.

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