Meet Glenn
Glen Allen is the go-to CMO of digital course launches. As a multi-instrumental musician turned marketing consultant, he helps entrepreneurs scale five to seven-figure businesses by consulting them and their team through marketing and launching digital courses. He’s the host of the Glen Ellyn Show, a YouTube channel about digital marketing, and an entrepreneurial podcast called Unstuck and Unstoppable. He also works as an unpaid chef, housekeeper and, chauffeur for three kids who call him dad.
What is the most effective way to build authentic connections with email list subscribers?
It’s to provide value to them. Definitely an imbalance of value over information about yourself or your products or pitches for your products and services. Right now, everybody is having to do a lot of their business online and a lot of that is happening through their email. We are becoming a little bit inundated and saturated right now so it’s really important to show up as a person, and not as a product, and to nurture your relationship with the people who have entrusted you with their email addresses and invited you into their inboxes by continuing to give.
For companies or organizations with multiple people, should communications be coming from the brand, or should it take that personal conversational approach?
Let’s say you are an organization. I’ve worked in the corporate space, where we had this challenge of connecting more one on one with our audience and our potential customers and clients and leads, and we kind of had to pick a face of the organization, and that didn’t have to be the founders. For a while it was me, and it was another agent of the company who was just best suited to showing up and being on camera or creating engaging content. Sometimes that means me writing in the voice of this person, but basically having a face and a voice that people can connect to instead of a brand or instead of a company is better. One of the ways that I recommend people do this is when you’re inviting people to sign up for something like a lead magnet or something that gets people into your email community, and you want to take the relationship to the next level. I am a big fan of things that are video-based, things that have a person on camera, engaging with you, talking to you, showing the values, and projecting those through personality.
What are some of the best ways to attract people into our audience when we’re building an online community?
A lot of reasons we’re building an online community is number one: it’s for the sake of the community. But also we’re in business and we’re not just in business, for the fun of it, and there is, of course, the commerce side of it, and we want to serve and help people, and we want to connect with people in a way in which it is financially viable for us. So we have things that we want to sell and offer that will help other people. When you’re doing this, a lot of people are, you know, nurturing an audience from, say, a social media platform, or a podcast, and we want to bring the conversation in a little bit more intimately and deeper into, you know, non farmed land. Social media is kind of that rented space, whereas we have our community of people in our private groups and our email list. That’s ours, especially your email list. So one of my favorite ways to build that, it’s having some kind of a lead magnet or freebie that creates value for the people who are the ideal person to work with and serve. To do that in a way that is fully aligned with how you ultimately want to help them through your paid products, your paid offers your service. I’m seeing a lot of upfront mistakes with how they go about that. The best thing you can do for somebody is to solve a problem they have. A very small burning pain, that then gives them a next level, good to have a problem. If you can solve somebody’s problem, you’re going to have somebody who is going to become a fan of you, they’re going to be engaged and connected to you with trust. I’ve seen this with things where oftentimes what’s happening is your customer or ideal client is searching for an answer to something and somehow, they come across some freebie or lead magnet. What I see often happen is they get the thing, it’s delivered to them in their inbox, they might download it, read through it, and then bounce. They’ve got no incentive to further a relationship with you. If you’re using an automated nurture sequence down the line to then inform them more about who you are and what your products or services are, and things like that. Oftentimes, it just kind of gets lost in the noise, even if your subject lines are enticing. I think a lot of that has to do with the vehicle that people use for these freebies. Downloadables don’t give you a good sense of who you are, and your talents. You need to find a way to build that trust and connection to the content.
How can we reach out to our network and collaborate with other influencers online to help build our audience?
I think one of the most important things is number one, showing up just like a person, not, you know, blasting out templates. Really taking the time to research different people and get to know what their values are to see if working with them is actually a fit. Once you’ve done that, having a sense of how does what you teach, or your expertise, or the way you serve people couple well with what value they’re on a mission to provide to their audience is critical. I’m in the Digital Course World so I’m always consulting entrepreneurs who want to build a digital course on how to launch the thing. But the problem a lot of people have is they have put all this time into a digital course and they haven’t put the time into building an audience of their own. So what I do with people is I help them forge relationships and reach out to people and network with people where they have that engaged audience already and those communities already exist, and people already have them. The thing is to learn how How to make relationships with people so that you can then reach those other audiences that are already out there. First, you make a connection and you can do that through adding value and just being a person.
Can share with our listeners one of your favorite or most successful networking experiences that you’ve had.
I know it sounds really weird, but I kind of systematize my networking, and I don’t do it to be disingenuous. I do it because I talk to so many people online that I need to track what I’m doing, or I lose track myself of who I’m talking with and who I need to keep up with. But what I like to do is I mean, number one, I love podcasts, I love connecting other people to other people and so, one of the things that I do is I look at what networks are already out there, what people are already kind of movers and shakers, and then just approaching them and adding value. I like the idea of connecting with other podcasters especially because they value other people coming in and adding value to their audience and that’s one of how they can grow is by bringing in outsiders. So with that, what I often like to do is just get to know people and promote them to my audience. If I’m engaged in a podcast or something like that, I like a specific episode, I might share that with my entire network or my Instagram or my even I’ll share that my email list because it’s something valuable to my audience and then it’s also valuable to them because they’re able to spread to a new group of people that they don’t have access to. So I like to do things like share, promote it, and even write a review and subscribe. If it’s not podcasts, there are other ways you can do this. We’re largely networking through social media platforms so you can always provide value to other people by, you know, having thoughtful comments, and sharing other people’s content, and promoting it out to your network. I feel like making that opportunity is a great way to connect to people that you might otherwise not feel like you have any access to.
How do you nurture the relationships that you have and what do you do to stay in front of these communities that you’re creating?
It’s strange, but I keep a spreadsheet of different things that I want to do for people. This kind of thing can be time-consuming and it’s not about making it a system and making it this robotic thing. You do have to put in the time to be a person and think of ways in which you can be valuable to people. I mainly use a spreadsheet just so I can stay on top of me, that’s just the way I like to work. But when it comes to the actual connections, I track ff I’ve made a connection, if I’ve connected people together, if I’ve left someone a thoughtful comment, or shared their content. So I like to have these different levels of giving over time, just to make sure that I am providing value to people, long before I ever consider asking them for anything or partnering with them. Sometimes that that, that that role is very short. II like to have virtual coffee chats with people just to learn about their business. Those conversations will immediately make you think of “Oh, my gosh, you should talk to so and so,” and that is one of my favorite ways to do that.
What advice would you have for someone that’s really looking to grow their network?
What are your pillars of expertise or value that you offer people and if you can turn those things into even some enticing headlines, you can grow your network. In terms of growing your actual network, there are so many great places on LinkedIn, where people are doing networking. Looking for people who are hosting these different networks and seeing what gaps are missing that maybe I can fill. Also asking them people if there’s anything you can help with is a great way to build a connection and get someone’s guard down. But if we start up front with what can you do for my thing, people’s guards are up and your ability to grow your community will be stunted. So show up with the other energy, and ask what can I do for you?
If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career?
I would say, learn more about business and marketing sooner. Side hustles and endeavors and like e-commerce and an Etsy store, all kinds of different things where if I would have known what I know now about marketing, I would have gone a lot further. Also, hire out sooner.
What final words of advice do you have to offer our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network?
When it comes to growing and supporting your network, find ways to get them to personally engage and reach out to you and even though it may not be scalable, find ways to put in the time to actually offer real help. It’s amazing the opportunities that that can open up for you. Whether it’s being able to speak, or joining somebody else’s network, they may promote you somewhere that you never would have expected. You just never know when you give what you know what kind of opportunities you open.
Connect with Glenn:
Check out Glenn’s Site and Podcast
Take Glenn’s FREE Golden Lead Magnet Course!