How to Transform Your Competitor’s Into your Best Lead Source with Podcast Guesting – in Just 7 Minutes with Melanie Benson

Related Links and Resources:

I put together a guide. The guide basically walks you through 17 of the most common mistakes that people make when they're guesting as an expert; you will get it at www.MelanieBenson.com/Scaleology and that will give you the free download and very simple to go through.

Summary:

Melanie Benson, Authority Amplifier, helps expert-preneurs stand out in a crowded market and attract high paying clients and opportunities. Melanie has a proven track record of accelerating results for her clients (it's not uncommon to see 3-5x revenue increases in the first 6 months.) She's host of Amplify Your Success Podcast, is author of Rewired for Wealth, co-author of the best-selling Voices of the 21st Century and Entrepreneur.com's Start Up Guide to Starting an Information Marketing Business, and has been featured in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Woman's Day, and Parenting. Melanie served on the Women Speakers Association Executive Team.

Here are the highlights of this episode:

2:36 Melanie’s ideal Client: My ideal clients are business leaders, business owners, and entrepreneurs who have been in business for two years but they're finding that they're not standing out with their message and the impact they want to have. They're feeling that they are 'best-kept secret', they're feeling that they're getting passed over by ideal clients, there are clients that're choosing their competitors. And they're looking for creative ways to tap in into the new markets without having to be on the road speaking all the time. 

3:13 Problem Melanie helps solve: I think without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest one is they think they're doing all the right things but they are not getting the results. So, they're feeling overwhelmed, they're exhausted, that moment when you are like "I'm trying everything what everyone has told me and I'm just not getting the visibility and the attraction that I hoped." Maybe they are already doing podcast guesting. My specialty is helping people look for the right audiences to get featured on a podcast, a guest expert, virtual events, virtual shows, whatever they want to do. And position their authority in a way that transforms them from being pass over and invisible in their market to really being seen as the GO-TO expert and get highly paid for that.

4:29 Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Melanie: A common symptom that I hear is, this just came up the other day, was from someone on my Facebook groups saying "so Melanie, I've been doing what everyone's telling me to do. I'm getting on the podcast guesting, I published a book, I'm doing all the right things but I just feel like people don't really see me, like they're not hiring me." At some level, that invisibility feels overwhelming to them, they feel so confused about what to do to fix that. On the other hand, sometimes people are doing all the right things and they're getting on lots of podcasts, but the way in which they're organizing their information, what they're going to talk about, it's not actually getting anybody into their leads. They're not turning into potential clients, they're not getting business from it, and so they're flustered. They're thinking "I think I'm doing everything right" but they can't figure out the right puzzle pieces to optimize the time investment they're making, so they're a little bit of hopelessness too, I think.

5:54 What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Melanie and her solution: There's a mistake of trying to do all the right things, but because you don't have a strategy that is customized to you, so it's not working. The reason that this comes up for people is that either A-they're just trying to figure it out on their own; they're imitating what they see other people are doing, they hear a hot strategy and we see this all the time and they are like "oh, I can do that" and the key is "I can do it on my own, I can figure it out" but they're actually not getting results. Figuring out on their own isn't really working out for them. The other thing that I think happens is, they're trying to do EVERYTHING and none of it is really moving the needle. And so, they're to put that visibility net out there, and they're everywhere all the time. I see this happening on some new platforms like clubhouse. They're putting a wide net but they're really not optimizing anything, and so they're exhausted, overwhelmed, none of it is really working to get the attraction that they really want. Or they're kind of wrapping around non ideal clients because they're doing this spread and pray visibility strategy and that leads to exhaustion.

7:51 Melanie’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): I have 5 key strategies that I teach clients, I'm just going to touch one of them here and that is, to really think about the message; that consistent message that you're putting out. And I just gave you the keyword 'consistent'. Putting a message out and doing different things all the time is not necessarily going to help. Doing something once in a great while like "oh, I'll do a podcast every 6 or 7 months" is not going to help. There's a consistent presence that we need to have. And your consistent message that's really catchy, really compelling, really juicy, is super important. It's part of what I called "my rocks method", and that's a one quick shift that everybody could do to start getting more bookings on the right podcasts, the right stages, the right platforms, but also activate those passive listeners. If people would just go "oh that's nice" turn them into really 'engaged and enrolled' listeners that can become clients.

9:05 Melanie’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): I did a lot of research about what works and doesn’t work; I've been to a lot of podcast guesting for almost 10 years now since the very beginning of coming out and having interviewed probably close to 600 people now. I know what works and what doesn't. I put together a guide. The guide basically walks you through 17 of the most common mistakes that people make when they're guesting as an expert; when they're on a podcast, when they're on a stage, when they're transferring their knowledge in some kind of interview style. And how to fix those so you're not leaking profits by leaking leads, and really turn that into a lead magnet. Part of it is how do you use competitor's audiences to do that. And here's where you will get it at MelanieBenson.com/Scaleology and that will give you the free download and very simple to go through. Think of it as a checklist to make sure that you got all the right components firing it at a 110% so that your competitors can become your best lead source.

10:39 How do we turn our competitor's audiences into our best lead source? Here's a little hack if you will about podcasts, and sometimes people have some online shows that you can do this as well but if you look at the people who do similar to you, they probably have already developed a really powerful audience that is hungry for what you do. And if they have a podcast or some show of some kind, they're hungry for great content. They want to interview amazing people like you, they can add great value. What I found is, is that sometimes our competitors’ kind of bring that gate down and say "it's ok if we do the same thing, just talk about slightly different" and sometimes they don't care and say "we can talk about the same thing" and that is a really powerful way to open up our competitor's prospect pools in the audiences. They spent years cultivating the 'I-know-I-can-trust-you' factor with and get a warm introduction right into that audience. You add master value, you share resources to a problem that the audience is dealing with - PURE GOLD.