[social_warfare]
SHOW NOTES
The real key to getting more sales is creating an engaged audience of true believers.
Where many marketers fall short of creating an engaged audience is that in their webinar, sales call, podcast, etc., they primarily focus on:
- THEMSELVES (i.e. their life, experience, credentials, journey, success, etc.)
- The features and components of their offer
News flash: That’s going to drive your audience away, not reel them in.
And if they leave your webinar, turn off your podcast, or disengage with whatever your form of content is, it’s going to be nearly impossible to get them back.
In today’s episode of The Not For Lazy Marketer’s Podcast, I’m sharing the two keys you need to implement in all of the content you create to build an engaged audience of true believers who will buy from you in a heartbeat.
Remember: At the end of the day, one of your biggest goals with your marketing (in all of it’s forms) is to create a more engaged audience because it makes selling exponentially easier.
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Emily Hirsh:
What is up my friends? How are you guys all doing? Welcome back to the podcast, welcome if you’re new. We have lots of new listeners according to our download numbers, which is exciting. So hello if you’re new. I am excited for today’s episode. So it was actually inspired, for those of you guys who don’t know me, I do a ton of reading. My goal is 100 books this year, and I am a little behind actually, but I’ve read over 25 so far. We started a leadership book club on our team and we read a book every month, and anybody who’s in leadership, so if they manage somebody. It’s been amazing because I’ve noticed that things that I would use to in the past, I would read and then I’d bring the takeaways to the team and be like, this is what we should do, or this is an idea and it just is not as powerful. It’s way more powerful if somebody actually reads it for themselves, comprehends it for themselves, and then brings their own views and takeaways from it to our book club meetings.
It’s been super awesome. I think we’ve done it for four months now and we’ve read some really great books, but even more than that, I feel like everybody on my team can bring a different perspective, collaboration, and view from the book that maybe I wouldn’t have thought of, or they wouldn’t have thought of. We’ve been able to create some really great initiatives, change some things, from that book. So super cool. If you have a leadership team, I highly recommend doing something like that because I used to think I needed to do leadership trainings or something. I am not the person to necessarily do the leadership trainings because I’m not a leadership expert. I’m always learning, and I learned from these books. I learned what to do, and then I learned and I collaborate with my team, and that is how I show up as a leader. This has been my answer to wanting to provide more leadership trainings and discussions for our team, not coming through me, because I don’t think I’m necessarily the expert. I need to show up as a strong leader, but I’m not necessarily the person who’s going to teach everybody how to be a leader, because who am I to do that? You know?
So anyways, one of the recent books that we read was the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. Before you’re like, “wait, that’s a sales book not a leadership book,” there is a lot in that book around training and team managing a team, time management. He’s talking about managing sales teams, which for us, we translate it to managing our ads team, but there was a lot in there with that. There was also a lot of marketing techniques in there and topics. And one of the things he said I really loved and I wanted to bring it here to this podcast about your audience and having an engaged audience. In that book, he talks about sales presentations, which is how people used to sell a lot more than they do today. Basically it’s what a webinar is, but what used to be, you’d go to an office and you would have a sales presentation. Now that happens a lot more in the form of something like a webinar.
Regardless, what he said was when you are presenting something like that, one thing to, and I might be butchering this because this is my interpretation, but one thing to keep in mind is to imagine everyone listening to your fill in the blank, like webinar podcast, a video presentation in his case, it was a presentation. So I am, but I’m bringing my own spin into this, but imagine everyone listening to your fill in the blank would get up and leave the room if it was something they weren’t interested in. I don’t know why, but I just loved this and how simple it was t0o.
Let’s say you’re building a webinar presentation, or you’re planning to do a video series, or even right now recording a podcast. I think there’s an extent where you don’t want to overanalyze it, but as far as the topic and what you’re talking about, and then the content that is going on your webinar slides or your presentation, just to imagine you’re actually in a physical room. You’ve got an audience of people sitting in chairs and you’re presenting this content, whatever it is, and if at any point in the presentation and the content somebody deems themselves as they’re not interested in it, right, then they could get up and actually physically leave the room. That visual of when you go to create this content. Even if it’s like right now in my office by myself, imagining okay as I’m creating this, if I had an audience of people sitting physically in a room and they were not interested and at any point in this podcast episode, they could get up and leave. It makes me step up to my A game more.
So imagining that for your webinar presentation, or your video, or whatever it is, especially for those bigger things like webinars, I really love because what it does is it makes sure that you don’t have any fluff, that you don’t have any content that is all about you and not about your audience. Then it’s very focused on serving your audience, speaking to their problems, their dreams, their hopes, their issues that they’re struggling with, and making sure it’s very audience centered. If you’re going at it saying, I have to make sure that I don’t make it so somebody is so bored in here and they could get up and leave, and you’re kind of running your content through that filter. You’re going to show up and make sure that the entire piece of content is audience centric, right? Because somebody is going to get up and leave and walk out of the room, hypothetically, which would translate to jump off your webinar or stop listening to the podcast. Whatever it is, somebody is going to do that if they’re not interested in what you have to say.
I love this, especially for something that ties in a sales presentation, because when you’re presenting content, first of all, of course you want to make sure the content is interesting, but you also have to keep them engaged through the sales pitch, through the offer. This is where a lot of people lose their potential customers, because when they switch over to presenting the offer, they start talking all about the features of the offer, and the offer itself, and all of those components, and they lose the audience’s interest. What you have to do is make sure when you’re talking about your offer, when you’re selling, no matter where it is, you have to still talk about it in a way that your audience is interested and talk about it in a way that very clearly they can see themselves implementing your offer, signing up for your offer, buying your product, and they can actually see that happen.
One thing, whenever I do a webinar, like the number one question I’ll get at the end, no matter how much I’ve added this in my slides which I’ve improved at every time, is questions like will this work for… and then fill in the blank, different industries, different products, different situations and scenarios. So in order for people to buy, they have to see themselves in the solution, and they have to see that it will work for their business or their life. As an offer is being presented to them, they have to be interested in it, right? You have to keep them engaged, which probably means keeping them engaged with solving their problem, and that dream of solving their problem, and showing them that your offer is the solution to potentially solving their problem.
So I’m titling this episode A More Engaged Audience Results In More Sales, because I want number one, my recommendation is that you start kind of running everything you create, but especially things like webinar presentation, if that is part of your strategy, everything you create, you keep this in mind. Imagine I’m sitting there, everyone listening, everyone watching whatever I’m creating can get up and leave and would get up and leave if it was something they weren’t interested in, will just keep you on your a game. This even relates to if you have a service and you have sales calls, right? When does a sales call work? It works when you make the entire call about that person. You’re not talking about yourself. You’re not going into details about you and how you created this product, and why it’s so special to you and all that. A sales call is only going to work if you take the time to understand the potential prospect, to connect with them on their problems, and to keep them interested in what you’re speaking about and your offer. It’s not going to work if you switch and you become you centric versus audience centric. That’s why I love this thought.
First of all, run everything you go to create, but especially big things like webinars or sales calls, big presentations, through that filter and really ask yourself where would somebody drop off? Where would they lose interest here? Where have I gotten to you centric, or fluffy, or whatever in my content? Then second of all, understanding that an engaged audience is the key to more sales. So building an audience who actually pays attention and consumes your webinar, who actually listens to your podcast, who listens to your videos, who trusts your content, is the key to sales.
Sometimes entrepreneurs and people go out and they’re like, I need sales, I need leads. But that is the end result. A lot of times the vehicle comes from creating that engaged content, creating that content that provides value, and clarity, and understanding, and connection that somebody didn’t have before they consume that content. One of the worst things that you can do is somebody gives you a chance by listening to your podcast, or listening to your video, or attending your webinar and you make them bored or you make them lose interest in what you’re saying and they jump off. The chances of them coming back and giving you another chance are slim.
At the beginning of this, I said this has to be balanced with running it through the filter, but I also believe not overthinking your content. Because what I don’t want is you guys to hear this and then spend like 25 hours trying to create your webinar and put all this pressure on yourself. But it is a good high level filter to run something through. It doesn’t equal that everything you put out has to be perfect. My podcast is very much isn’t, this podcast is not perfect. I mean, I record a lot off the cuff, but that’s also who I am. I do better like that versus scripted and very overly planned. You have to balance, you know, this high level filter of am I going to lose somebody’s interests? Which essentially is, am I making any part of my content too fluffy, too broad, too high-level that nobody can relate? Or not about them and it’s more about me?
Because remember, your audience doesn’t care about you. They don’t care at all about you, your problems, the work you’ve done, they really don’t. They care about what that means for them. Even if you’re talking about you. In any situation, the only way that works is if they can relate to you and see value in that, they’re learning from that they’re getting value from that exchange because it’s all about them. That’s how humans are wired. So running it through that filter, but not overthinking it. Making sure that at the end of the day, as long as you are providing that value and as long as you are creating that really powerful engagement with your audience, wherever that shows up. Whether that is a podcast, a video, a webinar, a sales call. Wherever that engagement is showing up, as long as you’re creating that positive engagement and you’re creating those raving fans, those people who binge your podcast, who will come to every webinar you do, those are the key. That audience is the key to your sales.
That’s what I’m trying to get across in this episode. The way you do that is you make sure all the content you create is at that caliber, that level of value, and you run it through the filter multiple times. I’ve definitely been in the place where I thought that every slide on my webinar was good, and then I’ve actually run it through a filter like this and I found slides that I’m like, oh, this is really fluffy. What am I even saying here? This is going to lose interest. It’s too complicated. It’s overwhelming, it’s confusing, whatever it is. Just imagining, literally imagining on a webinar, if someone feels uninterested they will get up and leave the room. I just loved that analogy to think through that.
At the end of the day, one of your big goals with marketing, in all of its forms, is to create a more engaged audience and to get that audience engaged with your brand, because every single time that’s a touch point that is growing trust, and that makes the sales so much easier. So that’s what I have to say today about this, and I hope it helps. If you have a webinar, you have content that you’re putting out, just running through that filter and see what ideas come to you. I think it’s a powerful way to identify areas in your content and how you’re connecting with your audience that can be improved, that can be up-leveled, that can get more engaging and provide more value to your audience. Thanks so much for listening today, guys. I’ll talk to you next time.
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