Forget about trying to be a thought leader to attract right-fit clients with a podcast.
You know what’s cooler than trying to be thought leader with a podcast? Try being a thought follower with a YouTube TV show. The cost of going video is marginal.
I personally host three TV shows aimed at professional service firms: Agency Rainmaker TV, Wealth Authority TV, and Health Authority TV. I learned this strategy from a client, Colt Briner, who uses it to grow professional service firms.
“Today every business is in the video business,” says Briner, owner of the marketing agency Scrappy AF Solutions.
Before he formed his agency, Briner used video thought followship as chief marketing officer at a professional services firm that worked with more than 280 hospitals across the United States to improve financial outcomes through efficient outsourced billing, collections, and payment recovery.
One of the first things that Briner did as marketing chief at the firm was to take a mobile video studio on the road to interview the CEOs of the health systems his company was supporting.
“I got to hear from the CEOs of these health systems about what it is that they are able to do when they have a high-functioning, well-performing revenue cycle,” said Briner.
On the surface, billing and collections is not an exciting topic. But the financial resources his firm helped deliver allowed providers to focus on improving outcomes and reinvesting in patient care, which results in engaging stories. That stated purpose was a growth driver for his firm and fueled its thought followship outcomes.
With thought followship, it’s not about you but about the leaders you are following.
“The stories that I heard from the CEOs of health systems were touching,” said Briner. “These were real stories of lives being impacted, health being improved in communities and hospitals expanding to create better access.”
Briner thinks thought followship is best for professional services firms that offer a high-ticket solution, have extended sales cycles, a narrow addressable market of less than 5,000 targets and complex relationship selling.
This is not a video only play. For my thought followship TV shows on YouTube, I also offer the audio portions of the show as podcasts on Spotify and iTunes.
Here are Briner’s tips on how to get the most out of thought followship video campaign
Energize the conversations. Pick a theme/purpose/mission for your critical conversations that has some energy in It. Choose an urgent industry problem/threat, controversial challenge, or timely opportunity.
Have lockstep coordination between sales and marketing. Business development teams need to be paying attention. Interviewees will be sharing everything the sales team needs to know to build strong relationships.
Give interviewees support to shine as experts. Learn their strength areas and ask questions they will hit out of the park.
Share, share, share. Atomize the content and guide your staff on how to engage with and share content for greater visibility. Tag your interviewees and their employers in posted content.
Commit to the basics. Thought followship creates a strong start but effective follow up and nurturing are critical for success. Don’t own the campaign, sponsor it. Keep it at arm’s length for better credibility and higher participation rates.
Briner says thought followship is about building the client relationship, learning their challenges and helping solve their industry problems. And this especially needs to be a non-selling zone.
As Briner adds: “Whatever you do, never sell.” That is the ultimate thought followship selling secret.
Thought Followship And The Trojan Horse
Here’s another take on thought followship. Have you heard about the Trojan Horse client development strategy for gaining high-paying clients?
Here is how I used it. For seven years I was paid to write $250 a month to write a weekly business development column for Forbes Online. As a result of the relationships I built, more than 12 people I wrote about eventually hired my firm to ghostwrite and publish a book for them, resulting in a half a million dollars in lifetime client value.
The metaphor of a Trojan Horse has come to mean a strategy that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected place. Now I don’t think of prospective clients as foes, but I am sure you get the metaphor.
As you probably learned in school, the Trojan Horse is a mythical story about a tricky move the ancient Greeks used to enter the city of Troy and win the war. Here is a recap. After a long siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid men inside. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the gift horse into their city as a victory trophy (I know, you think they would have been more suspicious). That night hidden Greek soldiers snuck out of the wooden horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of night. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city of Troy, ending the war.
Stephen Woessner, president of the marketing agency Predictive ROI, shared his Trojan Horse strategy for attracting high-paying clients. If you do it as a tricky stratagem, it won’t work: if you use it as an honest relationship-building strategy, then it will work wonders (I have seen it work time and again)
Woessner says this is a farming, not a hunting, client development strategy for prospecting. The Trojan Horse strategy can take up to 120 days for each prospect to fully ripen. Here are Woessner’s seven steps:
Step One. Identify and interview 25 dream prospects and post the interviews on YouTube. Invite prospects who have complimentary offerings, not competitors. You can use Zoom to do the video interviews very cost effectively. Make sure each interview is 10 minutes or less. Schedule a date for the YouTube video to go live.
Step Two. Share with the dream prospects you interviewed the date that their YouTube interview video is going to be available. Give them the link and give them a wonderful thank you. Also give them some social media content to make it really easy for them to share the YouTube video link the day it goes live.
Step Three. Then, 30 days after that initial airing of the YouTube video, “Take the highlights, the insights, the big gold nuggets that were shared during that video and feature them in a long form LinkedIn post,” says Woesnner. “This has to be 1,300 characters or less.”
Step Four. Be sure you tag your guests in those 1,300 characters. “It's not about you, it's about the insights and wisdom that your guest shared within the YouTube video,” says Woessner.
Step Five. At 60 days after a video has aired you want to go deeper. Do a deeper summary of the insights and wisdom in a blog post on your website or an email you send to your opt-in list. Tell the interview guest you are doing this. Embed the YouTube video in that blog post for SEO (search engine optimization) benefit.
Step Six. Create an ebook of the 25 blog posts. This can be a simple PDF. Share with your opt-in lists and on social media the offer of the free ebook. Share with the interview subjects that the ebook is available. Give them easy social media tools to share the ebook offer.
Step Seven. At 120 days after the interview, reach back to the prospect. Thank them again for helping you create and share great content. Ask them if they are open to a conversation over the phone.
According to Woessner, 90% of the prospects are going to agree to a conversation.
“This works because this entire process should never, ever feel like business development and you are totally genuine through the entire process,” says Woessner. “You are seeking their insights and wisdom to be helpful to your audience. Now you're reaching back out to them and saying, ‘Hey, I think there might be an opportunity for me to be helpful to you. Is there a time that we can sit down and talk with that?’”
Bottom line: This Trojan Horse marketing strategy works because you've built so much rapport and you've sincerely built a relationship. Prospects are grateful for the real gift you have given them, shining a positive spotlight on their work.
Henry DeVries is the author, ghostwriter, or editor of more than 200 business books, including his international bestseller, How to Close a Deal Like Warren Buffett—now in China! A former advertising agency president, he is the chief book architect and ghostwriter at Indie Books International in Oceanside, California.