BTS: Steal My Strategy For Creating Buzz!

Jaclyn Mellone: Welcome to Go-To Gal episode number 208. As always, I’m your host, Jaclyn Mellone. And today’s episode is very meta. Not like Facebook meta. Seriously, I’m so resentful of Facebook for taking the word “meta”. I feel like it’s lost its pizzazz. It’s a word that I love and use to describe things. And now I feel like it needs a qualifier. So not meta in the Facebook way, but meta in the meta way. I don’t know the other reference there. But essentially, what we’re going to do today is I’m going to walk you through a strategy that I’m using in my business right now. And I’ll tell you my thought process behind it, how I’m doing it and I’m going to invite you. So it can be like showing you like, oh, you can do this in your business too. This is how, but also invite you to be a part of it as a user on my end. This will all come together. But hang in there with me. I’m really excited to share this with you. This is something on the product side that I’d been wanting to do something with for a while for our listeners, for you of Go-To Gal. And another side of things, I always love when I get a chance to bring you behind the scenes and talk through not just what we’re doing but why we’re doing it and how it works. And give you that little behind-the-scenes sneak peek. So it’s a bit meta, but I feel like you’re going to enjoy that.

Also, today’s episode is brought to you by MemberVault. Now, listen, we do not have episode sponsors often. When we do, you know it’s going to be a company that I know and love. And MemberVault, I was thinking about this. And I think the only tool that I’ve been using in my business longer than MemberVault is Zoom. I have been on a MemberVault since, oh, life’s a blur, 2017, maybe 2018. And when I think back, literally, I have changed landing page companies, funnel companies if you want to call it. I’ve changed email service providers. I have changed other calendar schedulers. All of the other tools I use in my business, I have gone through at least I’m on my second one. If not some of them I’ve changed, four or five or six times trying to find the right tool. And while I was on, several other course platforms before MemberVault, I have stuck with them all of these years because they’re just so unique in this space. 

So if you have any of my opt-ins or if you’ve taken any of my courses or programs, you have had the experience of being on the user side of MemberVault. Maybe you have your own MemberVault account. But if not, there is a free tier to go check it out. And I definitely recommend you do. I could really gosh about MemberVault for this whole episode, which I will be telling you some other things about MemberVault throughout the episode. But essentially, one of the reasons that I love MemberVault is the idea that I can have my free content and my paid content all in one place. That it’s this hub that makes it from the user experience perspective. It’s all right there. You don’t have a bunch of dropbox links with all these different PDFs of freebies that you’ve gotten from me over the years. And I don’t know, a lot of times, most people do have their courses all in one place. But the freebies are usually separate. And it gets messy. 

And so, if you just want to use your perspective, that way at the basic level, not to mention that there’s a lot that we can do and that we do with gamification. And on the backend, I love it because of the insights we get of our user behavior and when people are clicking on something multiple times, it shows up that they’re a hot lead. And like, oh, okay that person has clicked on my one-on-one coaching a bunch of times. Maybe they’re interested in one-on-one. And you can automate responses to things like that or you can just take that information and use it too as part of your relationship building, as part of your nurturing. 

So there’s a lot of reasons why I could gush about MemberVault. But that is probably the biggest is that I love how it’s this hub that really simplifies things on our end and on the user end. And this relationship-building element of it allows us to really get some more data and insight from our people who are in there whether it’s for free stuff or our programs. It’s really been helpful to have access to that. 

Okay, so that said, today, we’re talking about a strategy that I’m using right now in my business. I am using MemberVault to implement the strategy. You don’t need to have a MemberVault account to do this. However, I will tell you a little bit about how I’ve done it in other places and why I really prefer MemberVault for that. So if you don’t have a MemberVault account and you want to check it out for free, go to jaclynmellone.com/mv. Got it? Okay, we’ll put that in the show notes. Also, if you’re listening to this during the month of January in 2022, we are doing a live event within MemberVault in their community this month for free that is called Build Your Buzz. And I’m doing coaching calls in there. I put together a course on Build Your Buzz for them. And we’re having a lot of fun. There’s a bingo board. You know I love a bingo board, and we’re having a blast in there. So if you’re listening to this during January 2022, and if you have a MemberVault account, or even if you don’t have one yet and you’re curious, come in and join us.

If you go to jaclynmellone.com/buildyourbuzz, we’ll also put that in the show notes for you, and you can join in for free, and see how you can get started with this. So what is this strategy? Well, as the name of this live event that we’re doing within MemberVault eludes Build Your Buzz, this strategy is about building buzz. So being at the beginning of the year, what a better time to build buzz. But even if you’re listening to this at a totally random time throughout the year or years later, I think there’s always, if you are looking for that type of, I defined buzz as meaningful engagement. If you’re looking for that meaningful engagement with your people, with your community, then you can create buzz at any time of the year. A lot of times we think with a buzz that it’s something that happens that it’s this thing that we’re passive to that we’re just lucky enough that there’s a buzz going on like one day, oh wow, there are a lot of people responding or a lot of attention, or a lot of people opening emails. And we think that it just happens. But what I’ve found is that when we’re able to intentionally do something to create that buzz, it not only builds and creates momentum for your offers but also gives me that energy. It gives me that momentum And I feed off of it because I feel more connected to my community and just more excited about what’s going on.

So if you are dragging a little bit, sure and you’re like, I need a kickstart, oh, this could be the thing that does that for you. Or if you’re like, okay, I’m ready, let’s dive in. Pretty much whatever strategy, I would recommend you do, I would tell you to do this first. So what is this? Well, I’m going to back up for a second. Outline just a few different, so I wouldn’t necessarily call this a framework, but when I think about creating buzz, I think about meaningful engagement. But before the meaningful engagement, there’s capturing interest then meaningful engagement, and then off the back of the meaningful engagement, I would say I would want to deepen that connection. We want to go further with that relationship, maybe segue into having people consume more content or free content or paid offers or whatever that look like. 

So these are things that people tend to do individually and think of individually. So sometimes you are doing something in your business to create that interest, to create that attention, that hype. Something I see a lot of people do is a giveaway on Instagram. Something that’s going to get a lot of attention. You’re going to get a lot of likes, a lot of people commenting. And you get that interest but does it turn into the other two? Does it turn into meaningful engagement? Doesn’t turn into a deeper connection than just that one-off thing? And maybe with some people, it does, but usually, without a plan for that, it doesn’t. And a lot of times people will get a big jump in, oh, I got all this attention from the giveaway. Maybe the giveaways for an iPad or a Target gift card, or maybe you’ve pulled together with a few other creators and are giving away goodies or whatnot. But a lot of times after the giveaway, people were only following you because of the giveaway. And a lot of times it attracts the wrong people, not really your ideal clients or students or customers. 

And so, yes, they can be great for attention and for somewhat of an audience building, I suppose. But the quality isn’t always there. So I think there’s a time and place for that independently. But it certainly has its downsides. Now, when it comes to creating meaningful engagement, a lot of people will just do like what is meaningful engagement? A survey is definitely something that comes to mind. And a lot of people will just do a survey very independently. And maybe they’re using Google forms or type form or something like that. And it’s a series of questions that may or may not lead to something else. But it’s its own thing, separate from everything else you have going on. And maybe there’s a giveaway attached to it, maybe not. A lot of times the giveaway that I’ve seen is a hundred dollars or something like that. The people are giving away. And it could potentially be creating meaningful engagement, but a lot of times it just feels so disconnected from everything else going on that it’s limited in that capacity. And then in terms of, okay, how do we deepen that connection? What does that look like? And sometimes that is people who are in our funnels. Sometimes that just happens randomly. But it’s hard to turn on that faucet. It’s hard to create that opportunity to get there. And so, it’s something that sometimes we feel like we don’t know have control over and we’re just waiting for that to be able to happen. 

So when I think about these three things and how together they create buzz, but independently, they’re all a little bit disjointed. So what does that look like? How do we pull all of this together to create something that will allow us to build buzz intentionally? To take control of the process and make our own buzz come to life? That is what today’s episode is all about. And this is the question that I’ve been asking myself and Erin Kelly, and I over, she is the co-founder of MemberVault. She and I were brainstorming on this and it’s like, how do you create buzz? How do you create buzz? And we both came back to a survey. But not just any survey. And that’s why I have the survey and there’s like, okay, meaningful engagement can absolutely be a survey. But independent of the other things, it can fall flat and it can leave you with disappointing results. 

And so essentially, what we discussed, what we realized is that we are both huge fans of a survey. And it got us really excited about putting together this Build Your Buzz event for the MemberVault community in which I was like, okay, well, if we’re doing this for the MemberVault community, I am dying to do a survey for my audience again too. And I have this really fun idea for a survey that is not just a survey but is, and I guess I should say these two ideas were independent but I saw where they could overlap. wanting to do a survey, but I’ve also been wanting to create some type of insider access for our Go-To Gal listeners. And I haven’t exactly known what was that was going to look like. And then I started to get some more ideas coming and I’m like, okay, I think this is at the point where I want to bring our listeners in, and have you almost helped me co-create what’s in there? Let’s start with something and then we can build off of that. But I really want this to be what I am craving a deeper connection with you.

Here, I am. I’m talking to the wall and my co-working space and I love in my courses and in our mastermind being able to engage in that way with our clients, with our students. And with our podcast listeners, I don’t always get that same type of interaction. And so anything we can do to bridge that gap and make this more of a two-way conversation is just a win-win for me. So we started brainstorming on this and we started talking about different ways that both of us have used surveys and how we’ve used surveys in MemberVault. Now, I have done surveys on other platforms before. And then I’ve also done surveys within MemberVault. And it’s interesting because a lot of times we’ll just whip up a Google form and put it out there. And then afterwards, I’m just kicking myself with like, we have all these random Google forms and it feels very disconnected. And I also feel like they just hang out there. Because of how MemberVault is designed when we’re bringing people into the MemberVault community into the MemberVault hub, whatever want to call. Where all my freebies and courses are, if you go there and take a survey, one, I can set it up. So when you fill it out, it unlocks something. It unlocks a bonus. It unlocks an offer for you automatically, which is just so flipping cool. 

So I love that we have that ability to gamify that a bit and have it like, okay, fill this out. And then that unlocks this. And then also, once people are in there, once you’re in there, you can grab. You can take advantage of the fact that we have all of these freebies. You can see what our offers are. You can poke around. And that gives way to really, it creates this experience of being able to binge. Whether it’s on our free content or our paid content, in MemberVault they call it the binge and buy community. Listen, I’m not anti-funnel by any means, but things are limited with the funnel. It’s like, okay, this is very clear like you’re going to buy this, and then it’s going to show this. And then it’s going to show this. That’s a very structured way of a buying experience for your people. Well, if people don’t buy those things, or if everything you have is buried within these funnels, a lot of times when people are bingeing through your content and they want something, they literally can’t access it.

Now, sometimes you have things that you launched at certain points during the year. And maybe you have it, but it’s literally not available. That’s fine. But if you have stuff that’s available, let’s let the people give you money. And so that’s one of the things that I love about having this is that we can put those offers on there and we can change what’s visible and what’s invisible. I have a ridiculous amount of products. I’ve been on it for many years, and we’ve had a lot of programs and offers and different types of things. And so I think we have 60 or something products behind the scenes. Can I look? I don’t want to exaggerate. Let’s see. So, okay. Right now, we have five products available in our account. So when you go there, if you’re not signed in, if you don’t have access to any of our other programs, you’ll see five. And then unless we change it by the time you’re looking. And then we have 52 hidden products.

So if you have a course or multiple courses or a group coaching program, or if you’re in one of my programs now, you have a MemberVault product for that. And so you will see it on your account. You’ll see the ones that you have your access to. But those accounts, don’t need to show for everybody else. So we have control over what people see so it doesn’t overwhelm you because if you went there and there were 57, we don’t want to exaggerate here. There were 57 products, how would you even know what to look at first? You would be completely overwhelmed. So essentially, we have control over what gets shown and what doesn’t. So as something, it is a timely launch, we can turn that product on or we can turn things off or we can test something, and then literally see how people respond. We can see behind the scenes, how people are engaging with that content which is just incredibly valuable information. It’s like there’s the survey question data and then that’s the next level of the user behavior data. So it’s like, okay, what are they saying in the questions but also, what are they doing? And how are they showing interest based on that? So that is how I love using a survey in MemberVault because it’s bringing people into this world.

But if you don’t have MemberVault or if you’re already set up somewhere else and you don’t want to try it out for free, if that doesn’t make sense for you, you can still benefit from doing a survey with your audience and using a lot of these same strategies that we’re talking about today. So the way I like to structure a survey is by adding these anchoring on these other pieces to the survey to get the most attention and the most benefit. So if we just have the survey, if we just have the meaningful engagement, that’s something. It’s certainly not nothing. But by adding these two other components, we’re really maximizing that effort. So what does that look like? Well, on the front end of it, that creating interest piece is when we’re creating the survey, a lot of times people are just like me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And then everything else in marketing, we tend to get like, okay, it’s about the “you”, it’s about the listener, it’s about the future client, that ideal person. But with surveys, a lot of times people create them only thinking about the reasons why they want the survey, not why someone would want to take the survey. 

So when we bake that in from the beginning and say, okay, how do we stack the odds in our favor? Not just how do we get people to actually want to take the survey? But this is about quality over quantity. How do we get the right people to want to take that survey? That means not giving away an iPad. That means not just throwing money at this because we want to create, we want that incentive that’s going to give us that hype of a giveaway, and whether it’s a giveaway or whether it’s everyone who takes the survey gets something. We want some way that we’re incentivizing our survey takers to take the survey. We want to incentivize them. I am very pro-incentivization. However, we want that incentive to be specific to the person we want to take the survey with because we don’t want people taking the survey just to get something for free. We want people taking the survey that are people that we want to be serving.  So that is huge. Baking that in from the beginning is going to ensure that you’re going to skew your results to the benefit of having the people who are going to take it are going to be the right people. And you’re not just going to get a bunch of data that you can’t do anything with because your results are skewed the other way because your incentive was something super generic. And people were sharing with friends because everyone wants to win a hundred dollars or get an iPad. And now, it all muddied up your data. 

So with that, yes, we want to lean into that benefit of a giveaway but be really intentional about it. For instance, with me, I’ve done giveaways where it’s a free coaching call with me. Who wants to win a free coaching call with me? People who want to learn from me, who want to work with me, who listens to the podcast, people who are in some way, shape, or form connected with me, or they’re new to me and still intrigued like, oh, I want help with that in my business so I would benefit from a free call. I’m not going to get people who don’t have a business or who have a totally a type of business or interest wanting to win that. So just by design, the only people who are going to enter to win are the people who would want to win that. Same thing with different offers that we have. I’ve given away access to courses. I think at one point we gave away a spot on the podcast for an interview. So things like that that only the people who we actually wanted entering those giveaways were going to enter the giveaway if you will. 

So then we have the survey itself. We want to be intentional there with what are the questions that we’re asking, what do we want to know? Who do you want to take this survey and what do you want to know? This sounds like we really hung up on what are the questions we should ask. Start with the answers. What do you want to know about? What do you want to either confirm or do you want to bucket your audience into different groups? If I wonder like for me, I wonder, do you have a podcast or do you not have a podcast? That’s something I want to know. And so that’s two different groups, podcasters and maybe future podcasters, not yet podcasters, not podcasters. So being able to separate the audience into those two groups is going to allow me to know who those groups are. I’m working on something that I’m very excited about that the podcasters might be interested in. So knowing who those podcasters are, those are the people that I could reach out to first about this opportunity. I’ll give you a hint. It’s a way for them to easily get sponsorships on their podcast.

So that’s something that a podcaster would potentially be very interested in. Someone who doesn’t have a podcast is not going to be a fit for that. But they might be interested in any of my content about starting a podcast potentially. Or if someone already has a podcast, I probably shouldn’t be emailing them about starting a podcast. They already got one. So knowing just that little detail is going to allow us to customize our communications and our messaging so we’re more effective. And that’s very simple. These can be deep and complex, or could literally just be that simple of, do you have a podcast? Do you not have a podcast? But you don’t know until you ask. This is where surveys can be really powerful and not just give you that insight of I’m sure you’ve heard, we’ve had guests on talking about this. And I’m sure you’ve heard other places too of how valuable it is to get. You want the actual words that your ideal clients are using.

So giving them that space to type out answers and see how they talk about things or what comes up that you hadn’t thought of yet, you want an opportunity for all of that. We have that there, but what else? What else can the survey be used for? So it can be used for messaging. It can be used for deciding what offer you should offer next to see where your audience is with things to be able to segment. I was talking about that I know which groups are which. And the more we know about the people in our communities, the more we know about the people who we want to be helping, the better we can help them. I’m going to tell you right now, that sounds old. In this day and age, but in this day and age, that is super valuable. 

The algorithm, the algorithm changes every five seconds. So we can sit here and stress about the algorithm, or we can just get to know our people. Because the more we know our people, the more we are going to not have to worry about the algorithm because we will just naturally rise. We will naturally rise up in the algorithm. But also, we’re going to cut through the noise because we have that connection because we understand them and we can talk to them on that level.

This is huge. And this is not just for beginning business owners, this is for people at all stages of business. So pretty much, unless you are mid-launch right now and you’re like, I can’t come up there for five seconds. Unless you’re there, which head down, you got this, keep your focus. But unless you are there doing a survey like this is going to help you with literally whatever else you’re doing. And I don’t care if you’re launching the program, this is your 12th time launching the same program, great, do a survey. If you’re trying to figure out what program to create for the first time, great, do a survey. If you want to pivot, great, do a survey. Literally any strategy we would put together, the first thing I would tell you to do is do a survey because getting that feedback and insight from your community or from your perspective community and audience is the exact data that we need to go put together to make those decisions. So you’re making decisions based on that data and insight. 

Now, in Build Your Buzz I go through this in very specific detail of how to put the survey together and the types of questions and all of that. So if this is something that you are wanting to do and to put together and you’re like, but I don’t really know where to start or what to ask or how to structure it, what should my incentive be? What are the options there? All of how to promote it, where to promote it, I literally go through all of this in Build Your Buzz. And it is free this month in MemberVault so if you go to jaclynmellone.com/buildyourbuzz, you will actually be in my MemberVault account and you can sign up for it for free and go through all of that.

One thing I want to underscore here is the Henry Ford quote which I keep referencing it and I haven’t actually looked at it in a while. So I’m like, I’m probably paraphrasing here. But that famous quote that we all know where it’s like, if I would have asked the people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses. So yes, if he would have asked the people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses. The people would not have come up with the car. And the same thing goes for your audience. Yes, there are times where you want to be specific and you want to ask like, what other podcasts do you listen to? You want that direct feedback and insight, do you prefer to watch a video or listen to audio? You want that very specific and direct answer. But when it comes to creativity and innovation and what you’re going to put together or what you’re going to offer, you don’t want to ask your audience to tell you that. You really are looking for insight, not answers. 

So there’s a nuance there because like I said, some questions you do want the answer like, just tell me what podcasts you listened to. I need insight on that. But when it comes to other things, you want that insight not that answer because you want to know their thought process, you want to know what they’re struggling with or what they’re trying to achieve, or what’s going through their head. You don’t want them to try to come up with that solution. They don’t have all the information to be able to come up with the solution. They don’t know that a car is an option. 

So don’t go into the survey looking for that answer, but ask the questions that are going to give you the insight where then you can look at that and see the patterns, and then knowing what’s in your toolbox, how you can support them. When you fully understand how you can help them, that’s when you can craft the most powerful solution. And when you’re able to position what you do as the solution to their problem, game over, game beginning. That is the fast track right there to grow and scale your business. When you’re able to get that alignment down where you’re able to really be completely in alignment with they’re struggling with this and you’re able to show how you can help them with that, bam. So that is a big goal of doing this. This is a big, big goal. All right, that is the survey piece. 

Now, we don’t want to leave them hanging after the survey. This is where surveys have gone wrong. In MemberVault, this is where I love that we have the opportunity to just naturally by them being in there, they’re going to poke around and find stuff. Also, have the opportunity to give access. So whenever we can, I like giving everyone that takes the survey something. That’s not always possible, but I love having that Oprah moment of like, you get a car or you get a car. Maybe it’s like, you get a mindset training. But that’s when people know that they’re going to get it, I think it just holds more value. So with putting together the survey that I have right now, there’s a couple of things. One, I wanted to have a really high-value thing that we could give everyone. But I also knew that I was tight on time. And I didn’t want to give away something that people had paid for because that felt unethical. And I had some freebies that I’ve given away before, but I think some of my most engaged people have gotten them. So maybe it’s like content from past programs years ago where it was like bonus content for that, that we were giving away. But some of our most engaged people have already had that. So it wouldn’t have been as exciting for them. And I didn’t want to exclude them, I really wanted them to be able to participate in this. 

So what I was thinking about is, how bloggers or maybe you were a blogger and you’ve done this, or maybe you read blogs and you’ve been on the other side of this, where bloggers will take blog posts of theirs that are free on their blog like still up and they will pull them together and put them into a book, into an e-book and they will sell it. People will pay them money for the same exact content that is free on the blog. People will pay them money because it is restructured and reformated into a way where now they can just go into this e-book and get it all in one place instead of having to dig all over the blog. And people pay money for that convenience. Isn’t that amazing? And you’re probably like, yes, I probably bought something like that before. We’ve absolutely seen this happen. 

So the similar type of concept except not paying, but knowing that people are willing to pay for that, that convenience for that extra step of having it all structured together. So it’s more convenient to go through, it’s more organized. They’re more likely to do it. They’re more likely to understand it, and all of that. They’re willing to pay for that. So it’s really perceived as a high value even though I wasn’t looking to charge for something. This concept, I’m like, we could apply this to podcasting. What we did for the incentive for this survey which there’s a couple of layers too. But for the first one is I’m like, okay, I want to give every single person that’s going to take this survey. Let’s take a group of podcast episodes and create a private podcast of those episodes. And what we get, oh, the most response from, the most requests for, the most back downloading of are my solo mindset episodes. Those are also evergreen. I don’t need to worry about, oh, that strategy has changed or the algorithm is different or the platforms or whatnot.

I don’t need to worry about those elements of it with that. Mindset is pretty evergreen. And so, what we did is we’re like, okay, we know that the people who are putting themselves out there the most in the Go-To Gal community, they’re struggling with the mindset. Because you can’t put yourself out there in that big of away, and that’d be going through that on the backend, not be going through the emotional roller coaster of it on the backend. So we know how powerful the mindset is. Both at the getting started, but in the growth, in the scaling like literally every single time you are up-leveling your business, you’re getting uncomfortable, that’s going to pull up all the mindset stuff. Knowing this, I know that the mindset is something that you want. And yes, you can go find all the mindset episodes here on the podcast. But now that we’re over 200 episodes, it’s a lot to dig through. 

So having a private podcast to say, okay, you want to go binge on the mindset episodes? Go here and download our free private podcast of all the mindset episodes. I’m like, okay, that’s the perfect giveaway for a survey. We already have all this content. We just need to pull it into hello audio, which is super simple to do. And done. We have a really high-value giveaway that we could literally give to every single person who takes the survey. Now, honestly, that would be enough for a survey. Would you take a survey to get that? You probably would. If that’s something that you’re interested in, you probably would answer some questions to get that. But I wanted to do more than that. And also just, I don’t know, I’ve been very creative so I’m like, what if we did this? And what if we did this? So trying to keep it within reason but also knowing that I was going to share this with you and share this with the member of all community. I’m like, we could have some fun with this. 

Something I have been wanting to do for a long time creates some type of a place where our listeners could go, where I could just drop in some exclusive content. Whether it was an episode just for you or behind the scenes with a guest, if we didn’t get to air the whole episode or stuff like this. We could do a private podcast. We did mindset and I’m like, oh, we could totally do a private podcast. That’s just podcast episodes on podcasting. Or like, what other topics could we pull out? Getting clients. We could do a bunch of these private podcasts. And so to make you co-opt into 12 different things if that’s something we wanted to deal with, that just seems clunky. What if we had a place where you could go and become one of our podcast listener insiders? So I was brainstorming names and decided to go with Gal Pals. So if you want to be one of our Gal Pals and get, at first, we’re giving you access to this private podcast of all of our mindset solo episodes, but we got more things coming for you too. Honestly, with our Gal Pals, as one of our Gal Pals, you can have first dibs on on-air coaching calls. 

We want to start promoting and sharing our Gal Pals on social. We want to do maybe it’s takeovers or we’re just sharing stuff. So being able to come to you for that too. There are all these different things that we can do and having a place where we can engage with you in that way and give you access to those things. Let’s do that. How do we do that? We’re doing that in our MemberVault account. And really it’s a bunch of surveys. And so where we set this up in MemberVault is you’ll go there to the Gal Pals product. On the backend, it’s called the product, but on the front end, it’s just Gal Pals, pretty graphic. A fun little clueless gift because you got to have some fun with these things. And then you click on it. You go through, you answer the questions. And when you answer the questions, it unlocks your access to Gal Pals, to the Gal Pals product. So within that product, you have the ability to apply for on-air coaching. You have the ability to apply to be featured as one of our Gal Pals. You have access to the private podcast with all the mindset stuff. And essentially, by asking you those questions, we’re getting the insight that’s going to be like, okay, what else do you want? Who else should we have on as guests? What topics should we cover? What else do you want for being a Gal Pal? We have a new logo coming out, so I got merch on the brain like, what do you want? Do you wear hats? I don’t wear hats, but other people wear hats. Other people wear t-shirts. Do you want mugs? Let’s ask the Gal Pals. 

I’ve also been wanting to do some Zoom calls with listeners and just talk about episodes or topics or what’s on your mind, or just do Q & A for you. I don’t know, things like this. I want to be more connected to you. So this gives us a really easy way to not have to broadcast that to the whole community but to go to the Gal Pals, to go to our most engaged, most invested listeners first with these things. So we’re able to get that insight from you, but we’re also able to give to you and create unique experiences that really deepen that connection. So you’re not just listening to content wherever you happen to listen to podcasts, but you’re engaging with us in different ways. And we’re able to deepen that connection through that because we’re learning more about you. We’re creating things for you. We’re creating different experiences where we can support you more. All of this. 

So one, if you want to be a Gal Pal if you want to, and this is the meta part. You probably get this, but in case I’m Tom talking in a lot of circles here, I want to make sure you understand what we did here is we made the survey itself an incentive. And so we stacked the survey with something like we could just say, go opt-in to be a Gal Pal, and then you’ll get this free download. But we wanted to create something where you’re filling out the survey as part of your free membership of being a Gal Pal and getting free access to these things. And so, it’s almost like the way we’ve structured the survey and that it’s built into becoming a Gal Pal, is an incentive in and of itself. The fact that we have free content in there reinforces that, and then we can do giveaways too. So we could have a giveaway for our Gal Pals or we can incentivize in other ways as well, which I’m so tempted to add an additional giveaway right now but I haven’t discussed it with the team and they might just kill me if I throw that in there. So we’re going to keep it as it is for this moment. But stay tuned. We may have some additional incentives if you’re a Gal Pal. Oh, it’s just fun to say Gal Pals too. Come on, I love it. 

So the cool thing about this is that it’s surveys within surveys. So when you fill out the survey, it unlocks the Gal Pal product which gives you access to these other surveys essentially. Keep with me. And to start, you’re going to get that private podcast feed. So you’ll be able to see it in MemberVault and then download it. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you’ll have another feed. You’ll still have this one where you listen to Go-To Gal and then you’ll have another one that is just those mindset episodes. So when you need a little extra mindset support, or if you just want to go binge them, they’re all right there for you.

Now, when I said the other surveys, the other two surveys, one is for on-air coaching. So if you have listened to our on-air coaching calls and you’re like, okay, there’s something I need support with. I want free coaching from Jaclyn. If that’s something you’re interested in, you can fill out the application for on-air coaching. Now, a little sneak behind the scenes there. One, I would love to feature you on the podcast in that way. I would love to bring you on for an on-air coaching episode. So that is just a built-in way for us to source who those on-air coaching clients are. Now, on the back end of that, what we can also do, we probably can’t take everyone who applies but that’s our first pool of where we go to. So one, we’ll be able to see by the people who apply who has a question or a business that we know our listeners are going to relate to the most. And then, and pick and choose which ones make the most sense to bring on-air. But for the people that don’t get to come on-air, we could offer you a discount for a coaching call if I had the bandwidth for that. 

So there are different things that we could do on the backend that we could build them automatically, or we could do manually. But even just through having people fill out that on-air coaching application, we’re taking care of something that we need to do that a lot of times we’ll put it up on Instagram. But this is a much more organized way to be sourcing those leads. And we’re able to then see all that data of what people won’t help with, with on-air coaching. So maybe we don’t have the space for it on-air coaching call, but we have a guest coming that covers a topic. Now, we have that deeper insight into what our Gal Pals are struggling with and want help with. So that’s really a survey within a survey. 

And then the same thing with the featured piece, which is not something we’re going to be able to do for a couple of months. But I’m already thinking like this because I know we really want to do it is obvious, there are questions that we’ll have there that are just like, we need that information in order to share. But we can also think about what other questions would make sense to ask and can build that into that survey? And that’s the kind of thing too where we get pitches, we get multiple pitches every day for the podcast. And the vast majority of people who pitch us to be on the podcast, we say no to. We just simply don’t have the bandwidth. And I usually have a pretty good idea in mind of who we’re bringing on as a guest. But once we start doing that, that’s a great way for us to be able to point people that we don’t have the bandwidth for, for the podcast, or it’s not the exact topic that we’re looking for for the podcast. Maybe we’re able to create some other visibility opportunities for them. 

So we’re able to start creating different opportunities for that meaningful engagement and deeper connection with our community. That’s really what it’s all about. And by having the incentive of not just special access to things as a Gal Pal, but also starting to give things away like that private podcast feed. That’s the only way you can get it is by being a Gal Pal. We’re not sending up a landing page to opt-in, do it separate from it. It’s just if you want that, you sign up to be a Gal Pal and design them to be a Gal Pal. You go to fill out those surveys so we get to know some information about you and how we can be serving you better and creating better content for you.

So I feel like this is like meta, meta, meta, and it’s like, oh if you want to be a Gal Pal, go to jaclynmellone.com/galpals, and that’s going to bring you there. So you can see what I’m talking about. And hopefully, also, you can become a Gal Pal and get access to that private podcast and these other things too. And more things to come, but it’s like, let’s just not start making up stuff that we want to give you. Let’s find out what people actually want or what they’re struggling with so we can figure out what to create for what you want. All of those things. 

Okay, that’s how I’m doing this month. You certainly don’t have to take it to this level. It could be as simple as, I didn’t have to do the Gal Pal thing. I just was really excited about it. It could have just been, go take the survey and we’ll give you access to this feed, or go take the survey and we’ll enter you for a chance to win a call with me. It didn’t have to be layered like this. I went a little bit all out. But I was excited, and it’s cool to see, okay, this is how I get scale it up, or this is how I could scale it back. And so, I don’t want you to be overwhelmed with me showing all these different options. I want you to just think of it as different ways to inspire your own creativity and see, okay, what do I want to learn about my people? What are you hoping to get insight on? And what would be the best way to do that where you are getting their attention, the attention of the right people? You’re asking the questions that are going to give you that insight and maybe a couple of answers, but mostly insight. And then how can you deepen that relationship after the survey? 

So you’re not just getting their answers and leaving it at that but what’s that next step where you can really, you know, whether if you have free content for them or paid offers, or whatever that looks like, how can you deepen that connection? Again, with MemberVault, I love that it’s all built-in, that we can do all of this. But even if you’re not on MemberVault well, one, you can always check it out for free. But even if you’re not, I know you can get creative and come up with other ways to do this, to make the most of your survey.

All right, that is a wrap. If you’re okay,  like, you got me thinking, Jaclyn. This is what I need to create some buzz this month. Let’s do this. And you want the step-by-step of how to do this, of how to set up a survey, how to figure out all these pieces both the strategic side but also the technical side of how to get this all going, if you go to jaclynmellone.com/buildyourbuzz, and that’s in the show notes too. You can join us for free this month with the MemberVault community and get free access to this training, and all that jam. In our resource guide, we’ve got a bingo board. We’re having a blast in there and I would love to have you join us. I’m doing coaching calls. So if it’s past January, I think you will need to be a paid member of MemberVault in order to have access to this after January, to get access to that full training. So if you’re listening in January, definitely take advantage. And if it’s past January, if you do end up paying MemberVault as one of their members, you will have access to it. So, all right. To create some buzz. I’m cheering you on. 

Can I just say, thank you so much for listening? I don’t think I’m saying it enough, but I love that you are here. If you enjoyed today’s episode, or if you’ve been getting value from this podcast, can you do me a quick favor? Head on over to iTunes and leave a rating and review. When you leave a rating and review, it basically tells iTunes that they need to spread the word and tell more people about this podcast, and I am on a mission to get the word out. I’m so grateful for your support. We want to make sure to shout you out too. So if you do leave a rating and review, keep your eyes and ears open. We will be either shouting out in the podcast or on Instagram Stories.