Ep 65: Mastering Influencer Collaborations and Promotion Strategies for Impactful Marketing Events | Expert Guest Lindsay McGuire, Goldcast

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Join Sarah Noel Block and Lindsay McGuire as they unveil the secrets to event marketing success. Discover how to entice top influencers, transform your virtual events, and forge lasting partnerships that propel your business forward. Learn to craft irresistible pitches, nurture valuable connections, and showcase your event's success to attract future speakers. Tune in for a masterclass in marketing efficiency and impact, without the burnout. Don't miss out—listen now!

Key Takeaways:

1. Value and Benefit: Clearly communicate the value and benefit to influencers when asking for their time, as time is valuable, especially when approaching strangers.
2. Building Relationships: Building relationships with influencers can sustain and grow your business, as it can lead to consistent leads and income.
3. Pitching Influencers: When pitching influencers to speak at your events, be prepared, polished, and put together. Create a pitch deck and synopsis of your show, highlighting the benefits for the speaker.
4. Speaker Incentives: Offer incentives to speakers, such as backlinks, the ability to pitch, and speaker gifts, to make it more enticing for them to participate.
5. Referrals: After a guest has appeared on your show, ask them for referrals of other potential guests, as this can lead to warm introductions and new guests for your show.

Meet Lindsey:

As the Associate Director of Content & Campaigns at Goldcast, my days are spent overseeing and creating content around how B2B marketers can use events as one of their top revenue driving channels. Head over to goldcast.io to learn more about how events can be a powerful brand and business growth driver, from webinars and ongoing series to summits and conferences.

Resources:

Content Lab
Masterclass
Content Repurposing with AI

Website: https://www.sarahnoelblock.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahnoelblock/
Newsletter: https://tinymarketing.me/newsletter
Tiny Marketing Community

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I think that helps too, because if people understand value and benefit right Because time is money, you know, but especially if you're asking a stranger for their dive.

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hey, hey, this is Sarah Noel Block, your host of the Tiny Marketing Show, where we teach you the easiest way to win in marketing without all the heavy lifting, because who has time for that? Today, we're talking about how you can convince influencers to speak at your events. So let me, can you just travel back in time with me for a little bit? Maybe I'll insert a sound effect right there. That's not my when I started Tiny Marketing four years ago, I didn't know what I was doing.

Speaker 2: 0:45

I definitely did not know how to sell, and what sustained me and continued bringing in new leads and new referrals was my show. Having the relationships that I built on my show because it was an interview style even way back then is what sustained my business and helped me gain consistent leads and consistent income that entire time. So I cannot thank all of my past guests enough for propping me up and helping me succeed as an entrepreneur, because I sure as shit didn't know what I was doing. But Lindsay McGuire does, from Goldcast. So I am going to drop you right smack dab in the middle of our conversation that we had and she's going to teach you three ways you can convince influencers to speak at your events. Now, this is going to be another multi-parter, because she was just chock full of great information, but I got to keep these episodes tight because you guys like that, so this will be a multi-parter. Today we're focusing on how to convince influencers to speak at your events. Enjoy. Hey there, fellow entrepreneurs and B2B marketers, before we dive back into the conversation, let me introduce you to a game changer in the lead generation arena Lead feeder.

Speaker 2: 2:17

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Speaker 1: 3:24

Wink, wink.

Speaker 2: 3:28

That is so true. So when you're hosting a virtual event, why should we be bringing in collaborations and influencers and guests?

Speaker 1: 3:41

Yeah, great question. I mean, when it comes to live events, if you're doing them all in-house, it can be a little bit easier because you have access to everything you need. Yeah, have your apps, people, you have your speakers, you have the content, you control it all. But at the same time you're really limiting your reach and your access and who you're bringing to the table as net new people. Because when you have a guest speaker, a guest presenter, you're tapping into their market right and you're getting to their audience, especially if it is someone who you might qualify as an influencer, quote, unquote status or whatever you want to put in that plug-and-play there.

Speaker 1: 4:18

But I would say a balance of the two in your strategy is helpful, because it is hard to book speakers for either live events or podcasts or recordings or summits or whatever that kind of thing is. It takes work, it takes hustle, it takes a network. So there's a lot that goes into having a strategy and bringing that into your live event strategy overall. But it is worth it because you will see that now you have a whole new audience, tap into your fresh content and perspectives and then you're also able to have that fresh perspective to be repurposed into other ways, so it kind of can refresh all your other content as well.

Speaker 2: 5:02

So we're going to dig into how to pitch these events to guests. But I real quick, I just want to say my entire business was built with virtual events and guest speakers. Like the relationships I built with guest speakers was a huge driver in my business. They all became friends, referral partners, collaborators and it made a big difference. That's all I did. That was the only marketing and outreach.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Yeah, no, you make a great point, sarah. I mean there are. So in my previous organization I ran a podcast as the producer for four seasons and then hosted as two, and I still have super strong relationships with a lot of the people who I invited onto that show. The same thing goes for a live event, right. It just helps you build relationships, build connections, have almost like a little cheerleader group, right.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:03

So do you make an excellent point there. That's another reason why you would want to integrate that into your strategy as well.

Speaker 2: 6:09

Yeah, I've been mulling over how to continue that relationship in a systemized way. How do we create a referral group where we meet up once a month and just say, hey, I got this lead. It's not right for me, probably for you though.

Speaker 1: 6:25

Yeah, I love that. And one thing I've tried to be strategic with. So I've launched a new show during my time at Gold Pass I've been here about six months now called Donuts in Demand. It's a live monthly show for demand generation marketers, and so now I've kept almost like oh, this is a data term, I'm sorry y'all, but like a roll of decks at my head of the subject matter experts I've had on the show what they talk about, what are their interest areas, what really gets them jazzed, what's their area of expertise? And so if I'm on LinkedIn and I see someone talking about who should I follow in this realm or who knows about this? Well now, oh, I'm going to drop a comment and I'm going to tag, you know, susanna or Sarah, whoever, and be like oh, they're a great fit for this. I bet they would love to tell you more or explain or pitch in their thoughts or something like that.

Speaker 2: 7:10

That's brilliant, and you're getting them in front of new people. So they're like yes, thank you yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:16

And it's almost like a nice way to do the like LinkedIn pods right.

Speaker 2: 7:20

Yeah, that's true, that's true. So let's dig into how to start petting those guests. Do you have a specific strategy that you teach?

Speaker 1: 7:31

Yeah, I would say the best thing to do first is find your warm connections right, because we're all getting how-did all day, every day, especially if you're a marketer or if you're in tech. My cold outreach right Like, yeah, we've done other cold outreach none of us do. And also same goes for your guests, right, and it's just so much harder and your percentage to convert is so much harder when it is just a cold outreach, especially if you're a new or newer show and you don't have a lot to back yourself up. Yeah, a lot of well-known brand If you're not a well-known person in the industry or whatever kind of goes into that. I always tell people the hardest time you'll ever face is when you are in that new show, because you have nothing to show for what you're doing, right, yes, but I would say the first thing is to tap into your network first. And that doesn't mean just your network, right, like I work with Pallosh and Kishore, our CEO, a ton when I'm sourcing my guests and they're working with me, I'm working with them. And then, of course, like my sales team, my CSMs, my whole marketing team.

Speaker 1: 8:39

So, first and foremost, think about who your ideal guest is for whatever event or series, or podcast or YouTube show or whatever it might be. Think about who that is. And then ask your fellow colleagues and that doesn't even just limit yourself to the people at your org. Ask some of your marketing BFS out in the market or like those are my first guests, yeah, yeah. So think about who else you can tap into outside your org, who can do a warm intro and, of course, some of that is doing some extensive LinkedIn creeping or Twitter creeping or whatever it might be, but I always encourage people, first and foremost, like go to your friendlies, right, because they're more than likely to tell you, yes, they're more than likely to not be a hard sell, and that will also give you some confidence, right, because it's hard if you're doing a bunch of outreach and people just never respond to you, or they do respond no thanks. You know it's sad, yeah, it is. It's like oh, I was so pumped, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 9:43

So I think start with your easy wins, right, and be sure those easy wins, though, do align with the reason for your show, the outcome of your show, the goals, your ICP, all those things, you know. Don't just do it to do it and just to get a yes, right, it needs to be strategic. But then once you're kind of outside of those friendlies or those warm intros, the best thing you can do is be super prepared, super polished and super put together. I think that is what set us apart when we started pitching donuts in demand, when it was a brand new show. Our first episode went live in September. So we haven't been running this for a long time and, granted, we do have some brand equity behind the Goldcast name, but we're not a huge, like massively world-known brand name, right. So I would recommend people to take the time when you're creating a new show, especially to make a beautiful pitch deck, to put together a really great synopsis of what your show is, what guests should expect, what benefits do they get out of it. And you'll be able to build that over time.

Speaker 1: 10:50

As you do run your show and you have like data you can pull into that.

Speaker 1: 10:54

But, for instance, for us, when we were net new and it was like, well, I can't tell you how many people will attend, or like the duration of their attention or anything like that, one thing you can do is, if you have run a similar program or series, pull stats from that. So for us. We had run CMO diaries for two years. We had run event marketers live, I believe, for about a year and a half when I was starting my outreach. So because I knew event marketers live was going to be the most similar show set to donuts in demand, different audience, but similar kind of style, similar marketing, similar cadence I just pulled in stats from where they had been and what those were resulting and I made it clear like these are not our own stats, but this is a previous series we run. We're hoping it to be similar. Here's somewhat of what you can expect and I think that helps too, because then people understand the value and benefit right, because time is money, you know, especially if you're asking a stranger where they're dying.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Absolutely, and if it's like a smaller business and you don't have any previous events, you might look at well, what's your reach on social? How many people follow you across all of your channels, maybe? How many visitors do you have on your website per month? Those are stats that you can still pull in if you don't have previous stats from live stream shows or podcasts or whatever.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Yeah, that's a great point and one thing that Mara, the CMO of Qualified, brought up. We ran a series masterclass, all about creating, launching and maintaining an ongoing live event series she talked about when Qualified started their first ongoing recurring series. They tried to position themselves and make themselves look a lot bigger than they were, which was like a brilliant strategy, and I think what you just said ties into that of well, you might not have stats for the show because it's net new right, but you have other stats attached to your brand that you can play into that pitch, play into that story that can make you look a lot bigger than you might be.

Speaker 2: 12:58

You know if they really dig past it Exactly when you're looking at your followers across multiple channels, it's going to make you look a lot bigger than well. I haven't run the show yet, so I have zero listeners, 100%, 100%. Ok, so we want a warm list or a friendly list. We want a pitch deck. Is there anything else we need?

Speaker 1: 13:22

I would say, to just be thinking about what's in it for the speaker. Like you know why you're doing it right. It's because you want to get content, you want to produce something great for your audience, you want to connect with new markets. Like you know all the selfish reasons you're doing it. Thing is, like the person you're reaching out to especially if it's someone cold or you don't have a warm intro or whatever it might be they're not going to care about why you want to run the show right Like they're going to care about.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Well, what am I going to get out of it? So, just being very clear on the expectations of what you're asking them for. So, is there a prep call? Is there a tech chat? You know how much prep work will you do beforehand, and just setting expectations, I think, can really help, especially again when it might be someone who has never heard of your brand, never heard of your product, never heard of you. The clearer, the more crisp you can be, the more likely they are to be able to make, like, an educated decision quickly and easily and be encouraged to do so, because a lot of people will just ghost you and it's fine, you're just going to have to deal with it. So, yeah, ghosting can happen, but I think the more clear you can be on expectations and then also again, like, what are they getting out of it? So who is your audience that the show is going out to? You know what's the expected either attendance rate or listener rate or the known.

Speaker 1: 14:45

If it's a show you've been running, just painting them a very clear picture of like why is this valuable to you? So, for instance, in my doughnuts and demand pitch deck, we have one slide that just kind of talks about how you'll get promoted in front of an email list of over 10,000 marketers. You'll be in front of our audience of over 12,000 on LinkedIn. You'll receive video clips and audio clips and this whole gamut of items that can help you position yourself as a thought leader. So just being very clear on what's expected from them to participate and then what do they get back in return? And if you have any kind of speaker incentives, make that clear. I think that really helped us with some of our outreach for AI summit is that we did have a speaker gift that we gifted upon others. That's a good idea and for some people, that is the way that is the trigger right, because they are getting theoretically paid for their time. So be clear about that if you have the budget, because that will get you guesses.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Another thing that gets yeses more often is if they're allowed to pitch. Some speaking engagements don't allow you to pitch, so if they're able to pitch or explain their offer at the end, then that's a bigger incentive too. Yeah, and backlinks as well, right?

Speaker 1: 16:04

Oh my gosh. Yes, there's a lot of people who will talk about the reason why they will do a podcast or a live event or a show is because they know that they're going to get those backlinks across all the platforms that show is running on and then all the content that's going out the door for that. So that's another kind of lever to use as a level.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Yeah, I was actually going to bring that up. I think that I'm on multiple podcasts a week and it's because of the SEO juice that I get from it Like all of that real estate from those backlinks that you get from being on other shows makes a huge difference. So in your pitch you could also include, like your domain authority.

Speaker 1: 16:44

Oh yeah, I hadn't really thought about that, but yeah, that's interesting too. Oh smart, have to add it. My list of levers I can pull.

Speaker 2: 16:52

Yeah, and they're going to get at least, like probably four backlinks from different platforms. So a couple of things. Seo juicy incentives, yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:03

And then one other thing to tap on to that kind of conversation too If you are using the content you are capturing from those recordings or events and then repurposing them into blog posts or long form content, things like that, once you have your event series show up and running, have that be part of the outreach too, right? Like if you're able to provide them some context of this is what you'll get and this is the quality of what you'll get. That also will then kind of bump up the percentage of people who will take the time to view it and also like tell you yes and if it's a no? Even if it is a no, you've at least driven them to some of your content. They've seen your brand, they see what you're putting out to market, and even if it's a no right now, that might stick in their head and there might be something else that's triggered from that further down the road as well.

Speaker 2: 17:55

That just made me think of the possibly running surveys with your guests after the fact to find out how many leads they got from it. What converted. Running sort of a survey that you could get an overarching case study from, like this, is the result. These are the actual results that my guests are getting from the show and, as guests, from the guest perspective, you can start tracking a little bit of that. I create custom landing pages for every show I'm on, with custom URLs for each one so that I'm able to track what shows drove new subscribers or new conversions. One show I was on which I was like I'm not sure if I want to be on it or not, but okay, I don't have anything at that time Ended up driving me five leads by the end of the episode. It was a live stream and I don't think there were that many attendees live because you know it was mostly supposed to be like an on demand thing, but just during the live recording of it, five leads came through.

Speaker 1: 19:02

See, you never, ever know. You know, and being able to track that too is so smart. And then you can go back and tell that person too, like, hey, guess what Like it's like oh, I did. Yeah, exactly. And I will say, regarding that guest outreach strategy too, once you have your show up and running, one smart thing to do is to also ask your guests if they have any referrals of other guests that you should ask. That's a good point.

Speaker 1: 19:30

So Alexander Lapa runs the Agents of Nonprofit podcast, which I was on because I'm very involved in the nonprofit community here, and he asked, like, hey, let me know if you know anybody who would be great for the show and a good fit. And then I, selfishly I'm a member of Junior League of Indianapolis. I was like, of course I do. Let me intro you to our president. You can definitely talk about, you know, nonprofits and this world Nice. So that's another strategy too to integrate into your series process or show processes. Once a guest has come on and they've had their interview or done their live event, be sure to outreach to them and say, hey, do you have anyone who'd be a good referral or you think would enjoy being on the show? And then again you're gonna secure that warm intro and it's gonna be great. So don't forget to ask people who have been involved in your series or show who do you think would be a good guest.

Speaker 2: 20:25

That's really good and, from the guest perspective, when you're doing that warm intro for a live stream or a podcast, you're creating some goodwill between that person you're intro-ing and you, because they're probably wanting more visibility, more authority, and you're offering them the opportunity for that. Can all be friends. Yes, let's all be friends, and that is that. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Lindsay dropped some amazing nuggets. I would say my favorites. We're having a pitch deck when you're trying to get those big guests so you can show them the stats that they're going to have, like this is how many LinkedIn followers we have. This is how many people typically view the show. That will help really reel in those big guest stars and show them what's in it for them, like how many backlinks should they expect to see? Can they pitch on the show? A hint always allow them to pitch, because why be on a show if you can't pitch?

Speaker 2: 21:30

There are so many good things in here, so I hope you were writing them down and check out the transcript if you just wanna go through and find them really quick. If you enjoyed this show, I'd love for you to like, rate, review this wherever you're watching, if you are listening, if you're watching on YouTube. You can leave a comment and I will see it. And, more than anything, I would love if you just hit that share button and share it with your friends who are interested in marketing or they're a small business wearing many hats and they need to learn how to market when they don't have a ton of time, because that's what we're all about over here Marketing, so you don't burn out, and the most efficient way possible. I'm a solo entrepreneur and I do it. I'm showing up for you and I can show you how to do it too. All right, thank you again. I wonder if you hear that clap right there. Thank you again for watching Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh. I love you, I love you. I love you. Goodbye.