6. Guest Blogging
There’s a few ways to tap into existing audiences, the most common exchange is through content.
Guest blogging can be a really powerful way of building authority in a space through content posted on multiple blogs in a market.
Step 1 — Identify Your Targets
Figure out what blogs or publications you want to be on. Make sure they’re frequented blogs and publications of your ideal customer targets and if you’re just starting out, aim for some smaller ones. You can leverage the smaller blog features for an Entrepreneur or Inc spot down the road.
Step 2 — Craft a Pitch
Keep it relevant to the type of content you normally see on the blog you want a guest spot on. Pitching “10 Study Hacks To Ace Your College Exams” isn’t a great topic for a blog about content marketing for example (that’s a true story…horrible idea).
You want to stay relevant to their blog and offer value in the same way they do to their audience. But don’t stop there.
Even if it’s a blog with lots of traffic, do a bit of your own research on the SEO side of things. Identify some topics that can drive SEO because the more traffic that lands on your guest blog, the more traffic that gets shot towards your site. It will also attract people to reach out to you and ask for a guest blog.
Step 3 — Make The Pitch
It’s just about as simple as it sounds. Send your target audience a suggested topic and 2–4 bullet points outlining what will be covered
In some cases they will ask for the whole article to be delivered at once. It’s still worth doing these if it’s a good blog/publication. At the worst, you can re-use that content in another pitch.
From there the process is relatively straight forwards. Get approval, write the content, get it posted, rinse and repeat.
You can get content requests delivered to you daily through HARO — Help A Reporter Out, among other similar platforms.
7. Guest Podcasting
Guest posting is great, but there’s a new medium that’s becoming more and more popular for content consumption. It’s podcasts.
Podcasts really just a conversation between two people, but recorded. The best ones have millions of listeners who download the daily, weekly or monthly podcast episode. Even some of the small ones can pull in 10,000 downloads without too much effort.
Podcasts often have weekly episodes, which means every single week these shows have to book a new person to talk to.
If you look at iTunes in your main market, you’ll see hundreds if not thousands of shows. Your main aim should be the ones not in the top 50 of your category. You want to focus on the ones just below that.
They’re hungry for good content and they’re growing, which means you’ll have less hassle to get a spot and you can book them often.
It’s a great way to build authority and get your offer in front of a few thousand people.
There’s also two great services to help you get going down the guest podcasting road: RadioGuestList and InterviewConnections. RadioGuestList is relatively low cost for those just dabbling in the idea of it while InterviewConnections is the more done for you option.
8. Testimonials And Case Studies
Your product doesn’t speak for itself. You have to speak for it.
Testimonials are a staple of any good landing page or homepage. They tell a story of what you can do for your potential customer through the stories of what you’ve done for others.
Case studies on the other hand are more detailed accounts of what you can do for a specific segment of your potential customers.
Typically these are leveraged to tell a story of how you achieved a result for a customer and breakdown how it’s repeatable.
Case studies make for the ultimate selling tool.
Testimonials don’t tell the whole story and often sound like they’ve been taken out of context. Case studies on the other hand are in-depth accounts of a situation where you’ve helped your customer achieve a result.
It can be the different between a 6-figure a year company and an 8-figure a year company.
They’re not just limited to service based businesses either. HubSpot actually has dozens of case studies sortable by industry, company size, solution, challenge and location.
The reason for this is people want to see a story that can be directly relatable to them. The more they resonate with the journey, the more they’ll want that end result.