Posted by: Daniel Levis
July 2, 2008
Issue #450

Interview and Be Interviewed
… For Fun and Profit!

Dear Web Business-Builder,

Yesterday, being Canada’s 141st birthday — I got to wonderin’ …

What would life be like up here in Canada if we hadn’t wupped you Yanks in that war?

… Would the Russians have gotten away with invading Chechnya and Saskatchewan?

… Would VCRs be legal?

… Would baby seals still be clubbed to death on the Toronto ice flows?

I guess we’ll never know …

What I do know is that to celebrate this Canada Day, instead of giving you the usual 13-gun salute, fireworks, and double ration of rum … here I am doling out Web marketing advice.

I know everybody hates it — advice that is — but think of it as a gift from the Great White North … right up there with Captain James T. Kirk, Tommy Chong, and Pamela Anderson. 

Now where was I … before fantasizing about being a lifeguard?

Oh right — advice. Well here it is: Every day — come hell or high water — make it a point to reach out to at least one other business, trade association or publisher to set up an interview.

Here are just a few of the many benefits a steady flow of promotional interviews can bring to your business:

• Benefit #1 — Tightens the bond you enjoy with your existing list of clients and prospects. When you interview bona fide experts for your people — about topics of intense interest to them — you’re bringing value, cementing relationships, and increasing the likelihood of future purchases.
• Benefit #2 — Creates problem solving content that can be turned into saleable products. There’s simply no faster or easier way to create hot selling new info-products than putting experts on the phone, and grilling them for solutions to problems your market is desperate to solve.
• Benefit #3 — Builds your brand and personal credibility. This one works both ways. When you interview the wisest gurus in your niche, some of their credibility naturally rubs off on you. Doubly so, when they interview you.
• Benefit #4 — Generate hyper-responsive leads. Access to pre-recorded and live interviews online is a great excuse to get people to opt-in to your database. Radio interviews can also drive opt-ins in large numbers. Ditto for interviews used to create feature stories in newspapers, magazines, and books.
• Benefit #5 — Make immediate sales. Leads captured through interviews are some of the hottest you’ll find anywhere. And when you put a strong sales process in place, you can automatically convert a goodly portion of them into immediate sales. As you bask in the afterglow, you’ll have your “reach out each day” habit to thank.

Yes, interviews are just busting with benefits. But alas, all of these wonders of the Web marketing world don’t happen without careful planning. There is an art and science to turning interviews into business growth.

Your time is one of your most valuable assets, and not every interview scenario is a guaranteed winner. How do you make sure your time is wisely invested? When making proposals, how do you know what makes a seductive pitch? When evaluating proposals, what should you be looking for?

In just a few words: Create win/win/win situations.

You’ve got to ask yourself:

1. Where’s my money?

I don’t recommend doing interviews just for the sake of “exposure.” There are exceptions, of course, but being a direct response guy, I think you should always be looking for an immediate return from your efforts. Have a revenue target. It will help you to make better decisions about what you pursue, and what you don’t.

Get a feeling for the size of the audience before committing to be interviewed. And be sure you’ll have at least a few minutes to talk about your business and what you’re selling at the end of the interview.

Normally I provide a list of questions for the interviewer to ask that lead naturally to the sale. At the very least you should have the opportunity to refer your audience to your website. Not the home page of course. Drive your listeners to a squeeze page or a page that sells a product. Duh!

When someone asks you if you want to interview them, try to get access to a recording of a previous interview to evaluate the content. Be sure it meets your quality standards. And if you’re interviewing that person to generate a commission from sales made to your audience, evaluate your potential interviewee’s sales process as well.

2. What’s in it for the other guy?

When reaching out to a potential partner, give them clear reasons why they should consider your offer. When someone approaches me to interview them, I have the following concerns:

• Is the subject matter consistent with what my subscribers expect from me? Does it compliment what I’m already giving them? Is it quality content they’ll value?
• Is the offer and price point right for my subscribers? Will they buy? Will there be a solid call to action and sound follow-up? 
• Are there residual income possibilities? Can I repurpose the content, offering it for sale, or as an ongoing lead generator?

Not all publishers will have the same goals or concerns. I have been interviewed by publishers who were simply looking for content for books, newspapers, magazines, and radio talk shows. Their main interest is the “pull value” of the topic, and quality of the content.

Regardless of what your interview partner wants from the deal, do your best to give it to them if at all possible. Never look at an interview opportunity as a one shot deal. If everybody wins, you can repeat the process again and again.

3. What’s in it for the audience who will ultimately experience the interview?

As an interviewee, you’ve got to think carefully about connecting with the different audiences you’ll be addressing. In each case, take some time to understand what draws them to your host. Then speak their language. Present your material in a context they’ll be familiar with. And where possible, use examples that are applicable to their situation when getting your points across during the interview.

As an interviewer, help your interviewee to understand your audience’s needs, interests, and frame of reference. Strategize a little. Create as much value as possible for your listeners. That’s how you’ll maximize your results from each interview.

Interviews are a marketing discipline, just like any other form of promotion. When I do an interview, my assistant and I go through a documented 16-step process to try and maximize the opportunity.

Here are a few of the more important steps:

Write invite copy — The more people who experience your interviews, the more money you’ll make. The copy that entices people to consume those interviews is important. Even when you are the one being interviewed, it pays to take the invite process into your own hands. Help your interviewee to attract people to the interview by giving him sample invite copy.

Write the squeeze page — It most cases, it makes good business sense for you to handle as much of the logistics of creating and delivering the content as possible. This allows you to demand a “registration” from everyone who consumes the content, thereby using the interview as a list building opportunity. The strength of your squeeze page will determine your results.

Create an interview outline — Work with your interviewer to understand the needs of his or her audience, develop a series of relevant questions, and give it to them. Impromptu interviews can work, but creating a structured flow for the interview that leads logically to your call to action is more likely to make you money.

Create supporting material — Usually I like to create some kind of an involvement device to go along with the interview that helps people get the most out of the material I’m presenting. Nothing fancy … it might contain just a quick summary of the goal of the interview, a bullet for each question (with plenty of room for note taking), and a call to action.

Set up and populate a new autoresponder series — Whenever I do an interview where I’m able to generate leads, I like to segment those leads. That way I can target these prospects for future special offers they’re likely to be interested in. My assistant also programs a series of pre-written, content rich follow-ups that go out to that list at pre-determined intervals to generate additional back end sales.

Create links — The links you use in your interview are important. You want to be able to track results and split revenues, but you also need attractive looking links that people will want to click on. For this reason, you’ll want to mask your tracking links. If your interview is distributed in audio format, you will also need these masked links to be easy to understand when spoken, and easy to spell, so they can be typed into a browser with a low probability of error.

Write a follow-up series — In order to maximize sales, you’ll want to send a series of follow-up messages designed specifically to get people who listened to your interview to buy the product you were promoting. Often, I will place some kind of a time limitation on the offer, and count down the days to its expiry.

Set up a feedback mechanism — And finally, you’ll want some subjective feedback as to how your interview was received, as an aid to improving your material going forward. You can do this ad hoc, but I prefer to have a defined process for collecting this all-important feedback. The best way I’ve found for doing this is with a blog. What I usually do is create a short blog post and invite people to submit comments at the end of the interview.

So there you have it dudes and dudettes … everything you ever wanted to know about growing your business with interviews.

If I missed anything — or you just want to say happy birthday to Canada — feel free to strike up a conversation in the comment box below.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™

Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these.

Looking for more of Daniel’s articles? Check these out.

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

Want to share or reprint this article? Feel free. Just give us full attribution and a link to our Home Page when you do.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

Related posts

• Free Money
• Buzz, Baby … BUZZ!
• 3 Money Clutching Tactics for Turning Little Dollars into BIG Dollars Online!
• The “Flow State” Secret …
• Rev Up Your Sales With A Google AdWords Campaign

---

10 Comments »

1. Comment by Tony Smith — July 2, 2008 @ 10:16 am

   Happy Birthday Canada!

   My Buddy has emigrated to Canada from the UK, and has just come back for a visit…. we definitely want to move to Vancouver, BC, where he is!!

   excellent article, thanks for that, it’s confirmed the importance of interviews to me.

   cheers.

   p.s. if you ever need to interview someone about how to be fat and lazy, reading marketing article after another, but not getting any work don, then count me in!! ;0)

2. Comment by Tom Fisher — July 2, 2008 @ 11:31 am

   Daniel,

   Your article on doing interviews was very good.  I am in the process of getting ready to start doing this very thing, and your info will be of great help.

   I’m very new to this, just getting started launching a couple of sites, and thought audio interviews would help provide content, build my lists, as well as be very helpful to future visitors.

   Thanks again,
   Tom Fisher

3. Comment by Daniel Levis — July 2, 2008 @ 11:55 am

   Hi Tom,

   I’m glad you found value in this post. Get good at getting and giving interviews, and promoting with them, and I know you’ll build your business fast and strong.

   Cheers!

4. Comment by John Scola — July 2, 2008 @ 12:30 pm

   Dude… what war? 1812?

   Otherwise, the only "war" I’m aware of between Canada and U.S. happened in that John Candy movie… "Canadian Bacon."

   Or… are you messing with our minds again, Daniel?

5. Comment by Linda Byam — July 2, 2008 @ 12:51 pm

   Daniel,

   How’s it goin’, eh? Happy Birthday, O Canada! Thanks for great interview insight. Your column reminds me I’ve gotta get a passport before year’s end so I can visit from Detroit any time I want. Being able to get into Canada is worth the considerable inconvenience I’m anticipating.

   Best regards to you,
   Linda Byam

6. Comment by Daniel Levis — July 2, 2008 @ 1:03 pm

   Hi John,

   Yes, I think I’m referring to the war of 1812. If my memory serves me correctly there was an invasion into what is now Ontario, and some chick named Laura Secord did the Paul Revere thing to tip off the Brit troops. Needless to say, manifest destiny was thwarted. Then again, I could be mistaken.

   Cheers!

   Cheers!

7. Comment by Mia Doucet — July 2, 2008 @ 3:30 pm

   Hi Daniel,

   Great article, as always. Would you consider publishing your documented 16-step process for maximizing the value of interviews in a future article? 

   Cheers, from a fellow Canadian.

   Mia Doucet

8. Comment by Daniel Levis — July 2, 2008 @ 3:53 pm

   Hi Mia,

   Thanks for your comment.

   The rest of the steps are just technicalities really, and because they apply to the specific systems we use, they’re not necessarily relevant. The important ones are there in that list.

   Daniel

9. Comment by Scott Stroud — July 3, 2008 @ 12:31 pm

   Daniel - Great tips… and very timely, since my co-host and I just interviewed the man himself - Clayton Makepeace -  yesterday for an upcoming episode of The Selling New Homes Podcast!  Now, you’ve given us a path to follow so we (hopefully) don’t embarrass ourselves… or Clayton.

   Scot

10. Comment by Copywriting Kid — July 4, 2008 @ 12:29 pm

    Great post, got a lot out of it. Thanks!