Traffic and Leads Podcast
Michael Greenberg shares his tips about how to land high ticket items, as well as how he combines the power of LinkedIn and Facebook to get people’s attention and create rapidly interested audiences with One-Click Lindsey on the Traffic and Leads Podcast.
Intro 0:01
You’re listening to the Traffic And Leads podcast where we examine what is and isn’t working in online marketing. Now please welcome your host online marketing expert one click Lindsay
Lindsey Anderson 0:17
Hey everybody, welcome to the Traffic And Leads Podcast. I am your host one click, Lindsay. Today I am interviewing Mr. Michael Greenberg from Call For Content. And he has a really cool strategy that he divulges his secrets in this episode of the Traffic And Leads Podcast. His strategy is specifically for coaches or specialty people, the kind of person who works just alone in their office, as a coach or consultant, and you’re trying to land a really high ticket item like $10,000 or over. He has a super cool strategy where he combines LinkedIn and Facebook ads and is able to really get people’s attention. So, if that description fits you, you’re going to want to listen to this episode of the Traffic And Leads Podcast. Alright, let’s hop into this interview with Michael. And we’ll see on the other side. Hey, Michael, welcome to the traffic and leads podcast. So excited to have you on today.
Michael Greenberg 6:19
Super glad to be here.
Lindsey Anderson 6:21
Well, why don’t you tell the listeners what you do? What’s your specialty? Michael.
Michael Greenberg 6:27
So I do content and authority marketing primarily for independent consultants and executive coaches. So a really very niche group there.
Lindsey Anderson 6:39
Yeah, it really is. So first of all, I want you to define something for the audience. What’s the difference between authority marketing or inbound marketing, or let’s see used another word there too, content marketing. Yeah, Is there a difference between those three words?
Michael Greenberg 6:57
So I think it’s more of a narrowing in focus than anything else. Whereas inbound brings into play anything from SEO to content in publishing. Making a blog and doing email is still the core of all these things. Content marketing really gets focused on creating specific content formats, and then pushing them out to an audience and growing that audience of dedicated fans. And then authority marketing goes one step further. And is really focused on just positioning the brand. Or, in my case, the individual as an expert. And as the go-to option in some very specific set of cases for a targeted audience.
Lindsey Anderson 7:46
Awesome. So when you say that you specialize in this niche for personal brands, you’re talking about consultants that are just kind of wanting more consulting work. That doesn’t have a team behind them, maybe a business coach of some sort. Can you give us some other examples of people that you service?
Michael Greenberg 8:05
Yeah, so a lot of independent business owners, especially when they’re operating what I call expertise-driven businesses. So that’s any business where you’re normally a service business, occasionally, it’s a product. But generally, it’s a service business in which the founder of a small team of employees has core expertise that is the main offering at the table. So for owners in those businesses, they have to still work in the business. And they’re often businesses in which you might be a hiring coach. So let’s say you’re a hiring coach, and you have to differentiate from other people who do hiring or HR. That’s it really a matter of educating that small market, which could just be law offices, and let’s say call centers in the 50 to 200 person range. You don’t need everybody to know who you are. And in fact, if you’re that individual, you’re operating on five to 10 clients a year, maybe. Larger contracts generally. I really specialized in that B2B high touch sale in the 10,000 plus range. So the big sales are my specialty, and I tried to build the relationships there.
Lindsey Anderson 9:38
So is the content different when you’re marketing to that? Or is it just more of a principle of targeting at that point?
Michael Greenberg 9:48
So the content is a little different. Um, your listeners might be aware of other episodes about the different stages of the funnel, in marketing.
Lindsey Anderson 9:58
Please review. Everyone here likes to review, Michael. Go ahead.
Michael Greenberg 10:02
Yeah. So when we talk about your marketing funnel. You’ve got the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel and the bottom. For the kind of content that I create, we really only focus on the middle and bottom of the funnel. We’re not really trying to build a huge audience for someone. If you’ve got 1000 or 2000 people on an email list as a solo practitioner. If you’ve built a well-targeted list, you don’t need to get much bigger than that. And similarly, if you have nobody on your list, then we could build a list as small as 150 or 200 emails. 200 People who are listening to your content, and if it’s the right 200, we don’t need anymore.
Lindsey Anderson 10:52
Okay, so how is the content different? Why is it that you need such a small audience? And what’s the magic sauce, you’re putting in that content that makes it special to blend a $10,000 sell?
Michael Greenberg 11:04
Yeah, the audience relates to each other, and you create content with the audience. So almost all of the content that I create is bringing in either audience interviews or potential prospects. Bringing in their problems, their conversations, and creating content around those. That, in turn, because you’ve got such a small audience you’re targeting, they will share, and their social network is actually aligned. So it’s a small enough audience that when they start sharing content that they’ve been in. They will see each other there, with a much smaller Pay Per Click spends on top of that, suddenly, you’re actually saturating this highly targeted, high-value audience with your presence and your brand. My target range is about two to 3000 on LinkedIn.
Lindsey Anderson 12:08
Okay, so I want to dive into that. So are you saying you go into LinkedIn, you’re using the LinkedIn tools to find very specific people that you would want to work with? And you pretty much find two or 3000 of them, then you create content that they’re going to see through paid ads either on LinkedIn or through Facebook. And you’re basically just serving them, this content through those kinds of mediums.
Michael Greenberg 12:34
So I’m going to find a LinkedIn demographic that works. And I do that by interviewing clients’ best customers, and I like to say I use my blending stick if you’ve ever done charcoal drawings before. To take those rough edges that the charcoal leaves behind, you use a tightly rolled piece of paper called a blending stick and Smooth them out. So I take this sharp edge, the direct profile of one of your ideal customers, and then I smudge the edges. And I look for something where we can get to that 2000- 3000 mark on LinkedIn.
Lindsey Anderson 13:16
Okay, and then you go, I know I’m getting into your system here. So you have the perfect avatar, the blended avatar, and you go to LinkedIn, and you utilize LinkedIn tools to find them. And then do you friend them on LinkedIn?
Michael Greenberg 13:30
Not usually. So what I’m going to do then is, take a look at those people and find the best 100 to 200 that is really the ideal for my client. And those people we’re actually going to go get the emails for. And we’re going to invite them to create content with us.
Lindsey Anderson 13:54
Okay, and what does that mean? Do you mean through podcasting?
Michael Greenberg 13:55
Podcasting is one of my favorite channels, and I try to get all of my clients to start a podcast, but I don’t always succeed. So we also do case studies or opinion pieces on topics and issues that are coming up in the industry. And really try to turn the content we create, into a media source for your targeted industry that you happen to own.
Lindsey Anderson 13:56
Like a blog. Okay. So you invite them to share their opinion on the XYZ industry-specific topic as a blog post or a podcast interview. This makes them then that much more engaged with you because they think you’re super cool because you host a podcast, and you have this cool blog. That meets their industry. And not only that, then you share it with these other 200 or 300 people, and they think you’re really super cool and your clients are cool, because of all the awesome content. Really cool strategy.
Michael Greenberg 14:54
And that person that we have on is then going to share that same piece of content that we just created. And so all the people they know. That is similar to them in that their professional industries are going to get that boost as well. And since really the audience we’re targeting is very small, that 2000, 3000 generally has some overlap in that share. And so we get that social boost at the same time. And it doesn’t work when you get big until you get to really big numbers. But for these very small businesses. It’s really an interesting tactic.
Lindsey Anderson 15:31
So are you only on LinkedIn? Are you also expanding to other paid media?
Michael Greenberg 15:37
I use Facebook, as well. I found especially for those of my clients selling to business owners with under 100 employees or so. Facebook works a lot better than LinkedIn. Though, with my executive coaches, and with clients selling more to enterprise or larger businesses, LinkedIn tends to work better. It really comes down to the industry.
Lindsey Anderson 16:04
That makes sense. But you still always find people on LinkedIn. And then you find their email addresses either through LinkedIn or all these other scraping kinds of tools. And then what? Do you upload them to Facebook? Or are you private messaging them? Or how do you make that initial contact?
Michael Greenberg 16:20
Matched audiences or a direct email? People are generally not offended if you’re reaching out to them to ask them to share their thoughts and insights on how much they know about their industry. And that makes for a much warmer, cold outreach. I like to think of it, it’s almost lukewarm.
Lindsey Anderson 16:40
A lukewarm outreach.
Michael Greenberg 16:44
I see response rates there, hovering in 30 to 40%. Which is much higher than you’re going to get in other sorts. But you’re limited by the rate of content you can put up.
Lindsey Anderson 16:56
So I guess it’s all that important. I guess. It’s super important. That you find those email addresses of the 2000 or 3000 people. And that, once you upload those email addresses to Facebook. That there’s a match on the email address like that’s going to be all very important, right?
Michael Greenberg 17:11
Yeah, as long as we get a small portion matched, we’re good to go.
Lindsey Anderson 17:17
Okay, because then basically, you’re only running ads to that very specific list. You’re not doing local likes or anything like that. And so your ad spend is minuscule, but highly relevant because these people are exactly who you need to be seeing your content.
Michael Greenberg 17:32
Exactly.
Lindsey Anderson 17:33
I think you just gave us all of your secrets.
Michael Greenberg 17:35
I actually wrote a book giving them away already.
Lindsey Anderson 17:38
Oh, what a segue, why don’t you tell us about your book.
Michael Greenberg 17:42
So I wrote a little ebook called The Authority Marketing Playbook. You’ll be able to get a sample chapter that gives away all the philosophy except the actual doing the work portion. At authoritymarketingplaybook.com. I’ve got a little landing page set up there. Essentially, what you’re doing is you’re going in, you’re building these personas, you’re finding out where they live because you’re speaking directly to these people. And then you’re just going to go to those places. That’s really what it comes down to. But the hard part is getting that narrow market. Because if you go big, you get nothing from this.
Lindsey Anderson 18:27
That makes sense. Plus everyone’s game for spending less on Facebook ads, you know what I mean? Legit. Awesome. Okay, let’s talk. I do have you for a few more minutes. So I want to talk a little bit about the content itself, kind of like that. That’s content. I’m guessing that you have to put some work into it and you have to look very professional. What are your thoughts on the content in general? Well, for this procedure.
Michael Greenberg 18:52
So I follow two tracks. One, make it educational. And two base it in real information. If I write a business fable for a client, that is based on a case study that they did that they probably can’t share for some reason. Maybe they’re under NDA. So we have to abstract the facts. If we put together a how-to guide, there’s a good chance I interviewed the client on exactly how they do that thing. To make that guy. So we really try to ground the content in facts and education. And if you’re teaching the people who see your content, and you are giving them what at least the expert involved, believes to be true, then you’re giving them content that they will find valuable. Or at least some section of the market will. And that’s really all I think you can hope for with content. A few people get a little better as a result.
Lindsey Anderson 18:54
Agreed, awesome. So I can see how the strategy would work for a business coach because let’s say you’re hosting a podcast about, you know, whatever that niche of business coaching you’re in and you can invite your guests on. Basically, you’re inviting your perfect avatar on as an interview, which I actually have another podcast that I do the exact same thing. But wouldn’t work for an accounting firm or something like that? Not so much.
Michael Greenberg 20:26
So, podcasting, I actually have seen that sort of podcasting for prospecting work with accounting firms. The only reason I know about this is that I used to consult with a locally-focused online business radio network called Business Radio X. They’re based out of Atlanta but have national locations now. And they were entirely focused on local businesses like accounting firms. And started primarily by calling them online radio, but really podcasts for these businesses that they use to network and grow these large networks within cities.
Lindsey Anderson 21:10
Wow, really cool. Awesome. All right, well, you’ve given us all your secrets. And so I’m going to turn the time back over to you to tell us how to find you, and anything else that you want the audience to know.
Michael Greenberg 21:22
Yeah, you can find me online at callforcontent.com. It is my business. You can find the free sample chapter of my book at authoritymarketingplaybook.com. And you can find me on Twitter at gentoftech.
Lindsey Anderson 21:43
Well, Michael, thank you so much for being a guest on the show.
Michael Greenberg 21:46
Yeah, thanks for having me today.