In this bonus episode, you’ll learn six of the biggest mistakes that experts make – so you can avoid them! Julie and her guests are hosting a best seller book launch for their anthology “Engaging Experts” on January 27, 2021 so be sure to grab your copy!
In this bonus episode, you’ll learn six of the biggest mistakes that experts make – so you can avoid them!
Julie and her guests are doing a best seller book launch for their anthology “Engaging Experts” on January 27, 2021 so be sure to grab your copy!
LINKS MENTIONED
Get the Engaging Experts ebook for only $1.99 today (and no, you don’t have to have a Kindle! You can read the book on your phone or computer.).
This dynamic book is your guide to the people and connections you need to go from ordinary and extraordinary!
Get your book here– https://coursecreatorshq.com/BookEE-US
Kimberly Weitkamp, Audience Converter
http://AudienceConverter.com/giveaway – Get the Perfect Welcome Series
Connie Whitman, Whitman Associates
https://WhitmanAssoc.com/csa - Assessment of your communication superpowers
Julie Hood, Course Creators HQ
https://CourseCreatorsHQ.com/idea - Is Your Course Idea Any Good?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The 6 Biggest Mistakes Experts Make:
Marketing (Kim)
Content Creation (Julie)
Sales (Connie)
COME VISIT
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https://www.CourseCreatorsHQ.com
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Hello there. Welcome to this special episode. You're going to double dose this week of the course creators HQ podcast. And I want to talk about six of the biggest mistakes that we see experts making. As they try to build their online businesses. I've got two wonderful guests with us today who are experts in their own, right? And I can't wait to share all their knowledge with you.
So let's go Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host Julie Hood. Hey everybody. I am so excited to have two of my brand new outstanding friends with us today because this week we are launching an anthology together called engaging experts, and they are phenomenal at helping us get the expert status going and figuring out how all this is going to fit together.
So there's sort of three different parts as you're going through as an expert in getting going. The first part is marketing and we'll have Kim in a minute talking about that. The second part is content creation, which that will be me and then all about how to sell it with Connie. So I'm thrilled that you could be here for this episode to hear from two of my brand new,
outstanding, good friends, Connie Whitman, and Kimberley Weitkamp. And I hope you can grab a copy of our new book, engaging experts, and hopefully the day that you're listening to this, it's still on the sale for only $1.99. So I will put the links in the show notes so that you can grab a hold of the book.
So Kim, can you start us off and talk about marketing and how that should go for experts? What should they be doing and how should it go? Absolutely. So hi, everyone, Kimberly Weitkamp from The Audience Converter. And my whole thing is about creating your marketing strategy and using the right words to really connect with your audience. Marketing is incredibly important when you're running a business,
especially when you want to be the expert in your field, because if nobody knows who you are, then you're talking to the trees, you know, or you're kind of just talking out there. And if no one knows who you, you know, if you're not marketing yourself, then there's no way for people to know that you have something to offer.
So a really key part of marketing of course, is to get your message out there. But one of the biggest mistakes I see online experts, especially like coaches and consultants create is they don't really take the time to sit down and figure out who am I actually talking to? You know, so many of us, we come to this from a perspective I want to help people.
I want to help people. And of course that means I can help everybody. But the reality is, if you're speaking to everybody, you're really making a difference to nobody. So you have to take the time to sit down and figure out what I call your audience, right? It's all about audience conversion, but you have to know who's in your audience first.
And that goes beyond just a, oh well, I help busy women who want to find more time in their lives. I think you've described every woman on the face of the earth who does work. It's just so broad that it doesn't really help you create that marketing message. That's really going to resonate and attract the right people to work with you.
So when I talk about your audience and defining who it is that you want to speak with, you really want to take the time and sit down and think about it. Okay? Who is a best fit? Not who can I serve, but who's the best fit for what I offer. And then go a step beyond that and decide who do I want to work with too often,
especially in, you know, as coaches and stuff we get, we get started and no, I'm an online expert. I can serve all these people. And then people come to you and you, you feel like you have to say yes, but the, the reality is is it's your business. And you get to decide who you're going to work with.
So as part of that process of defining your audience, I tell people, remember to include yourself in that description. Like, how do you want people to talk to you? How do you want people to work with you? What does that relationship look like? Who is it that you don't want to work with? Not because you don't like those people,
but because it's not a best fit for you. So when you sit down to create your audience, I talk about going beyond demographics, right? Go beyond the title, go beyond an age range and really sit down and, and have that clear picture of who is it in your audience that you really want to be talking to. And then you'll find that creating your marketing material is so much easier when you get that part done.
And then, you know, once you've got your audience down, right, you're putting your message out there. You're getting all of the good stuff out there. You're letting people know that, Hey, you're here. And this is what you're doing. The next big mistake I find people doing is they forgot. They forget to tell people how to take the next step.
Right? Too often, we take something called logistics, first marketing approach, which is, well, I heard I'm supposed to be on Facebook. So I'm going to go on Facebook twice a week with a Facebook live. Or I heard that I need to be emailing people. So I'm going to email my people once a week and you sit down and you go to create your emails.
And you're like, I don't know what to say. I'm going to figure something out. I'm going to put it in. And hopefully it makes sense. And then I'm going to hit send. But what you want to be doing is have a strategy in place. And that ties into what is that next step. So every time you create marketing material,
whether it's an email, whether you're showing up on a podcast, whether you're hosting your own podcast, whether you're creating a video, you need something really important. And that is the call to action. And it's exactly what it sounds like. It's you putting out a call for your audience to take action. It's you telling people how to take that next step?
And I know a lot of people are nervous. They're like, well, I don't want to bother people, blah, blah, blah. People always choose. If they're going to take that step or not. But if you don't put it out there, they don't know what it is. Right? Exactly. So with a call to action, it doesn't have to be very complex,
right? It could literally be. I put out a new podcast episode, go listen to it. So when you put it on social media, you tell people here's the link to go listen. Or if they're listening to a podcast episode, and you're talking about a brand new training that you're going to have say, Hey, you can go check out this training at my url.com/training.
You have to tell people what to do next. Because most of us, we have so much great information and we get so excited, but then there's so many different ways that our brains come up with for us to take that step. That we're not really sure what to do, and we get lost. And then we don't make a choice. So every time you put a piece of marketing out there,
you need to then have a call to action. You need to having a next step. You need to tell people, okay, now that you've done this, here's what you need to do. Next. I love that Kim. Cause I don't know how many, you know, we get so many messages, every single day marketing messages that if people don't,
aren't really specific, I kind of gloss over and click away and go onto the next thing. So I love that. Exactly. Like you, you see a good story or you, you hear a really great and interesting tidbit somewhere and you're like, oh man, that was so cool. That was interesting. Cool. All right, let's next? And then you like go and check out another website or you go back to watching cat videos on YouTube,
whatever it is that you were doing beforehand, because you don't know what that next step looks like. So emails need to have a call to action. Social media posts need to have a call to action. Pretty much anything that you put out there that is you putting your message to your audience needs to have that next step. And again, it's not necessarily buy my stuff.
It's not buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, right. It is. However, here's how you can explore more. Here's the next step to take. Here's how you can go and do this really cool thing. I just said all of those are potential calls to action. All right. So do you want to recap your two mistakes that you most often see for everybody?
Absolutely. So the big two mistakes I see with anyone who's working in the online world is number one, not defining your audience before creating your marketing, because if you talk to everybody, you're really talking to nobody. And number two is not having a clear call to action on every single piece of marketing that you put out there. Because if you don't tell people what comes next or what to do,
they're not going to know, and they're not going to take the time to figure it out themselves. Perfect. Thank you so much. So in the spirit of keeping us moving along and keeping this episode super short, because I know the three of us could talk for hours. I think the hours we talked beforehand, exactly. I will Jump into the content creation side of things.
So now that you've got marketing going and you've got people that are finding out about you and they, they are interested in what you have. Now, you have to start coming up with what is the content that you're going to be sharing with them. And can you of hit on this already with making sure they're sending out really good emails? And I will say that that is one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen my clients and the experts that I'm working with is not getting to having an email list fast enough.
So they are, they wait and they think I'll get to that later. But if you're going to be selling really anything, but especially if you're going to be selling an online course, having an email list that you contact regularly and tell them about this new course that you're working on, as you're developing it, you can build all this anticipation around your course.
And trying to do that ahead of time is what I don't see people doing. They usually create the course and then they're like, oh wow. Now I have to figure out how to sell this course. So coming up with an email list and giving it a really good way for people to get on it is it's something that you need to be constantly working on and trying to figure out,
okay, what am I going to give away? And how am I going to get ahold of people? So I have like four or five different email freebies that I am constantly giving away every time I'm on something, I'm sharing them and talking about them. And when you at least have one that you could use as you're getting started and then expand. So depending on the audience that you're talking to,
you can use that to help build your email list. So that's the first thing I see being the biggest problem is not getting started on that whole email sequence. Soon enough of I'm going to have a freebie, I'm going to create a landing page. I'm going to share it and get people on the email list. And then the second part of this is making sure that you're actually emailing every week,
because I don't know about you guys, but I've been on lots of lists where suddenly three months later, I get an email and I'm like, who is this person? When did I sign up for something? And I'll actually go back sometimes when I get those emails and be like, why didn't you guys sign up for this? And it was three months ago and they're just now getting around to it.
So just get around that. You're going to have some kind of content that you're creating every single week, whether maybe it's a podcast episode, maybe it's a blog post. Maybe it's an, a video or a Facebook live, but something that you promise yourself, you're going to create every single week. And then you're going to share it with your email list.
And that keeps it super simple. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just is a really easy way to connect with your audience. So depending on what your favorite way to create content is, that's what you should be using for your freebies and to give away. So now second mistake that I see a lot of people not getting around to is actually creating some kind of course,
which of course you guys knew I was going to talk about that part of it. And I want you to start honestly, with a simple freebie course that you're giving away one of my clients this week, we're working on it. And she created four about six minute videos. One was an introduction and then three learning videos. And we're setting this up to give away her free training course.
And it's seen as so much value for her audience that she's giving them a free course, even more than if you're giving away a free report, or if you're giving away some kind of free guide, she's actually giving away a free course, but it didn't take her long at all to set this up. She has four lessons and she's giving people also,
the other thing that I really like about this idea is making sure that they have a way to experience her. They get to take this course with her and they get to jump in and see what's it like to work with her? What is her course like? And they get to the end. And then the concept is that once they have worked with you for a little bit,
then they want to jump in and see, okay. She taught me that in this amount of time, what else has she got? If I actually paid her for something, what else could she possibly be sharing with me? So that's the second piece of mistake that I see a lot of people making is they don't jump into having some kind of course early on.
So it can either be a free one that you give away or even an inexpensive one as an initial way to get ahold of you or, you know, go to that $2,000 course to, I just want to see everyone creating this level of content that you can add into your business and making sure that you're taking the time to actually share your brilliance with the world and make sure that you're putting together that material for your audience.
So that's the second piece for me. I'll recap. My, my two mistakes. The first one is not building your email list to get an audience together before your course, and then actually not even craving a course soon enough, even if it's just kind of a mini type course. So Connie, you're up, who've got all this created. Now we have to sell it.
Can you help us with that? Yes. And as you're listening to my, my two good peeps over here, you have to have a clear vision of who your clients is. Then you have to know what they need. So you create the curriculum like Julie just said, and then you have me, which is the sales piece. So now you're having these great conversations.
You're meeting people, you're networking, you're out there building your, your brand, right? People are getting to know you. I need more Connie. I need more, Julie, I need more Kim and you don't follow up. So the first, well, let me take a step back. The first one is you're not preparing. So you have all this networking.
You have all of these people you're talking to and you're shooting from the hip big mistakes, just like just like Julie and Kim said, you have to know what you're doing before you actually get into the situation. So I have two free tools, like, like Julie was saying, what is your, your free things that people get to know who you are and you have to make some useful tools.
So I have two tools that I give away. It's on my website, giveaways, all of those things so that people show up prepared and, and you guys have both been on networking with me and the new we're in a two dimensional world now because of zoom. And because of COVID, we're not meeting lives. Everybody was pretty good networking meeting. I had my 30 second commercial kind of knew what to say.
Well, now you're supposed to put in the chat, what you do, who you are, who you serve and how you do it. And people write paragraphs into the chat. No one has the time or the bandwidth or the networking is usually an hour. Nobody has time to read that. You have to get your value statement down to 17 to 20 words,
put it in the chat, let people understand who you are. And then what happens is because you're so succinct and clear, like Kim said, who's my audience. You're clear. You know who that is? You put that in the chat, the people in that networking room, you'll make it two or three people that say, Hey, I'm looking for somebody.
Who's doing what you're doing. What's your email. Bam. You put your email in. Now you have somebody to, and this is the second big glitch that I applied people do. The second issue is you have all these names. Yay. It's like when you did live networking, you got business cards three months later. You're like, what networking was that?
Whose card is that? What did I say I was going to do? We don't follow up. My brain wants to explode. So I just want to share some stats with you guys. 2% of business owners, successful salespeople success with successful business owners, follow up pass, and they call it the 5th to 13th touch. So the touch could be zoom.
It could be an email. It could be a giveaway. It could be a phone call. It could be a networking event, five to 13 touch, 90 to 98% of salespeople and good, good, good salespeople and successful business owners. 98% of the time we stop at the fourth touch. So think about that. If you took one more step,
you probably have an eight out of 10 chance of converting that person or that group to a client. And we stop before we get to that point. My head wants to explode. So by not being prepared, you're not shining, not showing up. You're not letting people know how you can serve them, which is exactly what Kim and Julie talked about.
So you're really not letting or articulating who you are and how you can help. And then the second one is now you get them, they go, oh, tell me more. And we don't follow up. So you have to have some type of CRM, some type of it, keep it simple. Even if you want to do a spreadsheet, but what is your next step with that client or that prospect to turn them into a raving client who then,
oh, by the way, the referrals and all of the other secondary business that you can get from it. So they're the two big ones. The beginnings process of my seven step sales process. Number one is preparing and the seventh is follow-up and the two on the ends. If you're not doing them, all the other stuff in the middle doesn't really matter.
Oh my gosh, that's so good, Connie. And you're so right. I see that all the time, people will maybe be a guest on a podcast, but then they don't have anything to share to, to take someone to the next level or yeah, the networking events. So, oh my gosh, you guys, I so appreciate this. You have pulled together some really fantastic tips for everyone.
And before we end, I do want you to tell the audience where they can find more from you. I'm sure. I know you both have freebies that you're giving away. So tell them about those so that they can find out more about you. I'll go first then absolutely. You can go to the audience, converter.com/giveaway and get the perfect welcome series.
How to get more, opens, more clicks, and essentially more sales from email number one. And I walk you through the seven steps, the seven myths, if you will, or the seven things that you really just need to have to, to build that welcome series, which kind of ties in to what Connie was talking about with making sure you have a set way to follow up and making sure what and Julie was talking about as well as making sure you get started with that email list as soon as possible,
and actually have something to send them, Love that. And it's awesome. All of you should get ahold of it, Connie. Yeah. The next for me, the big one that I want you to do, and it's a free online assessment. I know everybody loves assessments. It's a communication style assessment. All of this stuff is really good, but if you can't articulate who you are and how you serve,
you're going to miscommunicate with the clients. So if you go to WhitmanAssoc.com/csa for communication style assessment, everybody gets a real cool report. It tells you your communication superpowers and what you're really, really good at leverage that you also get a report of your lowest style. There's five and all you get your lowest style, which is your blind spots.
So if your client is falling into one of your blind spots, you need to go in and articulate that. So that person goes, oh, that you get me. Totally. You get me. I want to buy from you. So you want to know your superpower. Do you want to know your blind spots? You get the report on each of those.
So WhitmanAssoc.com/csa. Love that. And mine would be determining whether your course idea is any good. It's a freebie that helps you kind of walk through it. And you can go to coursecreatorshq.com/idea, and grab your own copy of that. And then you'll be on all of our email lists. And we'll try to follow up with you.
I'll also put all of these links in the show notes. So to make this easier. So you don't have to remember all of these it'll be coursecreatorshq.com/27 that's coursecreatorshq.com/27. And the other cool thing that's going to be on that page is the link to get a hold of our new books. So we all have chapters and a new anthology called Engaging Experts.
So I hope you guys can all grab a hold of that. It's going to be, it's got some great material in it. I know I talked about creating a course. What did you guys talk about in your chapters? Oh, I talked about how you don't know what you don't know, so that's why you hire somebody else. Who knows what they know.
There You go. I love that. Yeah. And mine is Interesting. It's about creating a culture, a sales service and coaching culture. So that if you have other people working for you, you're the leader. How do you coach them to develop the culture, right. That communication pathway, so to speak with your clients. So I talk about that culture development.
Love it. Love it. Awesome. I can't wait to read your chapters and the book, so thank you so much, gals. I really appreciate you doing this with Me and thank you. Thank You. Good tidbits for today. Be sure and listen in. I hope you can review and also subscribe if you've got something useful today. So thanks so much for listening.
I appreciate You. Take care, everybody. Thanks you. thanks Julie.