Web of Influence - Brandon Lee

I wanted to share with everyone my new (not yet published) book. The reason that I am announcing it before it is completed is because I am asking you all for your input! Would you be willing to give my your opinion and help make this book the best possible for your industry?

I want to make sure that this book is really tackling the biggest pain points and challenges for local professional service providers and their digital and social goals and needs. Over the past few weeks I have been leading webinars with hundreds of professional service providers. I have been sharing my insights on Web 3.0 and how it is advantageous to them that consumers are engaging with digital of social very differently now than even 2-3 years ago.

In return, they have been asking awesome questions. Yesterday I spent several hours with over 200 real estate professionals in a Q&A session. I was able to listen to their questions, hear their frustrations, learn what is working well for them and help them create better strategies and systems for 2018. I want to do this throughout 2018.

This is where you all can help influence this book!

If you would like to jump to the survey and give me your opinion, you can do so by Going to the Survey Here. If you want a brief history and why I am passionate about this book and serving professional service providers, keep on reading.

As you may or may not know, I have spent the past 20 years creating content marketing systems for professional service providers. In 1998 I was founding partner in a startup that launched HealthyPet magazine. It was a branded content marketing solution for animal hospitals throughout the United States. We helped solve their frustrations with reminder postcards by providing a high quality, inexpensive and automated system that personalized the magazine and mailed it to their clients. The results were excellent. They increases responses to their first notice by 30%, added value to their valued clients and elevated their brand with a full-color magazine, branded as their own. We sold that company within 2 years to a public company called Veterinary Centers of America (WOOF).

By Design Publishing started small with its 2nd Issue in December 2002 and its 100th issue in December 2017. To see an image of the 100th issue, you can visit www.ByDesignPublishing.com.

After leading HealthyPet for the new ownership for 2 years, my friend and business partner Nathan Reese and I started By Design Publishing. BDP was the next generation of “personalized custom publishing” as I coined what we did to help explain it better . We created a library of magazines designed to help professional service providers with a drip marketing system that elevated their brand, automated their marketing, took the effort off their plates so to they could focus on running their businesses and generated an amazing return-on-investment. As you can see from the image, the model was to personalize and custom covers for professional service providers so it appeared to be their magazine. The body (or guts) of each magazine were the same for everyone, DID NOT have advertisements and were designed to promote our client, help them stay top-of-mind, build and strengthen relationships with their prospects and clients and not force them to do any of the work. Unless they wanted to do some customization themselves.

We created a variety of magazines to appeal to different style preferences, regions and industries. Our web application allowed our clients to build personalized cover pages to represent themselves and their local business.With high quality, full-color digital printing, we printed high quality covers for each client in quantities as low as 25. We would bind that cover to the bodies of the magazine(s) they selected and mail them directly to their clients and prospects.

The results? Over a 90% renewal rate, one of the fastest growing marketing firms from 2000 – 2008 and 1000’s and 1000’s of satisfied clients. It was marketing automation with a printed product before marketing automation was a digital term.

Here are a few that we created and used to serve over 25,000 clients in the US and Canada. Our clients were all local professional service providers including real estate professionals, loan officers, insurance agents, doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, local retailers and even some quick-service food franchise locations.

Your Home & Lifestyle magazine. A 24-page home improvement and do-it-yourself publication. We produced a new issue every month.

Life By Design magazine. This magazine was created through client demand. It was a more masculine-oriented magazine. We had prospects, generally men, who did not find an affinity to our decor and food magazines. They wanted something that they felt as more suitable to represent them and their brand. It was a 24-page travel, technology and business publication.

Swirl & Sip magazine. This was a 24-page publication on wine and food. It was designed for a wine enthusiast who was not an expert but willing to learn. This publication was adopted by some wine makers and wine clubs but was mostly used by attorneys, CPA’s and other business-related service providers. I sold By Design Publishing in 2007.

During these years I learned a ton on best marketing practices for local professional service providers. We learned as we listened to our clients about what was working best and worst. We learned by creating new programs and implementing for our clients. Some went really well. Others, not so much! We created a variety of Drip Marketing programs that helps our clients feel that they could just cross “Marketing” off their To-Do lists because our program was working for them every week.

We launched a By Design TV solution where our clients could have their own online TV channel that featured videos from all the great content inside their magazines. If we had smartphones with video cameras back in 2005, I am sure that we would have been a huge success with ByDesign.TV. That is a story for another day.

Why am I writing all of this on my blog? I believe we are experiencing another major shift in content marketing for professional service providers. I have been watching it. I have been experiencing it. I have been researching it. All of this has gone into my Web of Influence book.

But, what I am still realizing is that you all are experiencing it even more. You are seeing it first hand. Your pain points. Your challenges. Your goals. Your ideas. They will all make this book even more valuable for the tens of thousands of professional service providers that we hope to encourage. Will you contribute to make this book the most valuable it can be?

The survey is designed to take less than 3 minutes. If you are willing to share your experiences, thoughts and challenges, I would be very grateful. I may even send you a little gift as a thank you! Click the Survey Monkey Logo or Click Here to access the survey.