Sound Solutions: North Bank Audio Solutions

If you want to attract more clients, establish yourself as an expert and capture the valuable knowledge that you already have in your head, you should be hosting teleseminars.

A teleseminar is simply a way of distributing your knowledge to your audience. They are virtual events hosted on the telephone via a bridge line. Because of how simple they are to set up, they are usually the easiest way to get started in information marketing.

Very few of us are effective writers and even less of us actually enjoy doing it. If you are a coach, consultant, speaker trainer, teacher or service professional, it’s almost a given that your primary mode of communication is vocal. This is the beauty of a teleseminar.

Instead of speaking only to your clients, those who call your office or that you call, you can reach large audiences during and after your teleseminar. And instead of having to travel to high pressure speaking engagements, you can host teleseminars from your home or office.

Here are the 9 simple steps to launching your information empire with teleseminars:

Step one: choose a topic. This is a major roadblock for some people. Remember to focus on the benefits of the concepts you are teaching and that you pick a topic that your target market is actually hungry for - not just something you like to talk about.

Step two: create an outline. Don’t waste your time by writing out a word-for-word script for your teleseminar. Not only is it time consuming, but it will make you sound unnatural when you are hosting your event.

Step three: host and record a teleseminar. Use a free bridge line service like www.freeconferencepro.com or better yet, use www.handsfreeteleseminars.com, an online tool that allows you to host, record and promote your event at a very low cost. Simply invite your list, your friends or anyone who you know who might be interested in the topic you are covering. Don’t worry - even it if it’s just you on the line, still deliver the teleseminar.

Step four: distribute the recording. Send out the recording to your teleseminar attendees.

Step five: transcribe the teleseminar. Have a professional transcriptionist convert the audio recording into a text format. This can then be distributed as PDF to your teleseminar attendees and sold or given away as a free report or white paper.

Step six: set up an opt-in page with your recording and transcript as a free or low cost lead generation product. It can be in the form of digital files or a CD and a printed transcript. You will then drive traffic to this page through your online and offline marketing campaigns. Your goal is to get targeted people in your target market to exchange their contact information for your valuable recording and transcript. Then you can be in touch with those people and help transition them into customers and clients.

Step seven: repurpose your teleseminar into marketing materials. The audio can be redistributed as podcasts and submitted to directories. The text can be edited and redistributed as online marketing articles, blog posts, ezines and e-courses and press releases. The audio and text can be combined to create online video which can be submitted to YouTube and other video sites. All these pieces can be promoted through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogs relevant to your target market and social bookmarking tools like Digg.

Step eight: repeat the process. Tweak as you go. Notice which topics and approaches get the best response and focus on those. Pay close attention to which questions are asked the most.

Step nine: archive and repurpose again. Consider repurposing multiple free or low cost teleseminars into a book or a big ticket item (live event, high-end info product, home study course or coaching program.)

Even if you don’t complete all nine steps for your first few teleseminars, keep creating and moving forward. By simply getting started with information marketing and list building will help you refine your message, grow your business and differentiate yourself from your competition.

And now I’d like to invite you to learn out the 5 simple steps to turn one hour into a successful marketing plan at http://www.northbankaudio.com/teleclass

Caleb Scoville helps consultants, trainers, coaches and service professionals, multiply their impact with information products and audio and video online marketing strategies.

I recently gave an endorsement to my good friend and client Adam Urbanski of The Marketing Mentors for his upcoming Attract Clients Like Crazy event.

Well, if you’re on any of Adam’s lists, you should have already gotten his message about my testimonial, but I wanted to share you the link with you myself so that you could see what he did.

Have a look for yourself:
http://www.northbankaudio.com/mmtestimonial

What struck me about this was, not only did this testimonial become a vehicle for a powerful promotion that Adam could send out to his list, but it also became a promotion for me as well! I’ve already seen a few new opt-ins directly from this promotion he sent out.

The real reason I’m sharing this with you is two fold:

#1) I want you to learn from what Adam did.

Make sure you’re asking your clients, associates and even contractors or employees for testimonials.

When you’re asking for testimonials, coach your clients on what you’re looking for.

I’m going to follow this up soon with the anatomy of an effective testimonial, but listen to the one I recorded for Adam at the link above for the basic format.

#2) I want you to learn from what I did.

Are you offering testimonials to your associates who are highly visible in your target market? If the answer is  ‘no’, you’re leaving money on the table.

I knew that giving a testimonial to someone with as much  visibility in my target market as Adam has would pay off  for me just as much as it would for him.

Notice that I plugged my website in the beginning and end  of the audio I recorded. Whenever introducing yourself,  don’t use your company name - use your website.

Here’s that link again:
http://www.northbankaudio.com/mmtestimonial

One more thing… whenever dealing with testimonials, whether you are giving one or asking for one, audio and video is much better than just text.

You can truly identify with your audience and authentically present a message in these forms. Plus, different people like to learn in different ways and you need to make all of your information as easy to consume as possible.

Do you have any testimonial tips to share? Any big wins or horror stories? Do you absolutely disagree with what I just said?

Join the conversation. Add a comment below.

One way to leverage your time and propel you to expert status is by creating information products. A CD is an information product. This is something that can be free or for a fee. The free option is opt-in bait for a website, the ethical bribe, or the “pink spoon” as it is sometimes referred to. CDs are extremely easy and inexpensive to create and market.

This article was harvested from a transcribed teleseminar I hosted which can be part of a teleseminar. It may not be something that I’ll sell, but it’s something that I can use as opt-in bait. Then I don’t have to deliver this teleseminar every week or month. I can just say, “Do you want to learn these things?” and I can use the same sales or opt-in page I use to get people to opt in to this seminar. I can send them directly to the recording.

It can be just as effective as a teleseminar. The only reason it might not be quite as effective is there’s not a specific date attached to it, so there’s not as much urgency for people to opt in. There’s nothing that it has to go into once you put it up there. There’s no reason not to take advantage of this kind of thing.

Also, the recordings can be sold as bonuses along with other programs or products to add value. If you have some sort of coaching or higher-end program, you can include a recorded teleseminar, for example, “The Seven Deadly Mistakes” or “Six Essential Pits.” This is a great way to leverage that if it pertains to your target market and the problems that they have.

The recordings are also an instant legitimizer. Once you become a publisher of an info product, things will start to happen differently for you. Obviously, it’s not going to happen overnight, but you will have more opportunities if you have some sort of product to sell or give away.

If you have hosted a teleseminar, you already have an info product. There are a couple of different options. One could be a digital download, which is easy to set up. I suggest doing that no matter what.

There are also the CD and print material. There’s usually a higher per CD value with these, but it really depends on your niche market. You will just have to look into that to see which one is more realistic for you and a better deal.

I definitely encourage you to get started with this. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Even if you just record and do not edit or spiff it up, your content can be a great legitimizer to give away to your prospects.

If you host teleseminars, you are loosing money if you don’t have the recordings transcribed and repurposed into marketing materials and products.

Transcription is the conversion to text format. This is a very important step in an online marketing strategy. It is a way to take what you’ve recorded and brought it into a completely different medium.

I do not suggest doing this yourself. You can have an assistant do it if they’re familiar with this work. I suggest hiring a professional. It may seem pricey at first, but they can have it done in a couple days.

The main thing is that you want to find a transcriptionist who is familiar with teleseminars and can edit out your speech blemishes.

Another thing to look for is someone who can convert your teleseminar into an ebook. That’s something you can sell or give away on your site. It adds value. An ebook is a book in PDF format. If you deliver an hour-long teleseminar, it will be quite a few pages. If they format it right, it will be very flashy. It will add a lot of value to that recorded element you’re selling or giving away.

Here’s the most important thing. This doesn’t need to be something that your transcriptionist does. It’s something that someone on your team can do or you can do, if you have the time. You can harvest articles from your transcribed teleseminar.

Each teleseminar you record will be several pages long. You can find larger topics for each of those. You selected five to seven big ideas. Each one of those can usually be an article. There may be a little formatting you’ll need to do because you were just talking. You want to implement. You don’t need to necessarily make it perfect.

Each of those articles can be submitted to article portals online. This is one of the best ways to draw traffic to your site. Each of the big ideas is one article.

Here’s another tip if you’re using someone to edit your audio. It isn’t always necessary, but sometimes it is if you want to create an information product. You’ll want to have the audio transcribed first then highlight the portions you want deleted and send it to your audio editor.

The transcription can then be presented as a standalone or episodic element that you will re-purpose. When you submit articles they can be episodic. They can refer to Step 1 or Step 2.

It’s not always bad if it seems incomplete to have one article. You can refer people back to your site to find the others. You can say, “This is Step 1 of 5 in this series. Go to this site for the total.” You’re driving traffic to yourself. You’re teasing them with information.

As long as your information is good, even if it doesn’t make sense completely to give them one tip at a time, it will drive them back to the site. That is called “cognitive dissidence.” You’re giving them a little information, but not enough for them to be satisfied. You give them the solution by going back to your site.

Another important thing is to have your URL in the resource box. Most of the article portals do not allow you to have the URL in the actual text of the article. You need to make sure you have it formatted correctly in the resource box.

The URL you send them to should not necessarily be your branding site. It should be a squeeze or opt-in page where they can subscribe. The bait for the squeeze page can just be the entire audio and ebook of the same presentation.

The great thing about that is you give them a little piece of information. If they read it and went to your site, you already know they’re interested. If you give them the full article or the fully transcribed audio and the audio itself, you know that they will be interested. They will not feel cheated because they will get the whole thing.

The articles are usually 200 to 600 words long. The article portal sites are basically archived articles. People can republish those articles as long as they include the resource link.

It is really important that you allow people to do this. These people could be bloggers, publishers of ezines or print newsletters, or just doing research.

It’s a huge place where people can select free or cheap content to put on their website or ezine. A lot of people look for this because they don’t necessarily want to be the ones creating the content.

It’s also a great way to increase your search engine optimization because there is so much more content out there that’s getting spidered with your name and keywords in it. It’s an inexpensive way to gain web traffic and credibility.

Most of the sites are free. Obviously, you have to pay for labor to do that. It usually takes a couple of hours to submit to most of the important ones. You can do it yourself, but your time is valuable, so you don’t necessarily want to do that.

Another thing to consider is a press release. Sometimes when you are speaking, you might not actually have something that you’re able to publish to a press release, but they’re great for attaining media attention as well as traffic. Some of these articles will be able to be formatted and repurposed as a press release.

Another thing is an ezine, which is an episodic monthly, bi-weekly or weekly publication that is sent out via email. It’s a great place to repurpose the articles that you’ve already written. You can include a personal note, resource or link, but that article can be the content that you include in the ezine. You don’t necessarily have to be creating more content each time.

Technology may make our lives a lot easier in most respects, but every once and a while, there’s a glitch so big in our business that makes us want to smash our computers and run off with a neo-luddite clan.

Ok, maybe that’s a little bit dramatic - but the issue I’m referring to is something most internet marketers have run into at some point.

The issue is bad bridge lines. You know, when you host a conference call, teleclass, teleseminar (or whatever you call it) and everything’s going great and then all of a sudden… BANG! Everyone gets kicked off the call!

Well… I’m not here to tell you about some perfect bridge line that never has problems because frankly, I don’t know that one exists. For sure, free ones are going to be more prone to problems, but just because your paying a pretty penny for your bridge line, it doesn’t mean it won’t have the occasional glitch.

So here’s what I suggest:

If you’re going to host a teleseminar, have a secondary backup bridge line available just in case something happens while on the call.

In the announcements to you attendees, tell them about the backup bridge line. You could say something like this:

In the rare case that we run into a technical difficulty and get kicked off of our line, our backup bridge line number and code are xxx-xxx-xxxx, xxxx#.

That’s it!

99.9% of the time you won’t need it, but that one time something goes wrong, your clients or prospects won’t be cursing your name for being unprofessional - they’ll be praising you for your preparedness.