Beyond the Visibility Trap: How to Turn Guest Spots into Clients - Heather Cameron

Website: https://igniteyourmarket.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HeatherCameron

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercameroncoach/

00:01 Welcome to Beyond the Visibility Trap, How to turn guest spots into clients. So what's hot right now we are at the What's Hot Right Now Summit and I want to share what I believe is the hottest way for you to grow your business and to get results quickly and that is guesting and what guesting is, is leveraging other people's audiences to grow your business. But what if all that visibility isn't actually bringing in the leads you need or worse, you're missing out on opportunities altogether? You see, the truth is is the truth is the real challenge isn't getting seen there are so many opportunities out there to be on different podcasts. 

00:39 Some is giveaways, but the challenge is turning those those visibility opportunities into actual clients so today I'm going to share what the visibility trap is and how to move beyond it to turn guesting spots on podcast summits and more into real business results. I really want to help you unleash the power of guesting and leveraging other people's audiences to grow your business. So who am I i am Heather Cameron, I'm a client attraction strategist and business coach, engineer, facilitator and executive coach and I have been in business for over 20 years and I will tell you, guesting has been the key for me to grow my businesses multiple times i have pivoted many times in those twenty years, but I've always gone back to guesting, whether live or virtually to grow my business i am also the Co host of the Scrapbooking Fun Summit that's a side business I have with a partner and we've had over 40.000 thousand participants over 4 events. 

01:37 We're about to do our fifth event in a month or so. And I have seen guesting from both sides i have been a guest on many podcast summits and other things, and I host a very large summit i've also hosted other summits and I was a podcast host so I've seen guesting from many different sides and my passion is to help women business owners strategically embrace guesting as a business growth strategy and that's what it needs to be it's a strategy not just to grow your audience, but to actually grow your business and get clients. 

02:07 So what is the visibility trap? The visibility trap, Has this ever happened to you you know you delivered value on a podcast, but no one follows up has that happened it's happened to me. Your summit spot brings in a few downloads and that's it they never respond to any of your emails they don't open your emails, and eventually they unsubscribe so you basically get crickets from being on a summit or you're everywhere but still not seeing the growth that you want. Has any of that happened to you because that is what I would call the visibility trap. And typically what it is and what causes the visibility trap kind of at the core is we're focusing on the wrong things and so instead of focusing on visibility, we really want to focus on getting clients. 

02:55 And once we do that, we start to look at things much more strategically and that is really what I want to focus on. So here's what happens number one is a lack of strategy so you get on, you jump into a guesting opportunity without a clear plan or a goal. You have ad hoc speaking topics maybe a friend said, hey, do you want to be on my podcast or you see somebody post on Facebook and say, yeah, I'll be on your podcast you jump on, you apply. And there is no strategy behind that has that happened to you? Definitely put my hand up where I can see it. 

03:26 It has happened to me more than once i can't say that I don't fall into that more than once sometimes it just seems so good or you want to help someone out, but when you do that, it just doesn't work in results you're stuck in that visibility trap. Or, you know you get that opportunity, but you don't you don't have a really strong call to action. There's no clear next step to lead prospects to the direction that you want. You're not telling them how to engage maybe you take out an old freebie that you have and you use that because there's nothing that really matches the topic that the speaker's asked you to do. 

03:58 Been there, been there more recently than I'd like to say. So that weak or missing call to action doesn't turn people into clients, it just increase visibility. The next one also is the wrong audience, accepting guesting opportunities even when it's not aligned with your target audience now I did this six months ago. I was asked by one of our speakers to be on her summit and I'm like, that really isn't my audience, but she really wanted it. She was short speakers i did it as a favor to her. It wasn't a line target it really wasn't i did not get, I think I got 5 leads from it. I'm not even sure if it benefited her i should have said no, it was not an aligned audience it wasn't my target audience. 

04:38 And we do that sometimes we do it as a favor, but it happens so often that when we're really focusing on trying to get as many visibility opportunities as we can, we really need to step back and say does this make sense is this aligned audience and when we don't, we end up in the visibility trap. The next one too is no follow up system so we have a summit, like I said, the scrapbooking fun summit we have over ten thousand eleven thousand plus speakers for our last summit. 

05:05 And we have some speakers who've come on and they have no follow up strategy. They have gotten no leads now the speakers who have a follow up strategy, even at the simplest level will get somewhere between two to three or four thousand people on their list out of this summit and yet we have people come on and I encourage them, I've offered my support to help them set that up and they don't and they're just missing out on so many sales opportunities. And some of them are not like just starting out they have established businesses, but this is new for them and they don't understand the importance of having that follow up strategy. 

05:40 And those are, you know, the key components of the visibility trap. So how do we fix it? How do we get out of that so that we're not falling in the visibility trap and putting a lot of energy out to be visible but not turning them into paying clients we always want to think, how do we turn a stranger into a paying client? The fix truly is strategy first. We need to sit back and set our strategy, be very strategic on what we're doing, and then use that strategy to say yes to the right opportunities use that strategy to turn that stranger who's never heard from you before and weave them through a path that turns them into that offer. 

06:20 So what I mean by strategy first is what journey are you leaning them on? What I say is when you go on any of these as you guys are to me, 90 % of you are going to be strangers you've never seen me before so what journey are you leading them on and what ultimately do you want them to buy? So we want to make sure that our presentations, our information, our call to actions, our freebies all have the same thread through them so that it really works on that visibility should guide them through and experience a path, a thread that turns them from a stranger like never heard of you, you've never heard of them to a paying client now, of course not everybody's going to become a paying client, but we want to be really consistent and really on target so that that makes sense and there is a flow for that because when there's not, you cause confusion. 

07:13 I will be honest, I was asked, there's different levels of contributions that were doing this you'll see that as you go through the summit. I was going to put something in that isn't on topic for this i'm like, no, don't do that step back think about what you're doing right so it's something we always have to remind ourselves of that we are creating a story we are leading people down a path to ultimately, hopefully buy from us if they don't, then we want to impart knowledge on them and value. 

07:39 But ultimately that should be our goal of our of these visibility opportunities that we have or these guesting opportunities that we have. So it's always start with a strategic plan first that is key to that success that we're looking for. So what I want to talk about now is the guesting advantage framework this is something that I use with my clients to really step through and making sure they're set up for success when they're doing it and it really stands. We start with the word guest to really focus on that this is important for that guesting opportunities that we're doing. 

08:13 So the first G stands for growth and guesting strategy we have to have a strategy for what we're doing and that's what I was saying if we don't have a strategy, if we're not thinking through this, then we're going to end up in guesting opportunities that are not going to convert, that are going to, you know, ultimately if you go in the wrong audience and you're not getting what you want, it even hurts your email delivery. 

08:35 So we want to focus on making sure that our opportunities match what we're looking for. So the guest the G is be clear of that customer journey where do you want them to buy from you? Doesn't mean they're going to say, like, like I said a minute ago, doesn't mean they're going to buy from you but what is it that they want to buy from you? The next part is identifying the type of guesting opportunities that suit you. Podcast summits, giveaway, guest blogging, being a guest on a YouTube channel. 

09:02 There's so many things out there, live networking, being a guest in a network i can, you know, there's, there's many and I think I have a slide near the end of it. But what suits you? It's going to be different for everybody not everybody has the same thing that they want or where their business or their time is so what suits you? Then set clear goals for the number of guesting appearances you want and how many leads and sales you want over the next 90 days. 

09:24 Set a goal i love setting good, better, best goals. So having those so that you can, you know, be comfortable with the first one, you can stretch yourself a little and then you can just step out of your comfort zone with that best and see what happens. Then start researching and list potential guesting opportunities that align with your ideal audience or consider one that might be what I call adjacent. They don't align 100 %, but they're pretty close so, for example, if you're a website designer, a business coaching a coach's audience might be really good for you. If they're coaching new business owners, that would be an alignment that's very close, but they're not all their ideal audience but don't do what I do and get in front of somebody who has maybe 2 % of their audience is yours that's just not going to benefit you, right? So really be careful about that and then make a list of possible contacts who might know about opportunities. 

10:15 What I believe is when you put your antennas up, when you start being really strategic about this stuff, you'll start to see opportunities come i had a friend who said she was going to book like, I don't know, 10 podcasts in a year and she had that done in two months and then she just doubled, tripled that number because she opened up and she was open to it so really focus on the strategy be clear on what you want to buy think about how every step that you put them through leads them on that customer journey to ultimately what you want them to buy from you. 

10:45 The next one is unique and irresistible messages. So you need a message this isn't the same as your business message this is like a subset of it it's very focused down. You really need something that's going to make listeners want to listen to you and guests and hosts want to say yes to you. So one of the things I would suggest that you do is create three to five signature talks that align with your offer, if that's what you're doing, if you're guesting on summits or podcasts and things like that if you're doing bundles and you want to have offers, you want to have that low ticket and medium ticket offer ready to go with all of the descriptions so it's super easy for you to apply. 

11:23 I want you to weave a message or a trend from the topic to what you want to buy. You know, we all have interesting life stories, but getting on a podcast about our life story isn't going to bring them to the ultimate thing that we want to buy unless we can weave the message in there. O make sure that those topics, not only are they hot for your audience and they're hot for the for the host we want to make sure that they're catchy for you and they're aligned with what you want, right? If you people who host events are always looking for something interesting and different podcast hosts are always looking for people who can come on their podcast so we want those topies topics, sorry, to be catchy and valuable to your target audience and the host. 

12:06 You want to have a short description ready to go. Make sure you got your short buyer ready to go you got some testimonials ready to go so it's super easy for you to apply that. Like spending time in creating this will save you so much time. I can apply to podcasts and summits and other things in like half an hour or less. And sometimes I tweak my topic based on what it is. 

12:26 But having that ready to go will make this so much easier and more productive for you. The E stands for engagement and conversion systems so what are your systems in the back end right? The summit example I just gave you where we have people who are getting in front of 11.000 thousand people and they're not converting anyone because they don't have systems in place. So what is the next step you want them to take? And you want to have a clear call to action respecting the host requirements. Some hosts will allow you different levels, depends on the event that you're doing so you want to have kind of a set of clear call to actions that are going to align with what you want to buy. 

13:08 You know that thread that I'm talking about where you start with your topic and it leads to what you want to buy so you want to have clear call to actions respecting the requirements of the host. So you want to make sure your lead magnets align with your topic and your offers and you want to create a nurture system that moves strangers to paying clients. We don't want nurture systems that just build know like and trust, which is kind of what a lot of people do. Either they don't have a nurture system, you know, somebody signs up for the lead magnet, they send out one email and that's it. 

13:40 Or they've built a nurture system that doesn't focus on turning strangers into paying clients and that is one of my passions to work with my clients with, is really building that nurture system so that it can ultimately result in a paying client, which is the purpose of what we're doing in business. And the last one is to automate it. So we want our engagement and conversion system to be automated. You know, once you create one, it becomes so much easier to create more of them. But having that automated and having a lot of intention in every single step of it so that we're focused on that stranger becoming someone who we turn ultimately into a paying client. 

14:17 And I could go into another complete presentation on customer journey it's one of the things I love to talk about, but we're not going to do that today. The next step is strategic action and start now so you can get all the information you can, all this, but if you don't start putting into action, it's not going to happen. And so really focus on what do you need to do and I have a tool at the end that I'm going to give you that you can sign up for that can really help this but what do you need to do to nail your strategy, your topics and your messaging? What do you need to do for that? And then put your antennas up once you start looking you know, we've all seen this when we want to buy a car, we don't notice any of the cars on the street until we want to buy a car and then we see every car that goes by that might be the one we want to buy. 

15:01 The same thing applies here so put your antennas up once you start looking, you'll be amazed at the guesting opportunities that are out there and that can come your way. For example, recently I just got, I was talking to a colleague and I was like, I'm doing this and she goes, can you come and speak to my group? So not only did a guesting opportunity, but I got a guesting opportunity in a very intimate paid group, which gave me the opportunity to connect with some people it gave me the opportunity to refine my message. 

15:30 I wouldn't have had that if I didn't have my antennas up. So really think about that now and also set some set, set time aside in your calendar to seek guesting opportunities regularly. This can be the most powerful, the way that you grow your list. I know some people who do this like before they're about to launch something big, they'll spend two or three months beforehand focusing, you know, or two or three weeks, whatever their plan is on focusing on finding those opportunities that are going to get them in front of someone else's audience so they can grow their list. 

16:01 Set up and update your nurture system. Like I said, I could do, I could do another whole presentation on that, but really set up that ultimate, that nurture system and track your progress. Have a spreadsheet that tracks all your opportunities that you've applied for are you getting in are you not getting in? What's the promotional timeline and results so that you're not over committing yourself, which can happen and you're tracking what you're doing so really get into action. And then finally, the T is track, tweak and thrive. So guessing works, but you need to measure where it's going. You want to see the events that you're being really successful for. 

16:37 What number of leads are you getting and are they quality leads so I was on a bundle, I don't know, two years ago, three years ago, I got a ton of leads. I had a ton of people signing up to my email. Not a single one ever converted to clients so it was this great big one, but it was too broad topic. There were two, it was too broad there were too many people kind of talking about the same thing and that really didn't benefit and it actually in the end probably hurt my open rate of my email. 

17:08 So I'd rather be on a guest in opportunity that brings in less but more high quality leads. But I don't know that if I measure it like I was on 2, this one brought in a couple of hundred thousand i think it was leads. I was on another one at the same time, completely different group, brought in about 100 but they were quality and they turned into really good conversations and they turned into clients because I had quality leads, much less than this big hunk of leads so you really want to make sure that you're measuring your results so you know what's working, what topics work right, what little tweaks do you need to do it can sometimes be the littlest tweak that's going to make a difference so create a simple system to analyse which opportunities are working for you, which brought in the best results, not just the amount of leads, but the ones who actually engaged with you and no one to scale up. 

17:57 So that's another part about the traffic, the track tweak and thrive because as you build this and as you get all your elements and your strategies in place and you've got your systems in place and you've nailed your message, then you can go out to bigger audiences, you can join more opportunities and it's faster to do because you have everything in place. So that tracks Tweak and Thrive can really make a difference. And I have been sharing this throughout so I want to kind of talk a little bit about real results and I just shared some of them where, for example, I the larger group that I was on so I was on this large group, I did not get quality leads on the other hand, I was on a smaller group and I got quality leads. 

18:39 But I will share a result from the podcast world so I ran a podcast for about a year and I had some people come on who just had it all set up. They made it super easy for me they had their topics, they had all their information to me they had their call to action set that matched our conversation. So there wasn't any complicated Segway so when your call to action doesn't match your conversation, then it becomes hard for the host, especially in the podcast world, to have that Segway to introduce your call to action. So there was no, you know, the ones who came on who had everything in order, They're the ones who grow and they're also the ones that I see thriving right now i can think of 1, two women who came on my podcast went actually 3, two women and men who came on my podcast who were really new, but they had their acting gear and they are thriving right now like, I mean, one of them I think is business is just taken off completely because she always had her systems in place she always knew who she wanted her message was tight. 

19:40 It was dialed in. My audience was only going to be a subset of who she was looking for, but a strong subset dialed in was able to do that and her business is soaring. Then I had another people, there are a few people who came to my podcast we went through everything and I never aired their episodes because their message was all over the place. And when that happens, the host is not going to air your episode, they're not going to promote it so that's kind of that real results that I want to. To talk about and I've sprinkled real results through this whole presentation, but I want to think if I want to end with what's hot right now. 

20:13 So podcasts speaking live is still hot, maybe more hot than it used to be. So giveaways, bundles some it's like we're in right now social media so being a guest on somebody else's social media channel can be really, 

20:28 It can be a great opportunity it could be Facebook, it could be Instagram there's lots of chances out there where people are starting to, you know, they love to have that guest opportunity. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a conversation. Having somebody guest blog for you or do an email swap where you send an email to their list and they send an email to your list. Youtube doing YouTube youTube's hot right now so how can you use YouTube and be a guest on a YouTube channel? Networking, being at networking events, helping people i participate in a networking event and he has guest speakers for like 20 minutes to kind of do breakout rooms there's an opportunity, right? So networking events and other things like that, there is endless opportunities out there. 

21:07 You can be help a reporter out if writing and writing, if writing is more than speaking for you so really look at all those what's hot right now opportunities that you can do and remember strategy first so guessing is a powerful way to grow your business. It is one of the most powerful ways, honestly, to grow your business it's one of the, you know, when you really think about it, when you're on Facebook and Instagram, you're getting in somebody else's audience, right we're getting in front of Facebook's audience, but it's not curated and it's not directed but when you get in front of somebody else's audience who has built that audience and curated it really well, then that can make a huge difference to your business. 

21:47 Excuse me, remember strategy alignment with the right audience. Focus on client journey. Nail your topics in your message. Have a strong, I don't know why it says stop strong call to action, follow up our key to success and take action today really think about what do you want to do i want to help you take that action today. So you can download my guest advantage audit and this is, is your guesting strategy set up for success take the audit and find out so take you 5 minutes Max to take the audit and it's going to show you exactly what you need to focus on to really up your guesting game. And I've only scratched the surface today, but I hope it sparked something for you and you really spend time, take the audit, think about how you can be more strategic in your guesting. 

22:37 You can implement this and you can really have it change the way your business goes, and it can become one of the best ways to turn strangers into paying clients and that's what I work with my clients i work with my clients to help them set up their systems, set up their strategy and be really strategic about it. But remember, visibility without strategy can leave your efforts feeling flat. Visibility with intention, that's where the magic happens and I love it when I see clients starting to do that so thank you so much for listening. Have an amazing time with the rest of the presentations in the summit and thank you Kat for organizing all of this.