Systematize Your Marketing with Fab Giovanetti – The Reluctant Marketer Podcast #9

Fab Giovanetti is the CEO and head teacher of Alt Marketing School, supporting people making a positive impact through their marketing. Listen to her when she says: "Market to hearts, not to brains!"

Published: April 23, 2023

Matthias 0:12
Hello, this is the Reluctant Marketer Podcast. We explore marketing for people who don't want to do it, but feel they must. I'm Matthias Bohlen.

Matthias 0:34
Hello, dear listeners to the podcast! Welcome back to a new episode. Fab is today with me. I'm so excited to have you here. Welcome.

Fab Giovanetti 0:44
Oh, thank you for having me.

Matthias 0:46
Thank you for coming. Thank you.

Matthias 0:48
So, let's start with a little introduction so that our listeners can, can get to know you, can know what you do, first.

Fab Giovanetti 0:57
Amazing, thank you so much for having me on, Matthias, my name is Fab, like the ice cream, if anybody remembers the FAB, ... alright, it's a good one, it gets people to remember, or Fabiana if you want to try a bit of Italian, I am Italian by origin.

Matthias 1:17
Perfetto! Possiamo parlare Italiano, eh? No... 😄

Fab Giovanetti 1:21
Not everybody is not Italian can just get Google Translate in 321. Just in case... I lived in the UK for the last almost 14 years. And I came here studying, studying languages. And then I progressed into different things.

Fab Giovanetti 1:41
And I kind of stumbled upon or fell on to marketing role way back when we go back 13 years now. So it's been quite a while. And I love the job I love I was really excited to be able to kind of stumble into this career and learn from it.

Fab Giovanetti 1:55
And then as I progressed, I change obviously path, I became an entrepreneur. So I was working for myself, it's now been nine years, I've been doing this for a very long time. And I started supporting people with coaching and consulting. And now at this moment, what I do, I've combined the marketing knowledge with my passion, which is helping people make a positive impact and trying to make a difference in the world.

Fab Giovanetti 2:19
And so I started a school a couple of years ago, because Matthias I was bored, apparently, and I thought it would be a great thing to do. chilled. And but despite being a lot of hard work is my passion. I love it. And I just love connecting with students and with people. And so if I can help you make your marketing more fun and easy to approach today, then pretty much my job is done.

Make marketing less pushy but more human

Matthias 2:41
That's so cool. I saw this on your homepage already this "making marketing more human". I really liked that. What's the idea behind that making it more human?.

Fab Giovanetti 2:53
I think it's coming from listening to our audience, which is something that I'm sure you talk a lot about as well. And we all talk about the understanding what our audience thinks about and even maybe some of the things that they struggle with.

Fab Giovanetti 3:05
And one of the biggest misconception that we have about marketing as professionals or entrepreneurs, or new marketeers even is that marketing has to feel like you're pushing yourself onto somebody or, you know, I know you talked about being the reluctant marketing side of it. And so when we bring back to what marketing should be, which is it should really be about building a relationship and allowing people to choose directing people.

Fab Giovanetti 3:31
So not even persuasion, directing people towards the right solution for the problems, which hopefully, if you've done your work and your homework is you, then it shouldn't be a relationship between humans. And whether it's to humans, whether it's multiple humans. And when you look at it that way, one of the biggest, there's two big problems our students have, marketing is boring. And marketing feels sleazy.

Fab Giovanetti 3:53
So we decided to put it into our messaging or your resume, and I'm probably sure that yeah, as well, you know, we really wanted to work on that and creating frameworks that will help eradicate that thinking, because that's if that's the mindset, you're never going to be able to feel confident when you're marketing because it's always going to feel off to you.

Matthias 4:11
Yeah, exactly. I can so much relate to this because for me as a rather modest, non-bragging person, marketing always felt like bragging, right, like pounding the drum, tooting the horn, etc. all these metaphors, that it's about "making noise", right?

Matthias 4:27
And I like it very much when you say it's a relationship between two or more people. And you're directing not persuading. I really like that. Yeah, it's a good, good viewpoint on to marketing. I'd love that.

Fab Giovanetti 4:41
To be honest, I think I learned that mainly from hearing some of the ways people perceived what marketing was especially when the end today whether it's because the word marketing their services, and because they wanted to end in the industry, and they were like a kind of like the ideal being on social media. But I like the fact that I have to sell things And I was like, Well, if you're a marketer, you kind of have to grow your company or the company that you're working for. So at some point, you have to talk about what you offer. That's the idea. And so when you reframe that, that can help you putting yourself as you say, it's not about making noise. It's not about bragging, it's about providing some value, which I know everybody's like, five, I know that. But it's also about letting people know who you are, whether it's a brand or whether it is an individual will makes you unique, so that you can attract your people. Because let's be honest, Matthias, nobody wants to work with somebody that they cannot connect with, because it will make relationship really hard for both of you, right? You want to work with your people, I want to work with my people. And the people that love me, that love me, tolerate me dancing in the middle of the lesson, because they're really excited. These are the people that I want to attract. So want to make sure that they know that that's that's what we bring to the table, and then they can make their own decision.

Matthias 5:51
That's interesting. I love that it's a good it is kind of liberating, right? It's removing the burden from marketing.

Matthias 5:59
I never found marketing really boring. But I always found it stressful. Like, I love to build stuff. I love to build software, for example, I'm a software engineer, and also a solopreneur. And if you're a solopreneur, then you have to do your own marketing. There's no no other person doing that for you. And after a while I encountered somebody, I don't remember who it was, who said, If you don't share what you have to share with, with the world, the things you are offering, then nobody will know. And you won't have any business. I said da that's obvious. But it somehow stuck, right? Because yeah, if you don't, if you don't market, if you don't do anything, nobody will know about the stuff. So it's pretty obvious that you have to do marketing. Let's try to get a little bit further into it. What kind of students are coming to you? And what are they seeking to learn in Alt Marketing School?

What do marketing students want to learn?

Fab Giovanetti 6:58
I love it. That's an excellent question. So some of the things that we sometimes think about, and this is something that I want to be applicable to anybody listening is that our students think the one they want to know is a very specific goal. For example, very obvious one, I want to grow my Instagram account, I want to grow my Twitter following I want to get you know, which is fair enough. And that's the first bit of conversation what the good thing is that a lot of the people that were tracked are also very interesting in the human piece on that value driven, purpose driven. But when I talk about their goals, that's the first thing that comes and then what they realize that they need, as we're progressing through any of the courses and training that we do is that actually what they love, and what they need is the foundations, and the frameworks that can help them Yes, achieve that specific goal, but maybe even learn how to set better goals, or even how to set up systems and ways for them to make their marketing and get less stressful, less overwhelming, and more natural to them. So is we always feel like we're kind of going for specific trends or tactics or buzzwords, which is great. You want to grow your LinkedIn. Cool. I love that. But bringing back to the fundamentals of marketing, which are so much rooted in psychology, that's what excites the students. So it's almost like having the conversation or be like, I know, that's what you think you need, and it's gray. But what about getting Giving you the confidence to now and the clarity to know that regardless of what your goals are, you can show up with confidence and you know exactly what to do next. And this comes from great foundation. And that's the beauty of real marketing is not just about social media, it's not just about email marketing is about what they come work, where do they come from, you know, and that's kind of what we love to teach them, as well as obviously all the cool things that gets us all sparkly eyes and things like that.

Matthias 8:50
That's cool. That's cool. So it's not about views. It's not about impressions, on some ads. It's not about email, subscriber list size, and so on all these things, but it's more about how do people behave? Right? How do they perceive your brand? How do you make them want your brand? So yeah, it's really deeply rooted in psychology. You were talking about systems of marketing, systems for marketing? What do you mean by that? What could be some examples?

What is a marketing system?

Fab Giovanetti 9:22
When it comes to systems are so many ways that we can look at them? The way that I like to start, especially when people feel overwhelmed, is kind of understanding what are the repeatable activities that you do within your marketing. And the reason why I like to look at it that way is because it allows you first to reflect about what does marketing mean to you? And what does it look like for you? Because the beauty especially if you're a small business, especially if you're a solopreneur or again, if you work with multiple clients, even you have the choice to decide or to direct yourself and the team or the people that work with you to the channels that you want to tap into. Obviously, there's lots of decisions you have to make to choose your channel, but also some of it is like you enjoy being on the channel, you enjoying creating content for whatever that might be. Yeah. So this is kind of where you understand that systems will be different depending on which channels you focus on. And it might be that they change because if you're looking at email marketing, your systems might be different than if you are very active on social media. But it cannot create a system, sorry, create a system ..., you cannot create templates, and it creates processes, that's the word I was looking for, that you can use for any area of your marketing. Now you can tailor to that area, and then you can go back to again and again. And as things evolve, it doesn't matter if there's a new trend, if there's a new format, that is a new feature, there are some things you can get back to that you can come and make your life easier. So they're all about the processes that we do, which the funny thing is like, I don't know, if you have it as well, you're, you're a developer, you're an engineer. So that's kind of I'm a Virgo, ya know, that is similar, but it means that I like systems. So as a Virgo, I get excited about mapping out what I'm doing. Most of our students dread it, that's why we do it together. Because we make it fun. You know, and that's the thing we actually already have. We already have systems in place.

Matthias 11:11
So people don't like mapping out their systems becoming aware of them. And yeah, thinking about them.

Fab Giovanetti 11:18
It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work unless again, you do enjoy it, I like to geek out about a lot to simplify them to streamline them. For many of us, you know, especially creative people, our idea people and potentially a lot of people listening are like I have ideas, I want to do things I want to try things. So we want to act, and we want to do and that reflection piece can feel like it's stopping you is slowing you down. So that's not like you don't want to set up systems because you hate them. Most of us don't even know that we already have processes, we just have to you know, break them down to repeat them again and again and again. And that's why is a lot of it is mindset more than anything else and allowing that slowing down to reflect on what are the things that are keep on doing how can I do them better, that's literally how it starts.

Matthias 12:03
That's so amazing. It reminds me of when I do my YouTube videos recently, I published them every week. And there is a kind of repeating system behind it right you you said that systems have to do with a repeatable things in your marketing. For example, on YouTube, I always have to, I have to write a script, then I have to record the aerial on camera, then I have to search for some B roll video, some nice stock footage, for example, from the beach of fishing, to illustrate concepts that I mean, for example, recently in the video, I used the concept of running and encountering "runner's high", this emotional state that you have after some running. And I compare it to marketing, when you do marketing at the beginning, it's really exhausting, and you're stressful, and so on. And after a while, if you get used to it, it's it can even be fun. So I used the runners metaphors to, to search for some video on running. And I had to look for music for special effects for text and so on to put all this into my video. And all these editing systems I have, how many sections does my video have? How many takes do I make on camera? And so on all these things? Yeah, that's reminds me this must be a system.

How to make a first marketing system

Fab Giovanetti 13:26
Can ask you questions, Matthias, can I put you on the spotlight?

Matthias 13:29
Yeah, why not?

Fab Giovanetti 13:31
Amazing. This is a simple question. Actually. I'm making them bigger than it is. But do you have that some of the first question before that is: Do you have a todo list, or a list that kind of like a checklist for the things you do during the day of the week?

Matthias 13:46
Not not too often. For some things I have that. For example, whenever I want to publish a newsletter, I have a checklist what I have to do in that case. But for example, I really should do something for those YouTube videos, because it's always the same, I should have a checklist.

Fab Giovanetti 14:03
That's what I was going to ask you. So thank you for answering because that's where I find is so fascinating. Now that you know, and I want anybody who's listening to the same exercise: Think about one thing that you're doing, which you think is a task, but it's actually a project from the sound of materials is a list of some tasks or tasks that you have to do is literally a project. So think about that as a mini project that you repeat every single week. Yeah, and think about doing it now maybe without a list or a full breakdown. And then what I want you to do the listener, it's write down the full checklist of that project. And what it does, it completely shifts your perception of actually how involved it is and how much effort it takes is not a negative thing necessarily. It just allows you to be like this is actually a big thing. What can I do to make it better? And also, how can I give myself enough time to do it in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm rushed or overwhelmed, but until we break things down, and we simplify them When we see them, for most people, it's just a task. And I'm not, that's not a task. Man, that's not a task is a collection of lots of things that you do. So, you know, marketing is a collection of lots of projects that we repeat, again and again and again. And we tweak again and again and again. And so if you don't have a place that as got the systems written down to start with, is really hard for you to make it better. So maybe my writing and dama tears, you realize that you can systematize better we even categorize better your current bureaus and stock videos, so that it becomes faster for you to find them in the future. You know, things like this can really snowball, maybe you have a notion list of all the different after effects that you use, and for what so you can quickly click and refer to them. Little things like this can be built, but not until you have the awareness of where your time is going, especially when it comes to marketing.

Matthias 15:49
Yeah. And you also you don't have clarity about it. For example, if when I write down all those tons of things I have to do for creating a YouTube video. There are tiny little things like, for example, on the left side behind me, there's a lamp shining on me, because it makes me stand out from the background. If I forget that lamp, yeah, okay. It's not a tragedy. Okay, I can live without that shining light, right? But yeah, the video is somehow better if I don't forget the lamp. So yeah, things, little things appearing on those checklists really necessary. So yeah, we have these systems, what I sometimes do is I think about what do I need as an input for my systems that comes from software engineering, right? It's software's input processing output. So I always think about what inputs do I need? What materials do I need? What tools do I need? And so on? So could this be added to a marketing system? Could you write that down? Is it... Does it make sense to write that down?

Use Tiago Forte's PARA method to help with systems design

Fab Giovanetti 17:00
Yes, yes. 1,000%. What I love to refer to when it comes to systems is the PARA method, which is P-A-R-A, from Tiago Forte's "Building a second brain" book, it has worked so well. And actually, that's what we talked about in our lesson where we're less than about marketing systems and our certification, which is a first the most dreaded when we get in, and people are like, Oh, my God is so much. And then afterwards, I still get students telling me after months be like, I'm so happy, I stuck around. And I did the work for that class, because it saved me so much time. And use that power system and the power system. It has projects, areas, resources, and archives, again, get the angles book, if you want to check it out, because it's great. And I really love the idea of having like tools and resources really handy for you to kind of get back to. And that almost becomes that talking about software, that database does different databases that you can pull from. And it's not just the tools that you use, let's say to edit the video, it could be as we talked about the barrels, or some of the music that you use a specific time during a video. So it can be a lot of different things, I find that that's also when breaking down kind of what things look like, can be beneficial for you if you're always going to do things by yourself. But either if you have a team, or you ever want to outsource some of your marketing to somebody else, because you actually want to focus on your zone of genius, which might not be fully marketing, which is fine. It's so much easier to outsource when you have these tools and these resources and also kind of these simple instructions broken down. And so many people look at me, and they're like, why do I need instructions for I'm gonna do it all myself. And I always say at some point, hopefully going to evolve. You know, in your journey, hopefully, you're going to evolve, you can let go some of the smaller tasks. But unless you fully automate them, which is an option, if you're going to even outsource it to somebody else to lighten the load, you're going to save so much time, oh my god. I've done this for nine years, so much time working with other people when you have those instructions and those references in place. So it helps you. But it's also going to help you as you grow, which is my hope for you as well.

Matthias 19:05
Yeah, that's right. But not It's not only about outsourcing, I think it's about different persons in the same human being. For example, when I write down, when I'm planning new content, let's say for the next quarter or so, I'm a different person than the person who's exactly executing on that plan, right? So planning and execution are two different states of mind. So I have I almost have to write down my systems so that the other person that I am in that moment, still understands them. For example, when I wrote my content plan last week for the next three months or so. I made sure that every line in the database had some notes like what is the idea behind the article? What's the main topic what's the five most important points for that? that topic and what's the call to action at the end? So, in two months, for example, I will have forgotten all of this, right? Totally. And so then I'm a different human being, like almost, who needs to learn from the content plan. It's so amazing, I encounter that every time.

Helping your future self by writing it down

Fab Giovanetti 20:19
Actually, I love that. And that's a great point, thank you so much for sharing. So I'm gonna do a little swing in my chair, which, if you're listening, you can see that you can feel the swing. Yeah, she swims back. Now she is. And I'm gonna, I always bring the book up. Because I mean, there's my book, and I'm proud of it's called reclaim your time off. So I do like talking about this. And so I'm also a writer, that was my dream. That's what I was. And, you know, I've got a couple of published books now. So yeah, officially, but as a writer, I agree with you so much, especially as writing because, again, I'm a, I create content. And I always have, because I've always been a writer first, that was one of my dreams. And even as a writer, I had to remind myself and our writer again, last week, that you have to wear different hats when you are creating content or creating drafts. And you have to be in a completely different mindset when you're proofreading or editing your content. Because they're very, two very different tone of voices. And also, again, this is where your writing may actually not reflect your personality, if you're self editing, as you're writing. So if you're writing more freely, or even recording content more freely, you actually get your personality across. But trust me, somebody who's been writing for a very long time, if you are constantly self editing as you're doing it, because it's more efficient, and then it's quicker for you to publish, you're actually going to lose a lot of that magic that comes from your tone of voice, which is so important in marketing as well. So I love that. And I agree with you, I think it works really well with systems. And it works really well with marketing in general and content in general, where the different hats separate them, because then you're going to use different sides of your brain in a much more effective way. And you're not gonna miss any of that magic that comes from your unique storytelling self.

Matthias 22:00
Yeah, that's, that's totally true. When I'm in planning mode, I'm "a different Matthias" than in writing mode and in editing mode, and yeah, it's so different. Yeah, exactly. So what do you think were the most important systems that someone who, let's say, wants to become serious about marketing? Right? So this stage where somebody has seen Yeah, if I don't market I don't sell. So I need to do it, I bite the bullet, right? So what do you think would be the most important one or two or three systems that such a person should put in place?

Fab Giovanetti 22:37
See, part of the over-delivering me wants to give you two or three systems, but then found the teacher is like, no, no, no, I'm gonna give you one. Why, Okay, listen to me Matthias, because I will really like you to try and set up your own version of this one. So that's one. But if you do it, you do it right, and you get it done properly, there will be plenty. Because honestly, there can be lots and the good thing is that a lot of the systems that I even talk about in the courses and in the training can be used for different channels, as I said before, in different platforms, but the one that I think it's so important to have, especially if you want to treat your marketing seriously, and you want to use it for very clear goals, like selling a product, or building advocacy or loyalty with your customers, you know, very goal driven.

Build a marketing experiment dashboard

Fab Giovanetti 23:22

One of my favorite ones, which is a bit more understated, maybe, is a marketing experiment, dashboard, or page or whatever you want to call it, I'm gonna call it dashboard, because they're fancy. The reason why I like to have a place for me to run my experiment as a marketer, because I believe the marketers should be scientists and should be investigators, Curiosity is a huge skill of marketers, the people that took around. So when you are when you actually get better on your marketing, when you try things, and also you often fail spectacular at them, and you learn from them, and you do it better next time. So if you don't have a system to track that, it's really hard for you to know what works and what doesn't, is really hard for you to again, that reflection piece coming back, reflect on what you need to make better. And it's also really hard for you to action, all of those experiments or ideas. So the beauty of over that one systems you already cheating on myself, I'm gonna give you two things in there is that first of all you will write, first of all, you want to have almost two pieces in them, you want to have a place or let's say like a page or a sheet, where you can collect ideas, that could be great experiments for you to run. And then obviously, you're going to have the one place or the one if you're using notion, I will do it as at one database, I will just make it fancy, where you would then have another place within that database where you can actually run the experiments and reflect on them. So it kind of works in two ways. But instead of being just a place where you collect all the inspiration on the world, I like to actually categorize my inspiration, is it for content is it for other things? So we'll just have one happy place where I can write all the core ideas and tactics and life strategies that I see then going back to our hats, one day that I have a hat to that is less about excited fab hat and let it mature, like a gorgeous, gorgeous piece of cheese, Italian coming out. And then I choose some of them, I look at them. And it might be that you look at that strategy that you thought will be a great experiment for you to run with your community, let's say, last month, and you look at in your life, now, it might be they still feel like actually, this was great, I really want to try it. And so having a place for you to write down, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna give it a month or two months, or whatever it is. And this is what I would like to see, it helps you become a better marketer, because it teaches you how to look at what works and what doesn't, in a more objective way, and also how to celebrate some of the things that you do and repeat them if they work, you know. So that will be a two in one, you know, there's an element of collecting the data and collected the ideas, specifically for running experiments. So trying new types of campaigns or strategy for a specific goal. And then also having a place for you to then kind of write down what's what's happening. And within that, one more thing, I put actually in my to do list, I guess, and reminders, I put every single week to check the progress of my roadmap and my experiments. So I kind of look at what's happening and what I'm happy with and what I'm not happy with. So I put in my diary so that I know it's happening. And it's been one of the things that has transformed the business, because it's been so much easier for me to stop doing something that wasn't working, because it wasn't just working instead of me head-butting, you know, after three or four months. Well, I need to do with this. You don't

Matthias 26:33
once more and trying once more. Yeah, right.

Fab Giovanetti 26:36
You know, it's fun to find balance. That will be it.

Matthias 26:41
Ah, interesting. So to summarize this, let me try to find out my own words for this: There's one part of this marketing dashboard or experiment dashboard that says, Okay, what did I plan? What would be the ideas that I should run an experiment on? And the other part would be tracking the success or failure of those ideas, of the experiments, how did they work? Did they have an impact? Did they have no impact, did they have a negative impact, and so on. So yeah, I can understand that. Because otherwise, you simply start the next experiment without evaluating the previous one. And it's, yeah, you don't learn. I think that's the main problem you don't learn then yeah.

Fab Giovanetti 27:25
There's also something to be said, Actually, that's a great summary. On that note, sometimes we also be like, This worked one's high five to me, let's jump into the next thing that this said person that I look up to did, which is amazing, and they shared, and they were like, try it yourself, and I want to try it. And it's fine. But also like, if something works really well, you can repeat it at some point, maybe it's going to stop working, which is fine. But I think that's the other thing, don't be afraid to redo a type of event that brought lots of leading your business, or to retry a type of format to that people really resonating with. And I think it's harder for you to do, it's easier for you to do it when you can actually see. And you can get back to it instead of jumping to the next thing without really thinking about all the other things that you already know that your audience loves, you know, and it can be a bit of a shiny object syndrome. So that kind of helps you fight that a bit more. Yeah,

When marketing experiments fail, how do you find out the root cause?

Matthias 28:13
Exactly. Exactly. Shiny Object Syndrome is all the way present for me every time. It's so crazy. That brings me to one question that I always have about marketing and in. In software engineering, for example, when I write software that has a very clear cause and effect relationship, if something doesn't work, it's my fault. I simply have to investigate, find out what's going on that fix it, and then it works. In marketing. I think it's not so clear to me. Was it a good headline that overrode or what why did people not open those emails? Or why was this tweet that I sent out? Why would is so successful or such a failure? Tracking back to the root? Cause is very difficult in marketing? Because it doesn't depend only on me and the machine. But it depends on the other people, right? And people are kind of unpredictable, no less predictable than machines. What would you say? Do you have any, any mechanisms and a good, good practice for tracking back to the root cause, like why something was successful or not?

Fab Giovanetti 29:26
There's a couple of things. Excellent question. The first one is: understand the variables I mean, tokens Software, Software speech, or more like technical speech, look at the variables as well, because for me, a tweet being very successful versus not being successful can be as much about the people consuming the content as the algorithm also potentially boosting it because of a specific format. Let's say that the Twitter is pushing at the moment, as we like to take into Instagram which is and under platform that is heavily algorithm based at this time or even Tik Tok. Those are also great examples like some of the content will be pushed beyond belief even If the content is not necessarily the best, just because the right audio, the right format and the right time. So that's the thing, understand your variables, because it's not always a case of your audience. And so that's why another thing within that, which probably isn't less about like a proven thing, but it's another way of reflecting on this is ask yourself going back to, let's say the headlines, for example, ask yourself, is it? What is the headline, lack of success? Let's say, is this due to a specific symptom or a root cause? Let me explain. For example, you think that your headline is not performing well, because you're very low open rate on that email. But then the problem is, if you don't actually track your average open rate of your emails, then you think that that's the norm. But maybe, if you aren't tracking, you figure out that actually, all of your emails are very low open rate, because you have a lot of I'm gonna say some big words now, but you have a lot of core subscribers that are completely unengaged. And so you actually need to clean up your email list. And that's another problem. A lot of people are like, Oh, my content doesn't resonate. And that can be for example, and that can be one thing. But then sometimes you are mistaking the symptom for the root cause is actually the problem is not that is actually that you need to refresh, you need to clean up your audience, you need to refresh other things, you need to improve deliverability. So I always say there's two things already mentioned. So literally understand the variable, the first thing that could potentially affect the success, and choose whether you're happy to go against an algorithm or things like that. Secondly, understand the symptom versus the root cause. So, you know, that's why I like to track growth or track stats, which again, analytics person marketer, so I like to see the data because it helps me understand if it's an anomaly or if it's just how things are. And thirdly, to help out a bit more, because these are very big things to do. But on a smaller level, is also human behavior is not that unpredictable. If you look at the reason why we do things. So if you look at psychology, actually, there are specific reasons why we tend to, you know, we tend to respond well to urgency or scarcity. Now, your choice is how you're going to do in a way that in my opinion, should be ethical and should be, you know, it should be done in a way that is easy. Efficient, right? Yeah. You know what I mean? But there are things like so yes, in some respects, you know, humans have predictable, but when it comes to going back to the psychology, how we think we're a lot more predictable than what we think we are. It's just going back to that instead of looking at just trends and what's what's what's helping right now is actually understanding Okay, well, what does your audience feel as a pain? What will be one of their gains, these things, the beliefs, the pains, the gains of your audience? These are very much rooted into behavior. It's just about Mattia says to kicker, understanding what these are, you know, one more thing. One more thing is that the people are unlikely to tell you, if you ask them, the reason why they don't want to do something, or to do something, or they commit to something. So for example, for me, I learned more about what my students want, or how to get more students into the school, by our live sessions, when our students are already paid, and they're committed, and I will normally chat within that, you know, then I will do when I'm doing a survey or when I'm asking them directly, when I'm listening to what you're saying, Yeah, you know what I mean? We

Matthias 33:30
kind of natural versus artificial situation, right? When you run a survey, it's more like a lab situation.

Fab Giovanetti 33:39
You know, I mean, and that's, you know, you do what you can, obviously, but just to explain this, the fourth thing is not just psychology, it's also going back to some of these things that your audience really wants or really doesn't want. There are very, like deeper than just the surface, when you get to those, it's very likely that if you tap into those, your content, your emails and stuff, they were really speak to them, they were really kind of jumped out in them, then we'll get them to open or to engage. So there's a lot of things that are given this. But all of these can be valuable. It's just kind of to understand that is that's the problem of marketing is more complex than we think. And this is why I like to start simple, but just kind of like stepping back and kind of starting with the foundations because that really in that relationship first really helps with that.

The importance of starting out simple

Matthias 34:22
Exactly. That's that's a really important thing that you say that because otherwise, people become overwhelmed. They say, Oh, at least 10 or 20 things I have to look at now. And I always say no, just keep it simple. Keep it slow. By the way: "slower". For example, I got feedback on my YouTube videos that I'm talking too slow. Because on YouTube, it's the fashion to talk very fast. There's even software that people that will YouTubers use to remove all the pauses in speaking so yada yada yada. That's the style of a typical YouTube video and I don't Unlike that, I hate that. I got two different feedbacks. One is from people who like who also like that and say, Yeah, finally, someone who makes a pause at the end of the sentence. The other people who say, no, please talk, I always want your videos on 1.25 or 1.5 the speed? So, so crazy.

Fab Giovanetti 35:21
That's what it's there for! If they prefer it that way, you know, just get the speed up, I generally find that, you know, we're gonna make everybody happy light. And that's the other thing. You know what I mean? So I think you just, you know, you're doing you and knowing that some of the people that kind of consume the content actually like it this way, because that's how you like, or you like to consume it yourself. I think we need to give ourselves a bit more credit to actually do that. And also create stuff in a way that we enjoy, obviously, feed the algorithm feed what people are looking for, because that's what is there. But also, you do you boo, God, damn, I want to use gifts. I'm gonna say use the gifts even if I'm 13 apparently is a very cool thing to do. I don't care. I don't care. I'll still use gifts.

Matthias 36:07
Okay.

Fab Giovanetti 36:10
Just put it out there.

Matthias 36:13
And it's so much fun to have this conversation with you. I enjoy that. Okay, so yeah, marketing systems, human, human aspects of marketing, psychology, keeping it simple. Yeah. All very important things here. How do you measure? Or if you measure it at all? How do you recognize progress with your students? What would you say would be a good thing or a good effect that one of your students is accomplishing?

Fab Giovanetti 36:46
You mean as in just to kind of explain you mean, throughout the courses? And like seeing that the course is working for them? You mean with their marketing specifically? Just to understand

In your marketing school, how do recognize success in your students?

Matthias 36:54
Well... yeah, both. First, they have to grip what is in the course. And then they have to translate that into action. So how do you recognize somebody's really making progress?

Fab Giovanetti 37:07
Thanks for your question. So we like to give tangible things. So whether you're doing if you're doing a self paced Lab, which are shorter courses that are part of our library, then with that you have smaller projects, so I always have a project. So smaller projects are for shorter courses and libraries, they're very kind of specific to the topic. So they tend to be usually one thing, I always have a bit of a workbook, but that project is really where allows me to see kind of how they felt about and what the graphs about the topic, like our brand archetype lab, they actually create a one-pager with an archetype and all of their brand perception. So that again, kind of tells me, first of all, is good, because I can give them feedback, too. And then you magnify it with our live training and cohorts. And regardless of which cohort you do, you will have done obviously, bigger projects. So for our eight-week certification, it's the mark, they have a marketing plan, they presented the end of the cohort, which is going to be a time of recording this week. So it's graduation week. So excited. I know. That's why this Monday, I was saying before we went on here, this Monday feels like a Monday, I'm excited and blessed. And on top of that marketing plan for the eight weeks, they also built up to at the very minimum we built, we build five systems together at the very minimum. So I'm talking about a map of their systems, and then content systems, and then their brand manifesto. And then we look at OKRs and goals. So we do a lot of things. And then we have smaller kind of reflection points, but we also build some systems together. And on top of that, for that specific certification well marketing plan, so that helps us see the progress, what they learned what they applied. And the beauty of it is afterwards, whether they use it for portfolio if their market is looking for a new career path. If they're business owners, they can use it for their own brand. And if they're consultants, for example, they use it for clients. So it's great because they actually have something tangible they can go and use afterwards. To me the best proof though, is after months, kind of then coming back to us and being like, I'm still using our system, or you know, I'm still doing this thing. Like yeah, you know, it means that now they can feel a lot less stressed and a lot less overwhelmed about one specific thing that makes me really happy.

Matthias 39:18
That's that's a good thing to hear. If somebody comes around and says, "Yeah, I was successful. I'm still using it. I'm still doing it". Yeah, that's, that's a really good thing to hear.

Wrapping it up, and where to learn more...

Matthias 39:30
Now I run out of questions. So from my point of view, it would be time to close but if you want to go on a pleasure, Yeah, always.

Fab Giovanetti 39:43
I would say you know, I would say I think more than anything, I gave a lot of things to do. And I've tried to restrain myself because that's my problem. But I just want to reiterate a few things on the notes that I talked about. Find the one system again, I told you about experiments because I think it's maybe not like you know on calendar is something a bit different. So find one system, one project that you think you can really break down, that will be my thing, if you want to let the teacher make comes out needs to give homework to poor listeners or like why? Sorry, I apologize. No, I don't find that projects with a system that you want to maybe work on based on when we talked about. And I would genuinely say, track numbers and track your growth in a way that it's simple. And maybe again, it can be a follow-up episode about tracking and stuff, because that's a whole conversation in itself. But that will help you if anything, started feeling a bit more confident about, you know, we talked about how do you measure whether things are working or not, and what's successful. So stop just tracking, choose for your favorite channels and platform, choose even just two things that you can track, make sure it's not just followers, please, two things you can track just to start out and just to kind of feel a bit more in control, you can't grow you cannot track is as simple as that. So I would say these are the two things get more familiar with breaking down a project for yourself or a system that makes you feel more in control. And then start looking at where your efforts are going a bit more, these two things combined can really, really help you even just getting started with sending better systems feeling more aligned. And obviously, again, then you can do the small things to build that direction to look into those pains and gains and to build that relationship with your audience as well as a layer on top of it.

Matthias 41:26
Excellent. That's a fantastic summary. So yeah, our listeners have some homework now! No, that's really good, because you should have something if he listens for so long to such a podcast. So I want my listeners to be content with the with what they hear. Right. So yeah, they have something to do now. Fantastic. Fab. Thanks for being here today. I enjoyed it. I love to chat with you. And yeah, I wish you very much successful marketing school and everything you do.

Fab Giovanetti 41:57
Thank you so much. And thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions, you can find me @fabgiovanetti – that's long. So "fabgiovannetti" on any social, if you have any follow up questions or things I talked about that you want to get more clarity on, just shoot me a DM or comment in that.

Matthias 42:14
Cool. I have to put that into the description of the podcast or of the YouTube video so everyone gets your social handle to contact you afterwards. Thank you for being here. Bye bye. See you next time!