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Join us for an enlightening conversation with marketing expert Sylvia Garibaldi, as we dive into how to grow your audience quickly. Sylvia shares four of the fastest and most effective ways to grow your audience so that you can tap into new prospects on a continual basis while building deeper relationships. Sylvia cuts to the chase and provides actionable insights on utilizing targeted sponsorships, such as promoting special events or invaluable resources like webinars, and the necessity of a robust follow-up strategy. You’ll want to listen in and start implementing!
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Key Takeaways:
- Four dynamic strategies for rapidly expanding your professional audience.
- The transformative potential of sponsorships when utilized effectively.
- Methods for leveraging referral partnerships and joint ventures to heighten credibility and trust.
- Tips for creating engaging and targeted lead magnets to grow your email list and nurture potential clients.
Chapters:
(0:00:00) - Leveraging Sponsorships to Grow Your Audience
(0:10:09) - Strategies for Rapid Audience Growth
(0:19:30) - Crafting Engaging Content to Attract Potential Clients
(0:29:41) - Using Referral Partnerships and Joint Ventures to Boost Credibility
(0:41:59) - Implementing Effective Lead Magnets to Nurture Potential Clients
Resources Mentioned:
#7 Beyond Webinars: Secrets To Take Your Online Events from Ordinary to Extraordinary
#8 How to Use Virtual Stages To Bring In New Clients
#18 How To Fill Your Prospecting Pipeline
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00:00 - Sylvia (Host)
Let's dive in. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode number 19 of the Serve First, sell Later marketing podcast. As professionals, you face a very unique set of challenges in attracting and retaining clients in this very competitive market, and so in this episode, I want to talk about growing your audience. Growing your audience in order to solve any ongoing challenges of attracting and retaining clients. More specifically, I want to talk about four of the fastest and most effective ways that we know about how to grow your audience so that you can tap into new prospects on a continual basis while building deeper relationships. But before we dive into these strategies, let's discuss why it's so important. So here's the thing A larger engaged audience can lead to increased trust, credibility and, ultimately, client acquisition, and so for most of you out there, you probably experience those ebbs and flows of bringing in clients and then perhaps that well, dries up a little bit and then you start your prospecting all over again and, until you can start that momentum, growing and building so that you can bring in those consistent clients that you need to grow your practice, and so I want you to think about that, think about the frustration and the challenge you experience every time.
03:26
You need to get back into that momentum of growing your practice. So when you have a larger audience, you have more people who are interested in what you have to say, and so they're more likely to share your content with their networks, which means your reach begins to expand your content with their networks, which means your reach begins to expand. So when you have a more engaged audience, they're more likely to trust you and your expertise, and they'll view you as a thought leader in your field, which is truly invaluable. So building an audience requires a strategy and consistency. So in this episode, I want to dig a little deeper and share with you the four ways that we have seen the most success with. So I hope that sounds interesting to you. So let's get started with number one.
04:16
So the first way to build your audience quickly, or to grow your audience as quickly as possible, is by leveraging referral partners, and I know all of you are well-versed in the power of referral partners, but I want you to think about who are your partners. So first step is to identify who they are, and referral partners can include a wide range of professionals, such as lawyers, mediators, financial advisors, divorce financial analysts, therapists. These are just to name a very few, because if you get creative, there can be all different kinds of referral partners out there that complement the work that you do as a legal or financial professional. So looking for professionals who serve a similar target market, that's your goal. You want to find those professionals that serve the same target audience as you, but they don't directly compete with you, so consider their values, services and reputation to ensure that there's a strong alignment with your brand. So successful referral partnerships include lawyers collaborating with financial advisors, or they could be mediators working with divorce financial analysts. These are just a few examples, but, as you know, there are so many combinations that could work really well, and so what we've found is that these partnerships can lead to increased trust, credibility and, ultimately, client acquisition, and all of which contribute to growing your audience quickly.
05:55
So remember the reason why you want to grow your audience quickly. You want to avoid those ebbs and flows of prospecting, of bringing in new revenue into the firm. You want to be able to keep it consistently growing. You want that momentum there so that you don't have to keep struggling to build your practice. So when approaching potential referral partners, I think it's important to remember to be clear about the benefits of the partnership for both parties. So explain how your services can complement each other and how you can provide value to their clients. Also, think about how you can be open to reciprocal referrals and collaborate on marketing efforts, such as, maybe, hosting joint webinars or co-authoring social media posts or articles or attending speaking engagements together. So joint ventures, as I mentioned, webinars, workshops, co-authored content, sharing your services and offers on their social media, sharing it to their email list and vice versa. So this allows you to tap into each other's audiences, hence growing your audience.
07:10
So I want to talk for a moment about joint ventures, because they can be a really powerful way to grow your practice quickly and help you reach a wider audience and ultimately establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. And I think a very important tip here is to really make sure that you're nurturing these joint relationships or joint ventures. So communicate regularly with your referral partners, share updates and always be on the lookout for new ways to collaborate to collaborate, so you can attend events together, you can introduce your referral partners to your network and provide feedback on how the partnership is performing. So number two one of the most powerful ways to reach potential clients and grow your audience is to speak on stages. So, whether it's a virtual event or an in-person conference, speaking engagements give you a platform to showcase your expertise and connect you with your target audience. And when you do this consistently, you are continually growing your audience.
08:23
And I've seen many legal and financial professionals make the mistake of speaking at events where their ideal target market doesn't hang out and they end up presenting to a room full of peers and competitors, which is really a huge missed opportunity. Now, of course, there are opportunities and value in presenting to your peers, but in this particular case, if you are actively trying to grow your practice, you're going to want to present either to your ideal target market or present to your referral partners, so that you can co-collaborate and bring in referrals that way. So it's really important to align yourself so that you're building a relationship with your ideal audience by speaking on the stages where you know you're going to find them or the referral partners. So, for example, if you're a divorce mediator, you could find your ideal target market at divorce support groups. So speaking on stages is really a fantastic way to quickly reach new potential clients and grow your audience clients and grow your audience, and by speaking to the right people, you are really using the strategy to grow your practice consistently. So, whether it's your ideal end clients or your ideal referral partner clients, either one are going to be a very powerful way to grow your audience. In fact, if you want to learn more about speaking on virtual stages, then you need to check out episodes number seven and eight of the podcast, and I'll put the links in the show notes for you.
10:09
How do top professionals continue to successfully grow their practices? What are they doing that perhaps you're not, and how can you build this into your day-to-day work? If you want to know the answers to these questions and more, then you need to join my free workshop on April, the 23rd, 11 am Eastern Standard Time, and in this exclusive two-hour marketing workshop I'm going to do a deep dive into what top legal and financial professionals do that perhaps you're not doing, and it's all about how to become a trusted authority to attract ideal clients effortlessly, how they put concerted effort into their social media so that it's always growing and expanding, and what they do to build lucrative referral partnerships, and so so much more. So if you're eager to transform your practice and make it the best year yet and you want to engage in conversations with your peers, then you have to join me on how top professionals continuously grow their practices. On April 23rd Link for registration can be found in the show notes See you there. Okay, let's move on to number three.
11:27
So the third way to grow an audience quickly is through sponsorships. So sponsoring an event, an organization or an initiative where your ideal market hangs out can be a real game changer. But I'm not referring to using sponsorships to build your brand awareness, for example, sponsoring a local baseball team where they put a banner of your logo up. I prefer to use it by promoting something very specific, like an upcoming webinar or an in-person event, or perhaps a guide or maybe even a podcast, so you can tap into a whole network of potential clients. So let's say, for example, you're a divorce financial professional. You could sponsor an association or an organization where your ideal market hangs out so you can promote your webinar series on what they need to do and know so that they can divorce with financial peace of mind. So this organization could be a large divorce support group. Or maybe you sponsor an association of marriage counselors who can become aware of your services to specifically recommend to their patients.
12:44
So I hope this is starting to resonate with you and I hope this is creating some ideas for you to really think about how you can grow your audience, and what I want to say about sponsorships in particular is not only does it allow you can grow your audience, and what I want to say about sponsorships in particular is not only does it allow you to showcase your expertise, but it also gives you the opportunity to have the organization promote your services to their audience. So we've done this in our business many times and what we do is we sponsor associations that represent professionals that we serve, and we've had huge success with filling our workshops and webinars with ideal prospects who convert into being clients. Now it doesn't just need to be a webinar series dollars toward promoting your checklist or guide that you've created so that you can get your ideal prospects signing up with their emails and then you can follow up with them. So this is really using your webinar or your guide so that interested parties can sign up, and what's super important about this is to make sure that the topic really resonates with your audience and makes them want to sign up for these opportunities with you. So here's the key it's important to allocate your sponsorship dollars to promote something very specific, such as an upcoming event or a webinar or something else of value. This way, you're not just throwing money at the wall and hoping it sticks. And please don't forget to put a strategy in place for follow-up, because follow-up is absolutely important. So, after the webinar, or perhaps after downloading your checklist, send them a thank you email and offer them the opportunity to meet to perhaps answer their specific questions or provide them with advice on how you might be able to help them. So what's really important about this is that this keeps the conversation going and can lead to new clients. So it's important, if you've invested money into a sponsorship, you want to have a really solid plan in place to best leverage this sponsorship, and what we've seen is that sponsorships can be a really powerful tool for growing your audience and reaching your ideal market, and I think by promoting something specific and following up with participants or attendees, you can make the most of your sponsorship opportunities and, when done properly, you can get so much value out of these types of sponsorships, and I highly encourage you to think about what opportunities are out there that you could leverage in terms of sponsorships.
15:30
All right, moving on to number four. So content creation and lead magnets are powerful strategies that can help you grow your audience quickly, and the key here is creating valuable, relevant content that addresses the specific problems and needs of your target audience. So lead magnets are a really effective way to grow your email list and marketing funnel. So content creation should be laser focused on your target audience. So look at what they're already paying for or engaging with and create content that directly addresses those pain points and needs. For example, if you're a divorce financial professional, you could create an in-depth e-book on navigating the financial challenges of divorce. Or if you're a divorce mediator, you could offer a checklist on preparing for a successful mediation. So these types of hyper-relevant, valuable resources can quickly attract your ideal clients, and so by promoting this content across your website, your social media, your email list and other channels, you can start driving traffic and building awareness around your expertise, and this helps grow your audience quickly by tapping into the right people who are actively seeking the solutions you provide, and the same thing applies to the power of lead magnets in accelerating audience growth.
17:00
So lead magnets are essentially free resources you offer in exchange for someone's contact information usually an email address, and what we've seen is, when done effectively, lead magnets can drive a significant increase in email list signups, and the key to creating lead magnets that are highly relevant and valuable to your target audience is ensuring that it's something that really resonates with them, that's related to a pain point or a challenge, and I think by promoting these lead magnets across your marketing channels, you can quickly build a qualified email list of potential clients. From there. You can nurture those leads through email marketing, further content and outreach, and so this allows you to grow your audience quickly and start converting those leads into clients over time. So if you want a more in-depth resource on how to use lead magnets, like webinars or guides and checklists, then you need to listen to episode number 18, where I share loads of valuable tips on lead magnets. So remember, the key is to be strategic, test different approaches and continuously refine your content and lead magnets to maximize the impact. Do this and you'll be well on your way to growing a thriving, engaged audience in no time.
18:23
So building an audience isn't just about numbers. It's about fostering meaningful connections and establishing yourself as a trusted authority and by leveraging referral partnerships, speaking on stages, exploring strategic sponsorships and crafting valuable content and lead magnets, you do have the power to expand your reach and attract your ideal clients. You do have the power to expand your reach and attract your ideal clients, but remember, success in audience growth really requires more than just implementing these strategies. It really does need dedication, it needs consistency and really a genuine commitment to providing value to your audience. And I always like to say your audience is not just a number. They're real people with real challenges and aspirations. So approach your audience growth journey with authenticity, empathy and a genuine desire to make a positive impact. So thank you for tuning in with me and if you found this episode valuable, I would be most honored if you subscribe to the podcast rate and leave a review, or please share this with anyone who you think could benefit most. I'll catch you in the next episode.