WMTW 007: Our brutal early marketing journey [podcast]

Posted by Adam Franklin

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Updated on May 2nd, 2014

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With our first six episodes on iTunes… you may be wondering who we are, what led us here to this podcast and how we’ve embarked on a decade long adventure to discover web marketing that works.

Show notes

Background of Adam & Toby

Met in Grade 1 in 1986 at Ashgrove State School
Did everything from school, swimming, water polo, uni, travelling, 9.5 years in business and most recently a book!

Background of Bluewire Media

You’ll hear stories of us selling websites, doing graphic design, managing social media for clients, but we now are a web marketing consulting firm.
We started as strictly a web design shop (or agency for lack of a better word)
Evolved into social media as that come on the scene and over the decade we’ve evolved into a web marketing advisory firm, offering training, mentoring programs, events and speaking.

First marketing efforts:

Started in Jan 2005 with $120. We were non-techies, but keen on learning business and marketing!
First week we went on a surfing holiday (to celebrate!)
Mentor advice: you need clients to be a business (websites, stationery and office could all wait)
All we had was a Bluewire email address, and that was enough!

First attempt – knocking on doors

Pounded the pavement for 2 weeks for 0 leads
One breaking point, Toby introduced himself by saying “Hi I’m Adam”. Oops!

Second attempt

Cold calls for 0 leads — we had scripts and everything (Yellow pages)
The next breaking point was “I can hear crows in the background!”
Qualified cold call with a valuable offer: this gave us our first leads but not our first client.
First client came via a referral from our network (our water polo coach Lance’s mate from the pub)
First cheque for $247 (deposit for a $1200 website)
Lesson: value of your network and community

Q&A: Starting out today?

Knowing what we know now with our decade of experience and the new world of technology, how would we start marketing a business today?

Build an audience, solve a problem, understand the communities you are already a part of.

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Bonus 33 Free Templates

This podcast is brought to you by our new book Web Marketing That Works. You can download the bonus 33 free templates (11.2 MB – zip file).

Read the free, 28 page sample chapter (948 KB – PDF)

Or order the book online: Web Marketing That Works: Confessions from the Marketing Trenches (Wiley 2014).

About the Author
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About Adam Franklin

Adam Franklin is the bestselling author of Web Marketing That Works. He is an international social media speaker and CEO of Bluewire Media. His blog was Australia’s #1 Business Blog and his podcast was #9 on the top marketing podcasts in Entrepreneur magazine. His work has featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Huffington Post and iTunes. Download the popular Web Strategy Planning Template which has been used by hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. His weekly ‘Bluewire News’ email goes out to over 32,000 readers.