37: Organic Strategies that Boost Visibility & Build Your Email List

Hi, I'm Lydia. In 2020, I resigned from my corporate job and took a big leap of faith. I launched a business I had been dreaming about for a long time. I had so many questions when I first started and zero people on my email list, but I was committed to one thing taking massive imperfect action. Within 18 months I had thousands of students in my courses and coaching programs and was able to retire my husband from his 30 year career to to work with me. I'm still pinching myself that we get to run a six figure business while living a life we love. But the truth is this overnight success did not happen overnight. For more than two decades, I let imposter syndrome, fear of failure and perfectionism hold me back from my passions and purpose. What is it that you've been wanting to launch? In the Launch Perspective Podcast we share the mindset and the step by step strategies that will help you launch and scale the online business of your dreams so you can live life with more freedom and impact. It's time for a new Perspective. Welcome to the show. Hi everybody. Lydia here and I'm so excited for a special impromptu live interview that I'm doing today in our Facebook group. If you're not a part of our Facebook community and you're listening to the replay of this on my Launch Perspective Podcast, be sure to join our community. You can go to launchperspect. Come hang out with us. It's a great group where I share tips related to tech support and launch strategies for your online business. Because I have a very special guest with me and we're going to be talking about a very relevant topic for online business owners. So if you've been hanging around here in our group for any length of time, you know that we focus on the strategies that help you build and scale your business. One of those key elements is definitely lead generation. How are we finding new audience members? How are we growing our email list? Because without new leads, our business fizzles out or it never gets launched. And so I'm excited for the guest I have today. I actually met our guest in another community a while back, but she is a member of my Ignite membership and if you have not met Tracy Bieber, you are in for a treat. I love her energy. I love all of the practical, amazing tips that she shares around this topic. She is a visibility strategist and a business coach and I just want to go ahead and welcome her to our Launch Perspective Podcast into our group today.

Hey there. Thanks so much Lydia. I'm excited to be here oh, so much fun.

I love doing things together. And, you know, actually, in our Ignite membership, last week, you did a member spotlight. Uh, it's a. Something that we offer our members an opportunity to speak and share inside our group. And you just did an amazing job sharing some powerful tips. And that's kind of why I wanted to invite you to the podcast and to speak in our launch strategies group, because lead generation is so important.

Yes, yes, yes. Just like you said, if we don't have leads, then we don't have a business.

We don't. And so I. One of the words I want to really focus in on today is like, this word of visibility. Like, what. What does it mean to increase visibility? And how does it even relate to your email list and the growth of your business?

That's a great question. And visibility is all about being seen, being heard by your audience of ideal clients, the ones that you want to draw to you, the ones that you want to attract. Because the online space, as you know, is really, really loud and it can feel kind of crowded and busy.

Yes.

And so it's kind of hard sometimes for us to feel like we're breaking through to reach the people we really want to reach. That's where visibility comes in. It's putting. Putting strategies in place to consistently get you out onto the online space in different ways. There's lots of different strategies I teach for visibility, and I want everybody to find the ones that are most authentic for them so that they feel like there's a match there. But, yeah, it's all about being seen, being known, being heard, so that your ideal clients can go, yeah, Lydia is exactly who I've been looking for, and I'm going to connect with her and I want to get on her email, listen.

And you do a great job of this, by the way. I followed you for a while and, you know, we all struggle with that consistent visibility. And I will say, like, I. It's amazing how much I see you showing up. And I will say that that is really what made a difference for me in the beginning, is, you know, being committed to showing up live somewhere, you know, created visibility for me. And so I would love for you to share with everybody, you know, especially those who are kind of new to the who, their online business. Maybe they've just launched. Like, how do they get started with visibility? Especially if they're just growing that email list? Like, how do they get seen and get heard? Like, what would be those first few steps you would tell them?

That's a great question. One of the foundational things I teach is just use the word consistency. Consistency and patience are what we have to use employ in order to be successful with really anything in life. It doesn't matter if you're growing an online business, if you're trying to get in shape for a marathon, you know, whatever it is, consistency and patience are going to be your best friends. And so foundationally, I would want to look at the social media and you know, I shared this in the Ignite group last week. I have a very easy exercise people can follow that will help them create 90 days of social media content topics in only 30 minutes. Literally mapping out what are their content topics going to be for the next 90 days so that all they have to do is look at the week in front of them. What's that topic pick? Do you want to post three times a week on social media? You make three posts about that one topic and you're done. But you're consistent. That's the thing. If you want to do more posts, you can. If you can only do, if you can only do two posts a week because you're just starting out and maybe you're building alongside a full time job like I did, then do the two posts. But whatever you do, be consistent and set it up where you can do it week after week after week like you were talking about. One of my pieces of social media content from the very beginning has been live video. I decided I'm very, I'm a massive extrovert. Extrovert. I could talk to a brick wall. And so video is no big deal for me. So I thought, and I'm really strong on video. And I, and I believe my argument for video is that nothing deepens that know like and trust factor faster than letting somebody get to know you on a video. And so I decided years ago one of my regular pieces of content each week was going to be me going live every Thursday at 11:30. And I've been consistent with it. And I'll tell you, there are weeks when I don't feel like it. There are weeks when I'm like, first of all, I see the topic I mapped out for the week and I'm like, I don't want to do that. And then I don't want to talk about that. And then the second thought is if I've got to go live one more time. But here's the thing, I'm a business owner. I want the visibility. I've got to be consistent even if I don't feel like it and even If I don't feel like talking about that topic, because the minute I say to myself, oh, I'll find another topic for that week, that's where the wheels fall off the bus. Because I'll get busy and I'll forget about it. And then before I know it, the week has passed and I haven't put my content out there. So at a minimum, start being consistent on the platform of your choice and your audience is going to start to know when you're showing up.

They really do. And I can so relate to this scenario because the reason why I do struggle with consistency sometimes is because I'm constantly changing my mind on the topic. And just like you said, you just need to decide and do it. Because the more you think, no, maybe I should do this, or maybe I should call it this, or maybe I can't tell you how many times you're like, oh, now I'm out of time. Now I haven't shared. I'll just do it next week, right?

It's exactly like when I was in corporate. My friends would laugh at me, but every Sunday, I would set out five outfits for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And it reminds me of a time when I would wake up in the morning and I would look at that outfit I was supposed to wear and I go, I don't want to freaking wear that. But do you know that the minute I did that, I spent another 30 minutes in my closet trying to find something else to wear? And before I know it, I'm late and my day is gone. It's just so every time I talk about this, I'm like, this is kind of like when I picked out all the outfits and I decided I didn't want to wear that one. You know, just the wheels fell off the bus. So, like, put on the outfit. Just put it on.

And you know what I think it is? I think the reason we do that is we're constantly in our minds overthinking. We're perfectionists. So we're thinking, well, if I can't deliver like this pristine talk or live or presentation, and then if I'm not on my A game, and if I can't deliver this just profound thing, I shouldn't hit that go live button, right? And that couldn't be further from the truth, wouldn't you agree?

Oh, you know me, last week when I did the presentation for Ignite, I had all these plans of being very much like Lydia Martin with my slides and my this and my that. And I thought, I thought, I can't even create one more slide this week. So I decided ditch the slides and be an example of somebody who keeps it simple and delivers a great training face to camera, just like we're doing right now. And you probably heard the story of my dog needing to go to the bathroom in the middle of one of my Thursday lives to the point where I had to go, hold on, everybody, I'll be right back. I gotta let the dog out to go. And then this same dog threw up in the middle of one of my live masterclasses in my first launch. And I was like, but you know what people love with it.

Yes.

And I loved it.

And. And I think people, what they really love is authenticity.

Yes.

And learning from someone who is relatable and speaking to them from the heart. Right. Not from a perspective of I know it all. And I, I'm super perfect person and look at me and all the amazing things I know. And I, I want people to understand that they can go live. That is, it may seem so irrelevant to you or so insignificant, and it just may be the mindset, the tip, the tool, the one thing that one person needed. And so you have to kind of get out of your head, stop thinking about, oh, my goodness, what are people going to think about me? And how can I just show up and serve whoever is listening to my voice today and just hit that button and do it. And the more you do it, wouldn't you agree, the more comfortable you get in your skin and your voice and all the things for sure.

Like, 100%. Because if you go back and I don't want anybody to do this, but if you go back and look at my first Facebook lives, I was so boring. I was so boring because I had to have the. I tried to be anchor woman perfect. You know, like reading the news. That's what I saw on tv. And it wasn't like, several weeks later of doing this every single week, I started to find my groove. And for whatever reason, I started to loosen up. Like, I think I started mispronouncing words, which I'm notorious for, making up words, mispronouncing words, and getting off on a tangent on something, you know, that I get excited about. And that happened one day, and I had people, friends of mine, texting me, going, I don't know what you put in your coffee that this morning, but you need to have it in your coffee every single. Because this was the best live you've ever done. And I was like, what in the world?

Okay. I love it.

Ever since then I've just. I'm like, I'm gonna be my goofy self if I mess up. We're gonna roll with it. If the doorbell rings, if, you know, my husband comes home early for lunch, that's happened also. I'm like, well, come on in, hon. You know, because I'm in the kitchen. This is my fancy studio.

Yes, well, but that's what people don't understand. Just, just to show up, be authentic, share something that you've experienced, something you've helped a client with. Like, it doesn't have to be this profound thing, but this is the key and this is the point I would love for you to share with everyone. How does showing up and delivering content, whether it's a tip, a tool, inspirational, you know, talk, a mindset mantra, how do you take that? And then give a call to action that leads them to saying, I want to be on your email list so that you can continue to really communicate with them more effectively. So I would love to hear, how do we get from visible to actual email list lead?

Perfect. That's a great question. So on that list of 12 topics that I want you to map out, I want you to think to yourself, what are my calls to action in my business with CTAs is what a lot of people call them, calls to action. And it could be, join my free Facebook group. It could be, check out my latest podcast episode. Check out my latest blog post. Grab my free lead magnet. Like, how many lead magnets do you have? I want you to list them out. Do you have a free Facebook group? Do you have a podcast, a blog, a YouTube channel? You know, where can you send somebody next in that call to action that is going to land on your email list. And this is where the visibility strategies really are important. And giving that forethought to when I go live, if I invite people to my free Facebook group, if that's going to be my call to action, which you'll hear me say that in my lives, I'm always talking to people and seating through the live training, talking about my group and come join us. It's so much fun. My Facebook group is set up to grow my email list, by the way, I have the membership questions set up when someone lands there. And so every. I help my clients and students understand that every action you take in your business, all roads need to lead to email list growth. So when you're going live, I want you to think, what's my call to action going to be that will grow my email list. Now, if you're sending them to your podcast. But your podcast is not set up in a way to grow your email list, meaning on your podcast episode, you have a call to action where they can do something to land on your list. And then in your podcast show notes, you've got calls to action and links there where they can land on your email list. You don't want to use that as a call to action. You need to make that podcast work to build your list. You need to make sure your blog is dialed in to build your list. And so, you know, when I'm going live, I'm thinking to myself, where am I in my promotional year and where do I want to send people? What do I want them to do after this video is over? Is it a lead magnet? And in Q4 of last year, I employed a strategy I learned from Amy Porterfield. It was like a 90 day pre launch Runway thing that she doesn't train on very much anymore. It was in an older podcast that I found and I thought, I'm going to try this. And her challenge was to go live every week for the next 90 days and offer a free download of some kind as your call to action for them to land on your list. Well, my team and I did that and I ended up going from three lead magnets to like, now I have 11. Because once I created that very simple PDF to go with the video, I could repackage the lead magnet into the video and the PDF. And so, yeah, but every time I go live, I'm thinking to myself, what do I, where do I want this in them next? That's going to land on my email list. Whether it's a master class, you know, all the things I just listed.

There's. And I think people don't understand how many options there are. And so they, they're like, I don't always want to just say, get this one free thing. Get this one free thing.

Right.

Truth be told, I did not create a traditional lead magnet in my business for the first 18 months.

That's impressive.

Isn't that crazy? My main two lead magnets for 18 months was one that you've mentioned, the free Facebook group. So the majority of the people who joined my list in my first 18 months were joining my free Facebook group. I have a free Facebook group called Banish Business Clutter with Lydia Martin. And just like you said, I have membership questions. And one of the questions is, what is your email address so I can send you. At the time, I was doing challenges Banished business clutter challenges. So I said, I'll invite you to my free challenge with if you give me your email address. That was how I built my list, solely through my Facebook group and my challenges. So I will tell you, it's amazing to me how even just taking one of the ideas that you share can make such a massive difference, even if you don't have 11 lead magnets. Right? Yeah.

Just making that list. Like, I had a client and she was telling me, she's like, I don't know what my call to action is going to be. And I'm like, okay, let's review. What do you have in your business? And she was like, oh, my gosh, I wrote a book. I forgot all about my book. I'm like, go buy my book. That's a call to action. Now, hopefully she's got it set up where if they buy the book, you know, there's ways to do that, to grow your email list. But we forget about all the lead magnets. We do have the many offers that are maybe $7 or $9, the big offer you have that could be a call to action that grows your email list.

You know, book a call book a discovery call with me. Like, let's have a virtual chat. Let's, you know, like, there's so many call to actions that get people connected with you. And I totally agree. And just like you were saying with going live every week, I think people think it's so hard to create a lead magnet. But if you go live, there are so many tools that now that will transcribe your live and then you can take that live, use a tool like ChatGPT to summarize it, and then you go into Canva and you create a pretty PDF or you just go into Google Docs, create a little summary, and that's a lead magnet. Like, it doesn't have to be uber complicated. Right.

Fancy. You guys, if you go and opt in for some of my lead magnets, you're going to be like, oh, well, this is easy because you're going to get an email that's got the video, the replay, and the little link to the PDF. Simple. Keep it simple. Yeah, no, I love that, Lydia, because we forget about all the things that we've got.

Absolutely. And, and the same thing even with your website or, you know, like your link in, you know, your bio link on Instagram, like, where are we sending people to get into our world? Right. And so if they're not on that email list, we can't just rely on social media for them to see Our posts and all those things. So I think this is such an important topic. And what I love about you, Tracy, is you're sharing organic strategies. So this isn't even like paid advertising. And you've been able to build such an amazing list and community even without ads.

Yeah, I really didn't have any choice, quite honestly. And my business, all of these strategies that I have came to me because of my frustration with paid ads. I ran paid ads in the summer of 2021 and I might have, well, might as well have piled up all of my money and burned it. That's how successful it was. And then I even ran paid ads. I tried again this past spring. I felt way more confident about it. But honestly, Lydia, those leads were not the people that were buying from me. They did not convert. They were on my list, but then they would leave. And I just am like, this is obviously not the strategy for me. But you're right. I have on my email list now almost 3,000 people. And all of that has been from the visibility strategies I have in place. And a lot of people think because they do see me on social media, I have people say to me, I see you everywhere in Facebook groups and on social and all that. And they think that I'm on social media or in these groups all day long. I'm not. There's very strategic ways that you can show up on social and appear to be everywhere and giving great content, but not having to spend your day staring at the Facebook app and scrolling and all of that.

Absolutely. And I know one of the big things you teach, of course, is when you're doing this live content weekly, you teach people how to also repurpose that content.

Yes, exactly.

That you're doing one major piece of content that then breaks apart into smaller pieces that really does make you look like you're everywhere. Exactly.

And it's so much easier. So, like, part of the strategy that Lydia is talking about is I want people to have one anchor piece of content. So it might be your podcast, it might be your blog. For me, it's my live every Thursday. And this method of mine came about out of necessity because again, when I started this business, I was building alongside a full time job and two kids that were in middle school and high school and played every sport with a ball. So you can imagine how busy I was. I had to get smart about my time. So I knew that live video was going to be a hit. And I'm like, okay. So I would write out my live training and I still do this every week. But I have a framework that makes it really easy. I thought, you know, you got your hook, you've got your intro, you've got the meat of the training and your call to action. So the only thing that changes each week is the hook, the meat of the training, and maybe the call to action, depending on where I am in my promotional calendar. But I would write out the meat of that training and let's say I gave somebody four tips to building their email list. Okay, I've got my meat of my training written out. I can take two of those tips, create a social media post. Take the other two tips, create a social media post. Or I could take one tip at a time and create four posts. I can find a so let's say I'm talking about having a great mindset and courage to do the things that scare you. The Mel Robbins 5 second rule. I could grab a quote from Mel Robbins that corresponds to what I'm talking about and use that in my social media content with her name on it on a graphic and copy that talks about the things that I was just talking about in my training. And then I could take that if I I need to get back to making my blog. But I could totally throw that thing into ChatGPT now and say, hey, write me a blog post with SEO rich keywords. Then you plug that thing in, right, and you're good to go. And before you know it, you have what I call a marketing machine of social media content and things that are churning the business for you. And all you're doing is staying consistent with the pieces that you know you have to do yourself. And the rest of it just starts to happen because people see me active in groups because I've got my personal profile dialed in like we talked about last week in Ignite. My cover photo on my Facebook personal profile is an excellent email list strategy and it does the work for me. I have loads of people joining my free Facebook group every month. I have hundreds of people that join and I don't have to invite that many of them. It's because I'm present, visible and they go to my personal profile and they see my cover photo and they're like, oh, I want to be in that group.

Percent agree. This is, it's such a strategy that works and I love that you're teaching this. I know it's going to help so many people and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to partner with you. I know you have a free masterclass coming up, so I Definitely want to encourage everybody to sign up for this. This is the link lydiamartin.info Email Masterclass and I put that on there because I really wanted everybody to remember that this is to grow your email list. Tracy has so many tips. I know you're going to be sharing, I believe, four main strategies in that masterclass that they can implement right now that are doable for everyone.

Yes.

Right. Doesn't matter how big your list is now or what you're doing on social now. But I love that you break it down to be so simple with these. Kind of just step by steps. Follow this because I agree. I think so many people don't hit that Go live button because they just don't have a formula. And once you get in the groove and you're doing it every week, I just think it becomes like clockwork, so much easier.

It really does. I could push the live button now and do my intro in my sleep.

Because I've said, I've actually joked about that. I'm like, wake me up at 3am, give me a topic. I will hit Go live. Let's chat about it. Because you do get to that level of confidence and we don't have it in the beginning. I know I did it. But the more you do it, trust me, and I tell people all the time, you know, if live is, you know, maybe not your thing, you can do another form of visibility like a podcast, which is audio, right? Absolutely. Use audio as your main anchor piece. Those who love to write can use a blog as an anchor piece. Right. There's a lot of ways to be visible. But I so appreciate you sharing these very just awesome practical tips with everybody today.

You bet. And I would love to see you in the live masterclass. The first session is tomorrow. There's four different dates and times you can choose from. There's tomorrow and Friday, and then next week is Tuesday and Wednesday, I believe. And the times are either 10:30 Central or 2:00 Central. You know, just show you get an awesome bonus too, if you show up. I'm so excited about this. So this is something I created over the summer and it's not anything I sell. It's not anything you're going to see from me unless you come to this live masterclass or you're in my alumni membership and it's the Facebook Growth Toolkit so that you can have my best practices for leveraging the Facebook platform.

Love it.

Show up live and you'll get that.

Love it. Okay, so everybody wants to do that. I'm glad you have a lot of times available so go to lydia martin.infoemailmasterclass. choose your time. Go hang out with Tracy. It'll be so worth it. You'll get so many ideas that you can implement right away. Thank you for being my guest today to talk about this awesome topic.

Thank you so much for having me. I really, really appreciate it.

Yay. Awesome everybody. Well, I hope you appreciated this kind of impromptu live today in our Facebook community or if you're watching on the podcast. Thank you so much for following, supporting and leaving a review for Launch Perspective. That's where you'll find us on your favorite podcast app and I look forward to seeing you next time. Be sure to join Tracy's Masterclass. I know that you are going to love it. Thanks everybody. We look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks so much for joining me today on the Launch Perspective podcast. Looking for more? Head over to launchperspective.com for show notes and quick links to the Click content and tools that we shared today. Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes or ask a question that I answer on the show? You can do this and more@launchperspective.com See you there.