One of the (many) big lessons in the late, great Gene Schwartz’s book “Breakthrough Advertising” was when he talked about borrowing credibility from respected media sources.
For example:
If you could run your ad in The Wall Street Journal, and make your ad look, feel, and read like an actual WSJ editorial or news piece, you’d be able to “borrow” all that credibility from the WSJ for your ad.
It doesn’t work exactly the same anymore.
(Now they make you put “Advertisement” at the top, etc)
But, there is a way you can still use that idea/concept online, and do it to get a lot of extra names on that email list of yours. And, not just ordinary leads… but super leads — many of who may very likely hunt you down, opt-in, and be looking to buy something from you.
If not now, then some time down the line.
How do you this, exactly?
By using what the great master of getting free publicity Paul Hartunian called:
“The Halo Effect”
This is the same built-in credibility advertisers got by borrowing credibility before. But, instead of doing it via your paid ads… you do it via podcast interviews you get booked on.
For example:
Let’s say you are an affiliate marketer.
And, let’s say you sell a lot of health offers. And, let’s further say you are not a doctor, medical professional, or have a degree in anything even remotely related to medicine, health, wellness, nursing, pharmaceuticals, or anything else.
But, you are well-versed in the offers you sell.
You’ve used them yourself, and benefit from them, or know people who did.
And, you just want a chance to prove you’re not a quack or raving lunatic slinging MLM at everyone.
What do you do?
One thing you can do is get yourself booked on podcasts with audiences who might make good leads for what you sell. At the beginning of the podcast — if you knew what you were doing when you contact him/her, at least — the host introduces you.
Talks you up.
And, essentially “edifies” you to the audience.
This gives you automatic “build-in” credibility. While you are on there, you have that vaunted halo effect. What you say is faced with skepticism. Or, at least, with an open mind. And, let’s say you do a good job, demonstrate your knowledge, tell your story, and have a deep, meaningful discussion with the host about the problems and pains your market faces, some solutions they can consider, etc.
Maybe this interview goes for 20 minutes or so.
Maybe less, maybe even a little more.
At the end, the host asks you where your audience can get more info, you give your URL, and you get a number of people from that audience going through the trouble of finding your site, opting-in, and consuming your opt-in bribe.
Those are more likely to be red-hot leads.
Yes, some will be higher quality than others.
But, they are invested in you.
They will likely be doing it all with a lot less resistance. Instead of emotionally pulling back, they are more likely to be leaning in. And, if you mail them with my wily ways, over time, you could very well find yourself turning many of them into solid customers to whom you can sell other things to after that.
But, that’s not all, my little droogie.
That halo effect doesn’t just go away unless you allow it to.
Because, if you know how to leverage that interview, you can get yourself booked on many more such podcasts — each of which gives you an even stronger, brighter, and more illuminating halo, all compounding on each other, sending you more leads, to build an ever-growing email list, leading to more sales, and more backend sales, as well as potentially other opportunities (coaching, consulting, JV’s, speaking, etc — it’s kind of wild how that works out once you get it all going).
All from tapping into that halo effect and borrowing credibility.
Very simple.
But, not necessarily easy.
A lot of good people with lots of value to share get on podcasts but fail at monetizing it.
Enter the March “Email Players” issue.
I spend a lot of time on building your list via podcasts.
Including how to get booked on as many as you can stand (including potentially big ones), how to monetize them, and how to get all those successes compounding on each other, like a growing snowball of leads gaining size, speed, and force with each appearance.
This is one of my best ways to build my list.
No, it’s not “scalable.”
But, as you’ll see, there are ways I haven’t even mentioned here (I save the really good stuff for the newsletter…) to monetize these interviews and even turn them into “bursts” of new leads (besides the audience going to your site) on your lists in some cases.
But, the deadline to get this issue is tomorrow.
After that, too late.
Here’s the link:
Ben Settle
