How to Triple Your Audience for Free -- a Simple Co-Promotion Secret You Can Use Today

I recently spoke with Paul Cummings, VP of Sales and Marketing at Impression Management Professionals in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

He told me how he was able to get 600 people on a recent webinar and produce more than 50 qualified leads for his business -- at no cost. 

You can do the same. Here’s how …

Kevin Donlin: Paul, thanks for joining me. Please describe Impression Management Professionals for anyone how doesn’t know you.

Paul Cummings: We help leaders and sales people use outcome thinking to transform the way they think, listen and speak, so their brains work offensively rather than defensively. It works great for high-pressure situations, like a presentation, a negotiation, conflict or even in the sales process.

Kevin: Okay, let’s get right to it. You were able to triple the size of your typical webinar audience with a very creative joint venture. And it’s something people can use to get more prospects for a teleseminar, live event, or even to subscribe to their newsletter. What did you do?

Paul: We’re part of an association of training companies that get together once a year. One of the ideas that came up was that we collaborate together and do a webinar series to benefit all of our clients. We know that we don’t necessarily compete with each other, but we may have tools and ideas that would help each other’s clients.

So we all said, okay, we’ve got 6 people here and we all agreed to send out marketing information to our client list, included in our Twitter, Facebook, social media, and our websites. Then everybody would agree to do that and promote each other for 6 months.

For example, the first month, it was our webinar, and everybody marketed us to their customer lists. Now this month it’s somebody else’s turn, and we’re marketing them.

As a result, we were able to triple the number of people that we reach on a typical webinar.

Kevin: Triple! That’s a nice word. What was the before number and what was the after?

Paul: We typically get about 200 people to attend our webinars and for this last one it was actually over 600 people.

Kevin: Very cool. And what were your costs for this promotion?

Paul: Other than time to promote it, there was no cost. And we did something important for this webinar to make it successful for us. We used surveys before and after.

Before the person could register, they had to fill out a pre-webinar questionnaire with very specific questions. For example, we asked:

• What do you want us to talk about?
• What’s your job title?
• Are you interested in any of our upcoming programs?

So we were able to learn a lot ahead of time, so that we could directly talk to that audience.

Then at the end of the webinar, we had a survey pop up through Survey Monkey, and that’s relatively inexpensive or free. We asked specific questions like these:

• Would you be interested in a special report?
• Would you be interested in this particular public seminar?
• Would you be interested in executive coaching?
• Would you be interested in something for your team?

So there were many different options. And then they would check those survey responses, and we also asked, “If you want us to contact you, just check this box” and we ended up with at least 50 people who we were able to follow up with.

Kevin: All right, let me stop you and recap. That’s really, really valuable stuff that you shared.

First of all, you used surveys two different ways. Before the webinar, to help shape the content – people answered questions when they registered, and you used their answers to plan the webinar itself.

Then, after the webinar, you used surveys for people to qualify themselves by telling you what they were interested in. So you got to qualify people and segment them by interest, which let you follow up effectively.

That’s very, very smart stuff there, Paul. Anyone can use this idea. Bven if you’re not using GoToWebinar, there are a couple of webinar solutions. So I don’t want people to feel intimidated and think, “Oh, I don’t have the correct technology.” There are multiple webinar solutions, or you can do a teleseminar, just get a conference call if you want to start this out, so there are a lot of ways to use these ideas and it’s a really valuable idea.

Let me ask one final question. How did you go about negotiating with these other 5 co-promotion partners?

Paul: Well, first of all, basically we’ve been going to the association with these guys for years, so they became friends and so it just naturally happened. So it was just a discussion and we said, “Hey, let’s not attack each other’s clients, but let’s see if we can add some value and take it from there.”

Kevin: I see. That’s very clever. Paul Cummings, thank you very much. These are great ideas that anybody can use, whether it’s a webinar, teleseminar, or a live event that you want to promote.

Bottom line: Find one or more non-competitors who are already talking to the people you would like to have as clients, and agree to promote each other to your clients. There’s no cost and you’ll probably get a favorable response, such as you got by tripling your webinar audience and getting 50 qualified leads you are now able to market your services to.

Meanwhile, if you want to more clients like your best clients, my free Client Cloning Kit can help. Grab your free copy now, while they last.

Ms. X and the $5,000 Joint Venture Example

You can call it joint venture marketing, JV marketing, coopetition, co-marketing -- whatever.

They are different names for the same thing: found money.

Because ... when you form a partnership with another business to provide complementary products and services to each other's customers, you can quickly tap into a flood of new revenue, at little or no cost.

All you need to succeed is imagination and a willing partner.

Case in point: "Ms. X," the smart owner of a small Twin Cities service business who just landed $5,000 -- and growing -- in new revenue. Without spending one penny on advertising, new technology, or pay-per-click ads on Google.

While the sum of $5,000 may or may not excite you, the principle should: She got this new revenue for the price of a phone call and a short, in-person meeting with a former competitor (now a joint venture partner).

You can read and profit from my exclusive interview with Ms. X below.

(Why the cloak-and-dagger secrecy? I can't use her real name -- yet -- because she's part of a pilot training program I'm still putting the finishing touches on. You'll get the details when I pull back the curtain in a few weeks.)

Kevin: All right, Ms. X. Tell folks about the several thousand dollars that just fell into the lap of your small service business. What did you do?

Ms. X: We are a small company. We cannot always help our clients because there are things we do not do. For example, we do not do installations, so I wanted to collaborate with a company that did.

It has worked out great. We both have the same service philosophy and integrity. We send them jobs for installations such as the new (product name deleted) they installed for our neighbors. They send us jobs for service calls they cannot handle. It has worked very well back and forth.

I feel good because we have somebody trustworthy to whom we can send clients and, in turn, they feel they have somebody trustworthy to whom they can send clients. We have both given each other the leads with no money passed between us and we have each gained new clients.

Kevin: This was not some sort of mafia don meeting where it was high stress or a bunch of lawyers present, right? You simply called another, bigger company and offered to meet?

Ms. X: Yes. It took all the courage I had to even make that phone call and go to that meeting. I was a little nervous, but it proved to be a non-event. They were very warm and receptive.

Never in a million years would I have thought to start looking to expand our business by going to our competitors. We did, though, and now if we go on vacation, we have an ace in the hole knowing that our clients will be served properly in our absence.

Kevin: Tell me about that big order that fell into your lap as a result of working with this company.

Ms. X: They sent us to repair a (product name deleted) and it needed replacement. We were able to do that.

Kevin: Would you mind sharing the revenue that came in because of that new business lead?

Ms. X: That was a couple thousand dollars from one call and we have had other repair calls. I would guesstimate it was a $5,000 idea that popped into my head.

Kevin: We are only two or three months into your joint venture program and you already have close to $5,000. That really bodes well for compounding revenue and profits in the future, right?

Ms. X: Yes, it is just going to keep growing.

Now, here are 5 action steps for you ...

1) What products or services do your customers need, but you don't provide?

2) What 3-5 respectable competitors in your area could deliver what your customers need?

3) Call competitors and offer to meet, in person, to discuss how you might send them leads in exchange for leads from them, or a slice of the revenue, or both.

4) Keep calling until you form one new joint venture partnership.

5) Repeat until your customers have all their needs met, by you or your joint venture partners.

(Kevin M. Donlin is author of the Special Report, Guaranteed Marketing for Small Business Professionals.)