This week’s episode is in response to a question from one of our email subscribers, “If I am on a podcast or doing a virtual presentation – how do I get people to identify themselves as leads? In other words – how do I leverage that event for lead generation?”
It’s such a great question because it gets right to the heart of our marketing system – our message, our point of view and our offer.
So we’ll go deep into those 3 categories, pull some examples from folks like Tim Ferris, and hopefully you’ll come away with some aha moments and tangible things to work on!
1. A Clear & Compelling Idea that speaks deeply to the right people. The best guests know who they serve, the problem they solve and exactly why the right person should work with them. So on the receiving end of that message, the right person is saying to themselves, “Wow, that’s me! I have that exact problem!”
Look at Tim Ferris. He has an amazing post where he and one of his team breaks down the launch plan for the 4 Hour Body. He talks about his guest posting strategy, which often featured content written specifically for that blog that wasn’t included in the book, but was consistent with the Clear & Compelling Idea of the book.
Tim understands his core audience and the many sub-groups within that audience. He will write specific chapters of his books with specific sub-groups of his audience in mind, and then use those chapters to market to that subgroup with laser focus. But it all serves one idea – the Clear & Compelling Idea of the book. It’s not just random content thrown in to get attention. It all leads to the same place.
2. Unique and sometimes controversial point of view on the problem. As Chris Lochhead says, if you can reframe the problem – describing the problem in a new and different way, it’s assumed that you have the solution. For anyone who now sees the problem the way you do, you are now the natural choice for the solution to the problem.
But if you describe the problem in the same way everyone else does, you’re starting from a disadvantage. You have to work uphill to establish that your solution is different, because it comes from the same foundation as everyone else, the same perspective on the problem.
Work to uncover and refine your opinions until they become razor sharp and positively polarizing, then build your interviews and presentations around those opinions. They lead to your Buying Beliefs, and the more Buying Beliefs people agree with you on, the closer they are to becoming an ideal client.
What does it mean to be positively polarizing? A good example is a client, Lars Hedenborg, who coaches real estate team leaders. They are often overworked and feel underpaid, and many have teams that actually take profit out of their pocket while adding work, but they’re trapped by the ego drive of the top line numbers that their team does.
Lars has a polarizing message, which is to focus on the bottom line, including the actual lifestyle you’re living as a team leader, and rebuild the business on a model that’s actually scalable and sustainable. We’re playing with the messaging right now, but we’re tentatively calling it the Scalable Team, a new model for how teams are built and structured to maximize both profit and lifestyle of the team leader.
Now that could come across as a very negative message – especially if he put all his focus on the smoke and mirrors and ego in the team world. But in the end, any message, no matter how negative, can ultimately be a positive message, because it’s not about trashing everything that’s out there now.
Lars is on a mission to help team leaders create a better lifestyle and more profit. It just happens that letting go of the ego is one of the first steps in building that new kind of team on a new model. So he has to deal with that to push away the wrong people and attract the right people.
3. An offer in exchange for raising their hand – that is both clear and compelling.
It must be clear as to what problem your offer solves. This is easy to lose sight of, because we have so much content, so many tools or templates or training we could put into an offer.
But ultimately the offer must be crystal clear, and ideally no more than 2 offers – a way to work directly with you (if that’s available) plus a lower-risk way to stay in touch and learn more. It can’t be an evaluation or a quiz to determine if they are a good fit for YOU, that’s all about what you want.
It must be a compelling offer, by solving a problem for them in an interesting, different way. Now, here’s where I’ll give a bold opinion. I think the best way to get people to raise their hand on a live presentation or podcast is to offer some unique and simple solution to a smaller, tactical problem. Specifically, a smaller tactical problem that comes before the main problem you solve.
The Range of Problems – There is a range of problems your ideal clients have that are related to the problem you solve. What smaller problems come before the problem you solve, such that if someone solved that problem, it would actually make them need you MORE, not less.
You don’t want to offer something that if they take it and run with it, they actually need you less. So it takes some time and experimentation to find the right kind of offer. But the place to start is to map out that Range of Problems, and look at all the problems that you could help someone solve that would actually move them closer to needing you, closer to being an ideal client.
Then make a list of the unique tactical solutions you’ve found to those problems.
For example, when I’m featured on a podcast that focuses more on relationship building than other marketing tactics, I have a specific offer I created that gives away a copy of my Relationship Board Template in Trello. It’s the Trello Board where I track all my key relationships and look for ways to make introductions between and among those key people.
It’s a simple offer to make, but it’s a unique, tactical solution to a common problem – how do I add value to the key relationships in my world to generate more collaboration, referral and sales opportunities?
I don’t offer those on podcasts where the focus is my book, because I already have a free book offer on my website I can direct folks to. The last time I did a presentation, a third of all the people listening went and signed up for that free book offer.
That’s pretty good but I could do a much better job of selling them on that offer, or sweetening the deal by including the audiobook version.
So there you have it, those are the 3 key areas to improve to get people to raise their hands, identify themselves as leads or get into your email list!
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