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The Blueprint For Attracting 10 High-Quality Clients In The Next 30 Days With Your Podcast

September 24, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

podcast clients

Want to see how I can help you grow your podcast? Schedule a free strategy session today!

A podcast is your goldmine for attracting high-quality clients to your business. Podcasts give you the ability to attract listeners and guests to your show. And while there’s already so many blogs and YouTube channels out there, podcasting is ripe with opportunity.

Convince and Convert laid out several fascinating statistics for podcasting in 2018. They provide 13 important statistics, but these are the three we should pay attention to.

In 2018, Six Million More Americans Listen to Podcasts Weekly versus 2017

- Takeaway: Podcasts are growing

23 Percent of Americans Have Listened to Podcasts in the Car

- Takeaway: You can’t read blog posts or watch videos while driving. Podcasting provides a competitive advantage due to the audio nature of the content

18 Percent of Americans Now Own Smart Speakers

- Takeaway: More smart speakers are coming soon, and more people will say, “Alexa, play the podcast Breakthrough Success.” It helps to mention 49% of podcasts are listened to at home…BUT wait until smart speakers are built into cars and podcasts become as mainstream as radios. It’s already happening.

Podcasting is growing, and if you have a podcast, you’re riding a big wave right now. For people who don’t have a podcast, it’s best to first decide what your show will be about and who you’ll serve.

We won’t dive too deep into starting a podcast, but it’s worth mentioning for anyone who doesn’t have a podcast yet.

You can host your podcast using a site like Libsyn, Pippa, Blubrry, or another podcast hosting company. I personally use Libsyn because it allows me to easily publish podcast episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and on other podcast players.

Your costs for producing episodes depends on how many you produce. I produce 3 episodes each week for Breakthrough Success. That comes to roughly $20/mo on Libsyn and around $28/episode after I pay my audio editor and show notes writer. At 3 episodes per week, it comes to about 14 episodes per month.

I also spend $20/mo for Acuity which makes scheduling episodes a breeze. You get most of the features with a $10/mo account, but I run several calendars on Acuity which is why I pay $20/mo.

I also use Skype’s Call Recorder to record podcast episodes. If I want to record a video interview, I’ll use Zoom.

My total expenses for hosting the podcast stand at around $450/mo. Why would I undertake an investment like that when I could use that $450/mo on other things (or save it. Or buy stocks and real estate).

The answer is that one $997/mo client pays off all of those expenses. And my podcast brings in more than enough clients to pay for itself.

Plus I get to interview influencers and learn so much from them while providing my listeners with epic content 🙂

How Much Money Can You Make Podcasting

Client attraction is one of the top ways to make money with your podcast. Remember how I mentioned you can get $997/mo clients by hosting a podcast?

Get 9 of those types of clients from your podcast, and you’re at a nifty 6-figure income. Get 21 of those clients and you’re making over $250K every year.

The math adds up, and the best part is that client attraction isn’t the only way you can make money with your podcast. Some people listening to your show won’t want to become your clients right away.

You need to strengthen the relationship with them through your episodes and get them to put some skin in the game. “Putting skin in the game” is marketing talk for turning a listener into a customer, even if it means a $1 purchase.

It’s very easy to create something and charge $1 for it. In most cases however, you’re better off pricing that product at $7 or at $5/mo to boost your profitability.

The product I promote on Breakthrough Success depends on the timing. Right now, I’m promoting the heck out of Podcast Domination. I’ve mentioned it in every episode lately and charge $0.99 during the preorder phase.

Some of the people who buy Podcast Domination may become clients in the future. But the great thing is that each customer is a strong lead. I consciously write my books with the intention of building the dialogue, landing more clients, and boosting overall product sales. My books act like silent salesmen.

This blog post is a silent salesman, and I hope you buy my book through this link 🙂

Oops. Not so silent anymore. We all gotta make money to continue pursuing our dreams at a high level of intensity.

But going back to the book, I use the book to achieve a few key objectives:

Fulfill the promise that a reader will learn how to grow, launch, and monetize their podcast by reading the book. If you don’t fulfill your promises (i.e. unethical clickbait), nothing else matters.

Demonstrate my expertise because potential clients only hire people who demonstrate high expertise and/or a low price. Since I don’t underprice myself, I focus on providing massive value to demonstrate I know what I’m talking about.

Provide a call-to-action. At the END of the book, I tell readers how they can schedule a free strategy call with me. I DO NOT include this link at the beginning of the book.

While I’d get more strategy call sessions by including the call-to-action at the beginning of the book, some people would find that link through Amazon’s preview option.

That preview options allows you to view the first 10% of any Kindle book free of charge. That means I’d be on strategy calls with some people who didn’t put any of their skin in the game. Sometimes you can turn these people into clients, but it’s much easier to convert someone who has already made some kind of investment in what you’re doing, no matter how big or small.

Remember, at $997/mo, you only need 9 clients to make 6-figures. You just need 6 clients if you raise your services to $1497/mo.

How To Charge Those Kinds Of Prices

The higher you charge, the fewer clients and customers you need to reach your income goals.”

For some people, charging $97 for a consultation session is difficult. Technically, it’s easy. Just change the order page or PayPal button to reflect the new price. However, some people don’t believe their consultation session is worth $97. These people are underpricing themselves.

Other people command $1997 price points just to spend an hour with them. There are services that cost five figures each month, and some people have no problem writing a $1 million check for a Lamborghini.

$997/mo is the example I’ve used, but if you can (note: yes, you can) charge higher than $997/mo, then you need fewer clients to hit your income goals.

Ask yourself what it would take to double your price without doubling the time you spend on each activity. You don’t go from $97 to $197 by going from a 30 minute consultation session to a 1 hour consultation session. How can you make that same jump without the extra 30 minutes.

The two answers to this question are demonstrating your expertise and showcasing your credibility. It’s no wonder the highest priced products and services are flooded with testimonials.

Want to get high profile testimonials? It’s not as difficult as you think. Interview high profile guests on your podcast. Build relationships with them. Tell them about your product or service and offer it for free (for an ongoing service like scheduling social media content, offer one free month).

Then you’ll start getting testimonials from key players in your niche. Some of those same people may become clients or buy a bunch of your products. Even if none of those key players become long-term clients, those testimonials will provide you with strong social proof as more people come across your products and services.

Notice how the podcast helps with a key element in converting people into clients? If you do it right, you can also use the podcast to demonstrate your expertise as well. You can release a solo episode every week, share insights in between a guest’s answers, and do a bunch of things to demonstrate your expertise during each episode.

So How Do We Actually Get Clients

Everything you’ve currently read has been the set-up for attracting clients with your podcast. If you have been skimming, I recommend quickly scrolling up and gleaning the key highlights from what I mentioned earlier.

Most prospects turn into clients through free strategy sessions. Almost everyone in the business leads people into a free strategy session to convert them into a client. Anytime I’ve hired a coach, I made that decision based on a free strategy session.

If you want clients, then you will need an Acuity account. Acuity makes it easy for you to create a calendar that only shows the times when you are available. That way, it’s easier for prospects to pick times that work for you instead of engaging in a back-and-forth conversation to find the ideal time.

acuity scheduling calendar

If you even have to engage in that kind of back-and-forth conversation, you will lose clients.

Acuity is the best option available, but it comes with a universal problem all calendar apps come with. The long link problem.

Remember, you’re goal is to recruit clients with your podcast. If we were talking about blog posts, you could easily include a hyperlink to your schedule page and move on.

But with a podcast, that option doesn’t exist. You have to verbally say what the link is. I ran into this problem when promoting my book Podcast Domination. On a blog, I can just include that hyperlink in there.

On a podcast, I have to figure out how to tell people to visit this link:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FSHGR9N

I’d have to say Amazon dot com slash gp slash product slash B07FSHGR9N during the episode. That’s hard to say while keeping the episode natural. It’s even harder for a listener to remember.

Especially if that listener is driving like the 23% of Americans who listen to podcasts in the car.

I took that same link and turned it into this:

www.marcguberti.com/pd

Much easier for me to say and even easier for a listener to remember.

Marc Guberti dot com slash P D is much easier for people to remember than the other one.

How do you create links like this? If you have a WordPress powered blog, I recommend the Pretty Links plugin. It’s the one I used to create the link above, and I also get to track stats. By creating a custom link for my podcast, I can track how many clicks can be specifically attributed to my podcast.

You can do the same thing with bit.ly links. You can customize the text that appears after the slash. The link http://bit.ly/podcastdomination also gets you to the book’s Amazon Page.

The only danger with using bit.ly is that your ideal link might be taken. For instance, bit.ly/pd will send you over to someone’s Flickr Profile. Therefore, I can’t use that customization to link to my book.

Distribute Each Episode For Added Exposure

You now have a solid foundation for attracting clients with your podcast. Now you need to spread the word and attract more listeners to your show.

You could technically still reach your 10 client goal without getting a single podcast download, but it helps big time to have a strong listener base. More listeners means more potential clients.

You have to start by getting your podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify at the very minimum. The more podcast players you can get on, the better.

That’s something you get out of the way the moment you start your podcast. A good podcast hosting company like Libsyn will provide you with quick and simple instructions on how to get your podcasts on those places.

You should also get your podcast on Alexa. Since that’s still new, I’ll briefly talk about it since home speakers are still an emerging trend. All you have to do is fill out TuneIn’s podcast submission page and wait for approval.

alexa for podcasts

If you ask Alexa to play a podcast, it will search on TuneIn to find a podcast that matches up with your request.

That’s why if you say, “Alexa, play the podcast Breakthrough Success,” Alexa will play the latest episode. My podcast was approved for TuneIn and now Alexa can play the Breakthrough Success Podcast.

Create A Social Media Posting Calendar

The real distribution begins when you create a social media posting calendar for your podcast. This is where you share your podcast multiple times across all of your social networks.

Most people make the mistake of only posting about their new episodes on the days they come out. There’s no follow-up in this approach which leaves a lot of traffic on the table.

For each new piece of content, you need a weeklong calendar of aggressive promotion. Create several custom tweets, post on Facebook, pin on Pinterest, post on Instagram, reach out to influencers, and promote your episodes as far as you can promote them.

For the custom tweets, I include images and quotes from the show. When I include a quote, I always tag the guest. That way, the guest sees I tagged him/her and is therefore more likely to share my content.

Your social media posting calendar may look different depending on your frequency, but you should plan at least a week out. Even when that week is over, you should still continue to occasionally promote each episode you create.

To this day, I’m still promoting Episode #1 of Breakthrough Success because it’s still valuable and a bunch of people haven’t listened to it yet. I also want to give my audience the gift of seeing where I was when I was starting out with the show. You only realize how far you’ve come when you take a look at some of your past stuff.

Distribute Even Further With Repurpose.io

Repurpose.io is an awesome tool that allows you to do as the name suggests—repurpose your podcast episodes.

You can turn your podcast episodes into YouTube and Facebook Watch videos for $12/mo. Before this tool, I invested several hours to coming up with audio snippets from certain episodes and posting them on YouTube. However, it was tedious and I didn’t see a big enough ROI.

Repurpose.io is a game changer because it’s all automated. You set it up once and all of your future episodes get published on your YouTube and Facebook channels. I currently don’t have Facebook Watch set-up, but here’s how a Repurpose.io video looks on YouTube.

Pretty nice set-and-forget for $12/mo. You can also pay $20/mo if you want to do this with multiple podcasts and/or Facebook Watch channels.

Interview More People On Your Podcast

Do you remember when I said you could get clients with your podcast without getting a single listener? I wasn’t joking.

Every guest you interview on your podcast is a potential client. You’re in the middle of a sales call the moment the guest joins you on Skype or Zoom depending on what you use to record episodes.

If you interview 100 people for your podcast and get 10% of them to convert, you’ve got 10 new clients. You can interview people who you believe would be great potential clients to work with. You can determine in the conversation if the potential client would be easy or difficult to work with and make your pitch accordingly.

While getting more listeners helps with attracting guests on your show, I find that very few people ask for download numbers. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting thousands of downloads or less than 10 downloads per episode for most potential guests. They just want to be on more podcasts.

100 > 100

Most podcast hosts with 100 episodes under their belt get there by interviewing 100 people. Some get there by interviewing slightly less than 100 people because of the intro episode and a few other episodes. Other hosts get there with a solo show and don’t interview anyone (to that, I say you’re missing out on a lot of relationship building).

Some podcast hosts with 100 episodes have interviewed more than 100 people, hence 100 > 100. In 100 episodes, you can interview more than 100 people. To break that down, in one episode, you can interview more than one person.

In fact, you can technically interview as many people as you want in one episode. Nothing is stopping you from interviewing 3 or 4 people in the same episode.

Just arrange with a group of people to all join in on Skype or Zoom at the same time. Then, ask questions and let all of the guests answer each of the questions you ask. You can allow conversations to develop between guests to add a different flavor to your episodes.

That’s 300-400 potential clients in 100 episodes if all of your episodes are round tables. That’s a lot of potential.

How Guests Become Clients

Earlier I mentioned how you can shorten your link using Pretty Links if you use a WordPress blog or by using bit.ly if you don’t have that luxury. That shortened link is essential to turn guests into clients.

Very few guests will become clients on the spot. Most of them will want a strategy session with you so they can see how you would help them. During the episode, you’re going to mention that link and provide your listeners with the call-to-action.

Your guest is going to hear that same call-to-action intended for your listeners. And if you think about it, your guests are also your listeners. They listen to what you say, wait for you to ask the next question, and then answer it.

If a guest sees you as an expert, they’ll follow up about the free strategy session you mentioned earlier in the episode. You also have the pre and post episode conversations to drive the free strategy call home.

It’s important to not push the conversation towards the free strategy session. Don’t start off by telling the guest about your free strategy call offer. Let the conversation develop.

If the guest asks you what else you do besides the podcast, you can then mention your services and mention that you offer a free strategy session. If the guest expresses he/she has a pain point that you solve, mention that you can solve that problem and you can jump on a strategy session with him/her on a future date.

Some guests won’t be interested in buying your services, but they’ll know people who are interested. For this group of guests, you can ask them for referrals. I only recommend asking for referrals if you get into a conversation about what you do and believe the interview went well.

The Final Step Of The Strategy

Hosting your own podcast allows you to grow an audience and have guests on your show. Both of those groups of people are potential clients. But there’s one more core group we need to tap into for maximum success.

The final step is to interview podcast hosts in your niche. Once you’ve honed in on your pitch and have had some guests on your show, it’s time to reach out.

Some of the podcast hosts you interview will then invite you to be a guest on their shows. This is what you want. When you get interviewed, the host is now a potential client. Depending on how much you wow that host, you might get a client on the spot.

You also get access to that host’s listeners. At the end of a podcast episode, the host traditionally asks a question like, “Where else can we find you?” When you get that question, tell listeners they can schedule a free strategy call with you.

As you get on more podcasts with this strategy, more podcast hosts will reach out to you and invite you to be on their shows. Eventually, you won’t have to do the outreach anymore. All of the podcast hosts will come swarming to you. With each interview, you’ll get your message in front of more potential clients.

At this point, you may have a client overflow. All that’s left to do for this final step is to find and reach out to podcast hosts.

Finding Podcast Hosts

Finding podcast hosts is the easy part. One of the most common ways to find podcast hosts is by searching through podcasts on iTunes and Stitcher (while I like Spotify, it’s still a very music oriented platform, so I recommend doing this research on a platform that only displays podcasts).

Just search your niche, find podcasts, see which ones take guests, and reach out to those hosts (more on outreach coming soon).

There are two other ways you can find podcast hosts.

The first tactic is to go on LinkedIn and search “[your niche] podcast host.” LinkedIn will then display a bunch of people who are podcast hosts in your niche.

All you do at that point is start building relationships.

The second tactic is to google “[your niche] podcasts.” Instead of seeing all of the podcast hosts like you can on LinkedIn, Google will provide you articles. Most of those articles will allow you to easily identify the top podcasts in your niche.

For instance, when I Google “business podcast,” I get these results

top business podcasts

A lot of these articles lead to curated lists of top podcasts in your niche. These podcasts are the big fish, so getting on them may be more challenging. However, if you get on one of these podcasts, you have a much greater chance to get on other podcasts.

Reaching Out To Podcast Hosts

Once you find podcast hosts, you need to reach out to them and ask to be a guest on their podcasts. You’ll get some rejections but mostly a bunch of yeses as podcast hosts need guests to fill up their episode calendars.

You reaching out to them saves them the time of finding another guest for their show. While this sounds like a win-win scenario, plenty of people know about this win-win scenario.

I’ve received hundreds of emails from people asking to be on Breakthrough Success. I couldn’t cater to them all, and that was even back when I was releasing five episodes each week. As a podcast host gets more guests coming their way and reaches out to more guests, that host will become more picky.

For instance, I publish three episodes each week on Breakthrough Success. I know that’s a little under 40 episodes per quarter. That’s a little less than 40 people who I can interview, and the more yeses I say now, the fewer yeses I can say in the future.

Asking to be a guest on someone’s show isn’t enough anymore, especially for established podcasts. The key to getting on more podcasts is to make the host’s life as easy as possible.

If you’ve hosted a podcast, you know there’s a lot of prep work. Here’s a list of what goes into producing an episode:

Finding the guest
Scheduling the interview
Determining a good topic
Writing the guest’s bio
Writing questions
Conducting the interview
Editing the episode
Writing the show notes
Scheduling the episode

That’s a lot of steps, and some of them are very time consuming. Since I delegate most of the post-production, I typically spend most of my time on Steps 3-6.

As previously mentioned, you want to make the host’s life as easy as possible. The best way you can do that is by providing a 1-sheet that cuts down on the host’s prep time. On my 1-sheet, I include my bio, a list of suggested topics, and pictures of a few podcasts I’ve appeared on.

I opted against including a list of suggested questions on my 1-sheet because I rarely look at the suggested questions on other people’s 1-sheets. The problem with suggested questions is that some hosts may simply ask all of those suggested questions in the interview.

I prefer to create a different experience on my podcast by asking questions that few people would think of. Similarly, I don’t want everyone asking me the same questions when I appear on other podcasts (except the backstory question which is virtually impossible to avoid and a good ice breaker).

Including your 1-sheet will increase the amount of yeses you hear from the podcast hosts you reach out to. You can create your 1-sheet using KeyNote/PowerPoint or Canva. For my 1-sheet, I used KeyNote and exported the slide as an image. Regardless of how you create your 1-sheet, it will work wonders for getting interviewed on more podcasts.

In Conclusion

Your podcast can bring in all of the clients you’ll ever need for your business. Before you start using your podcast to attract clients, set a monthly income target.

Then determine how many clients you need to hit your monthly target. Get clear on the numbers before you take action.

Then it comes down to interviewing many guests and attracting even more listeners to your show. Combine that with promoting your free strategy session, and you’ll have a winning formula for your podcast.

You can then take that winning formula on the road by appearing on other podcasts in your niche.

What do you use your podcast for? Do you have a podcast or are eager to start one? How are you attracting clients for your business? Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Want to see how I can help you grow your podcast? Schedule a free strategy session today!

5 Principles That Will Strengthen Your Mindset

March 9, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Your mindset is critical for your success. We all know this, but we need to consciously strengthen them.

Strengthening your mindset isn’t a quick fix. It’s something you do gradually. Some people can have an instant life-changing transformation, but even with that, the mindset determines how long that event affects you.

Some people feel completely transformed during the New Year only to lose that feeling halfway into February.

Strengthening your mindset is continual. It’s something you never stop doing. With that said, here are five principles you can use to strengthen your mindset.

#1: Achieve A Daily Or Weekly 1% Improvement

If you gradually improve, you’ll see the exponential gains later on. Improving at 1% every day will result in a 3778% improvement in a year.

If you improve by 1% every week, the improvement is 168% improvement.

I know everyone prefers the 3778% improvement over the 168% improvement, but some goals are different than others. It’s possible to achieve a 1% improvement each day for some of your goals. For others, weekly is the only possible option.

However, a 1% improvement isn’t just based on results. It’s also based on actions. Let’s say I write 1% more words every day for a given time. We’ll set the starting point as 1,000 words.

By the end of Day 1, I am at 1,010 words. It’s not a groundbreaking performance, but look at what compounded growth does…

1 Week: 1,072 words per day
1 Month: 1,347 words per day
1 Quarter: 2,448 words per day
2 Quarters: 5,995 words per day
1 Year: 37,783 words per day

Okay, I know no one is writing 37,783 words every day. You may decide to set that goal if you can build a team of writers around you, but chances are you and your team aren’t writing that many words each day.

However, the rest of those numbers are very doable. And a 1% growth isn’t asking for much. In the beginning, it’s just an extra 10 words. The growth compounds and adds up. When you hit 1,100 words per day, a 1% increase means an additional 11 words per day putting you at 1,111 words per day.

It’s not a consistent +10 each day but instead a consistent +1% each day. That’s a big difference.

So what happens when you reach 5,995 words per day (you might as well write those extra five to hit 6K)? You can continue to grow your word count, but you’ll eventually square off against a limit.

You have to write 14,681 words every day if you continue growing by 1% for a third straight quarter. But do you have time to write that many words? It’s easy to go from 1,000 words to 1,010 words and scale up to the first two quarters.

However, in the third quarter, you’re adding hundreds and sometimes thousands of extra words to your daily routine. You’ve trained for it, but time is finite.

It’s not like I could increase my weekly mileage by 10% all the time. Eventually, I’d have to run 100 miles every day (mathematically speaking).

I’d work towards it gradually, but I still believe it would have a heavy toll on my legs. 100 miles per day is A LOT to ask any runner, and for most of us 24 hours isn’t enough to run that long.

I don’t have to keep proving time is finite. We all know that’s the truth. But what happens when you’re writing 5,995 words every day and you are comfortable writing at that pace?

Pick something else to improve by 1% every day while maintaining the new routine you built.

I listen to audiobooks for 40 minutes each day during the school year during my commute. A 1% increase puts me at 40 minutes and 24 seconds. Sometimes I’ll blow past the 1% limit but set 40 minutes and 24 seconds as the minimum threshold. As long as I improve at the minimum 1% threshold every day, I’m happy with my progress.

#2: Live On The Edges

Most people start their day in the middle of it. Anything after 8 am, some people may be awake in your house. Rush hour traffic is building. Your part of the world is awake at that time.

I don’t start my day in the middle. Yes, 8 am is still early in the day, but not early enough to live on the edges. If you live on the edges, you’ll grow your edge on the competition (I had to).

My day starts at 3:30 am. That’s when I wake up and go through eight books. I’ll read a section or two and then march on to the next book.

At 4 am, I’m doing work. I’m writing blog posts, planning out videos (socially, I am not a morning person. I tried doing videos once at 5 am. Never again), marketing my business, and any of my other priorities. I’ll respond to emails later in the day.

Someday, I’ll start staying up until midnight because I have no problem with doing videos late in the day. That’s how I live on the edges. I get to bed at midnight and wake up at three.

I know what you’re thinking. Glaring health problem. Just three hours of sleep. This former teen entrepreneur went crazy at 20.

I get most of my sleep in the middle of the day. I’ll recharge when everyone else is hustling. For me, that’s usually in the afternoon. Productivity drops at that time anyway (What time do you eat your lunch? How do you feel afterward?).

I take my nap when everyone else is hustling but gradually losing productivity. When I wake up, I feel fully recharged. That’s why I can see myself doing videos until midnight during the summer.

My schedule won’t work for everyone, but by using my schedule as an example, you can find yourself less stuck and distracted. If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s better for you to go to the grocery store at noon than at 5 pm. Beat rush hour so you’re not in a long line with a lot of other people rushing to get the same food.

That grocery store reference is just an example that can be applied to many areas. Start grinding before others start their day, and take your rest while everyone else is up and about.

#3: Associate With The Best

You become who you associate yourself with. There are different versions of the same idea, but we need to keep it in mind.

When most people think about who they associate with, they think of about the people in their community. Most people have an “Oh well” mindset if they’re in a bad community.

However, you don’t just associate with the people in your community. You also associate with the people you pay attention to.

One of the people I associate with is Jim Rohn. I’ve listened to his audiobooks and read his books even though he passed away in 2009. I never read or listened to any of Jim’s books while he was alive.

People like Jim live on through their work. Other people who impact people in a big way are still alive, and you can consume their work too. The more of their work you consume, the more you assume their work ethic and mindset.

That’s why I enjoy reading Brian Tracy books. Brian has an excellent goal achieving mindset. Even better, he’s written many books, and that allows me to consume more of Brian’s content.

I can also go through the daily content that Gary Vaynerchuk publishes so I can get a deeper understanding of his mindset.

I know that in some cases, I’ll come across insights that I already know. However, reminding yourself of those insights, but more importantly, forcing yourself to continue associate with the best will allow you to someday surpass them.

I study my role models with the belief that I will and must someday surpass them. When I surpass my role models, I want other people look at my journey and hope to surpass me someday. Assuming we have the right role models in mind, this would make the world a better place.

#4: Learn Every Day

This goes in line with associating with the best. Part of that association is consuming content that arms you with new knowledge and ways of thinking.

This isn’t a once in a while activity. This is a daily activity. You should invest at least 3% of your income towards self-education. That’s how you make a fortune instead of just a living.

That’s why I listen to audiobooks during my commutes. It’s also why I read blog posts and books on my smartphone instead of playing the latest video game app.

#5: Continue Taking Action

Just because advice is simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. During good times and bad times, you must continue taking action. Keep on creating new content, promoting your brand, and doing everything else to up level your game.

Living on the edges will give you the uninterrupted time that will help you take massive action. Before you take any action, make sure you set your priorities. What are the three things you need to do today for it to be considered a success?

Keep taking action. If you struggle with taking action, give yourself reachable goals and more reasons to take action. I’ll continue writing down all of the reasons for me to take action just to motivate myself to do more than what I’m already doing.

In Conclusion

Your mindset determines your success. There’s no way around it. That means if you strengthen your mindset, you increase the likelihood of your success.

There’s no guaranteed way to become successful, but there are guaranteed ways to increase your chances of becoming successful.

This blog post outlined five key practices that will increase your chances of becoming successful (however you define it).

Now it just comes down to implementation and living based on these principles.

What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any principles you’d like to share? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

The Top 4 Email List Building Strategies

January 23, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

email list growth

Email list building is one of the most important areas of your brand. You’ll get a dramatically more effective response when you send an email to 10,000 people than when you send a tweet (or any social media post) to 10,000 people.

There are plenty of ways to build an email list. You don’t want to master the wrong strategies, but you also don’t want to rely on one method.

For a very long time, I solely relied on Twitter to grow my email list. My efforts paid off as over 10,000 content creators joined my list, but I knew that to achieve monumental growth, I needed additional email list streams.

We understand the concept of having multiple income streams, but we need to understand just as well the concept of having multiple email list growth streams.

I wrote a blog post earlier containing 50 tactics to grow your email list. While the tactics will help you grow your email list, the best tactics boil down to these four strategies.

#1: Evergreen Your Social Media Promotion

I don’t manually send tweets about my landing pages anymore. I use ViralTag to put all of my tweets in a cycle.

To not make myself too dependent on Twitter, I also created a posting cycle for Pinterest. This posting cycle was a bit more complicated as I have to account for several boards, but it was well worth the effort.

As a side note, I also delegate my social media growth to other freelancers. That way, I can focus on implementing other strategies and creating more content.

#2: Optimize Your Site For Maximum Conversions

optimization

If you get hundreds of thousands of visitors, but you have no method of converting them, then you won’t grow your email list. This email list building strategy is a focus on the visitor’s experience and getting them to subscribe.

As soon as visitors come on the blog, they are greeted by a welcome mat designed to get more opt-ins for a free offer. Pop-ups, the sidebar, and the blog posts themselves get even more opt-ins.

I use ThriveLeads to optimize my blog for generating more leads. It allows me to utilize all of the capabilities I just mentioned and more. AppSumo is another great option as well.

#3: Create An Affiliate Program

I am an affiliate for Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever Course. Michael Hyatt has impacted a lot of people, including some of the top players in various niches. When it came time to promote the course, many affiliates jumped on board.

The result?

In less than two weeks, all of the affiliates combined brought in over 80,000 opt-ins. You read that correctly, and I did not type in an extra zero.

That’s roughly 8,000 new subscribers every DAY. Many people would be very happy if that was their month.

Michael Hyatt was able to do it in one day.

I’m not saying that all affiliate programs lead to these types of results, but they will have a big impact on your business.

I grew my email list by over 25% by hosting the Content Marketing Success Summit and Productivity Virtual Summit. CMSS got me past 10,000 subscribers. When you get a team of people to promote your offers, you can reach out to far more people than you could have ever reached out to on your own.

You can use a service like SamCart to create your own affiliate program. When you recruit affiliates, it’s essential to communicate with them through a custom email list and a Facebook Group Page. These two communication platforms will be more than enough to keep your affiliates on the same page for what to promote and when.

Michael Hyatt’s course promotion was a launch which means there was a beginning date and an end date. In addition to running a launch style product launch, you can also run an evergreen promotion so affiliates can set their social media posts in a continuous cycle and constantly promote your landing pages.

#4: Use Facebook Ads

I recommend trying the other three before you give Facebook ads a try. The reason is that you don’t know how well your landing page converts until it gets enough visibility. You don’t want to use Facebook ads for a landing page that doesn’t convert.

You also don’t want to use Facebook ads for a landing page that converts well for getting opt-ins, but the autoresponder doesn’t bring in any sales. Then you’re losing money in the short-term even though you are growing your email list.

With that said, Facebook ads are the dominant player in the social media space. There are plenty of ways to optimize your Facebook ads, but I’ll give you the basic math you need to run a successful Facebook ad.

You’ll need to pick a Facebook ad that is measured by the cost per conversion. Before you run your Facebook ad, you should know how much a conversion is worth to you.

Let’s say you have a landing page with an effective autoresponder. Based on your past results, you know that the average subscriber spends $5 in the autoresponder. If you can convert subscribers at $2 per conversion with the Facebook ad, you make a $3 profit for each new subscriber you get from the Facebook ad.

These are the ads that become successful. It’s not just about optimizing your ad for Facebook standards, but it’s also about optimizing your autoresponder so Facebook optimization is a worthwhile effort.

To take this strategy a step further, you can focus on promoting a webinar. Webinars tend to convert very well from opt-in and sales generation standpoints. When you have a webinar that converts really well, you can even make it evergreen so you don’t have to continuously perform the same presentation.

In Conclusion

Email list building strategies are all around us. The only ones that will work are the ones that you meaningfully implement. Of all of these strategies, evergreen social media posts is the easiest to implement. It’s an easy one-off task where you occasionally have to look at your posts to see what’s still working.

Optimizing your site for maximum conversions is similar but can involve more time and continuous testing to get better conversion rates.

Creating and growing your own affiliate program is much more involved, especially in the long-term. However, this approach can yield incredible results. With the exception of affiliate program fees and having a team behind him, Michael Hyatt didn’t have to pay a penny to get those 80,000+ subscribers.

You can run a Facebook ad before you start your own affiliate program. But the affiliate program would help you paint a better picture of what cost per conversion would allow you to make a profit.

What are your thoughts on these email list building strategies? Do you have any strategies for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Strategy

July 27, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

A social media presence is paramount to the success of any business in the digital age. These days, no marketing strategy can be complete without a social media strategy. With the social media landscape constantly changing, we need evergreen tactics that can form the core of our social media strategy regardless of which social networks are our top dogs. The following are four ways you can quickly improve your social media strategy and get better results.

#1: Leverage On Messaging

Customer service is at the heart of successful businesses. Get customer service wrong and before long, your business could run out of revenue. You can leverage the messaging power of social media and turn it into a potent customer service channel that goes beyond special offers and resolving disputes.

Social media has vastly changed customer service landscape. This was inevitable given that many people spend a considerable amount of time daily on social networks. Just take a look at some of these eye-opening stats:

According to Pew Research, 70% of Facebook users log on daily, including 43% who do so several times a day. 59% of Instagram users, 38% of Twitter users, 27% of Pinterest users and 22% of Linked users log on daily.
In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Americans spend an average of 40 minutes per day on Facebook.
Research by Nielsen has found that 33% of customers prefer to contact brands using social media as opposed to the telephone.
JD Power conducted a study that established that two-thirds of customers go to Twitter and Facebook for customer service.

Clearly, if you aren’t using social media messaging for customer service, you are losing out on a great opportunity.

But, there is a caveat. Engaging customers on social media is time-consuming and at times complicated. Sifting through hundreds of comments looking for complaints and/or suggestions is just part of the game.

The only way to effectively use social media for customer service and stay sane is to use Messenger Bots. Facebook’s recently popularized Messenger Bot makes it easy to quickly respond to common requests such as initial greetings. Other messaging apps like Telegram even have built-in functionality that allows customers to get quick answers from a menu selection.

#2: Mix Paid Content with SEO

Content marketing will only continue to grow stronger in future. So, it’s important to keep creating valuable content. But, to expand distribution, it is advisable to use paid content if you can afford to. Organic traffic is fantastic but if you can reach a bigger audience with paid content that converts visitors into sales, then it’s worth a try?

Unlike a few years ago, paid content today is customized for the platforms and targeting options allow one to target a niche audience. Think of paid content as a useful ally to build an audience faster. Paid content is great for startups and local businesses especially when launching new products or running a seasonal campaign.

#3: Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment

Mark Zuckerberg once stated, “the biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

Where social media is concerned, you must boldly experiment. The dynamic nature of social media means that new ways of doing things, technologies and tools keep coming up on a daily basis. The innovators that try out the new stuff before the rest of us often get to benefit from upgrades.

Instagram Stories is the latest feature that early adopters happily jumped on. While this feature hasn’t been around for long, it already has over 150 million daily users. Experiment with new features whenever they launch and sign-up for early releases where possible. You might just stumble on something that completely revamps your social media strategy and turbocharges your business.

#4: Don’t Forget the Golden Rule

Active interaction. That’s right. This is the golden rule of a successful strategy. A quiet audience that doesn’t interact with your posts is a clear indication that something is wrong. It could be your content isn’t relevant, interesting and useful enough or your response rate is low. Invest in a good analytics tool to find out what works and what doesn’t.

Remember that social media includes the word social. Don’t solely use social media to shout out your message at your audience. Instead, take the time to ask questions and interact with the people who engage with your content.

In Conclusion

About 80% of small and medium-sized enterprises are using social media to drive sales and business growth. Rather than just having a presence on social media, you need to go deeper and understand how to make the maximum use of the features to provide better service to your customers and improve your bottom line.

What are your thoughts on creating a social media strategy? Have any suggestions for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

10 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Businesses

February 9, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

email-marketing

This is a guest contribution from Stacey Marone

If you still haven’t made email marketing a priority for your small business, you should definitely do that as soon as possible. When your email list grows, your potential for sales also grows. You get a chance to attract loyal users to your website, and they get special offers they can’t resist. It’s a win-win situation.

Some content marketers will tell you that email marketing is outdated. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Take your own email as an example. Do you subscribe to lists from the websites you often visit? Do you like getting special offers from your favorite online bookstore? Of course you do!

Through perfectly-designed and written email messages, you make a quick and easy offer. Moreover, you get a chance to improve the traffic at your website. All you need to do is plan and execute a great email marketing campaign and work on the design and content of the website. If you get those points right, you’ll get more traffic and an improve conversion rate.

Coursera, for example, found a great way to attract its users to improve their activity at the website. They constantly get suggestions of courses they would like. The emails are personalized in accordance to their activity and preferences. Someone who likes history and shows such an activity at the website won’t get irrelevant suggestions for psychology courses. The creators of this email marketing campaign also send updates about the progress of the platform and remind the users they can access their courses from anywhere. This is an example of a good email marketing campaign, which provides a lot of value to the users.

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The question is: how do you get there? How do you plan and design the perfect email marketing campaign? The following 10 tools will help you with that.

#1: Constant Contact

This is one of the fastest growing services for email marketing. It is very user-friendly, so it’s the perfect choice for those who are making their first steps with email promotions. The mailing lists are very easy to manage.

The strength is the great choice of templates that are very easy to customize with drag-and-drop actions. You don’t need advanced design skills to use and customize a template in a way that would look appealing to your potential customers. Through Constant Contact, you can send personalized welcome, anniversary, and birthday messages that will make each subscriber feel special.

If you haven’t created an email list, you can easily upload it from Gmail, Outlook, Excel, and other services. From then on, it will grow. The platform will handle the bounces, unsubscribes, and inactive emails so you won’t bother with those details.

#2: Zoho Campaigns

This email marketing tool is focused on building last relationships with the subscribers. You can achieve that with the right design, content, and response to the actions of the recipients. The campaign tracking and reporting features of Zoho Campaigns are extremely valuable. You’ll be aware of the way your audience reacts on your messages, so you’ll constantly work on the improvement of your campaign.

You can use a template, but you can also create your own design if you want to be extremely unique. With Campaigns, you can create landing pages for your Facebook audience.

#3: ConvertKit

You’ll notice how this service is described the moment you land at its website: email marketing for professional bloggers. Why would a small business need an email marketing tool intended for bloggers? Well, if you have a blog at your website, then ConvertKit can really make your content marketing campaign more effective.

This tool is different from all others on this list because it focuses around content. You’ll be sending automated emails that invite the readers to read more at your website. When people want to get tips and solutions (and they do), that’s exactly what you need to deliver.

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#4: GetResponse

This is a tool that not only helps you deliver great messages to your target audience, but also educates you on proper email marketing. The emails will look great on any device; and guess what: you don’t need any design skills to achieve that. The HTML code editor is suitable for people who have some skills, but you can always use a template if you don’t belong in that category. GetResponse also gives you over 1,000 free iStock images to use in your designs.

You will get access to webinars that teach you how to boost the conversion rates. In addition, you’ll get tools that help you build great landing pages that lead to conversions.

#5: Campaign Monitor

This is a complete email marketing and automation tool that allows you to address each recipient personally with the messages. That’s an important effect to achieve. With Campaign Monitor, a high level of personalization is possible because the tool allows you to use important data from any third-party apps, such as Salesforce and Shopify.

The fact that you can control the time of sending email messages is also important. The last thing you want is wake up the recipients from other time zones with notifications in the middle of the night.

The design of your emails will be great with Campaign Monitor. The drag-and-drop builder works perfectly well.

#6: SendinBlue

This platform supports more-or-less the same features that all other tools on this list provide. Its advantage, however, is in the SMS marketing tools, which you can combine with your emailing campaign. You can reach the relevant audience with messages triggered by their interactions with your business.

You will get personalized email and phone support by the SendinBlue team, so you can always find solutions to the issues you face during the campaign. The free plan is another huge advantage. ALthough it gives you only 9,000 emails per month and not many other features that are available with the paid plans, that’s still more than enough for the beginning.

You can try the free plan and see where it takes you. As your campaign grows, you can get a Micro, Bronze, or Silver membership. Advanced users can make progress to Gold, Platinum, Diamond, or Atomic membership.

#7: AWeber

From all email marketing tools on this list, this one is probably the easiest one to use. It’s perfect for a small business that wants to get attention through an emailing campaign. With AWeber, you can rest assured that the messages will end up in the inboxes of your subscribers. They won’t be lost in the spam folders.

The templates look great and are pretty easy to use. You can design appealing messages in a matter of minutes.

Small business owners love AWeber because of the rock-solid support system. When you’re dealing with an email marketing campaign for the first time, it’s important to get tips from someone who understands your struggles.

#8: MailChimp

If you’re looking for the most popular email marketing platform that most people use, this is the one. It’s strength is individuality. It enables you to design unique email messages that convey the character of your brand. In an email marketing campaign, personality is an extremely important feature to keep in mind.

The features of MailChimp are great for small businesses, but they will remain relevant when your company grows, so you won’t have to look for another tool that meets your marketing campaign’s growing needs. You can connect your store with MailChimp’s ecommerce integration. This feature enables you to connect the email marketing with the conversion process in a seamless manner.

#9: Infusionsoft

The moment you land at the website of this tool, you’ll notice its strength: design. The platform provides solutions for sales and marketing automation that are exclusively designed for small businesses. These are the things you’ll get with Infusionsoft: improved conversion rates, more leads, sales process management, master ecommerce experience, and automation of tasks that are holding you back.

As you can see, this is much more than an email marketing tool; it’s a solution that takes care of multiple aspects of your small business. Still, the plans are relatively affordable regarding all features you get.

#10: ActiveCampaign

This is a classic email marketing tool. It helps you design beautiful campaigns through templates, so you can send newsletters with no effort. You can automate your marketing channels when you import personal and behavioral data about the contacts.

The platform supports free image hosting, so you won’t bother looking for free images all over the web. You can easily find a suitable image to fit into the design of the free template. The good thing about the templates is that they help you create a mobile-friendly design.

Added Recommendation: Engage Bay

Engage Bay is a powerful, affordable, all-in-one marketing solution for SMBs. The company presents itself as a more affordable version of HubSpot which provides capabilities for email marketing, marketing automation, CRM & sales, and the Help Desk

In Conclusion

The success of a small business is practically dependent upon the online reputation it builds. For the sale of building a great online reputation, social media platforms are not enough. You have to find a way to communicate with your audience and send your personalized message directly to the potential customers. Email marketing is the perfect solution. Make your choice from the tools above, and you’ll be on your way to a successful email marketing campaign.

About Stacey

Stacey Marone is a freelance writer for essays.scholaradvisor.com and a social media marketer working part-time on contract for a large consultancy firm in the US. She creates magnetic content optimized for search. In her free time she also does volunteer work and organizes some activities for children. You can follow her on Twitter.

How To Write Valuable Content When Pressed For Time

November 21, 2016 by Marc Guberti 5 Comments

write valuable content

This is a guest contribution from Andrew Howe.

Content creation has never been an easy thing to do. In the digital era, it has become even harder to write compelling and valuable content as the digital world is a bottomless sea of content.

Most niche blogs publish new content on a regular basis which means having fewer topics to discuss. It seems there is nothing new under the sun.

While blogging is getting more competitive, there is no way out for content marketers. Writing valuable content is a must. And most of us would agree that writing on the same topic over and over again takes time, effort, and inspiration.

Plus, being a blogger means having more things to do which include analyzing competitors, communicating with clients and readers, growing income, and creating content.

The sum up?

If you’re not inspirited, the writing process would take even more time, and it seems to be a closed circle.

A logical question appears. How can we write valuable content while being pressed for time?

First, you should know where to find time for writing.

Second, it’s important to understand the role of high-quality content for your website growth before we move forward. So, what does valuable content give your site?

Improves SEO ranking
Boosts traffic and, therefore, increases sales
Helps to build brand authority

As we can see, valuable content is beneficial for your site, so you’d better know how to create it.

First things first:

If you know how to manage your time wisely, you’re able to write a lot daily without sacrificing the quality of your content and your personal life. Thus, there is no better way than increase your productivity and start being more efficient.

However, writing daily is not just about having time for it or having enhanced writing speed; it’s also about being full of ideas that rock.

The more great ideas you have, the better. Knowing what to say gives you an opportunity to keep on writing without taking pauses to wait for your muse to come.

Thus, you need to be interested in the topic you’re discovering and have a lot of stats and facts to prove your thoughts. This is another actionable way how to write 2,000 words a day without being about to burn out.

Content marketing plays an important role in your business growth. If you know how to create high-quality content, it’s more likely you know how to attract and hold your audience’s attention.

While everyone says that creating valuable content is a must, it’s important to find out what makes it!

What makes content valuable?

write valuable content

Evergreen, unique and compelling
Satisfies your readers’ needs
Gives an actionable solution
Teaches something new
Boosts SEO ranking

Once you understand what is valuable content, it’s time to check out some methods how to write high-value blog posts.

The simple takeaway? The quality of your content matters. Here are some ways to write valuable content while being pressed for time.

#1: Be An Expert On The Topic

Although the number of writers is growing rapidly, just a few of them put quality over quantity, forgetting that the level of wateriness gives you nothing but a bad reputation.

If you want to grow as a writer whose readers value him, you need to be an expert in your niche. Thus, don’t miss the chance to do in-depth research in order to collect all facts and data, read a lot about the topic of your article and, therefore, find out what you can add.

Obviously, the easiest way to be an expert on the topic is to write about the field of your interest, your passion. The more interested you are, the easier to know all tiny details about the topic.

#2: Create An Outline

Writing a lot is hard, but it can be easier if you follow some guide. There is no better way to keep on the right track than use your outline where you’ve put down your brilliant ideas in a logical way.

A good outline gives you structure and logic, organizing your thoughts flow from A to Z.

If you believe that writing an outline is just wasting of time, give it a try. Once you create it, you can see how much time it helps to save. Although it seems simple, most writers skip this part of the writing process, relying on their practical experience. Your outline is a basis of a good article.

#3: Work On Your Drafts

No matter how good as a writer you are, you might have a big number of drafts that you haven’t use for publishing on the web. For many reasons, most of us pass on the idea to work on these drafts in order to find it a better home. However, it can help you save time and efforts.

It’s hard to predict when the next brilliant idea will strike you, but you can always come back to the ideas that you have already had! Look at your drafts, analyze the reason why it wasn’t a good fit, and work on the gaps. Maybe a new handy article just needs some proofreading.

#4: Focus On One Article

Most bloggers work on different articles at the same time. Although it may seem like a good idea in order to write more, more often than not it gives you nothing but a burnout. Shifting writing several articles is a way to sacrifice the quality of your content and, therefore, get a negative feedback from your clients and readers.

To write more, you need to complete the current assignment, no matter how much time does it need. Be strict with yourself, and never start doing another task until you complete the current one. It’s better to write one good article than produce a lot of mediocre publications on the web.

#5: Use Tools And Apps

Living in the digital era, we have a big number of opportunities to make the most out of it, and using tools and apps is a great way out when it comes to writing. First of all, it helps you save time. For example, you can paste your text and check it for common typos and grammar mistakes and then proofread it more carefully. Plus, there are different tools that help you on every stage of content creation: headline generators, grammar and style guides, editing and proofreading apps, games for improving writing speed, etc.

#6: Find A Team To Join You

There is no better way to save time on writing than find a team of talented people to join you. You need to be focused if you want to write, edit and proofread your text like a boss, and it takes a considerable amount of efforts to do it. However, you can find freelance editors to help you or hire a team. If you’re on a tight budget, there are some forums that offer part-time jobs and you can hire professions from time to time in case of emergency.

#7: Draw Inspiration From Your Readers

A good blogger writers for the audience to provide solutions to the problems the readers might have. If you pay attention to your readers’ feedback, you can find insights what to write next. Many readers leave comments asking for further information, and it can become a new idea for your blog post.

No matter how much free time you have, there is nothing better to boost productivity than being motivated. Thus, you need to draw inspiration from one of the resources to keep on writing valuable pieces.

Inspirational Resources for Bloggers

write valuable content

It’s easy to feel discouraged at certain points within your blogging journey…especially when you are pressed for time. To combat feelings of discouragement, I have compiled a list of inspirational resources you can use to refuel your motivation.

Successful blogs. I bet that every blogger draws inspiration from other blogs that have a big number of visitors and interesting content. Don’t spend much time on reading mediocre blogs; focus on your personal top list of the best blogs.
Writing forums and communities. All bloggers face obstacles, and they need to do their best in order to overcome these problems. Being a member of a writing forum or community gives you an opportunity to find support and actionable ways out once you have some problems in the blogging niche.
Reading. Well, it’s hard to write good content if you don’t read. Reading enriches vocabulary, develops creative thinking and creativity, and gives you insights!
Offline conferences. What can be better than meeting other bloggers in person in order to share experience, knowledge, and tips! Moreover, there might be master-classes to learn something new.
Traveling. What I love the most about blogging is that you don’t have to sit in the office to write content. There are no limits, and you can go whenever you want to write! Traveling can teach you a lot and boost inspiration, so don’t skip writing while going somewhere to explore new edges of the world.

Writing valuable content is an important task for every successful blogger who wants to stand out from the crowd. Your audience doesn’t take care about your time, so it’s you who should know how to keep on writing, no matter where your muse is, or whether you have time for it. Luckily, there are some good ways how to write high-quality content.

Do you have your secrets about writing valuable content if you’re pressed for time?

About the Author

Andrew Howe is a content writer at Edubirdie who loves everything in the digital world. Also, he has crafted AdverbLess tool to help people improve their writing skills.