What Movie Trailers Can Teach You About Video Marketing

In a WORLD … of video MARKETING … with a budget BALANCED ON THE EDGE OF A KNIFE … a few marketers blow their lead goals out of the water. Why? Probably because they’ve learned to create buzz by watching movie trailers.

Movies are a $286 billion industry and much of their success hinges on the handful of 1 to 2- minute movie trailers that promote them. Wherever an industry pours millions into making brief video snapshots as entertaining and persuasive as possible, we’re interested, and we think you should be too.

5 things video marketers can learn from movie trailers:

1. Infuse your videos with emotion

No, your marketing videos don’t have to make your viewers bawl, but they do have to make them feel something. That something could be annoyance (at their current process), desire, mirth, or camaraderie—whatever drives your point home.

How do movie trailers do this? According to the master of Hollywood teasers, John Long, “A great trailer has its own mini-story.” Long was recently nominated for multiple Golden Trailer Awards (yeah, it’s a thing) and he told Fast Company that he recommends breaking down the whole movie into a trailer with a “three-act setup” where you introduce a problem, complicate it, and then bring it back home and hint at a grand finale. This works, he claims, because audiences have grown more sophisticated over the years and aren’t satisfied with long, linear shots of people just talking.

For your marketing videos, the same holds true. Figure out how to break down your brand narrative into a mini-story. Are you saving the world by saving customers’ time or money? Are you skyrocketing end-users to career-stardom because of how good they’ll look after buying from you? Fit it into the three-act setup and you have a solid, attention-holding plot.

2. Begin with a powerful hook

Good trailers don’t open with a whimper—they launch into a mystery. Often, directors use tense music, an unexpected sound, a cloud of fog, or a curious piece of dialog to spark curiosity. Do the same with your marketing videos, and do it fast. Research shows that you only have a matter of seconds to snare viewers’ interest and unlike movie theatres, you don’t have a captive audience.

To achieve this hook, don’t be afraid to start somewhere other than the beginning. Copy the director Quentin Tarantino who is famous for capturing interest by leaping to an exciting scene in the middle or end of his story. After your hook, introduce your company logo or the title.

See the trailer for Bladerunner 2049 which hits all the right points:

3. The real story is told in post-production

If you’ve ever seen a movie and thought, “man, that was nothing like the trailer!” you’re definitely onto something—editing can completely change the story. The folks who cut movie trailers are rarely the same people who made the film and their only goal is to sell tickets. As such, they’ve been able to produce some pretty misleading trailers over the years. For example, the trailer for the Tim Burton film Sweeney Todd famously forgot to mention that the movie was a full-fledged musical because that fact may have hurt ticket sales.

Testament to the power of editing, an entire cottage industry of jokesters have recut movies to completely change their meaning. Just look at the horror film The Shining, turned into a romantic comedy:

Or Jaws turned into a Disney film.

Point being, it’s how you edit it, not how you shoot it, that determines what your video is about. Make sure that you have the appropriate tools, time, and talent to make something noteworthy out of your marketing video post-production.

4. Create anticipation

Finally, viewers need to take action after your video. An evocative trailer hasn’t done its job if you don’t want to actually see the movie afterward. Your marketing video should similarly leave out the best part while hinting at the grand finale. “You have to have a great way to end the piece,” says Long. “The way people’s [sic] brains are wired, first we remember how something ends, and then we remember how it begins.” How does Long typically end his trailers? Just after the dramatic climax:

For your marketing videos, you can do one even better: Instead of waiting for your viewer to hopefully buy from you later on, capitalize on that climax with a CTA or lead form within the video itself. Any viewer who has made it that far is clearly qualified and interested and it’s time to move them forward in the epic drama that is … their customer JOURNEY.

Want more video marketing tips? Read How to Use Video In Your Email Marketing Campaigns.

The post What Movie Trailers Can Teach You About Video Marketing appeared first on Vidyard.

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4 Ways to Promote Your Business with Video

Did you know that almost 80% off all Internet traffic is made of video? And did you know that every day over five billion videos are watched it on YouTube? Video is huge, and if you’re not using it to promote your business you are missing out on a big opportunity. Below you will find four ways that you can use to promote your business with video content.

1. Create marketing videos

YouTube has over one billion active users many of them are searching for general information, tutorials, how-to videos and so on. If you create a marketing videos targeting specific keywords related to your business you could attract those users. The cool thing is that you don’t even need to know how to record video. You can leverage libraries like VideoBlocks to download ready to go motion graphics and then simply customize eat to your business.

2. Convert your existing content into video

If you don’t know what kind of videos that you can create, you can simply transform your existing content into videos. For example, you can convert your blog posts into videos. Second, if you have a marketing material like e-books or reports you can also convert them into videos.

3. Create a YouTube channel

As long as you plan to create a more than a couple of videos, and you should, then creating your own YouTube channel is a must. By promoting your YouTube channel on your website and on social networks you should be able to increase their popularity off your videos. Here is a post with 18 tips you can use to promote your YouTube channel.

4. Use explainer videos on key pages

Research confirms that video can increased conversion rates significantly. This means that you should have at least one video on your sales pages, newsletter sign-up pages, and so on. There are many online tools that can help you to create an explainer video for your product or service, and those will help your potential customers to better evaluate and understand your offering.

Original post: 4 Ways to Promote Your Business with Video

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Your Small Business Needs a Blog and Here is Why

Small businesses can gain a lot from taking advantage of technology and by using a website builder. One of the easiest and most important ways to utilize this is to start a blog. A blog is a tool that allows you to reach people and engage with them. There is no other method for marketing and engagement that is as effective as blogging. When you create a blog, it allows you to essentially speak to your target audience. This makes you more real and relatable to them, allowing for a deeper human aspect with your business.

Offer Promotional Material

When you are blogging, you want to ensure that the content is varied and valuable. You can make some blogs centered around promotional materials, such as coupons or special sales that are coming up. You can also create content about new products and services that you are launching. It is estimated that marketers who blog get about 67 percent more leads compared to those who do not blog.

Search Engine Optimization

People need to be able to find your business website to see what you have to offer. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the biggest factors in getting your website better search engine placement. While you want to utilize it on all pages, it is easier to take advantage of this method with your content. You start by doing keyword research to see what people are searching for. For example, if you sell a productivity application for mobile devices, you want to see which keywords people use to find information on these apps.

Once you know the top two to three keywords, you build valuable and accurate content around them to drive traffic to your website. Just remember that while the keywords are important, the most critical aspect of your content is quality.

Market Research

You have to know what your audience wants and your blog is an excellent way to assess this. Your website builder can implement different tools to aid you in tracking activity so that you can analyze what is attracting visitors and what is not. The backend of your website has analytics to show you information, such as where your traffic is coming from, where and how it is being shared, and the content types that are the most popular. Use this information to help direct your blogging strategy.

Enhance Credibility

Businesses must be credible in order to succeed. A blog is an opportunity for you to create a presence for your brand within your specific niche. When you blogand provide valuable information to your customers, you make your brand more trustworthy. Remember that success begins with providing something of value to your target audience.

Your blogging can help to increase your company’s value to the public by not only supplying them with products or services, but also with important information that is related. In fact, approximately 60 percent of consumers have a more positive outlook on companies that provide high-quality and valuable custom content.

Network More Efficiently

Networking with fellow businesses, professionals, and your customers is important to grow your company. When you blog, you get to meet people and engage with those that can be beneficial for your business. Make sure to read comments, answer questions, and work to develop relationships through your blog. Over time, the relationships that you do make could further your credibility and enhance your bottom line. Just ensure that your interactions are genuine.

With this information, the next step is getting your small business blog up and running. You do not need a complicated setup or anything fancy. In fact, keeping it simple will be the most beneficial. Just make sure that the content is sharable and that it is true and honest.

Original post: Your Small Business Needs a Blog and Here is Why

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How Video for Sales Boosted Terminus Email Opens by 40%

Video has become an important part of our DNA at Terminus. As an account-based marketing company, from the beginning we’ve been focused on personalization and obsessed with finding creative and authentic ways to reach contacts at our target accounts. Video is a channel that allows our sales team to personalize their outreach in powerful ways, and to put a face to what otherwise could feel like a cold outreach or sales process.

Recently a sales leader asked about the ROI of video and I was surprised by the question. Don’t get me wrong — as a sales leader myself I want to see an ROI for every tool that we use, but the impact of video seemed obvious. For an inside sales team, how could creating personalized videos during SDR outreach or during a long sales process not have an ROI?

Terminus has been at the forefront of building a new category around ABM, which has caused some interesting challenges. While we don’t have many direct competitors, our buyers typically do not have an initiative or budget set aside for our product. We face challenges around market confusion as there are many ABM players in the space, lack of knowledge around how to launch an ABM strategy, and including the entire buying committee in our sales process as marketers across several teams may need to collaborate to use our platform.

To surmount our unique set of challenges, we absolutely need to personalize our messaging and find creative ways of sharing it in order to break through the noise. We also need to reach multiple contacts in the organization throughout the entire sales process. Video has become a crucial tool in allowing us to do this quickly and efficiently.

I brought video via Vidyard’s ViewedIt into our sales prospecting at Terminus earlier this year. The results have been pretty mind-blowing. Right away we started getting real-world feedback from people like:

“You caught my attention. Kudos to you guys for a killer prospecting email. I forwarded your email to our BDR team for some inspiration…hope you don’t mind.”

“Thank you so much for actually taking the time to actually talk about me instead of just telling me what you do.”

In fact, one of the recipients of our videos wrote a whole blog post about how impressed she was intrigued and impressed by the approach from one of our SDRs, Morgan Gillespie. Here’s one example of Morgan’s creative outreach.

But the results aren’t just anecdotal either. We closely monitor and track our work and within just a few months of incorporating video, we found that we were seeing in our outreach emails (using video as a first touchpoint vs. a traditional approach):

• A 40% higher open rate
• 37% higher click rate
• 5.5% higher reply rate (compared to an email outreach from without video)

Finally, another benefit we are seeing from using video for sales is that the information we send out is getting circulated to more members of the buying committee. It’s actually reaching the decision makers because it is suited for busy people who simply don’t have the time to read lengthy emails and documents.

For those of you ready to bring the power of video to your sales process, here are some things we have learned along the way:

Be human.

Video has been a central part of my company since the beginning. In the early days, our Co-Founder & CMO, Sangram Vajre, made a series of thought leadership videos about topics related to account-based marketing (which you can also read more about in this post).

We discovered something surprising: the videos that were getting the most views were the impromptu ones where he didn’t sound scripted and there was no fancy cinematography. These videos resonated because they felt genuine and he was speaking from the heart. So we just took the same concept and took that to the sales team. Here’s another example from our SDR, Ryan Vitello.

We coach the team to film one, maybe two takes of each video from their desk or a quiet spot around the office. This makes the video feel natural and captures someone’s attention. It’s also a quick, easy way to send a personalized message. It’s easier to get out a complex topic or to provide an explanation on why you’re reaching out verbally than in an email.

Lay a proper foundation.

Right now video has an enormous advantage in business (read: the novelty factor) because it’s such a fresh and dynamic new medium. But like any channel, if not used properly it can just become one more thing to blast people and annoy them. It’s really important to provide value, and it’s the job of the sales leader to properly train and prepare their team to use every channel, video included.

At Terminus we have each of our SDRs and AEs practice doing a set number of test videos before we just give them the ability send them out to prospects. The process is simple: We have each member find five prospective companies that would be a good fit and then select one contact in each account to record a personalized video for. Once complete, they are to email these examples to their manager to provide tips and feedback. Once they have proven that they can create a valuable and effective video, we certify them to use our video platform for sales outreach.

I highly recommend that you create a training and testing process for your team before launching any type of video strategy to ensure it leaves your recipients with a positive impression of your company and brand.

Avoid the ‘me-centric’ approach. Make it about them.

Another key to not annoying people with video, we’ve found, is to remember that customers don’t care about your product until you prove that you can provide value to them.  The great news is that video is the perfect channel to do this effectively. Video allows you to quickly share what you’ve learned about the company and/or contact that caused you to reach out and how you believe that your product or service can benefit them. It’s easier to share this in a video than to pack it all into a short email.

So as with any good prospecting, first research the company to ensure it’s a good fit for your offering. Then, research the buying committee and create a plan for outreach. Use that information to carefully construct a tailored approach including multiple channels- email, phone, social and video. Your message across all channels should be the same, but can be delivered in different ways. The key is to speak to how you can help that person and organization, NOT to simply tell them what you do. Automated emails can accomplish that for less expense.

In today’s busy world of automated mass messaging it’s really hard for a sales person to break through the noise. It’s tempting to double down on automation and volume to improve your chances of success, but those efforts are not valuable and provide diminishing returns. According to the Aberdeen Group, 75 percent of customers prefer personalized offers.  Creative, value-driven, and personalized outreach will help your team stand out, and I can almost guarantee will improve your conversion rates. Video is one of the best, most effective ways to do exactly this in your sales and marketing efforts.

Let me know how it goes, and send me YOUR stories of success!

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How to win more RFPs using video

There’s one menace that looms over the head of nearly every salesperson, and can strike at any time: the dreaded request for proposal (RFP).

Sometimes, they arrive out of the blue as a mass request to your company sales email. Other times, an RFP can come after an otherwise fruitful conversation with a client, who shatters all hope of an easy deal by saying, “Sounds great. Will you just fill out this RFP?”

However they arrive, RFPs rarely seem like good news. Most begin with a gargantuan, exhaustive lists of granular questions on everything from your data security procedures to your CFO’s favorite ice cream flavor. They’re written to apply to everybody, and because they’re so general, they strip you as a salesperson of much of your storytelling craft. Without the ability to interview your prospect, discover pain, and apply a solution, you’re left to complete this dauntingly large document with little hope of standing out.

And, as a salesperson, no matter how bad you think you have it, your client might have it even worse.

RFPs aren’t fun for anybody

Many salespeople wonder “who actually reads this stuff?” and indeed, that’s someone’s job. In the early stages of an RFP, a project manager is assigned and asked to collect responses from a variety of vendors. Some businesses such as nonprofits or government agencies actually require that these procurement processes be competitive, which means project managers nearly always deal with more companies than they prefer to.

While RFPs do serve a purpose and are designed to make buyers’ jobs easier by standardizing questions, they sometimes fail because every sales team’s responses vary. Anything that’s open to interpretation can, and will be, interpreted. Some salespeople rewrite questions, others don’t get back in time, and some just keep calling and trying to have a talk. The result is often that project managers spend hundreds of hours trying to shoehorn responses back into the template. It’s exhausting work.

Even when responses are clear, they’re usually long. That’s because it’s difficult to say things simply in text, especially when you don’t know who you’re writing to. If a salesperson is asked to answer ‘How do you and your competitors differ? Explain.’ you had better expect a short novel in response. As David Wadler, CEO of the procurement software company Vendorful  put its, “RFPs for complex products or services, by their very nature, are usually full of verbiage and jargon.”

One great way to help provide clarity, of course, video. Wadler’s company focuses on making RFPs less arduous, and when asked about the impact of video in a proposal, he replied, “Being able to see a product in action provides incredibly helpful context for the buyer.”

Plus, it’s a huge favor to the project manager.

How about a request for personality?

Video makes your prospects’ job easier because people love video, your prospects are people, and you’re probably the only vendor that thought to use that medium. Your competitors will be busy churning out stacks of rote, boring, jargon-laden text while you’re presenting in a format that’s actually enjoyable to ingest. Plus, it allows you to inject some personality, build a relationship, and turn the evaluation in your favor.  

3 ways to use video to win more RFPs:

1. Tell your company’s story: In sales, relationships matter. Even though it’s rarely mentioned in RFPs, your prospects are trying to figure out if you’re a likable business. They need to know that you specialize in what they need, that you’re reliable, and that you’ll be around for a long time, but they also want to know that you’ll be enjoyable to work with. Use a short video as a way to convey as much and explain why you’re a great match.
2. Send walk-throughs: It usually isn’t until the final stages of the RFP process that you get to present your solution to the customer. That means that up until then, you’re relying on your writing skills to convey some pretty nuanced differences between you and your competitors. If you do it wrong, you’ll be ruled out. With video tutorials, however, you can give customers an up-front taste of what your product looks like (a pretty big plus for those who have well-designed and attractive products) and get them familiar with it. Even if they aren’t conscious of it, you’ll become the standard against which they measure all others and by the time you finally present your product, you’ll already seem familiar.
3. Articulate a vision: Most RFPs limit you to describing how you’ll solve their problem. Send your prospect a video on how it’ll make them feel. If it’s practical, even create several, one for each different department. Articulate a vision of how they and their company will benefit with this problem solved, citing case studies and real life scenarios. In doing so, you’ll give your prospect a more concrete sense of what you can do for them personally, and this gives you a big leg up on the competition.

Now, just imagine yourself sitting in the project manager’s seat. Seven vendors have collectively sent hundreds of pages of documents with barely a page-break in sight and you happen upon one that includes video links. It’s much shorter, with concise, punchy answers, and video thumbnails of the salesperson smiling and waving. You click, and you’re lifted out of the drudgery of key-punching into a world of video entertainment.

As that salesperson, you’re already top of their list. Supplement your RFPs with videos and you’ll win the hearts and minds of busy procurement managers along with the deal.

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Content Pros: How SalesLoft Is Leveraging Content to Drive Results

Teaming up with the team at Convince & Convert, Vidyard’s VP of Marketing Tyler Lessard hosts the Content Pros Podcast. For this week’s episode, Tyler is joined by Matt Wesson, Director of Content and Creative at SalesLoft, to discuss leveraging content throughout the buyer’s journey to engage customers, convert leads, and grow to scale. Check out the full podcast:

Here’s a few of our favourite moments:

You’ve been doing Content Marketing even longer than we’ve been in business, but I think it’s changing, right?

Absolutely, and I think even for somebody like Joe, who’s been in content marketing since the very beginning, I think there’s always that impulse to try and put a box around things. I think that’s the way that organizations work, right?   Like Marketing VPs, as I’m talking to two high level Marketing VPs, sorry, like to define boundaries on their team, and I think it was very easy to just say, “Oh, content marketing, it does this.” You need a Resource Center, you need E-books, you need blog posts. I think that worked really well for a long time, but I think people are starting to realize that the real value of content goes way beyond just resources.

I think it’s a very simplified way to think about the need that it’s addressing. To just say, “Oh hey, we’re providing resources to the customer that provide value and its located here.” I think the real value of a content team is those creative solutions, that they are designed to develop for customers. Those can be extended throughout the entire organization, and they should be. Everybody within a company, except maybe developers, and probably for a reason, are interacting with customers at some point. You know? … And the influence of content teams, a lot of times are still limited to that topple funnel area. I think that’s doing a disservice to not only content, but to the entire organization.

What about using content marketing at different stages?

I think it obviously depends on the situation. I think every company is going to be a little bit different. If you have a shorter sales cycle, your ability to extend a certain asset deeper into the funnel is a lot higher than a more complex sales cycle. But I think in software in general, it’s usually in my experience, a mistake to try and fit one asset across the entire sales cycle, because those needs are different, right?

I think breaking it down by those different stages, and then working really closely with the sales team, you’ll start to assess a very different set of needs that you didn’t really know were there. I think it’s super easy to say, “Oh hey, we’ve got an e-book that ties such and such a feature to such and such a problem, let’s just keeping spanning that out throughout the sales cycle.” I think that’s kind of where content marketing was maybe five, six years ago. Nowadays, you’re starting to see it change where the customer wants an e-book when they’re learning about your company. When they want to learn a feature set, they probably want to see a video, an in depth demo with the sales team.

I think before they were getting that in some way, shape, or form, but now that content’s involved in it, they’re getting it in a way that they can more easily understand. They’re getting it in a way that’s more attractive, they’re getting it in a way that’s better positioned. I think the role of content to me, is to produce a lot of diverse assets. I think if you’re just producing one and trying to extend it through the sales cycle, you’re probably still providing value to the audience, but you’re probably falling pretty short of where a content team could be delivering value to the company.

Get The Full Story

If you want to hear the full podcast, we’ve posted it above, and you can read a full transcript of this talk on Convince & Convert, where it was originally posted!

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How to Grow a Blogging Business with Zero Budget – Erin Odom

Ready to start blogging, but don’t have any money to invest yet?

In today’s interview, I’m talking to Erin Odom, the author of More Than Just Making It: Hope for the Heart of the Financially Frustrated and founder of The Humbled Homemaker, a blog dedicated to grace-filled living designed to equip and encourage mothers in the trenches.

Listen to This Episode

Her Southern charm and wealth of inspirational, practical content has drawn an audience of millions over the years. Erin and her husband Will live in the South where they are raising their four children.

Erin can speak to an experience that I hear about all the time. She built her blog at a time when she had ZERO money to invest. Yes, actually zero money. But that didn’t stop her. Nope, she blogged, networked, DIY-ed and bartered her way into a full time income and brought her family out of poverty.

How did she do it?

Erin’s Story

Back in 2011, Erin and her family were living on a very low income. After moving to South Carolina to be closer to her parents, they had a home in Mississippi that was under water and not selling, right in the middle of the recession.

Her husband Will was a high school teacher working in a state that does not pay teachers well at all. They had a toddler and an infant. Both Erin and Will were working odd jobs but living on government aid. Erin’s degree in journalism helped her to get some freelance work at a local newspaper and couple other writing gigs.

Erin and Family

The schedule was hectic. Erin worked a lot in the middle of the night and during naptime. Her parents helped out with child care, too.

Would she have done it differently? Erin feels she didn’t have a choice back then, but she definitely doesn’t recommend sacrificing your rest if you have the option!

Erin found out she was pregnant with their third child in winter 2011. At the time, they thought they were doing everything they could, but they still couldn’t make ends meet. “The tunnel just felt really dark,” Erin says.

She didn’t know much about blogging at the time, but within a week of each other, two separate people mentioned that some stay-at-homes moms were making an income from blogging.

Erin was initially excited but skeptical. She was intrigued by the idea but didn’t know how to go about it. And she was scared to tell anyone that she was thinking about blogging for a living.

For the first six months, Erin didn’t tell anyone except her husband. At first, he said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Over the course of six years, there were many ups and downs. There was also a period of tension when the blog was taking a lot of time but not making a lot of money. Then, Erin started to burn out and wanted to quit, but her husband encouraged her to keep going. And now, her husband has quit his job teaching and works on the blog with her.

Erin called the blog The Humbled Homemaker to speak to her own experience of being a wife, mother, and homemaker and feeling “humbled” by the daily challenges she faced. She wanted to help other moms in similar situations navigate “life in the trenches,”

The Humbled Homemaker

She mainly wrote articles at first. She wanted readers to know from the get-go that there would be no guilt, but only grace coming from her. She strove to provide content that came from the heart but was also practical. And she tried to create content around things that she was struggling with at the time.

No Money

All the experts say that you need to buy a domain name, have professional design, and so on in order to monetize your blog. Erin is here to tell you that it is possible to start for free if you don’t have money to invest. Just start somewhere.

The key is choosing a platform where you can monetize. Erin initially used Bloggr, and started off as thehumbledhomemaker.blogspot.com.

When she felt like she had $10 to spare to buy the domain name, she upgraded to thehumbledhomemaker.com. And, finally, eventually, she had enough to get started with a professional WordPress site.

You don't need money to start your blog today!

If you really can’t invest anything in your blog right now, that’s okay! But start with the intention of upgrading as soon as possible, and make sure that you’re still able to monetize your work.

So what was Erin’s strategy?

Back in 2011, link ups on other blogs were really popular. Erin found a meal planning blog with a link up. She wasn’t doing weekly meal plans at the time, but she saw the potential to get some traffic within her niche. She started posting her meal plans there every week.

After about a month of doing this consistently, she got a random email from two other bloggers. They had seen her link and invited her to join a Mastermind group that they were forming.

These three women formed a group with the intention of helping each other grow. So they posted on each others’ sites, did series together, and boosted each other on social media. This was a huge factor for Erin in growing her audience.

Erin stresses that this Mastermind group wasn’t about competition, but camaraderie. All these women were in a similar niche and could’ve been aggressive with each other, but they were motivated to help each other succeed.

She also says that you also have to be willing to start these connections yourself. If no one approaches you, you’ve got to put yourself out there and approach them! Take some initiative, and start a Mastermind on your own. As Erin says, “It’s free! You can do it.”

Everyone in that first Mastermind group was at a similar stage with their blogging business. This group was also very intentional about growing audiences. They did several joint series, where they would link across blogs in their posts.

Today, you could share your group’s content in your weekly newsletter. You can also share through social media. With zero money to invest, these are all FREE ways to grow your business.

Building an Audience

Erin wants you to remember that although there are so many things you can do today to grow your traffic faster, but slow and steady wins the race. Remember the tortoise and the hare!

Relationships yield amazing benefits for your blogging business.

In Erin’s story about her road to blogging success, RELATIONSHIPS keep coming up. Relationships require investment of time to nurture, but they don’t necessarily cost money. And they can yield some amazing benefits for you.

Around the same time that she started her Mastermind group, Erin also started writing guest posts for other blogs. This proved to be a fantastic way to build new relationships.

She also used these relationships to barter for stuff she couldn’t afford. For example, someone in the Mastermind group was very skilled with design and wanted some more experience. Erin herself is more skilled with words.
These two partnered together for their mutual benefit: Erin offered to edit her friend’s ebook, and her friend offered to migrate Erin’s site to WordPress and do the design work.

By 2012, Erin had also learned how to barter to attend a conference. She approached companies for sponsorships: ”I blogged about their products, and they sent me to the conference.”

This is great advice because, as you know, attending conferences is such an important part of blogging. So think about building relationships with companies where you create value for them and then you get something in return.

Monetizing

Erin’s blog started making money right away, but not very much. Just a couple dollars here and there.

However, Erin was also pursuing other income streams at the time. She started editing for other bloggers, and she says that she learned a lot from that job: her client was using WordPress, so she go to learn the platform while making some money.

Real Food, Real Easy

She also edited ebooks and tried to VA for another blogger, but that didn’t work out too well!

Erin says that you may have to find some related money-making ventures when you’re first starting out. Then you can use that money to start growing your blog.

She also made money through private sponsors (that was more popular back then than it is now). She approached sponsors through email, and they then bought sidebar ads or sponsored posts.

A friend’s husband installed Google AdSense for her, and she also did a little bit of affiliate marketing. Eventually, she got AdThrive.

Finally, she wrote an ebook together with her Mastermind group. It was a joint recipe book called Real Food, Real Easy that they collaborated on and sold together.

Was Erin using an email list? At first she just had an RSS feed.

Then, in Fall 2012, about 18 months after starting her blog, Erin was involved in an affiliate marketing sale. People were starting to do really well, and everyone started emailing back and forth about what was working best.

People weren’t building email lists back then, but someone in the group had downloaded email addresses from Feed Burner and gotten a lot of sales that way. When Erin tried the same trick, Gmail kept shutting her down because she was sending too many emails. It was working!

She quickly got MailChimp (although she has since switched to Mad Mimi) to manage all those email addresses. Email then became a big deal for her.

How can you build an email list on a budget? MailChimp and Mad Mimi both have free plans that you can take advantage of. MailChimp actually allows up to 2000 subscribers, and you can send up to 12,000 emails per month, on the free plan.

It took Erin two years to replace her husband’s income of about $30,000 before taxes. It took three years before she was earning a full time income.

Her husband quit his job in December 2016 to work on the blog full time with her.

Let that sink in: Erin had zero to invest, but within two years she was making $30,000 before taxes. Within three years–well, she doesn’t want to give a number, but she does say that it completely blows her mind how much she can make.

You can do it fast, but that take a lot of hustle and lot of financial investment. If you don’t have money to invest, you can still do it–it might just take a little longer.

Relationships, Relationships, Relationships!

Relationships, relationships!

Look at everything Erin was doing: it ALL comes back to relationships. If you are trying to do this thing and you have money to invest or you don’t, don’t try to grow as an island! No one is an island. It won’t work unless you invest the time to build those relationships.

Erin met some of her best friends online through blogging. A couple that she met online once drove hundreds of miles to stay with Erin and Will and offered to help them figure out their financial situation

Nowadays, she gets together with other blogging families once a year, as a family to Mastermind in person.

Foster those relationships. You never know where they might lead.

Want to know more?

Erin’s new book was released on September 5! It’s called More Than Just Making It and it’s part memoir, part practical advice on how her family climbed out of low income living in the aftermath of the recession. The key was discovering that they needed more income, and creating that income through blogging. You can get all the info and purchase a copy at morethanjustmakingit.com.

Resources Mentioned

• Erin's books:
  • More Than Just Making It: Hope for the Heart of the Financially Frustrated
  • Real Food, Real Easy
• The Humbled Homemaker – Erin's website
• Affiliate Marketing tools:
  • Google AdSense
  • AdThrive
• Email autoresponders:
  • MailChimp
  • Mad Mimi

Infographic

How to Grow a Blogging Business with Zero Budget – Erin Odom

The post How to Grow a Blogging Business with Zero Budget – Erin Odom appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

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