The 3 Strategies For Staying Top-of-Mind & Getting More Gigs | The Lead Nurture Series

[00:00:00] Brian: Hello and welcome to the Six Figure Creative Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Hood. If this is your first time listening to the show or watching on YouTube, first of all, welcome. This podcast is for you. If you're a creative freelancer, you offer. Freelance services you want to earn more money from your creative skills, and you will sell your soul at all costs to make more money Screw the you want to make more money if that's you you're in the wrong place here if we we try to prioritize making money without selling your soul.

[00:00:25] Brian: Today. We're continuing our series. We're probably wrapping our series up on the LeadNurture series. This is a standalone episode, so you don't have to have listened to the previous stuff, but it's helpful to have listened to the previous two episodes.

[00:00:36] Brian: but just to recap lead nurturing is essentially how do we build that no like and trust factor with a lead, a new lead who just found us over a long period of time, preferably three, six, nine, 12 months or more so that that relationship is built.

[00:00:48] Brian: And I equated it to gardening where when you plant the seeds at the beginning of the planting season in the early spring or mid spring after the final freeze, you don't just plant the seeds and then disappear for six months. You need to nurture the plants and the new sprouts that are [00:01:00] coming up. You need to water them. You need to prune them.

[00:01:01] Brian: You need to make sure there's not pests killing them. You gotta make sure they're not getting over watered or too much sunlight. It takes energy. It takes effort. It takes a lot of work to nurture plants in a garden as you're growing it. I know this because I've had a garden all summer long and I've gotten a lot of fruit from it.

[00:01:14] Brian: but if I were to neglect that, if I were just to plant those seeds, It would be an overgrown mess that I got very little out of. funny enough, yesterday I did clear out my garden for the season because the first freeze of the year was coming in, which would kill off most stuff.

[00:01:26] Brian: Plus we're heading out for this trip for a month or more. And

[00:01:29] Brian: essentially digging up all the tomato plants and the, peppers and basil and pretty much anything that wouldn't survive the winter.

[00:01:35] Brian: so I got my, what I consider final harvest of this garden and it was massive. It was like 40 pounds of tomatoes, most of them still green because again, we had to cut the season short because we had an early freeze coming in. Plus we're leaving the country, I'll post a couple photos of my harvest uh, on our show notes page at sixfigurecreative. com slash 283. If you want to see those for whatever reason, but it was a massive harvest because I put a lot of time effort energy into nurturing my garden over the season. So now we're back to [00:02:00] leads and clients instead of seeds and gardens and fruit, but the concept's exactly the same.

[00:02:05] Brian: so a few weeks ago on episode one of the series, we talked about the four main building blocks of nurturing leads. Last week, we talked about mapping out your entire client journey. That was a very different type of episode than what I normally do is almost like a workshop because there was video elements and it really made the most sense if you could follow along and do it yourself while watching along this week, we're going to talk about the specific strategies of how to nurture leads.

[00:02:25] Brian: What can you actually do to nurture leads?

[00:02:27] Brian: But before I get into the specific tactics, just a quick reminder of episode 1 in this series, one of those four building blocks, because these four building blocks are what we're going to be sprinkling throughout all of our lead nurture efforts.

[00:02:36] Brian: When we talk about the specific tactics in this episode, those four building blocks again are building desire for what it is that you offer as a freelancer. So how, can we build desire? Number two is building and showing credibility and authority in your niche so that you are the go to person in whatever or services that you offer and that you have some form of external validation.

[00:02:54] Brian: And proof that you're great at what you do. The third building block is building relationship. Again, showing that you're human, [00:03:00] showing people in your outfit, this wonderful grey sweatsuit that's probably a regretful thing to wear in my hot podcast studio, but it was freezing this morning and I wanted to have something warm on, but showing that you're a human being.

[00:03:10] Brian: So people get to know you and I shared a bunch of stuff in that episode about I like to make sourdough and coffee and ghee butter. I like to do workations. I do stupid things like talking too fast. As I'm sure you know by now, if you are still listening at this point, even if you're brand new, you know, Brian talks too fast.

[00:03:24] Brian: I can't put it in my normal 1. 5 X podcast speed. I need to slow it down to one time speed because Brian already talks at 1. 5 X speed. But these are the things that make me human, that make me stand out and beyond, maybe some of the more dry, boring business podcasts you've probably listened to.

[00:03:38] Brian: And I'm honestly still working on this. I'm still not great at this part, but I'm working on it to show more of my humanity.

[00:03:44] Brian: And then the fourth building block is just consistency. Staying top of mind, staying relevant, being remembered for a long period of time, consistently over three, six, nine, 12, 16, 18 months, 24 months.

[00:03:56] Brian: so that when they're ready to hire somebody, you're still top of mind. That's hard [00:04:00] to do. But we're going to talk about how to do that today. So this is the four building blocks, and everything we talk about today is going to be doing some form of one of those things or more.

[00:04:07] Brian: And I kind of have three unofficial buckets of strategies that we can try and I recommend Just focusing on one small bucket, not even a bucket one thing within these buckets that you should do until it's fully implemented and working before you start doing everything else because the worst thing about a podcast like this, and especially if you are a podcast addict like me, where you listen to a bunch of podcasts, and for some reason, there's still never enough episodes because you listen to so many episodes.

[00:04:29] Brian: probably listen to five episodes a day, of many different podcasts because I do a lot of podcast walks around my neighborhood. But there's something called an advice buffet. And so whenever podcasts like mine are telling you strategies and things to implement, it's just a smorgasbord of things that you could do and not all of them are relevant to you and not all of them are relevant to you yet.

[00:04:48] Brian: so you've got to be the one who knows how to choose the right things to do and focus on just those things. And even when you have multiple things that could be great strategies, some of which will sound great to you today. Transcribed Only one of those is [00:05:00] the thing you should focus on right now because we are not a team of 30 people that we can divvy up responsibilities.

[00:05:04] Brian: We are solo freelancers. Therefore, we have to pick one priority at a time because there's only one of us. keep that in mind. so bucket number one for nurturing leads. So those four building blocks that I talked about earlier is content marketing. And before you go run off and say, I don't want to create content, hear me out.

[00:05:20] Brian: I'm not going to try to talk you into doing it because it's not right for everybody, but just understand what content marketing is and is not because it's probably not what you think it is. Yes, it's the things that you already know are content marketing like this podcast. I'll talk about that. YouTube videos.

[00:05:33] Brian: Blog articles, et cetera, et cetera. But some things are content that you don't think is content

[00:05:38] Brian: like paid advertising. Now most people will not paid advertising in the bucket of content marketing, but I do in the context of lead nurture and you'll hear why that is as I talk about this kind of bucket of strategies.

[00:05:49] Brian: so for content marketing, the number one rule I have for freelancers is this. Your goal for content marketing is not to be well known. We're not trying to be influencers We're not trying to gain hundreds of thousands of [00:06:00] followers That's a different business model in and of itself. Our goal as freelancers in content marketing realm is to be known well.

[00:06:07] Brian: And that's a big difference. To be well known is to have hundreds of thousands of followers. Not what we're trying to do. To be known well is to have a hundred followers. And those hundred followers know us really well. so we're using a content marketing strategy to nurture leads, to build a relationship. Our goal is to be known well, and I just want that to stay top of mind for you because I love that, kind of mindset shift

[00:06:27] Brian: within content marketing. We have

[00:06:29] Brian: the most obvious type of content, and that is your content that you have created.

[00:06:33] Brian: And the thing that trips people up here is because they don't really know what to talk about. But if we look at those four building blocks, it's probably going to spark some thoughts about content that you could create. again, those building blocks are building desire. So showing transformations,

[00:06:45] Brian: talking about the desired end state, just normal conversion marketing things. Number two is building authority and credibility. So that's where you can show expertise that you are great at what you do,

[00:06:54] Brian: demonstrating what you're capable of, teaching what you've learned, social proof of case studies,

[00:06:59] Brian: [00:07:00] or that third building block, which is building that relationship, showing that you're human, sharing your opinions on things, love it or hate it. This stuff works when it comes to content marketing, and the fourth is consistency, which is more of a byproduct sharing content regularly.

[00:07:12] Brian: But the area I want to start with in content marketing that people don't think about when it comes to content marketing strategies is email marketing. Email marketing is the natural first place to go to if you're using some of the lead generation strategies I talked about in the lead generation series before this.

[00:07:25] Brian: This was. Last month, I think if you're just scrolling through your podcast app, you'll see the lead generation series. And we talked about building an email list, generating leads, and a lead is simply somebody that you can contact. So it's not just an email list. It can be social followers. If you can contact them, it can be just opening up your phone contact list.

[00:07:40] Brian: Every contact in your phone is technically a lead because you can contact them. But I try to think of leads more about people that are interested and Potentially qualified they're not just a friend family member There's somebody that could be a good client for you, So that's kind of how I differentiate it

[00:07:53] Brian: but if you're building an email list email marketing and sending out a regular newsletter or just an Email once a week is an [00:08:00] easy low stakes way to nurture leads without having to be What you would consider a content creator. You don't have to be on video. You could think of them as blog articles That aren't published anywhere is the lowest stakes easiest to set up thing is to just if you're building an email list Nurture that email list with regular emails, And the great thing about email marketing is you don't have to pretty it up, which is crazy to think about. I've, seen studies on this. I've tested this myself, but emails that are just plain text, maybe some like bold or italics they're not like crazy designed email newsletter templates that you see like big corporations using or e commerce people using.

[00:08:33] Brian: Those actually get less opens less clicks and just a simple text based email converts better people open it more often

[00:08:40] Brian: the more you do it the better you get but if you're a decent writer You can knock out a newsletter in 30 minutes to 45 minutes So to spend 30 to 45 minutes in a week To write out a newsletter that does one of those things we talked about in the building blocks, builds desire, builds authority, shows credibility, builds a relationship, shows that you're human, shows proof, case studies, testimonials, anything that demonstrates [00:09:00] expertise in your field, news, Interesting facts, new tools, things that your client should know before they hire somebody.

[00:09:07] Brian: Like there's tons of content you can create. this is not an episode on coming up with a full content marketing plan. We have episodes in our backlog of four content marketing specifically if you're interested. But email marketing is the easiest way to get started. Beyond that you have what I call the big three the other big three types of content that you probably think of when it Comes to content marketing that is a podcast like this These podcasts are wonderful If you're like me and you were the type of person who got in trouble for talking too much at school My teacher literally said she yelled in class Brian Stop talking.

[00:09:34] Brian: You can't whisper. Stop even trying to whisper. You cannot whisper. I was incapable of whispering. Anytime I'm talking in class, I would talk at a low voice like this. And it's so easy to hear that. So I always got in trouble for talking too much. I got detention a lot. I got written up. And now this is my main form of content marketing.

[00:09:51] Brian: I enjoy it the most. I like talking for 20, 30, 40, 45 minutes up to an hour on a solo episode. That's insane. Interviews are easier if you're not like a super talker, but I've [00:10:00] just found that I Don't run out of things to talk about for whatever reason, at least not right now. It's I think 2023 this year has been almost all solo episodes with a few kind of re shared episodes from backlog of interviews.

[00:10:13] Brian: And then maybe a one odd off interview here and there, but there's also YouTube. That's the other of the big three. So if you're more of a video person and then there's blog content, that's the other of the big three. If you're a writer and you want to actually publish on the internet.

[00:10:24] Brian: Especially if there is a chance to rank for things for SEO, where you can actually get traffic to your site through Google. That's another strategy you can implement. The one that I use of all these, I've done YouTube in the past. I have blogged in the past, but podcasting has been my mainstay. And it's just good to experiment with these to see which one you kind of land in.

[00:10:40] Brian: Because I started with blogging. Then I went to podcast. Then I tried to do a YouTube channel while doing the podcast. And then I realized why am I doing two pieces of content a week? When my bottleneck is not lead nurturing, I went back to the podcast, stopped doing the solo dedicated YouTube videos.

[00:10:54] Brian: And now these, podcasts are just longer versions, less edited. I had a video editor do a bunch of pretty stuff on the YouTube [00:11:00] stuff to make it more watchable. And they were shorter, but those are the big three and you kind of just pick which one you want if you want to do one of these three, but there's also another one that is still content marketing within this big bucket that I don't consider one of the big three.

[00:11:11] Brian: Because it's its own stand alone thing, and that's social media, short form content. I'd say the big three is all the long form content mediums, YouTube, blog, podcast. An email's newsletter can be long form or short form, but social media is all short form and or just photos.

[00:11:26] Brian: However, the reason I wanted to talk about social media. I'm not an expert in this at all. If you want an expert, talk to my wife. She's generated over 200, 000 followers between her Instagram and TikTok. For those who don't know, my wife has an account called Meg's Tea Room. she talks about books, basically.

[00:11:40] Brian: She's a book nerd. Fantasy books. Cozy fantasy, to be specific. So if you like your fantasy books to be low stakes, To not be high action, full of murders. Whatever you think the opposite of Game of Thrones might be, that's what she talks about. That is her TikTok and YouTube channel. And she is what I consider a social media expert.

[00:11:57] Brian: That is not what I'm hoping that our listeners will [00:12:00] accomplish. You don't need hundreds of thousands of followers. to make this work. Remember, we're not here to be well known. We're here to be known. Well, With that being said, there's a big difference between discovery content on social media and nurture content on social media.

[00:12:12] Brian: I don't really do discovery content on social media. I do nurture content. Nurture content is this. It is containing those four building blocks I talked about before building desire for what is you offer building a credibility. AKA showing expertise and building a relationship with people being consistent top of mind over time and all we do to nurture on our channels and instagram is we just take clips from this podcast and I looked it up and Organic clips that we've shared on this podcast reaches

[00:12:38] Brian: Over 10 000 people a month something like that over 2 000 people have engaged with it It's not big numbers when it comes to social media, especially considering what we see with paid ads where we reach hundreds of thousands of people per month and generate thousands of leads a month.

[00:12:50] Brian: It's small potatoes. However, again, we're trying to be known well, not well known paid ads are how I'm trying to be well known in my niche, at least. And it's a numbers game there. But social [00:13:00] media, it's more about quality over quantity. So we just, right now, we're going to change this soon, but we only just post one or two clips a week from the show just to stay top of mind and stay relevant and just have recent stuff posted on social media.

[00:13:10] Brian: But discovery content is where you're posting stuff with a great hook that feeds the algorithm and gets you ranked to the top And it gets you hundreds of thousands of views and tons of new followers. That game is exhausting. It can work really well if that's the game you want to play, but that is not lead nurturing.

[00:13:24] Brian: That is top of funnel awareness creation, almost to the lead generation world. That's where you're trying to get new leads And if you're playing the game just on social media, you're not doing any email marketing or paid ads. You look at it like this discovery content that gets you put in front of strangers on the internet, generating awareness.

[00:13:40] Brian: That is the same as paying for ads, you're getting eyeballs and you're paying time for it and effort for it. Not money, but time and effort. And some of those people, small percentage will follow you. Every one of those follows is a lead. You can contact those people if you want to DM them, it can be sporadic because you're limited by how many people you can DM.

[00:13:55] Brian: You can't DM everybody at once like you can with the email list where you can send out a blast to all of your followers. [00:14:00] I'm putting followers in quotes. So to me, it's not as valuable to have a social media follower. Now we're playing the nurture game. Social media nurture is much easier. It is just sharing things that are part of those building blocks. for people, if anything else, to remember you exist. And best case scenario, they get to know you like you and trust you more. so that is lead nurturing on social media. It is not discovery content. It is not playing for the algorithm. It is not trying to get tons of views. It is merely staying relevant, getting people to engage so that you're known, liked, and trusted. And somebody that does this really well, I think, is a past guest we had on the show.

[00:14:30] Brian: Just came to mind, actually. I gotta look this up. The

[00:14:32] Brian: Episode 175. Way back, November 23rd, 2021. There's an episode titled, The Six Figure Creative's Guide to Copywriting for Freelancers. And that was an episode with Rachel Grieman. She has a copywriting company called Green Chair Stories, I believe. And if you follow her on Instagram, she does a really good job of creating what I call like nurture content.

[00:14:50] Brian: all the people that we have had on our show, we follow on Instagram. And so I see their posts all the time. And she's been consistent. She doesn't have huge numbers. She's got 7, 000 followers at this point. Her reels [00:15:00] maybe have a couple thousand views each. They're not like a crazy amount of views on them.

[00:15:04] Brian: But she's been consistently doing this over a long period of time. And she puts a lot of personality into these.

[00:15:09] Brian: And even though it's been over a hundred episodes since she was on the show, she was top of mind for me when I'm thinking through this.

[00:15:15] Brian: And I still feel like I know her well because I see her content on social media again. She's done a great job of just nurturing me as not really a lead, but a peer or a friend on social media. And then because of that, she just got a free shout out on the show again, over a hundred episodes later. So you never know where your content might land you.

[00:15:31] Brian: So that is the bucket of content marketing for your own specific content. So when you were creating content for your own platforms, That's this first kind of area of content marketing. But there's another area worth talking about that I think people don't think about. And that is other people's content.

[00:15:46] Brian: Think about this podcast tour. That's the area that a lot of people neglect and something that I've been setting up and working on myself. Podcast tours where you just go out and you're on everyone's show. We've all seen this. If you listen to podcasts, you'll see the same guests on multiple shows.

[00:15:57] Brian: sometimes for us, it's because heard a guest on someone [00:16:00] else's show. We just want them on our show. That's not necessarily a podcast tour. A book author will always do a podcast tour that's centered around their book launch. For example, we had,

[00:16:08] Brian: New York Times bestselling author Mike Michalowicz on the show, back in episode 166, he was talking about his, new book at the time,

[00:16:14] Brian: which is called Get Different.

[00:16:16] Brian: and we were able to get this amazing author who's like one of my favorite authors who's got a lot of great books, including Profit First, Clockwork, Fix This Next. He's got a lot of like. big books out there. And this is probably one of the smaller books that he's done, but we got him on the show because he was doing a podcast tour around that book launch.

[00:16:30] Brian: Freelancers can do the same thing. You can do a dedicated push to be on other people's shows. You don't have to have a big book launch around it. You just need to have things that you could talk about that are relevant to that show. And that show needs to be relevant for your client base.

[00:16:43] Brian: I will fully admit this does not work for everybody some freelancers are just in a niche where their ideal clients. are too different from them. For example, if you're doing design for big businesses, there's probably not a lot you can go on podcasts where business owners are listening and share information.

[00:16:58] Brian: Although you could, probably [00:17:00] find an angle if you have built your way up to becoming expert in that field for that specific thing. But in many cases, it's hard or impossible.

[00:17:07] Brian: So if that's you, just skip this part or ignore this part. But for those of you where you're close enough in skill set and knowledge with your clients, or you're on the same level playing field, they're able to look up to you, at least in your area of expertise, even if you may be lower on the, on the ladder than your clients, if they're a big business, or they're a corporation, and even in a corporation, by the way.

[00:17:27] Brian: It's still one individual who's making the hiring decision or a small group of individuals who's making a hire decision. So you can still create content that's appealing to those specific people.

[00:17:35] Brian: But just making a list of podcasts that would make sense for you to be on, Like I'm sure a few of our guests have done where they've reached out to us because they wanted to be on our show because our show had their ideal clients in mind. It can be a great way to create content that you're not fully in charge of. Meaning you don't have to build a following.

[00:17:49] Brian: You're just getting in front of other people's audiences, but you're coming with some form of content and value to add, but you can do that with a podcast tour. You can do that with guests posting on other people's blogs. If someone else has a blog, you can create content for that [00:18:00] blog that they then share to their following, especially if they have an email list to send that article to.

[00:18:04] Brian: can do the same with social media collaborations. This is not common in our industry because this is kind of like influencer world, but you can do micro influencing, which is to be known well in a small niche, collaborate with other people like you. They don't have to be big followers. And to be honest, if it's too small, social media accounts collaborating with each other, there's less noise.

[00:18:21] Brian: They're not having to decide, should I collaborate with this person or that person? You're the only one person they're talking to about doing some sort of collaboration with. And it could be as funny as you doing reels together or skits together or something that's just relevant to your audience.

[00:18:32] Brian: when it comes to creating content, don't just be limited to creating your own following. It makes the sense for a lot of people to start on someone else's platform, someone else's podcast, someone else's blog. Someone else's newsletter,

[00:18:43] Brian: so that's content marketing. There's your content that you've created There's other people's content that you can be a part of and then the third piece of content marketing is paid ads And I want to talk about how this actually fits on the content marketing bucket because we think paid ads That's a completely different strategy.

[00:18:56] Brian: Well, it's not Paid ads when it comes to nurturing leads over a long [00:19:00] period of time is still content And we actually have an episode on this strategy. We call it the omnipresent strategy if you go back to

[00:19:06] Brian: Episode 266. So that was July 25th is when it came out this year The episode is called how to stay top of mind by being impossible to ignore It was called the omnipresent strategy that episode

[00:19:15] Brian: that talks about Retargeting and advertising and this is where lead nurture comes to play And I'll summarize very quickly, but you can go back to that episode for a deep dive in this. If this is something that's interesting to you, when someone comes to your website or engages with you on social media by following you or watching a reel or liking something or commenting on a post or they subscribe to your email list or any number of specific actions that are taken Any of these people can now be what's called retargeted or? Remarketed to and this is where the magic happens when it comes to being omnipresent now because I've engaged with your ad or I've engaged with your social media channel.

[00:19:48] Brian: I'm now seeing your read marketing ads everywhere. I'm seeing them on websites and blogs that I'm reading. I'm seeing them on my social feed. I'm seeing them in my reels when I'm swiping And if you set things up correctly, you're [00:20:00] able to be persistent and consistent without being overwhelming and annoying. And that's a hard balance to get. I'm not going to pretend like I've perfected this.

[00:20:06] Brian: there's a, uh, Grant Cardone quote, it's something to the effect of I'd rather be annoying than irrelevant. Something like that. That's not everyone's cup of tea, but that is a way of looking at it. But freelancers, I promise you, you are nowhere close to becoming a nuisance or someone who's annoying who's seen too many times.

[00:20:21] Brian: You are almost all irrelevant and I say that coming from a place of love. I want you to stay relevant and I mean that not from a mean place. I just mean truly to be relevant by definition of Google. You have to be closely connected or appropriate to what's being done or considered I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like I need to be. Known, liked, trusted, and top of mind to be relevant as a freelancer. So if I am irrelevant, I am not getting the gig.

[00:20:47] Brian: so take that however you want, remarketing, you can stay consistently top of mind and you can pay for that privilege to be there and it's not very expensive,

[00:20:55] Brian: but to do it well, it requires content. So this is easier if you're already [00:21:00] creating some sort of content, whether it's. Reels, whether it's photos, whether it's education, whether it's just sharing testimonials or reviews or case studies. But the more inventory of content you have to share in this omnipresent strategy, the more effective this is because not everyone is going to respond to the same thing.

[00:21:17] Brian: Some person. might see a case study and see themselves in that case study and then finally reach out to you. Another person might see a piece of content that finally gets something to click in their head and then realize the value that they would get by working with you. And then they contact you that way.

[00:21:29] Brian: Some person might just see something that makes them laugh and reminds them that you exist and that now they have this need. And so they reach out to you that way, Whatever the type of content is everyone responds to things differently.

[00:21:38] Brian: so the larger the backlog of content that you have the more likely you are to have that one thing that pulls someone in And if you actually you go back to last week's episode where I talked through the client journey where we mapped out all the different phases from unknown to known All the way down to client to repeat client that is a great place to think through what does someone need to see in this phase to get to the next phase.

[00:21:58] Brian: and connect create a piece of content or series [00:22:00] of content to retarget people in that area. And this is actually a powerful when you get to advance paid ads. People do some crazy stuff to just show people who are in just one of these phases and they have all sorts of criteria that just shows ads to just.

[00:22:12] Brian: Level three, trying to get them to level four. Again, go back to last week if you want to hear more about that, but this stuff can get crazy, but that's why this is under the content marketing because you're creating content, but you're just paying for that content to be in front of people versus having to somehow get the eyeballs on the content, which most of you don't have a big pull to put people to the content you're creating in the first place.

[00:22:31] Brian: That's why the omnipresent strategy can be great for freelancers to essentially. So that is content marketing. I'm done talking about it. For all you people that are just like, Brian, I don't want to create content. Screw you. This is stupid. I'm never creating content. I'm going to say you must hate money.

[00:22:44] Brian: However, we have other options. So we're going to go to option number two for. Lead nurture tactics and strategies and that is becoming a social hub many freelancers I'd say most freelancers have made it work without Content marketing without paid ads, But those people have [00:23:00] great social networks, and I'm not talking about online social networks.

[00:23:02] Brian: I mean The literal Human beings around them, the network of people that they know like, and trust, and that know, like, and trust them that there are pros and cons with this approach, but with any approach, you can make it work. If you understand the inputs and the outputs, what do I need to do? What are the actions you need to take to get the results that I want? And if I'm not getting the results that I want, I can up the level of activities that I'm doing.

[00:23:21] Brian: if you can boil everything down to that, you can make any of these strategies work. However, when it comes to building your social network, or just networking in general, if you want to call it that. Most people take a haphazard approach to this.

[00:23:31] Brian: So there are a couple of things you can do if you're trying to build your social network. And again, I'm not saying software or online, I'm talking about in person, real connections with people that do know like, and trust you. I call it your KLT network. Know like, trust, KLT. Know like, trust network is what we call it. You can call it whatever the hell you want. So thing number one, where there's clear inputs and outputs, and those are events. They can be formal events where you're going to networking events, which I wouldn't recommend, but things that are called networking events are generally not the best place to go to build your [00:24:00] network.

[00:24:00] Brian: Pro tip, but when I say formal events, I mean like trade shows, conferences, organized meetups, things that are actually like set up as a place for you to go and be around the people that you know would be your ideal clients. But there's also informal meetups and events. That's things where you are just in social circles.

[00:24:17] Brian: You're hanging out with people.

[00:24:18] Brian: And if these don't exist in your city, create them. There's a wonderful videography agency right down the street from me. I'm going to give him a shout out. Cumberland creative. The founder listens to the show. So years ago, he was actually in my studio doing video for one of the bands I produced.

[00:24:32] Brian: And fast forward, 10 years later, and he's got what I believe is at least a seven figure agency with big team, nice office. he, uh, DMed me on Instagram saying he was a fan of the show. So shout out to him. they were doing something multiple times that I thought was interesting.

[00:24:46] Brian: And they had, parties or gatherings at their offices.

[00:24:49] Brian: And while it could just be like a holiday party for like friends and family and employees. I don't think that's what it was. I need to reach out to see if this is the case. If not, just take this for what it's worth as a strategy you could do. But I [00:25:00] believe they have networking events at their offices because it's a great way to get the foot in the door with people that, you want to be around.

[00:25:06] Brian: So for example, if you're treating your clients to, Open bar, food, catering, whatever, at your offices like this agency does, and they can bring friends. Who do your ideal clients hang out with? More ideal clients. So this is a way to become the social hub, to create the events yourself so that you can surround yourself with people that you want to work with.

[00:25:22] Brian: So if these events don't exist in your area, create them. Make a meetup on meetup. com.

[00:25:27] Brian: Start being the social hub in your network to where you're the connector. Again, very hard to do. Not everyone's meant for this. I'm honestly terrible at this. This is why I do so much content and paid ads because I am terrible at networking,

[00:25:39] Brian: but some people this is their strength. So that's the first thing is events, building that social hub through events, either formal, informal, other people's events, events you've created. But the second one is communities. Many people I know are part of communities online,

[00:25:52] Brian: industry specific communities. There's all sorts of communities they're a major part of and they build a network within that community. And in many cases, I've [00:26:00] seen their marketing model is to join communities and masterminds and paid groups to just get near their clients. An example is somebody I know that runs a paid advertising agency.

[00:26:10] Brian: they're in an agency that runs ads for companies. And so their whole thing is they'll just join masterminds, they'll spend 25, 000 to 50, 000 to join these masterminds that are full of 50, 60, 75, 100 other business owners. Who are all successful and if they get one to two clients from that group, which they usually get more than that, they will have made up more than what they spent to be in that part of that group.

[00:26:32] Brian: So that is a way of essentially paid advertising,

[00:26:34] Brian: but that's bucket number two is social hub.

[00:26:36] Brian: And that's a more personalized way to do things. And the third bucket here, as we kind of wrap this episode up is, one on one good old one on as they say belly to belly bumping bellies. this is an all in person by the way when I say one to one it can be emails texts DM in person but it's where you were specifically directly Talking to or communicating with somebody on a one to one fashion.

[00:26:57] Brian: Not one to many, this podcast is one to many, one to [00:27:00] one. Because of the time consuming nature of this, typically, this is reserved for what consider like sales leads, people that have expressed interest in working with you. However, depending on your client value, you could probably do this with a lot of your marketing leads, aka people that could be good fits, but have not directly expressed interest in working with you again.

[00:27:16] Brian: Again, Just to quickly talk about a marketing lead versus a sales lead. Marketing lead is, I've raised my hand, I'm on your email list, or I have followed you on social media. I might be a good fit for you, but I have not said that I want to work with you. Whereas a sales lead is someone who might be a good fit, but said, I want to hire you.

[00:27:31] Brian: What does it look like to work together? That's a sales lead. so you've got to figure out where that one to one attention breaks off. For us, especially in Six Figure Creative and our coaching program,

[00:27:40] Brian: we market on a one to many scale. But when it comes to sales, it's all one to one because there's a lot to figure out to make sure we're both a good fit for each other.

[00:27:47] Brian: So anything you can do on a one to many scale, like building desire for what it is you offer, showing credibility and building authority, showing expertise, showing external validation, building the relationship, showing you're human, getting the know like, and trust you.[00:28:00] All these things can be done on a one to one scale.

[00:28:02] Brian: It can be done on a phone call. It can be done in a DM. It can be done through text messages. It can be done in a coffee meeting. but I have a rule here. When it comes to one on one, there is no such thing as a no with a qualified lead.

[00:28:12] Brian: There is only a not yet. So as soon as somebody has raised their hand, become a sales lead. And I know they're qualified because I've had a discussion and I know they'd be a great fit, but they say no, I do not ever abandon that lead. I will follow up 6 12 months later just to see how things are going. I will make sure during that time they're getting my one to many nurture content over that period of time. And the goal is 6 12 months. Next time, it's a yes. In worst case, it's just a no, not yet. But to me, if someone is a qualified lead, unless they say don't ever contact me again, which has never happened, unless they say that, they're going to get follow ups with us on a reasonable timeframe.

[00:28:49] Brian: So just because someone hires another freelancer or says no, or gives an excuse or ghosts you. If you know they're qualified, like they would be a good fit for you, keep following up one to one in the meantime, make sure they're seeing your [00:29:00] one to many nurture content, whether it is one of the big three pieces of content, whether it's your social media, whether it's retargeting omnipresent ads, whatever that is, make sure you follow that rule that you don't let any lead slip to the crack.

[00:29:10] Brian: So it takes a good CRM to do this. Maybe another episode, I'll talk about CRMs. Maybe that's. Something that's percolating in my brain, the CRM episode again. but those are the main kind of tactics and strategies around what you can do to actually stay top of mind But last reminder is do not do all of these at the same time, pick one and implement it fully or at least explore it to the fullest extent that you can so that you know whether something you want to keep doing or not. Because I talked about this in episode one of the series, lead nurture is not a one and done thing.

[00:29:37] Brian: It takes ongoing time, effort, energy, and sometimes money. But it is always worth it if you're doing it well.

[00:29:43] Brian: For example, in a garden, you can't just water your plants one or two times and say, I'm good. It's not a very effective strategy, is it? Pick one, fully implement it until you know you either hate this and never want to do it again, or it's working. You've got an autopilot and you can do something else that you can start building up as well.

[00:29:57] Brian: But if you're struggling with knowing what to pick, or [00:30:00] how to implement it, or what specifically to say or do, If you want me and my team to help you build an awesome, badass nurture strategy for your business that builds desire for what it is you offer, that shows that you are the best option that you from all the other freelancers that are out there that you're competing with helps build that relationship so that you are known well, not well known, but known well.

[00:30:19] Brian: amongst the people that do follow in your little sphere of influence and consistently keeps you top of mind over a long period of time. Like I said, three, six, 12, 18, 24 months or more. So that when the client is ready to hire someone, that person is you and not your competitor because you're the one who's still top of mind.

[00:30:35] Brian: Then I encourage you to go to sixfigurecreative. com slash coaching to just learn more about what we do. If it looks like something that you're interested in, apply. Here's the entire process. You watch the video on the page, gives information. You say, I'm interested. You apply, book a call.

[00:30:48] Brian: We'll look over your application. If it's not a good fit, we'll let you know. If it looks like it could be a good fit, We'll get on a call with you. We'll discuss where you're at now, where you're trying to go and see if it's a good fit. If it's a good fit, we'll talk about working with you. The way the coaching program [00:31:00] works is you join, we create a full marketing roadmap for you. If you don't like that roadmap, you just say, Brian, I hate you, your program, your roadmap, everything about you.

[00:31:08] Brian: And then we part ways and you don't have to pay us anything. If you approve the road map, you like the road map, from then on it's just a month by month come to program that you can pause or cancel at any point because life happens, people go on holidays, people get sick, people go through big life changes, and I like the flexibility of knowing that.

[00:31:23] Brian: If something big has come up in my life, I can pause for now. I can always come back to it and we can help you implement that roadmap at a later date. Takes the pressure off, So if that sounds like something that you might need help with for one on one help, feedback, accountability, Then go to that link, watch the video and consider applying. But here's the cool thing about this. today. I got the report back from my assistant and of all of our coaching clients. One person is not doing the work right now, everyone else who's in our coaching program right now is doing the work, getting done. And I don't know about any other program. They can say that they have one inactive person right now and we're still reaching out we are likely about to send a literally a handwritten letter to that person to get [00:32:00] them back engaged to implementing what we built out on the road map so that they get the results that they want and the reason we track this metric is because we want our clients to be successful and we set up everything we can to have a accountability so that you can actually do the work to get the done so that you get the result that you want.

[00:32:14] Brian: Because I know that when you get the result that you want, I have a happy client for a long time who will refer other people to me.

[00:32:19] Brian: so if you're still listening, just go to sixfigurecreative. com slash coaching. Check it out.

[00:32:23] Brian: So as I wrap this episode up, it is Thanksgiving week. If you're listening, the time I record this, however, it is. Halloween, actually. You get a little idea of how far in advance I am right now. I kind of hate it. I like having like relevant things that have happened this week.

[00:32:36] Brian: I like the week to week treadmill that I'm usually on. but hopefully you have a good Thanksgiving if you're in America.

[00:32:40] Brian: If you're not, the last two years, including this one, We've been traveling the world during Thanksgiving and I found that no matter where you're at even in Singapore We were last Thanksgiving. You can find a good Thanksgiving dinner anywhere So if you're not from America go to anywhere I don't know go find someone that has a Thanksgiving dinner and just indulge.

[00:32:58] Brian: It's actually not [00:33:00] that good. I don't like turkey I like a lot of the parts around Thanksgiving, but just do it and thank me later. Send me an email, podcast at six figure creative. com. If you want to give me some thoughts on whether you love, do we have any Thanksgiving lovers here? That's the question.

[00:33:11] Brian: or maybe we've got some Thanksgiving haters. what's your favorite Thanksgiving food? Mine is the sweet potato casserole. it's like sweet potatoes. And then there's the way my mom makes it is like candied pecans or pecans, however you want to say it.

[00:33:23] Brian: I say pecans at the top of it. And then some people, they do like a toasted marshmallow top on top of that. We don't do that. That's a little extra, but that is so good. yeah, have a good Thanksgiving. I'm having a good Halloween today. We leave for Peru tomorrow, but by the time this episode airs, we will probably start to wrap up our trip and head home sometime around or after Thanksgiving.

[00:33:40] Brian: But starting next week, you should hear some episodes from us on our travels. And those are always, I'm not going to build them up. They're going to be boring. You'll hate them. I don't even know what I'm talking about. This series is done on the Lead Nurser series. Who knows what I'm about next.

[00:33:51] Brian: But that's part of the joy is you just don't know what's coming up next. I've started putting my ramblings at the end. I don't know why. This is just what I've started doing instead of at the beginning. Maybe it's because I was like, if you [00:34:00] make it this far, you care.

[00:34:01] Brian: If you're at the beginning of the episode, you don't know like, and trust me yet. So maybe this is, this is how I'm going to do things from now on. Start adding random shit the end. So you hang out with me. So that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Six Figure Creative Podcast. See you next week.