Building Your List and a Fresh Take on Freebies with Glenn Allen

Jaclyn Mellone  

Welcome to Go-To Gal Episode Number 168. As always, I’m your host, Jaclyn Mellone. And today we’re talking about a fresh take on an old strategy. So if you have been in this online marketing world for five seconds, you have likely heard of the idea of having an opt-in or a freebie or a tripwire. There’s seriously be more awful terms for those concepts. Tripwire, literally, you’re trying to like put a wire out to make your prospective clients and customers trip over it and trap them. I don’t even know. It’s an awful visual.  

But if you’ve been in this space for five seconds, you know what I’m talking about. One of these things, something that you are giving your audience, your followers, your community for free in exchange for their email address. This is a strategy that you use to build your email list. And a way for you to really start to build that no love and trust with the people who are following you too. So they’re getting that from your free content by opting-in and getting this content that’s still free, but is gated behind that email exchange. It’s a little bit higher value. And you’re starting to turn that trust even more that they’re opting in, and they’re getting something of really high value for free, which is hopefully leading them to the next thing that you offer. 

So this concept of putting an email in to get something of value has probably been around since the beginning of the internet. I did not Wikipedia this. I feel like this is not essential to the conversation we’re having here. But it’s been around for a while. And I feel like it is in desperate need of a fresh take. And through conversations that I was having privately with my friend, Glen Allen, I just fell in love with the fresh take that he has on this. I’m like, okay, Glenn, this is brilliant. People need to know about this. 

And hello, here we are. Welcome to this episode. So today we’re going to talk about what is this concept of a golden lead magnet and let’s just back it up and talk about how do we even get people opting in to our lead magnets. What are some of these places that we can find traffic? What is this lead magnet concept, this new take, and how do we implement that? And what else should we be thinking of in terms of creating our lead magnet or leading people to that next step with that lead magnet? We’re gonna hit this from a lot of different angles. There’s clearly only so much we can do in a podcast episode.

So while we cover a lot of ground in this conversation today, I also asked Glenn if we could do a masterclass just for the Go-To Gal community. And he said, yes. So later this month, depending on when you’re listening, on April 21st, Glenn and I are going to co-host a masterclass talking all about the golden lead magnet, and the golden lead funnel, and how to really start thinking about leading people to our offers in a way that’s really helping them solve a problem and and how to implement this with a fresh take. It’s a really creative concept. So sign up for that free masterclass Glenn and I are doing. Go to jaclynmellone.com/golden. 

Okay, back to today. So before we get into things, let me formally introduce you to Glenn. Glenn Allen is the go-to CMO of digital course launches. As a multi-instrumental musician turned marketing and business consultant, Glenn coaches online entrepreneurs to scale from five to six figure businesses and beyond by helping them turn their expertise into digital courses and membership sites. He’s the host of The Glenn Allen show, a YouTube video series about digital marketing, and a podcast on entrepreneurialism called Unstuck and Unstoppable. He also works as an unpaid volunteer chef, housekeeper and chauffeur for three small children who refer to him lovingly as Dad. All right, without any further ado, here’s my conversation with Glenn. 

Glenn, I’m so excited to have you here today.

Glenn Allen  

I’m very excited. I didn’t tell you this before but this is like my number one podcast I’ve always wanted to be on since I started this doing podcasts. You are number one on my list.

Jaclyn Mellone  

What?! How did you just throw that on me? No. Now, I might be completely flabbergasted. I don’t even know. I love it. 

Well, good. That’s what we’re all about here, making dreams come true. And we have so much to dive into today. But before we do, take us back in time to when you were growing up, what were you the go-to guy for back then? 

Glenn Allen  

I would have to say I was a musician and ever since I was a kid, I grew up in a musical family. Dad is a professional drummer, my Grandfather was a jazz saxophonist. I play both those instruments and a bunch of other ones. And so it just carried with me all my life. Became a band geek and even carried into my adult life. And that’s kind of in a roundabout way how I came to do what I do now.

Jaclyn Mellone  

All right. Well, that was a good lead up into like, well, what do you do now? Tell us, what do you do and who do you help?

Glenn Allen  

So I work with creative entrepreneurs that have some expertise in an area where they want to scale their business or grow an online business, teaching what it is they’ve done professionally. And a lot of those people who happen to be, in a roundabout way, I’ve gone from being a music teacher to coaching other music teachers, other Emmy Award winning songwriters, Emmy Award winning performers, music producers, people who run live sound for the likes of Janet Jackson and Gwen Stefani. Not just musicians, but a ton of really amazing musicians. I help different service-based creatives, videographers, photographers, authors do digital courses. Not just create them, but launch them strategically. And it’s funny, because I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to actually create my own courses around songwriting, and in a roundabout way ended up helping those very people who do those kinds of things.

Jaclyn Mellone  

It’s so funny how that happens. We can never figure out what all of those steps along the way are gonna be. But taking that action leads us to the next step, which just opens up all of these opportunities. So I’m always curious, how did some of those dots connect that brought you to serving this audience in this way?

Glenn Allen  

Well, back in I think it was the early 2000s, I moved to New York City and then California and I was kind of gigging, but it doesn’t really pay the bills very well. And I was playing some bands and following my music career, but I had to pay the bills with some teaching. And I got to the point where I was teaching full time in a music store. this little 8 by 10 room with, just one window on the door, and just saying the same things over and over and over and over. And coming to realize actually that I kind of had this repeatable process of getting people, kind of coaching them over common hurdles. And I thought, I gotta get out of this room. I can only make so much money, saying the same things over and over. I can live at work like 40 some hours a week. I should scale this. I should get a YouTube channel. 

So I started a YouTube channel called I’m an Orchestra where I guitar things and bass things, piano things, song writing. And the digital information space was pretty wild west. There wasn’t a whole lot of information out there about how you make it happen. But I was watching some people and saw one guy selling this course on how to play like Stevie Ray Vaughn, or something. And I thought, that’s what I got to do. I started taking the tutorials and offering a free mini course in an email list. And I said, like email automation that at day five or seven, or something like that. Sold a $7 eBook that I spent six months writing on songwriting, and I made an amazing 70 bucks.

Jaclyn Mellone  

When you said that many months, my eyes were just like holding. What, $70.

Glenn Allen  

So much work for $70. And what’s cool about that experiment is it taught me a ton about marketing and positioning and setting up all these back end systems. And back then, you’re the cobbled together of all these different marketing tools. And it was so much more confusing than it is today. The tech just wasn’t what it is now. But I cobbled a bunch of marketing systems together, and people started noticing what I was doing, and they’re taking interest. Friends of mine would say, hey, can you set up my YouTube channel for my business, and started getting more and more freelance work.  

And pretty much just poured that money back into buying as many digital marketing courses that I can get. Just tens of thousands of dollars, and I became obsessed. And I am always learning something new. And so it went from having this YouTube channel to then having a new channel on marketing, and this freelancing stuff. And I’ll just kind of like our dream corporate job in marketing, where all the marketing hats, created digital courses, membership sites, and stuff like that. And this is a side hustle, started doing it with different people. And it really just kind of took on a life of its own and became my thing.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes, I love seeing how each thing led to the other and led to the other and to where you are now. And I did not know that story with your first eBook. I think we can all relate to that. There are so many things that we could jam on today. But one of the things that I love your approaches with and I was really excited to dive into more with you is audience building and where do you go. You have the course, you have an offer, you have an idea for a course, how are we building that audience? Are we spending a million dollars on ads? What are the different options and how are some of the different ways that you’ve approached traffic and audience building?

Glenn Allen  

That’s such a loaded question there. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Let’s start with your philosophy, what is your philosophy? How should we be thinking about building our audience?

Glenn Allen  

Okay, we all know ads can work. I don’t want to poopoo ads, and I’ve got some good friends who are in the ads world. But for the very beginner, chances are you have too many other plates to spin and you don’t really have your offers dialed in well enough that you should start dabbling and paid traffic. That’s pretty much my thing. Ads is like you add gasoline to a fire that is already there. And that’s where ads are wonderful. And there’s even some mid level places where you might do ads, but people don’t always understand what that means. There’s a lot of confusion. It’s very techie. And it’s always changing.  

But what is readily available to you is always, of course, all these different platforms that you can build. Where you can just choose a platform, whether that is your podcast, one of my favorites, or a social media tool, like YouTube, another one of my favorites, that’s where I, of course, started. And there is leveraging other people’s traffic, which is my absolute favorite thing. Because as you’ve actually said, if you’re trying to build your authority, you’re trying to build a name for yourself, trying to build your personal brand. When you’re on somebody else’s platform, you’ve got that double authority. And so you can show your audience that you’re somebody by promoting that thing you’re on, and they’re imparting authority onto you by bringing them into your world. Borrowed traffic is my absolute favorite, because chances are the traffic exists, you just got to go stand in it. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

It’s so true. And this is something where at any point in a business. Right now, I’m spending $100 a day in ads, which is really big for me, because I normally don’t do any ads. And this is still a strategy that I’m using. I’m so like, the two can live, it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. But I love that this is available at any stage of business. If you’re just starting off, and you don’t have necessarily all those things dialed in, you can tap into this. And if you’re established, you could be tapping into this, too. So how do we approach this? I could see people being like, well, if I have nothing who’s gonna want to share their traffic with me. What does that look like in terms of collaborating? Let’s start there. What does that look like in terms of leveraging other people’s platforms?

Glenn Allen  

Well, the thing is, yeah, there’s going to be different stages of people that you can and can’t reach when you’re first starting out, typically. If you have a certain skill set, it might be easier to approach people. And nowadays, it’s a lot easier to approach people than it ever was before, in certain ways, too, because the gates have kind of opened up a little bit. But one of my favorite ways is actually podcasts, getting on other people’s podcasts. And it’s something that I can thank you for. I’ve been able to get on a ton of podcasts, thanks to your Plug-N-Pitch.

Jaclyn Mellone  

I am happy to see this.

Glenn Allen  

But it is, it’s what’s giving me the idea for so many things that I do. And the great thing about that is it’s very symbiotic. Because those creators, those thought leaders need people and they need content, and you need audiences. And so they’re gonna promote you and you’re gonna promote them, it’s very mutually beneficial. And so some of that, you have to go and build the relationships. And that’s just part of it. Reaching out to people, getting on their radar. I like to do things like subscribe and share somebody’s podcasts and/or leave a nice comment and review, a five star review. That whole thing. Just kind of getting on their radar and digging the well before you’re thirsty, and not just reaching out to people and saying, hey, I want something from you.  

Podcasting is a big part of it. You can borrow traffic with guests blogging. Another thing I like to do is Facebook groups. And you basically be in these Facebook groups for your area of expertise, and just show up and answer questions, add value. And don’t ask for anything in return necessarily. But if you’ve kind of been at it for a little while, you can approach them and say, hey, I’d love to do a free training or something like that.  There’s all these different ways in which you can basically provide value to these other creators. But the thing is, going back to your original question, you have to have a way now to get them back into your email list. Because getting your name out there is one thing and even having a bunch of followers on Instagram is another but those things don’t necessarily equate to having a business. Those are all just farmed land, as many people say. So take that traffic and bring them back over into your world. And you got to have a killer free offer or even just like a low ticket offer to make that happen.

Jaclyn Mellone  

So good. Now on a high level, we know this. Like okay, when you traffic, we need to opt-in. The way you’re breaking this down is like okay, I can see where some of these strategies can get simplified and feel more accessible and how they start to go. What have you found that is the best way to approach this in terms of okay, if we have a course or we have a service that we’re offering, how should we think about what that lead magnet is to make the most out of these opportunities?

Glenn Allen  

It’s a great question because I actually like to align the lead magnet with the end course in service but I also like to align my lead magnet with topics that I might pitch to other people. An example of that is okay, if I’ve got this lead magnet on XYZ, I’m going to think of different angles. I can approach from XYZ. So it’s like the fastest way to do XYZ or very simple, series secrets about XYZ that will get you results faster than anything else. Something like that. You think of these little things as kind of silly pitched headlines. And so now when you approach these podcasters, they appreciate you having a nice little headline that maybe they’re interested in, because you’ve done some of the work for them. And they’re like, oh, my audience will absolutely love that if you’ve done your homework. And then, once you’ve got that, the conversation can flow really naturally into that lead magnet. But that lead magnet should absolutely be aligned with whatever your service or courses is. And there’s a lot of ways to go about this. 

There’s actually a few criteria I found with picking your lead magnet, because a lot of people, number one, they’re not sure. Should I make a quiz, a cheat sheet, should be a checklist, should it be an eBook or something like that. One of the main things is answering like a burning pain that falls under one of your main content pillars that you want to be the go-to for, you to be known for. And what I love is when it does this, it closes that loop on something that they may Google. They might even pay to have answered for them. But in doing so, opens up this. I call the next level problem or good to have problem. Certain problems you have there, like that’s a good problem to have. I’ll give you an example. Steve McClaren, who’s got the Digital Course tribe, he teaches people how to create memberships. And when you’re in his kind of free warm-up sequence, he gives you this thing called the founding member scripts. And it’s basically just a way of approaching your current list and saying, hey, I’m about to do this new thing. It’s a membership. And I’d like to offer you a really low ticket founding members pricing for life. And I’ll be building it with your input. And we’ll be improving as we go. But as long as you’re in it, you get to keep in at a super low price. And we’ll be changing in the future. 

I did this, I sent it out to my list, had a bunch of people respond, they hit the link, they paid me. And I was like, crap. One problem to solve. It’s this burning pain, which is how do I validate my idea? How do I get paid customers for a membership, but it opened this new good to have problems, next level problems. And now I have to figure out well, how do I retain members? And how do I create a membership and what has to go into it and all the things that the paid offer can only answer. 

So there’s just like closing the loop or being a big loop. But then there’s this other aspect of it. A lot of times, we go on kind of a freebie seeking, if you will inquire. Where we’ll go to Google or go to some social media tool, we want to learn about something. And so we’ll seek out some free guides. And maybe sometimes we even want to get like we’re willing to just pay for that answer right away. And what happens a lot of times, I actually tell you a story of how I came up with this idea for just like the better way of doing a lead magnet and engaging people more than just once, more than just on that initial email. 

So I was trying to figure out how to do hashtags for Instagram. I want to grow my audience on Instagram and is thinking, okay, I know hashtags have something to do with it. But it’s really confusing. You see the way people usually use hashtags, but they’re just like #SundayFunDay. Like very conversationally, and that’s not the thing. That’s not how this works. But I didn’t really understand how to research them? How many should I use? Where do I find them? Why are people using certain ones that they use? And what’s the strategy behind how they post them?  So I downloaded a few guides. And the first guide, it’d be somebody. Here’s like, here’s my PDF, and you read through, and it’s got this little bio. And you see this cute person in their slick office, and then hi, I’m so and so. And I started my business because of XYZ. And then you read things, and they’re like, okay, that was nice. Maybe you do something with it. Maybe don’t. And then day two, they’re like, did you get it? And it’s like, yeah, I got it. Day three, day four. It’s like, oh, yeah, by the way, I’ve got a Facebook group. Day five is, here’s the thing about me. Day six is oh, you know, join my business accelerator.  

The thing is, I don’t know who they are, they haven’t really engaged me. I don’t feel like I really have a connection with them. I don’t have like several of these in my inbox at the same time, because I’m kind of on a fact finding mission. Couldn’t distinguish one from the other. But this one person, she had video training, and I’m watching the video. I’m showing how to do it. I’m seeing her style of teaching, her personality. And I’m like, this is incredible. This person’s a genius. Immediately, after in the description, and in the sidebar of this video and in an email, she’s saying, now that you have the thing you came for. Now you know how to find these hashtags, because you watched her do it and you’re doing it along with her. You’re gonna want to know what to do with them. And I was like, yeah, I’m gonna want to know what to do with these. And so that’s where her upsell to our full course came in. It’s not only will you learn that, you’ll learn what you really wanted. It wasn’t just the hashtags. It was actually to learn how to use Instagram to actually get leads and build a business and make money with Instagram. Was it not? Of course, it is.  

So they’ve taken this small burning pain, and then they’ve engaged with you in a meaningful way. That’s not just like a PDF. So I felt like I had a connection to her. And I started thinking, well, what if you took it one step further, and it wasn’t just one video, but you did three videos, and they’re real short and they get people just to bite size win. What that’s gonna do for you is people have got something I want to learn from you, and you can break it into these tiny three little nibbles. They’re not going to get overwhelmed by the process and they’re more likely to follow through, and they’ve got this reinforced repeat engagement with you. So that’s basically what I call the golden lead magnet. And I find it to be just like the best way of really quickly getting people to feel like they know and absolutely trust you. And when you feel that you’ve got something like that, it’s so much easier to be confident and just reach out to other people and be like, hey, I’d like to talk about this thing, and feel excited that you have something of value to bring them back into your world with.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes, I love that you took us through that whole story, too, of where you got that inspiration from and how it works. Because we’ve all been there when we’re struggling, we’re trying to learn. And that’s the very reason this and that, and I so resonated with that. And when you were saying what you came up with the golden lead magnet, when we first talked about it reminded me a little bit of me doing a live challenge. I know that works, that taking a video and breaking it up. And with our challenge, our videos are long. But that concept of helping them solve the problem, one problem and highlight again another that next level problem, I love how you put that. 

But that day by day, it does mirror a little bit of a challenge, but in a way that is easier to digest because it’s small videos and is evergreen. So it doesn’t necessarily take that energy of a challenge, which is a lot of energy. So I think psychology, I’m working because psychology wise you’re spot on. But this is packaged in a way that is easier to have going evergreen and probably more digestible for them and not giving them hours and hours of content like we do and a challenge per se. 

Glenn Allen  

Yeah, absolutely.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. So with this golden lead magnet, I have so many questions. First question, though, I’m curious about your take on right now. I think these low ticket offers are really hot. Do you think we still need to always have someone who might be like, oh, I want to do this. But I want to charge for it. What’s the benefit of having it free versus that low price, which as I’m saying, but still? How do we decide? Do we want to charge for it? Do you want it to be free? Where do you see that fitting in? 

Glenn Allen  

You can always have your SLO or order bump off of this, if you’ve got something that really helps get fast results with it or something that you can plug in to go with this kind of thing. At the end of the day, you want to have something that draws people into your audience. And if you can get them to pay for that thing, and it’s a low ticket, then do that. That’s absolutely fine. I’ve seen that kind of thing work with them. What is her name, Laura Key. I can’t remember her name, but she’s all about live streaming. And she had this really low ticket thing. And when she’s on podcasts, she always talks about that low ticket thing. It was never a freebie. And clearly that was working for her. I’m a very flexible person. When it comes to marketing. 

There’s not a lot of things where I’m like cut and dry. And this is the only way to do it. And if you don’t follow it to the T, it’s not going to work for you. I think that we fall into that mentality far too often. But it’s important to understand that all of these things, you can radically break down and make work the way you want them to work.

Jaclyn Mellone  

I’m with you. I usually don’t have hard and fast rules either. And I think it’s good to have both. I love having those little price offers that attract the customers. But I think you’re leaving something on the table if we don’t have any freebies, if we don’t have a chance to bring those people into our world for free before they’re ready to commit even a low commitment and introduce them to us. And I feel like that’s what you’ve put together with this golden lead magnet, this different way of doing a freebie where it’s not just a PDF or an eBook, but it’s really a way to solve a problem and for them to experience what it’s like to work with you or learn from you.

Glenn Allen  

Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, that is one of the most important things too. If you’re going to the grocery store, and there’s somebody in a little chaos, and they’ve got some new product. They’re not gonna just hand you a pamphlet on what that product tastes like. They’re gonna give you a sample. She goes without saying, if you’re trying to get people into some kind of one on one service with you or a group coaching, or something where you’re the face of it, you’re the personality. And what really gets people is you, and that is a lot of us, that’s our businesses. That it makes perfect sense to show that brilliance and get people to see what it’s like to learn from you and to hear your expertise, either just in an audio or on video, rather than just a PDF or something like that.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Oh, I love that you said audio because that’s just so much easier than to be on video. Oh, and I do use Hello Audio. So we could do something like this on Hello Audio. Now, when they get this freebie, do they have it forever? Or do you take it away at some point?

Glenn Allen  

That’s a good question. With mine, I actually do a 14-day thing because what I teach is, the golden lead magnet is actually teaching you how to create your own golden lead magnet. So there’s some things you got to do that number one, you got to outline the thing and you gotta do it in a way we get it so that it’s not overwhelming to people and then you can actually make the thing and so I want people to actually take action. So to kind of light a fire under the keys there. I only allow them to have access to this for 14 days. That’s that, it is gone.

Jaclyn Mellone  

I love that twist because that’s what we do in a challenge too. And I’ve never thought to add that into an evergreen situation. And you are, you’re doing it to get them into action because how many freebies do we all have that we’ve never seen anything with.

Glenn Allen  

Absolutely.

Jaclyn Mellone  

The land of the forgotten freebies. And getting them into action to get that result is what’s going to move them solving that next big problem. If they don’t ever solve that first problem, I guess they’re not really primed for the next big problem.

Glenn Allen  

Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s another kind of category that I look at as a criteria for what I’m trying to figure out. What’s a great topic for building a lead magnet to kind of mirror what you just said about getting into the next thing. There’s certain things that you might do in your services, or your coaching or product or whatever that requires them to have a certain level of competency first. Or there’s a certain part of your business where you could be paid to help them do certain things. But you’re like, I don’t really like working with people that are at that level. And that’s kind of part of what birth is, too. When I work with course creators, while I have worked with some people on helping them actually create their course, or outline their course or build it, that’s not really my thing. 

There’s a lot of people who have those products. A lot of people that came to me, they’ve already watched Amy Porterfield digital course Academy. They already have a course and they’re just like, alright, Amy’s not gonna actually hold my hand here. I need somebody to hold my hand. And that’s what I love doing. I know all that kind of speed bumps they’re gonna hit and all the tech problems they might not know how to solve and all that stuff. So I decided I don’t necessarily want to build a product on how to build courses. But I’d like them to have the ability to like, know how to build a list, and have an audience. I want them to know how to do some basic tech stuff. And so I thought, I’ll just build a freebie that kind of gets them doing those things before they even talk to me.

Jaclyn Mellone  

So good. I’m like, okay, now you have me thinking of like, so it’s for someone listening who doesn’t have a freebie. And I guess, what are some of those questions that you asked yourself to figure that out? Or for someone that has a freebie maybe, how do they tweak this to fit into that model? Because I could see it’s like, okay, well, I already did all this work to have freebies, and maybe they’re not doing what we want them to do. Can we update an old freebie to fit into this? 

Glenn Allen  

I love updating all the freebies to fit this because you don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel or throw out what you already created. In fact, if you have a freebie, you just make it a downloadable component of the video or something like that. You can basically take what you’ve got, and just break it down into these smaller pieces. Because the way we learn, we want these short bite sized things. We don’t want to watch a half an hour thing right now, in one sitting or anything like that. We want to get these quick wins. That’s what it’s about. And when you do that, like little bits of short wins, it creates like this dopamine rush for us. It creates this sense of excitement and accomplishment. And what that’s really doing is actually that is creating a sense of almost like addiction or like falling in love with your content. I mean, you’re literally making those love chemicals. So they will love you. They will relate your face and your voice to oh, when I hear that voice, I’m getting a result. I’m making progress in my life. I like this person. So you’re building that trust in such a crazy chemical way. A lot of people don’t think about that sort of thing.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Oh, I love that you brought that up of how it’s really like you’re creating a relationship with them. And it’s being intentional and how we’re doing that. Now back to that old model of lead magnets, where we’re introducing them to ourselves and all like, all of those things. Do you still leave that in? Or does it just naturally happen? Because we’re on video or audio, and that’s coming across more clearly than it would in an email.

Glenn Allen  

That’s a really good question. I was just talking to my group. We were talking about how you know a lot of us are especially there’s a lot of newbies who are coming into the digital space. And even some of us that have been in it for a while, and we’re looking at these books that were written like five years ago and five years aren’t in the grand scheme a long time ago. But in the digital marketing world, that might as well have been the 1950s for certain things. You should do a soap opera sequence where you’re telling your whole brand story across three emails, the cliffhanger and all this stuff. It’s like, that’s now played out. Because we’ve been forced into our homes to work from home. And we’re dealing with business online. And we’re all doing all this email marketing now. And we’re all getting more and more marketing savvy. And we’re getting a little bit overwhelmed with all the marketing fluff. 

Yes, of course, you have to. You don’t want to be a commodity of information, like tap water, where you turn the faucet on, it’s always there. And you just expect that you take it for granted. You want to be a person and a personality and let people know about you. But what happens is through showing up an audio or video, that connection is being built and maybe you’re not putting your story brand in there yet. But what you can do is you can ascend from there and pepper in client results or blog posts you have that are related. You tie it into other bits of value and continue adding value through your nurture sequence. So I will put little things in there. But I’ve talked to a lot of other people in the digital space who have been at this for a while and they’re saying a lot of the same things. It kind of starts trimming some of that marketing fluff a little bit. Your story, it’s great to have a story and a brand story and all that but you don’t need to have kind of the long bloated email marketing sequences that we are told to make. Just even a few years ago, you can kind of pepper things in and people will get a sense for you, the more they engage with you. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Which just feels like a big relief to me, because it always seems like a big project. Trying to figure out how to write all those things and make them connect and have all these emails. And yes, it was a lot of work.

Glenn Allen  

Yeah, one of the most popular books is Donald Miller StoryBrand. I hear about it all the time. But do you know how old that book is?

Jaclyn Mellone  

Four years.

Glenn Allen  

I think it’s 10 years old. Can you believe that? I read his follow up book and he said, I should have acted sooner. I should have written a follow up book sooner. This is my attempt to make that right. I’m paraphrasing. But he says something like that, in his follow up book marketing Made Simple, where he kind of realized I made this thing everybody thought it was great. But I didn’t really other than like a course he sold, give you a real practical follow up for it. And so a lot of people are misusing it and thinking, oh, I need to make this big saga and create all these stories everywhere. It’s a little misguided. And so yeah, you don’t have to worry about all that. You can throw that aside.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Interesting. I haven’t read his follow up book. So I’ll have to go check that out. But I did love the story brand. And I think it does. It gets you thinking about things. But sometimes if we overwhelm our especially new people to our world with all this information, like are they, do they even want to hear it? Are they ready to hear it all and all of that with your strategy here? We’re giving them what they want. Like this thing that they really want the content on, but in a way that is pulling them into our world where we’re kind of slowly dripping out these things. Kind of I guess, because we’re using relationship analogies here is probably the equivalent of okay, maybe. I’m like the first day. They are here, like every yeah, like you lead that up really well with the relationship stuff. But it’s like, okay, let’s stick a little time. And then once we know someone better than we want to hear more, we want to hear all those stories, and we understand the context of it more.

Glenn Allen  

Yeah, dating is a perfect analogy for that. I recently engaged in. So for the last so many years, I was dating like crazy. And you get on these dates where they just want to talk about themselves and talk about themselves. And you don’t get the chance to ask questions and learn about people. There’s no mystery. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to just you know, have somebody just tell you their life story right up front. It’s a very weird way of going about things. So that’s a great analogy.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Well, I’m glad I’m all coming together here. So anything else we should think about when I guess putting together our plans for traffic and for leading people to this golden lead magnet, or any other like stories you have of your own lead magnet or client one? 

Glenn Allen  

Sort of thing. Well, one thing that’s been really great about this is just like how much more engagement I have, and how much more people feel like they really know who I am. And trust me from this, and it’s really started to create this weird celebrity status for me in different forums. And I don’t think I’d have that if I just had a PDF.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Okay, now, I’m intrigued. Tell me more. So what’s happening here. What types of things are used?

Glenn Allen  

So I’ve seen part of several online. Facebook communities of other course creators, of other marketers and things like that. And sometimes I’ll just go in and answer questions and just provide value. And when I was first testing out this golden lead magnet, that idea, I just sent it to a bunch of people just to see number one, are there holes in my funnel? As are spelling mistakes, things like that.

But more people started asking about it. And then that post still exists, and I still get people asking about it. And a few times now, I’ve gone into different forums. And because I’ve been alerted. So and so’s mentioned you. And I’ll go read the post. And there’ll be some question about something and someone says, yeah, I discovered this guy, Glenn Allen, and he’s got this great mini course on how to pick the perfect lead magnet topic. And then how to build it to get repeat engagement, and then how to use that to do XYZ. And then other people are like, oh, yeah, Glenn is great. Oh, yeah, he’s the best. I don’t know these people. It’s such a strange feeling. So it kind of creates this weird little, it creates authority for you to build that brand.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. Well, what you’ve done here is you’ve taken the bigger topic that you can hit because you were saying, like I can help people with selling their courses from the audience building and how they’re going to convert that audience and that whole funnel and all of the steps. You’ve kind of taken this broader knowledge base that you have that you can help people with. And you’ve identified one of those big first pain points, kind of like you were saying with the hashtag story. You pulled out the lead magnet, and you became the go-to guy for lead magnets. And the cool thing about that is that it’s early enough in your customer journey where people are getting introduced to your. You’re known for this thing that’s very closely connected to everything else. 

So it’s not like it stops you from upselling or people hiring you for other things. But it’s so identifiable. It’s so taggable, as they like to say, but it’s like something people are asking questions about needing help with. And so it’s easy for people to tag you, and share this especially free resource. And you dazzled them in that free course. So that’s really cool how that’s from this thing with totally automated, they’re getting this result. They’re seeing you as that authority on that topic. And it’s really shareable on this, for this, like one very specific thing. That’s the perfect lead into everything else that you do.

Glenn Allen  

Exactly. And some of the ideas for that, it came from. You’ve got this Plug-N-Pitch idea. And I thought, well, how the heck am I really going to get on podcasts, if my current freebies just kind of feel I wasn’t really excited about them. But I didn’t know what the heck I was doing and they’re all over the place. I had a bunch of different freebies, that I didn’t throw them away. I just kind of decided, well, for every one of those lead magnets I already have, I’ll just make sure that in the nurture sequence, I get people on this same train and say, hey, by the way, I got a free gift for you. And then they’re gonna go through that Google lead magnet as well. It really gave me the confidence to approach other thought leaders knowing I had something really valuable rather than just another PDF that was just so.

Jaclyn Mellone  

So true. Now, the funny thing is, it gave you the confidence to approach these other thought leaders. But from the podcaster perspective, it’s like I don’t care what today’s freebie is like. It’s just funny, the perception to have. But I think when it’s you declaring that that’s an area that you can talk about, and that you’ve been, because you are not just saying, oh, I can talk about this. But because you’ve created something that teaches on it, that gets people a result, and you’ve map that out. It’s you’ve anchored in that authority. 

So that feels more real people are going to experience it, and they probably go through it and invite you to be on their podcast, because they’re like, oh, I want you to talk about this with my audience. So you start to get that effect, too. And that’s what’s really cool about having this as a freebie. I think it’s important to have offers that anchor our authority. But it doesn’t have to be this big Signature Course. It could literally be the golden lead magnet.

Glenn Allen  

Yeah. You just think about what you want to be known for? What would you like to be the go-to? And I think you’ve been talking about this in your authority armor exercise, to this kind of, do you have offers that align with what you want to be known for? And I find that a lot of people don’t. And so.

Jaclyn Mellone  

It’s so basic, but it’s true. It’s a common thing which is that you don’t necessarily have an offer that specifically maps out that thing. No, it’s so true. Well, you definitely have my wheels turning on how we can be leveraging this more and really just thinking more strategically, and really revisiting our lead magnets, because they are still important. It is still a great way to convert this, whether it’s on your own platforms or other people’s platforms. It’s a great way to bring people into your world, but not necessarily through the old way. And this is a new way to approach it in a way that whatever it sounds like this works for. I mean, what types of offers is this work for? I guess, let me ask you that instead of assuming that they are offering other offers that you don’t think this would work for.

Glenn Allen  

Offers that it wouldn’t work for? I don’t think so. Like I said before, if you’re somebody who is selling a service, where you’re the face of it, and sometimes even not. There’s actually a guy, Chris, who reached out and was just really thankful. He said, I bought a DCA about Amy Porterfield course. I bought Rylan Tans thing and he bought it like one other course. And he said, this is the best thing I’ve seen. I was so blown away by that. He said, this is really easy to repeat for what we do. And he has a business in Australia, teaching people like Ted Talks, speakers, or just corporate sales people or whatever. How to take elements of design and certain tools to make really impactful presentations. And when I saw what he was doing, it’s like an agency, I’m like, how the heck can you take what I’m doing and turn it into this thing for your agency. And he ran with it and did it and then sent it to me and I went through and I was like, oh my gosh, this is brilliant. This definitely tees you up to whether he has a little course on design. And he also has a high ticket offer where it’s like we will create your presentation and just bam right into it. And so yeah, I haven’t really seen anything where it supports like that doesn’t make sense. You can’t, never mind, don’t do this.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yeah, possibilities are endless. Okay, so one, we have a webinar coming up so I was so excited about this and we’re so much in alignment with okay we want you to be the go-to gal or guy. And if you are leveraging other people’s audiences, but even your own, having that way for people to take that next step with you is so important. And Glenn has a webinar, and we decided we’re going to do this live this month. So we can invite you to be a part of it for those of you who are listening when this airs. So tell us a little bit more about that webinar.

Glenn Allen  

So I want to talk about what you can do to build your audience and authority mostly organically by leveraging other thought leaders. And as we talked about the golden lead magnet, that’s the first step, you need to have something to get people in your world. But there’s really like a four step process that I work with my clients on, and building traffic and building awareness. And so that’s what we’ll be talking about is just that four step process to put a call basically, the golden lead funnel. So you’ve got your golden lead magnet, now you plug that in, and that’s the first step of the process. From there. It’s just like, okay, now you need the other pieces to have a golden lead funnel, that’s just gonna organically. And if you want to add ads, it’s gonna really help you build an audience and authority.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes, we’re going to have a lot of fun and it’s going to be so helpful. So definitely come join us live, you can go to jaclynmellone.com/golden. And then Glenn, how can we stay in touch with you?

Glenn Allen  

You can check me out. I’m on Instagram, like most folks at the Glenn Allen show or hit me up Ed’s Glenn at the Glenn Allen show calm.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Alright, awesome. And we will put that all in the show notes. And I think I’m gonna leave that blooper in there. Because that was too funny. All right, thank you so, so much, Glenn. This was a blast and so inspiring and insightful. And I’m really excited for this webinar coming up.

Glenn Allen  

It’s a pleasure to be on your podcast.

Jaclyn Mellone  

If you are anything like me, after listening to this conversation that your brain is swirling with ideas and you want more and how to create and implement this idea, the strategy of the golden lead magnet and the golden lead funnel. Well, if that is you, you are in luck later this month on April 21. So I guess depending on when you’re listening, it may not be later this month, it might be like tomorrow. So be mindful of the calendar. But on April 21, Glnen and I are hosting a free masterclass where he is going to really like walk us through this step by step. And if you’re curious, if you’re excited, if you’ve got ideas, brew ideas, brewing and want more, definitely come join us. You can do that by going to jaclynmellone.com/golden.