089 | The Psychology Tools Missing From Your Marketing with Rai Cornell

Patrick: [00:00:00] Have you ever felt like your marketing just isn’t working? Like you’re pouring money into ads boosting posts, or trying every trendy tactic out there, but nothing’s clicking the way you hoped? Maybe you’re starting to wonder if the problem isn’t your strategy, but your approach, what if the secret to creating marketing that truly connects and converts lies not in the newest platform or funnel hack, but in understanding how your customer thinks.
Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan, and today’s conversation is going to be a complete shift on the way you think about marketing. I sat down with Ray Cornell, a seasoned marketing consultant with over 18 years of experience, and a fascinating background as a correctional psychologist and abuse counselor.
She brings a psychology first approach. To content marketing, and in this episode, she reveals why understanding human behavior is the missing link for most [00:01:00] entrepreneurs trying to scale their businesses. We dig deep into what’s actually broken about traditional marketing, how to stop shouting into the void with call to action overload, and instead start building a trust driven content strategy that guides people through a buying journey without ever needing a hard sell.
Ray walks us through her elite method, a step-by-step system rooted in real psychology and backed by data. That can transform how your audience experiences your brand from the first touch point all the way to long-term retention. If you’ve ever wondered how to make your content stand out in a crowded market, how to communicate your value without sounding desperate, or how to build a marketing system that generates pre-sold, ready to buy leads.
This episode is for you. Gray shares, actionable insights and powerful tools that will help you elevate your strategy, strengthen your brand, and finally see your marketing start working with you, not against you. And if you’re ready to start applying smarter strategy to more than just your marketing, I’ve got something else for [00:02:00] you.
Head over to vital strategies.com for its slash tax. To start building out your personalized tax strategy. We’ve put together powerful tools and guidance that can help you save more, grow faster, and keep more of what you earn. Because real wealth isn’t just about revenue, it’s about what you keep. This episode is packed with gold from start to finish, so stay with us.
Take notes, and let’s build marketing that actually works. Ray, thank you so much for joining me here today. I’m excited about this conversation. We’re gonna dig into really, uh, marketing, but doing that and looking at it from a psychology strategist point of view and, uh, your background lends itself well to that.
We’ll get into that in, in a minute, but, uh. Uh, really just excited about the expertise you bring in content marketing and consulting for B2B businesses that are really looking to, to grow and scale their business without throwing more dollars down what can feel like a black hole when it comes to ads.
So thank you so much for, for joining [00:03:00] us here.
Rai: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
Patrick: Yeah. So when I think about the things that the entrepreneur is looking at and, and worried about, they’re like, man, marketing feels. Disjointed. I’m like spending money over here. I feel a little salesy. You know, I, I’ve got all of these things going on and I’m not even sure what drives buying decisions and, uh, my conversion rates are low funnels.
You know, what, how, you know, do they even work? Where are the leads coming from? And then they’re just tired of pouring money into marketing that, that doesn’t work. Mm-hmm. Remember my first marketing that I ever did 20 years ago. I put this ad in this like. Handout thing, and I thought it was gonna be great and, uh, produced x absolutely nothing for me.
I’m like, oh man, this is frustrating. And so they can feel uncertain and overwhelmed. Even embarrassed, right? Like, I remember spending the money on this thing, like being excited about it, and it, it produced nothing. And you know, it, that marketing doesn’t reflect the brilliance of their business. You know, they could be providing a ton [00:04:00] of value.
And if you’re not communicating that message well, it’s a, it’s a problem. And then I think the, the last problem is just thinking about. You know, marketing should reflect the intelligence of the buyer, uh, yes. And reflect the integrity of the brand. And, um, you know, the buyer deserves better, right? They deserve marketing.
That, that builds a relationship, not just like, you know, a a dollar sign running through the pipeline. So, um, thank you so much for, for joining us here today. This is going to be good.
Rai: Yeah. This is what I. Sleep, breathe. I absolutely love talking about psych marketing. So yeah, I’m ready to
Patrick: dive it. All right, very good.
So you’ve been in the marketing space for 18 plus years, but before that you were a correctional psychologist and substance abuse counselor, and you transitioned into marketing. And so, yeah. Um, do you wanna just give us a little bit of your story on, on how you made that transition and how you are utilizing these tools?
Rai: Yeah, sure. So as you said, you know, I started out as a corrections and substance abuse [00:05:00] counselor and all the while I was getting my bachelor’s degree in psychology and I got a master’s in professional clinical counseling and marriage and family therapy, and I got another master’s in criminology. And throughout school I was freelance writing on the side.
So I was doing website content, website copy, web dev, and. I just thought that was gonna be my, my little side hustle to pay my way through school and get this career jump started. Little did I know that after eight years of working in mental hospitals and community counseling centers and drug rehab facilities working with parolees and probationers, I ended up throwing myself full-time into that marketing business and really making it my.
My main purpose, my main passion, and I, I still love the psychology of understanding how people make decisions and how people design their own lives. So when I was working as a corrections counselor and a substance abuse counselor, I worked with the most difficult personalities to help them change [00:06:00] the most deeply ingrained behaviors, whether that was addiction.
Criminal behavior or personality disorders. That was my area of expertise. So I really got to understand how people’s external lives and external behaviors come to be based on the internal mechanisms that are going on inside their minds. And now I take those same models and apply them to my marketing strategies.
Patrick: I love it. I love it. And. It’s so interesting. You know, I think there’s so much that happens to us and we make so many decisions, and I don’t even know. I, I think for the most part, especially when I’m thinking about like, I think therapy and counseling is, uh, valuable. I go on a very regular basis and, uh, I, one of the things that I’m constantly working on unpacking is why I make decisions.
And there’s these things that are sort of like hanging out in the background. Yeah. Um, sort of affecting my decision making for good and bad. Right. I think there’s, and so. I, I think the, the work that you’re doing is, is [00:07:00] fantastic. Can we take a step back for a second and talk a little bit about, I’m gonna say some of the problems with traditional marketing.
Maybe unpack some of those and then we can get into the, the solution on how we resolve that.
Rai: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that, that you said that was really interesting to me earlier is you said when you first started marketing, you put out an ad. Mm-hmm. And I think one of the really big.
Things for people to understand, especially as they’re marketing for their own business, is there’s a huge difference between marketing and advertising. Advertising is all about putting out an offer, doing something to entice someone to contact you, but that’s not marketing. That’s what happens later on in the funnel.
Marketing is all about building a relationship. It’s about building that know, like, and trust factor without ever having a human to human conversation. It’s your business showing up in the places it needs to, providing information, education, [00:08:00] helpful resources, and acquiring that trust, you really have to earn it.
Mm-hmm. So marketing, I like to think of that as the relationship. Advertising is like a point of contact. Hmm.
Patrick: Yeah, I, I love that. And it’s so interesting you say this ’cause we, we took a, I’m, I’m not in my office today, we’re in Fargo, North Dakota, and it was a nine hour road trip with my daughter and it was awesome.
And, but the interesting thing I’m thinking about the marketing that you’re describing on our way here, we went out of our way to find restaurants and gas stations that we have what we feel like are a relationship with. Now. We’ve never been to these specific places, but it’s like. Hey, I know when I go to this gas station that bathrooms are gonna be clean, the service is gonna be friendly, they’re gonna have a selection of, you know, the stuff we like to eat and drink.
And so, um, that’s such an interesting observation ’cause it’s like, you know, their ads on the sign the side of the road aren’t getting me to show up. It’s the relationship I have with that, [00:09:00] that brand will say that gets me to drive five miles outta my way to just find that, um, that experience. So.
Rai: Exactly.
And depending on. How headstrong your target audience is. Mm-hmm. Sometimes advertising actually works against you. You know, my husband and I, we kind tend towards rebellious personalities. You know, we’re entrepreneurs, we like to do things on our own, and if someone cold calls us or cold emails us or puts an ad in front of us in the middle of a video we’re trying to watch, we have this weird mental note to never purchase from that company because we’re like, how dare you?
Patrick: Yeah.
Rai: Do not intrude on my quiet time, my personal life. If I want what you have to offer, I’m smart enough to go out and research and find you. But that’s the thing nowadays, especially. And, and I will also say, especially in Western culture. Mm-hmm. The buyer wants to be in control of that buying journey.
And you have to let them, and that’s one of the most [00:10:00] uncomfortable things for business owners to do, is to create a system that hands over control to the buyer. But you really. Able to do that effectively and predict what your pipeline is gonna look like when you lean into human behavior and really map your marketing strategy to what that buyer wants to experience.
So even though it is a bit of a relinquishment of control, you can still have that predictability within it.
Patrick: Yeah, I, I love that. Okay, great. So we, we’ve talked about advertising and marketing and advertising is, would you say it’s a bid for attention? Yes. Like, I’m in this, this loud world. I’m trying to like, you know, uh, get somebody to like stop what they’re doing, scrolling, you know, and it’s interesting.
I think we can look at that bid for attention. Um, when we think about advertising, could we think about all of the new opportunities, right? With social media and that type of thing. But. [00:11:00] Somebody that’s gotten my attention lately actually sent me some direct mail. I’m like, nobody’s actually doing this anymore.
You know, it’s sort of everybody’s trying to get online and get my attention and somebody, they went over the top, they sent me this enormous package. It was an envelope, but it was huge and I had to reach out to the guy ’cause I’m like, Hey, this was a fantastic, I’m not ready to buy. I’m not interested in your service, but I just wanna acknowledge like it works like you.
You got my attention on this, this one. So,
Rai: yeah. I think a lot of times what happens is when people think marketing, they think sales and, and that’s the problem is when people put the wrong things in the wrong places. So for example, I worked with A-M-S-P-M-S-S-P hybrid company for a while, so managed services and cybersecurity.
And when I first started working with them, I looked at all of their online presences, their website, their social media, all of these places where people could just go and and read about them if they looked up the company name. Everywhere you [00:12:00] looked, it was call us, book a call, book a demo.
Patrick: It
Rai: was a constant bombardment of a call to action.
There was no value they were providing. And yet when I talked to the people running the company, they had so much value to offer. They had this entire model that they were basing their business on and their customer experience on, and it was brilliant. Mm-hmm. And it was something that if they led with that.
That’s what would really attract people in while building that trust. So all we did was take their very bottom funnel messaging and put it back the bottom of the funnel where it belongs. Mm-hmm. And then we filled in the gaps of the top of funnel messaging, which was the value add that education, the information people are seeking.
And they went from getting one leads per month to 41 leads per month inbound. And that is all we changed to get those numbers.
Patrick: Yeah. So it, it. Is, is this a trust issue? Are we moving from like, I have no trust. [00:13:00] When I see your ad or your call to action, to call and schedule an appointment to, Hey, let me introduce myself, let me, let me give you some insight into maybe not even introduce myself.
Let me help you solve your problem. Right? Um, hey, you’ve got a cybersecurity issue. Here’s the top 10 things that every company needs to do. Yes. And you’re like, oh, great. Now I can’t execute on those ’cause I don’t know how to do that. But now I have somebody that I’m thinking about reaching out to because they just gave me the answer to my problem.
Right. Is, is trust, like, and yeah. I’m curious about the trust opportunity here. ’cause it seems like that’s where I’m at. You know, when I’m thinking about my road trip and stopping at those restaurants and gas stations, it was like, I trust them to deliver ’cause they’re good at delivering, uh, in my experience.
And so, um. But I think we can deliver that lots of different ways. So I’m curious your perspective on that.
Rai: Yeah, absolutely. So we live in a time and in a [00:14:00] culture where there are two things that are not scarce, but we feel like they are. And those are time and money. And especially in B2B buying decisions, companies want to trust.
They wanna have some level of, they don’t even need a guarantee, but they wanna feel. There’s a guarantee that they’re going to get their money’s worth and it’s going to help save them time and frustration.
Patrick: Yeah,
Rai: so anything that you’re doing in your marketing, it has to build that trust, and the only way to do that is to show that you’re trustworthy.
You can’t tell people, Hey, trust me. Trust me. Because when I say that, like, Hey, take my word for it. What do you think?
Patrick: No way. Yeah. Something
Rai: fishys going on. Like, why are you telling me to trust you? Mm-hmm. That’s weird. Stop it. So you have to show them that you’re trustworthy. And so what we do within our marketing strategies is there’s a point where we hone in on what it takes to build that know, like, and trust factor.
And it’s all about [00:15:00] neurotransmitters. So. There are a zillion different chemicals going on in our brains all the time, but there are three in particular that you really need to focus on for your marketing. The no factor is allowing someone to become aware of you, and you do that by delivering these quick hits of information, that satisfy parts of the brain, that activates dopamine, that makes them feel good towards you.
You’re giving them this internal satisfaction then as they move down through your funnel. They need to like you. So this is where you need to use messaging that tells them, I hear you. I see you. I feel the pain that you’re feeling. I understand you on a human to human level. This has to be very emotionally connected and, and a lot of, um.
Kind of like the intrinsic benefits that they’re gonna get from working with you. And that’s how you activate oxytocin and they form an emotional bond to your brand where they like you. And then lastly is the trust factor. And this is where you need to make [00:16:00] sure that the promise that you’re offering earlier on in the funnel is actually what’s delivered.
They need to see consistency of messaging. They need to feel like you are making promises and delivering on them, whether that’s, hey. Use this coupon code or Hey, put your email here and we’re gonna send this to you in the next hour. It can be something as simple and automated as that, but they need to build that trust factor.
And when you allow them to move faster towards achieving their goals, that’s where you release endorphins and that’s the neurotransmitter that gets them feeling like, okay, I’m safe here. Yeah, I’m accomplishing things. I’m moving in the direction that I want to, and feeling like this is good for me.
Patrick: No,
Rai: I’m ready to buy.
Patrick: I love it. Uh, I also love what you’ve done with taking the psychology and bringing it in under the science behind it, because I think about some of the things that you’ve talked about here, and, and those are things that I’m, I’ll say, working on [00:17:00] as, as tools. Like sometimes I’m, I’m so quick to wanna solve, right?
Somebody comes to me with a problem and I wanna solve it, but what I need to do is. Um, I’ll say validate what they’re feeling, right? Like, I, I slow down for a minute and I’m like, okay, I can understand why that’s a problem. You know, I don’t necessarily have to agree with it, but I can validate why they’re feeling that way.
And then I think, you know, moving on from that point and, and just thinking of all the things you just talked about, like those are so good on, um, just helping somebody walk through the, the emotional aspects because it’s like. Unfortunately, we want to take and turn this, uh, this person checking out our website into a dollar bill, right?
Like at the end of the day, that’s why we’re in business. We’re here to be profitable, make some money. Um, but I think that most of the people that have successful businesses have figured out that it’s a relationship game and we, we have to build [00:18:00] relationship. But it’s, it’s awfully hard to do through these digital things if they would just show up in our office.
Sit down with us and we could talk through their problems, it would work. But, um, our website unfortunately is the, the way that that happens. And I, I love how you’re bringing these pieces into the, to the equation. So I dunno if you have anything else to add to that. ’cause I would love to get into your, your process for how we sort of, somebody comes to you and goes, Ray, help me.
What do I do next? You know, so.
Rai: Yeah. Yeah. Anything else to add
Patrick: before we jump into the process? Are we ready for that?
Rai: Yeah. Let me just add one thing, which is that. I think you said something really important, which is that when somebody comes to our website, we wanna turn them into dollars.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Rai: However, if we focus on that as our goal, it goes away.
It’s elusive. It’s like, have you ever seen those, uh, wall hangings that are like this rainbow computerized image that just looks like squiggles? Then if you kind of look off to the side and let it be in your peripheral [00:19:00] vision and you relax your eyes, suddenly you see this image of penguins or a, a ship on waves coming at you.
It’s kind of like that. If you look directly at the thing, which in this case might be trying to get conversions, trying to turn those site visitors into dollar signs. You are not gonna make it happen, because people are gonna feel that, and they’re gonna feel that all you care about is the transaction in their money that’s in their pocket.
Whereas if you focus on something else and you focus on building trust and giving that person what they need in order to feel safe to give you their money, the money is gonna be a inevitable byproduct.
Patrick: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I love this ’cause I, I think there’s. We might get some people that turn into dollars, but the number of people we would have to get to our website, you know, when our conversions are so low because it’s just, um, we’re, we’re ineffective in our communication.
I just think of the value that we bring into the equation, both for the visitor and our [00:20:00] business when we, uh, we level up the, the work that we’re doing. Yep. So this is good because I see this, you know. Sales and marketing, right? Like I could be a great salesperson and I could knock on a, I don’t even know if I need to be a great salesperson.
I could knock on a a thousand doors, right? And if my conversion’s 3%, I can go, cool. If I knock on 2000 doors tomorrow, I, you know, I make twice as much money, or I can become more effective. I can dial in my communication and I can still knock on the same thousand doors, but I might get up to. Three or four x if I improve my process, you know?
Right. And connect with people on a different level, so,
Rai: right. And marketing’s job is to make sure that when you show up at that door, they open the door and they go, oh, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been seeing you and I’ve learned this thing. Or, I listened to this podcast. You did, or I read this article that you wrote.
I’ve been meaning to reach out to you. Thanks. Thanks for coming to me now. Now I’m ready. [00:21:00] So your 3% now goes up to 30%.
Patrick: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Rai: And you have to knock on fewer doors to get that same amount of money.
Patrick: I love it. All right. Now I’d like to talk about the elite method, and I love this name, by the way, who doesn’t want the elite method in their lives.
So can you walk us through the elite method and then we’ll, we’ll dig into each of the steps?
Rai: Yeah, absolutely. So one thing I will say about this method is. Oftentimes when I lay this all out for people, they go, well, of course, of course I need to do this, and of course I need to do that, and of course I should be doing this.
But the thing is nobody ever does it in this order. Everyone always hones in on the eye, the implement, the build part of the process. That’s what people get excited about within marketing. And yet, the reason your marketing’s not working is because you’re not doing it in this order, and you’re forgetting critical steps either because they feel too daunting, they’re really uncomfortable, or you don’t have a good system for [00:22:00] them.
So this method lays it all out for you, puts it in a nice streamlined step-by-step process. And then. If you were to work with me, you would get the exact automations and systems to make a lot of this process just happen overnight. And so, and we have some things that we’ll give away at the end of the episode that will allow you to do this yourself.
But I just wanna say, you know. I think a lot of people need to trust themselves.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Rai: So when you have this little voice in the back of your head saying, oh yeah, okay, I really should be doing this. Listen, listen to that little voice and don’t cut corners on your marketing, so
Patrick: love it.
Rai: To that end, the E-L-I-T-E Elite Method starts with e examine.
This is where you have to take a really good, hard look at what you’re putting out there. Like I said about that client I worked with who, when you just look at their outward online presences, not their nurture sequences, not their sales assets, not their proposals, but their [00:23:00] top of funnel, just publicly visible appearance.
Everything they were saying screamed, desperation. It screamed, oh my God, we really need a sale. Please, somebody contact us pretty please. That is not an impression that you want to give the market.
Patrick: Yeah.
Rai: Instead, you wanna appear confident, full of information that you’re willing and ready to share freely.
You have to come across as this confident, secure company that people want to feel the way you feel. By being in your orbit, they get to experience those same emotions of confidence and clarity. So take a good hard look at what you’re actually putting out there. Another part of this step is when I work with companies, we will do market research and we will actually do customer interviews as well as audience interviews.
So we, uh, for that same cybersecurity and, and managed services provider company, they wanted to be predominantly selling [00:24:00] managed services. However, when we sent out the survey to their target audience, we found that everyone thought they just sold cybersecurity products. And so there was this huge disconnect between what people thought they were, what they actually wanted to be selling.
You have to find that out so that you know how much or how little work needs to be done to fix your public perception before people are ready to contact.
Patrick: Uh, I think that’s wonderful. ’cause you know, the, the audit is so important. Because I might think I’m doing everything right. I might think that the, the marketplace perceives me a certain way, but if I don’t go out there and actually get the data, you know, find out those answers to those questions that, you know, I think are, are true and they’re not.
Um. I’m gonna keep doing things that are gonna give me less than ideal results. If today’s episode got you thinking differently about your marketing strategy, here’s something else to think about your tax strategy. [00:25:00] Just like marketing, most entrepreneurs are stuck using outdated tactics that don’t actually move the needle.
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So, exactly. Okay. This is great. What’s next in the process?
Rai: So the next step is learn, and this is where you learn the psychology of your buyer. So within this step, I like to zoom in and zoom in again. So first we need to look at what I told the stages of change matrix. This is an [00:26:00] adapted, uh, psychological model from my time as a corrections and substance abuse counselor, where the stages of change in substance abuse counseling helps you guide people through actually making lasting changes within their life.
Ones that are really difficult, I mean, they’ve been leaning on unhealthy coping skills for years, sometimes decades. How are we supposed to change that behavior? This framework walks them through it now applied to marketing. This helps buyers change their behavior from choosing your competitors or doing nothing at all.
Two, choosing you. And so when you break down the sales funnel. Further into the stages of change, you get these narrower, win narrower, excuse me, windows, where you can really dig into the internal psychology of what’s going on for that person. And within each stage of change, we then look at the cognitive behavioral therapy triangle within that particular moment in that person’s psychology.
And the cognitive behavioral therapy triangle kind of looks like [00:27:00] the, uh, recycling symbol. Mm-hmm. Where it’s these arrows going in a triangle around and around and around. And it’s an endless. You know, circular, um, pattern. And what happens in marketing is marketers get so hyper fixated on changing the behavior, driving a particular behavior.
Click book, a call purchase, but that’s only one third of the whole process. As humans, our thoughts drive emotional responses, which then drive our behaviors and our behaviors affect the way that we experience the world, which in turn affects our thoughts, which then elicits a different emotional response, which elicits a different behavior.
And so within a particular stage of change, we need to then intercept someone’s thought, introduce a new thought. To elicit a more positive and, um, more feel good emotion for that person, which they’re gonna associate with your brand of making them feel this, this pleasurable response, this dopamine hit, whatever the case may [00:28:00] be, which then elicits the behavior you’re actually looking for within that particular stage of their readiness to buy.
Patrick: I love that and I’ve studied a little bit of psychology, especially on the, some of the sales side and negotiation. It’s so powerful and people have no idea how it’s impacting them. They think, oh, those, those things would not influence me. But you’re, you’re really using, I’ll say, uh, science to, uh, you know, you talk about all those, those brain chemicals that people have going through them and how it impacts our, our behavior is tremendous.
Yeah. I, I love that, that triangle. So can you give me the triangle again and just Uh, yes. ’cause I think that is, uh, that’s so powerful when we think about how we influence people.
Rai: Yes. So the pattern is thoughts affect our emotions, which affect our behaviors, which then affect our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and so on.
And you know, to your point, we often think, oh, can never work on me. I’m not [00:29:00] manipulatable. This is not about manipulation. This is just about the pat our, our brains are like operating systems. Mm-hmm. They work with certain frameworks. And even as you’re listening to this podcast, it, this is happening for you.
So for example, you might be thinking, oh man, this chick’s voice reminds me of a terrible, uh, teacher I had in elementary school, which elicits a certain emotion, which makes you go, I don’t wanna listen to this anymore. I’m gonna turn it off. Or you might be thinking. Oh, some of this psychology stuff. This reminds me of what I studied in college and this is really fascinating and that elicits a feel good curiosity, which elicits the behavior of you learning more.
You continuing to listen, maybe going to Patrick’s website.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Rai: Yeah, it’s happening right now.
Patrick: I love this. Um, and I think this is absolutely missing in marketing in general. I, I don’t think. [00:30:00] This is the fir i we, we talk to marketing people all the time. Right. We see this and I’m not seeing anybody having these conversations about bringing the psychology into the equation and Yeah.
And influencing people in a, in a way that it’s, it feels like chess when everybody else is playing checkers, so, right. Um,
Rai: right. And, and I, I wanna say, you know, this is not. For the purpose of manipulating people into doing something they wouldn’t normally do. That’s why I left the world of B2C marketing because I felt like it was so high pressure.
You know, peer pressure, fomo, scarcity tactics, impulse driven, I don’t like. I enjoy the world of B2B and helping entrepreneurs really connect with the audience that they can truly help.
Patrick: Yep.
Rai: And helping them grow organically and naturally because. When you have a solution that can genuinely help other people or other businesses, you deserve to be successful.
Patrick: Yeah,
Rai: we need to get more of that out there. [00:31:00] It’s just a matter of framing up your message and what you have to offer in a way that people are going to be open and receptive to accepting and trying your solution.
Patrick: Yeah. I love it. I love that we’re, we’re making a very clear distinction between we’re not trying to manipulate people into something they wouldn’t do.
What we’re we’re doing here is. And, and I think about this, if I truly care about you and I want the best for you, I need to articulate the value that we can deliver and then let you make a, a good decision. Right? And, and I think most of us are missing that in our marketing ’cause we’re not connecting with people at this level.
It’s so good. Okay, so now I’m really interested in the implement side. Yes. The equation, because I’m. At times overwhelmed by all of the opportunity. Mm-hmm. To, to market, right? Like I talked about some direct mail that I received, right? Like that’s an option. I could put a billboard up. I’ve seen these like new [00:32:00] interesting billboards.
I’m like, that’s fascinating. You know? Then there’s social media and digital marketing and email and Google ads and like the, the. Yeah, opportunities are almost endless. So I’m, I’m curious to talk about the implementation and how, how we take, I’ll say what we’ve learned about our potential customers and now we, we turn that into a, a strategy that’s going to, uh, drive them into our business.
So,
Rai: yes, so. As you can probably tell so far with this whole elite method, within each letter I have these little solve models within the implement stage. This is where we’re actually building and the strategy for building something effective. An effective funnel is what I call the four M’S of marketing.
Now, a lot of marketers or a lot of business owners go into their marketing thinking, oh gosh, I’m seeing everybody on TikTok. I’m seeing everybody on Facebook, Instagram, and running LinkedIn ads. I guess I should do that too. [00:33:00] They’re starting with the mechanism.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Rai: That is the last step that you should be thinking about.
The fours of marketing are motivation, method, messaging, and mechanism. So the thing here is you first have to get into the mind of your buyer. You have to think, what is their motivation for interacting with me? What could they possibly hope to gain from their perspective, not your perspective. This isn’t about sales.
This isn’t about growing your email list. It’s what is the motivation from their side of things. And you need to have an altruistic motivation with your marketing. You have to be committed to helping the person on the receiving end of your marketing. And so that motivation piece is a bit of a litmus test.
If your motivation doesn’t match up with the stage of the funnel, a stage of change that they are actually in, then it’s not going to work. So it’s a really great litmus test for that. Next is method. This is how are we actually connecting with this [00:34:00] person? Are we providing value? Are we providing something for them to interact with?
Are we. Trying to manipulate them. You need to make sure that your method is ethical and that it’s going to give them a positive experience on the other end. Next we go into your messaging. Now, this is where the cognitive behavioral therapy triangle comes into play because this is where you need to intercept a certain thought to introduce a new emotion that feels good to elicit a behavior that you want.
And then lastly, the mechanism is where does this person hang out? When are they gonna be most receptive? To this message. I was just talking to a client of mine who told me this great story. He’s, he’s a pilot. Um, he is really into old cars and I just love listening to his stories. He told me this one about, um, I think he read it in a, a book about a company that specializes in car insurance for vintage cars.
And what they did was they went to these car [00:35:00] auctions. You know, a lot of people when they’re buying vintage cars, they might be older and they’re trying to recreate an experience from when they were younger. Maybe that’s when they met their wife. Maybe they were in this car when they went on their first date with their then girlfriend, now wife.
This company set up these little mini photo shoots where people could buy their car from auction and then have this little mock wedding photo shoot to recreate exact poses that they were in when they were younger. And it was this amazing experience for people. The company met the new car owners, right?
When they were thinking, oh shoot, I just spent all this money on this amazing car and I have this amazing experience. I really wanna protect it. Now this company is giving them something that they’re gonna cherish for the rest of their lives. This photo, that recreates a special moment, that’s the way you need to go about it in that direction.
Not putting the mechanism first.
Patrick: I love it. The problem with that as a business [00:36:00] owner is that sounds hard to me, year to just go. I’m gonna buy an email list and just spam people. Right? Like Yeah. But
Rai: does that work?
Patrick: No, it doesn’t work.
Rai: Yeah. Right.
Patrick: How do we go from like, because I, I love this. I think this is absolutely the right, right thing.
How do we start to develop that, like that photo shoot, like that’s great. Yeah. Right. Uh, how do we start to develop these. Uh, these interactions that are, are going to start to impact people from a, a psychological perspective and start to build that trust. And they’re like, I, I want to, I, I wanna do business with these people.
So how, how do we do that? That, that sounds like the hard, scary part to me. And Ray, that’s probably where you come in and like help craft these things, but I’m generally curious about how we do that.
Rai: I think it’s easier than you might think. So the thing is. A lot of, so this is why I love working with entrepreneurs and self-employed [00:37:00] business owners, because those types of people are not afraid to do hard things.
Patrick: Mm-hmm. And
Rai: you’re either gonna do the hard thing of buying an email list and spamming that list and getting frustrated that it’s not working, and then ruining your reputation. Because if that person on the receiving end of the cold email ever stumbles upon you on LinkedIn, they’re gonna go, oh. Company that was spamming me.
I had to block them. Not fun. Not going there. That’s a hard thing to pour money into something that’s not working. The alternative is to sit down, turn off your screens, sit in your chair.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Rai: Think about the person you wanna connect with. Exercise that empathy muscle that we all have. We all did this as kids.
You know, you lay on the grass and you look up at the clouds and you imagine. What is that shape? What is this shape? What, where could that bird be going? You have to do the same thing. Imagine what it’s like for the person that you’re trying to connect with, and then [00:38:00] put yourself in their shoes. Make a list of all of the problems that they’re dealing with, whether they’re related to the solution you have to offer or not, and then.
Think about, okay, with these problems, which one could I actually offer advice on? Which could I actually offer a solution to? And then the next step is, okay, when they have this problem, where do they go? Do they go to LinkedIn? Do they go to Instagram? Do they go to Google? Do they go to chat, GPT or Claude?
Do they go to friends and family? Do they go to their local small business administration office? Do they look up events or webinars? Do they go to Eventbrite? I mean, you can tell, I can go on and on and on of where do they go, figure out where they’re going to look for a solution and then put your solution right there.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is great because one of the things that I, I just challenged my daughter to do, she’s, um, she’s 15, [00:39:00] uh, sharp kid personality for days. Um, and, and this is probably my fault. She’s not that excited about going to college. And my wife and I have college degrees and, uh, but we don’t, neither of us are like in that arena anymore.
I’ve got a political science degree. I’m going to be an attorney. And then I was like, I, I run into every attorney I meet and none of them like their job. And I’m like, you know, so our encouragement had been, Hey, if you’re interested in something, like let’s, let’s go get some experience in it before you go get educated.
And, and so she was like, you know, I school’s fine, but I, I might be interested in just like starting a business like you and mom. And so I’m like, nice. So I’m like, what? Get out a yellow pad. ’cause most people won’t do this and write down 20 potential business ideas. And I’m like, the first 10 are going to be really hard.
And then the next 10 is where the gold’s going to be. Those are going to be the ideas that like, you’re like, oh [00:40:00] yes, this is, this is really good, and I can combine number 17 with number four, and that might make something. And so I say all that because I think that’s where I, I’m thinking about these, these parts of the process, right?
I’m thinking about the. The audit, what do we currently have as assets that we could utilize? Then I’m thinking about, you know, the profile, you know, going out and asking our people what’s important to ’em and thinking about how they think. And, um, and then, then we start to move into like, okay, let’s start to solve some of these problems that we’ve had and let’s utilize some of our maybe current assets so we can, we can meet people where they’re at and uh, and do that.
And it takes time. It takes some energy. I think you’re right. The, the entrepreneur knows how to do hard things. I’ve got a shirt that says Hard work pays off. And it’s like, yep, that’s, that’s true. And everybody that, you know, I, we work with agrees with that. Uh, I also have a, a sign up, a letter, board sign in my office that says, do hard things.
You know, it’s like [00:41:00] at the end of the day, whether it’s your relationships, your health, uh, your business, like doing the hard thing. Produces results and it’s worth it. You know, it’s where a lot of the joy comes from. And so I’m saying all of this because I think there’s the, the people that are willing to invest in the process, not just looking for the drive through breakthrough.
Like, I’m just gonna buy the mail list and spam ’em. Um, those are the people that get, uh, outsized results and everybody’s looking at ’em going, how, how did you get here? How did you do this thing? It’s like, well. I showed up every day and did the work, and now, now I’m here. So that is, is worth acknowledging.
So,
Rai: yeah. And I think, you know, one thing that you’ll never hear any other marketing agency owner tell you is an unpopular, uh, perspective in marketing, but it’s that there is no one size fits all. Mm-hmm. There is no system that works for everybody. And the reason I say that is because when you’re looking [00:42:00] at other businesses, even if there are other businesses like yours.
You can’t just take the easy way out and replicate what they’re doing because you are unique. What your business does is unique. The unique value and experience you bring is unique, and then your picture of your ideal buyer is unique. It’s different from your competitors. And so when you have all these unique factors, it results in having to create a unique marketing system.
That works to connect to you, to the people that you really want to attract in.
Patrick: Right?
Rai: And if you’re just copying what everyone else is doing, you are applying all the things that are irrelevant to your business.
Patrick: Yeah. I, this is, this is fantastic. So I’m, I’m thinking about implementation. I see implementations probably going to lead us to the T part of this.
So can you talk us through t what happens there?
Rai: Yeah, absolutely. So T is transformed. This is where most [00:43:00] marketers and most people start getting a little uncomfortable and a little itchy in their own skin because it’s all about data. It’s all about metrics. So even though everything that I’m saying sounds like soft science, you know, psychology, feelings, thoughts, and motions, like all that kind of qualitative, abstract stuff, you have to follow the patterns.
And we see patterns in data. Unfortunately, we can’t measure thoughts, we can’t measure emotions, but we can measure behaviors. And if you track metrics intelligently and you really think through, oh wait, these are vanity metrics and these are actual revenue driving metrics, then you can start to validate or refute what you tested earlier in your funnels.
And as with any social science, it’s all about an empirical perspective. So you have to test and iterate and that [00:44:00] iteration comes when you factor in what you’re learning from what the metrics show.
Patrick: Yeah. I, I love this and I think one thing, I’m gonna go back to my drive-through breakthrough comment earlier.
Uh, I think most business owners can be impatient in general, and, and so is there a, to be able to get good data. And I think about, I heard this analogy once and it makes sense to me. Like if I take a seed and I bury it and then I dig it up to look at it and see if it’s grown and bury it and dig it up, it’s like it’s not gonna make any progress.
Right? Yeah. Because I’ve gotta let it do its thing. Right. Um, is there, is there a timeframe that we should, and I understand we’re constantly iterating, but like some of this stuff takes time. It takes a minute to really see the. The change start to happen, the transformation start to happen in our business.
Um, you know, from implementation to transformation is not overnight. Right? Right. The seed doesn’t turn into an oak tree. [00:45:00] Uh, so I don’t know if you can give us any thought process around like, you know, this is the commitment we should really be making when we start to execute on our marketing strategy before we start to see like real results.
Rai: So whenever I build a marketing strategy for my clients, I’m not just doing the buyer psych profiling and building out the implementation plan, we’re also building out the transformation plan, the metrics plan. What are we going to measure? What do these measurements indicate to us and what do they, more importantly, what do they indicate at each stage of change?
Now it’s within that when you break it down in this horizontal fashion along the buyer, your journey from someone first. Developing the problem that you have to solve and then becoming aware of the problem and then being open to seeking out a solution to the problem and so on. There are 11 stages of change, so I won’t go into all of them right now.
That’s where you have to match up the right metric to the right experience and [00:46:00] behavior that you’re trying to track. And in some cases, especially if we’re talking about visibility messaging that we might test out over LinkedIn ads or something like that, you can get results in a few days depending on your tam, your total addressable market.
If, however, you’re trying to gauge whether or not, let’s say an email nurture sequence is working. First of all, you cannot email people every other day. That is just gonna drive them away, right? So your cadence is another factor in this whole constellation of understanding your metrics and what do certain behaviors actually indicate.
You might need two to three months to see if your email nurture sequence is working. Now we can check the performance of each email with open rates and click through rates and things like that, but. That’s the other thing is a lot of people kind of succumb to these grandiose promises that marketing agencies put out on Facebook and Instagram ads about, oh, you’ll get 90 leads in 90 [00:47:00] days.
Well, that might not be enough time to really tell you
Patrick: mm-hmm.
Rai: How your message is resonating in the market. And those might be very desperate out of ICP leads. They may not be good quality for you. You know, you have to make sure that you’re matching. The number that you’re tracking and given enough time to your point of how I love that seed analogy, I’m gonna use that.
I love that. Yeah. You have to give it enough time and the amount of time really depends on the metric itself. So that’s kind of an ambiguous answer in the whole, it depends thing, but the mechanism will tell you how long you need to let it live for in order to determine if it’s effective.
Patrick: Yeah, this is great.
I think you’re leading us to the, the E in elite. Yes. So do you wanna, do you wanna finish this up there?
Rai: So, other than the buyer side profiling bit, this is my second favorite part of the whole process. I am, I’m a very human to human collaboration team [00:48:00] oriented person, and so this is where I start to get really excited because the enhance the last e, the enhanced step of this whole process is tapping into the human insights from within your team.
If you’re a solopreneur or if you’re a, if you’re doing founder led sales, this might actually involve you more than other team members. But this is where you take those human insights and you feed them back into the top of the process. So enhance is all about. So lemme take a step back real quick. When we’re doing the implement process, we’re not just building top of funnel, we’re building a completely full funnel journey.
From demand generation through sales enablement and into retention programs. So this is the other thing about marketing that focuses just on lead gen, when you focus purely on just getting the contact information or just getting the sale. You’re satisfying one part of your business, but you’re neglecting the bigger picture of the business.[00:49:00]
Now I do marketing that is going to not only elicit pre-sold leads, so the sales team has an easier time actually converting, but also that’s going to contribute to increase retention and LTV. So if we can increase that lifetime value of the customer, you’re gonna have a more stable growth pattern. And when we go into enhanced, we wanna take.
Human insights and learnings from the sales reps who are at that point of conversion, and the customer support team who’s actually charged with delivering on the promise you made at the beginning of the funnel. You have to feed those insights back into the system to make sure you’re preempting concerns and breaking down fears, and particularly for retention, maximizing your tool adoption if you’re a, mm-hmm.
Software as a service or any kind of service based business, you need to make sure that the people who you’ve actually done all that hard work to convert, stay with you. And that means you need to ingrain [00:50:00] your product or service into their daily lives.
Patrick: This is, this is fantastic. I, I love how you’ve taken it from, let’s take a look at what you’re currently doing, figure out what our assets are to, uh, really impacting people at a different level that we’re used to from a marketing perspective.
And then I’ll say, wrapping that up, it’s not just marketing, like, let’s make a sale. Let’s make a relationship that’s long lasting, right? Let’s figure out how to get people plugged in and keep ’em plugged into our business so we can keep providing the value that they need and, uh, we’ll continue to be profitable.
And, and I think about, you know, I, I don’t know if this is a good example or not, but like all of us need to be well, physically well, right? And, but it’s so hard, right? Um, you know. I think about, you know, those behavior changes that need to happen from, you know, going to the gym, to [00:51:00] eating well, to, you know, making sure I’m getting to the doctor and all those, those other pieces.
And, um, you know, I love that you are, you’re helping business owners like see the opportunities to impact people’s lives. Uh, now we’re on the finance and tax side of the equation, right? We think this is super important to people’s lives, right? Yeah. If you give less money to the government, you can build more wealth and impact, you know, your family and community in, in ways that, uh, you wouldn’t have otherwise.
And so it’s like, I love the idea of making a bigger impact using these tools that you’ve outlined here, and I think it’s just so important for the business owner to, to consider all of these things that you’re talking about and, uh, really con like start to take action on ’em because it’s, it’s, it’s critical for business, it’s critical for the people that we’re serving.
So.
Rai: Exactly, and that, and that’s why I’m such a fan of content marketing because you know, unlike ads where you have to pour money into ads, and as soon as you [00:52:00] stop the money, the ads stop. And at a different point in time, they may yield completely different results based on an algorithm with content. It lives online forever.
Mm-hmm. And with tiny, subtle tweaks to that content, which costs virtually nothing. You basically pay words to create something and it generates top of funnel, mid funnel, and bottom funnel and retention all the way through the lifetime of your business. I mean, to me, if you’re gonna spend money on marketing at all, whether you’re doing it yourself or you’re hiring someone, that’s what I would invest in is the thing that has more longevity and impacts more points in your business to stabilize and grow revenue.
Patrick: Yeah. Absolutely. This is great, and, and I think you are, you’re laying the foundation here nicely for some of the tools that you’ve made available to our listeners and, uh, for people to check out. So I think people should start off@cornellcontentmarketing.com, and that’s Cornell, [00:53:00] C-O-R-N-E-L-L content marketing.com.
Just, just go there and then, uh, we’ll have links to this in the show Note, if you go to cornell content marketing.com/book or slash elite. Toolkit. Uh, you’ve got some great things for people to check out. Um, and then I, I think these are for, uh, I think you need to get a, a flavor for the, the work that you’re doing.
Obviously people have a flavor here, but I think one of the things that we talk a lot about that is important is we’re big believers in, in who, not how, like I, I love the how. I love to understand the how, and then I wanna bring a who into my life to help me execute on those things. Just like the, the. The health analogy I was talking about earlier, like the success rate goes up dramatically when you have a friend to go to the gym with, or a personal trainer to, to create some accountability.
And I, yeah, I think about, you know, somebody that’s been there, done that, seen so many different things. I can try to figure it out on my own, but, uh, as the business owner, I have my [00:54:00] unique ability that I like to lean into and do that thing, and I wanna bring everybody else in around me to, you know, bring their unique ability to execute on those things.
Um, yeah, I think that’s also important and you’ve got some different ways for people to, uh, connect with you, to engage, uh, if they’re like, Ray, I need this in my life and I don’t wanna, uh, the book is great, but I need some help. So, um, what are the best ways for people to connect with you? Is the website the best way to go?
If they’re like, uh, I don’t need to know anymore. I just ready to engage with, uh, Ray and her team.
Rai: Yeah, either the website or LinkedIn. If you go to our website, cornell content marketing.com, and you go to our contact page, you can book a call with me. You’re not gonna book with a sales rep. You’re gonna book right with me right there on the page.
Or you can find me on LinkedIn. My first name is spelled kind of weird. It’s RAI. Then Cornell, like the university. But like you said, you know, I, I really just want people to have these tools. And even if you never hire me, you never contact me. That’s okay. Just start looking at your marketing [00:55:00] differently and you can get that toolkit and it walks you through the complete process of building your own strategy that you can start using right away.
And so does the book.
Patrick: I love it. And I think the, the issue is if people don’t act, you know, are. As entrepreneurs, we stay stuck in the same marketing loop, right? Yeah. We’re chasing leads, we’re draining our budgets, we’re falling behind to competitors who, who win with smarter strategy. And I think you’re bringing smarter strategy to the, uh, the table here.
And when we apply this, uh, psychology, the, the strategy of bringing psychology into our marketing, I think it really stops. Having to guess, right? Yeah. Their con the content converts, you know, it’s connecting with people on a level. It starts to convert and it starts to fill the funnel and their brand earns trust.
And even before those first sales calls, you know, like I, I loved your, your thought process around like, when they show up at your door, when I show up at their door, if I’m making all these, you know, if I’m knocking on doors and my, my marketing was effective, [00:56:00] we’ve already got relationship, right? Yeah. And I, I think that’s where.
We can start to, to scale the business without wasting our time and money. And I love how you, you bring all this together with like, let’s not just bring them into the funnel. Uh, let’s keep them long term as customers, right? As clients, right. That to continue to engage with the business. So, um, I think this has been been wonderful.
Anything else that we should be talking about before we, we wrap up our conversation about, uh, the power of bringing psychology into our marketing?
Rai: I think, you know, a lot of people have this negative connotation towards marketing and advertising and rightfully so because we’ve been bombarded with ads and, and pressure and kinda like these icky feeling tactics our whole lives.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Rai: As you’re doing your marketing, another great litmus test is. How would I feel if I was on the receiving end of this? How would I feel? Would this feel valuable, interesting, [00:57:00] curiosity provoking, all those good things helpful? Or is this making me feel like, oh, I’m not doing well enough, or I’m not good enough, or, oh, I’m dumb compared to the competition.
And you know, don’t make your people feel bad. Make them feel good. You’ve worked so hard to create a business that provides actual value. Lean into that even more, all the way through your marketing.
Patrick: I love it. This is, this has been a wonderful conversation, so insightful and I, I really do think that when the entrepreneur embraces these strategies, marketing to other businesses, that it’s, it’s transf transformational.
It, it takes you from, you know, being disconnected from your, your buyer to, uh, strategic and data-driven. And you get to a level where you’re, uh. Nobody’s competing with you because you’ve built this relationship and this trust that is just powerful. So Ray, this has been great. Thank you so much.
Rai: Likewise.
Thank you so much.
Patrick: [00:58:00] That’s a wrap on another powerful episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and spending your time with us today. I truly hope you found value in this conversation with Ray Cornell. If her psychology first approach to marketing sparked some new ideas for your business or helped you see your strategy in a new light, do me a favor and share this episode with someone else who could benefit from it, whether it’s a fellow entrepreneur, a business partner, or someone on your team.
This is the kind of insight that can make a real difference. Be sure to come back next week. We’ve got another high impact episode lined up that’s all about helping you grow, protect, and optimize the wealth you’re working so hard to build. And if you’re ready to take action right now and start building out a smarter, more intelligent tax strategy, head over to vital strategies.com/.
It’s time to stop guessing and start strategizing. And remember, you’re a vital entrepreneur. You’re vital because you’re the backbone of our economy, creating opportunities, driving growth, and making an impact. You’re vital to your family, creating abundance in every aspect of life, and you’re vital to me because [00:59:00] you’re committed to growing your wealth, leading with purpose, and creating something truly great.
Thank you for being a part of this incredible community of vital entrepreneurs. I appreciate you and I look forward to having you back here next time on the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. Where we help entrepreneurs minimize their taxes, master wealth, and optimize their lives.