#183: 3 Tiers of Partnerships to Grow Your Audience

Welcome back to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina, Onativia here to get you stoked about building up your core space business and living the lifestyle of your dreams. I really want you putting yourself out there in a bigger way. And some of you have written to me and said, Gina, I don’t have the audience I want yet, or This is what I also hear.

How do I build an audience when I’m just starting out? And if you’re starting small or actually wherever you’re building your audience, this episode is for you. I don’t care if you have a tiny audience. Miz size huge. Maybe you’ve got audience of buyers waiting for you. It doesn’t matter. In this episode, I’m going to teach you how to cultivate partnerships in order to grow your audience and your business when it comes to building up your audience.

I think there’s no better way than partnerships, because with partnerships, if someone has an existing audience, you get to borrow from them. You get to speak to them in a way that provides value and hopefully in a way that eventually they want to buy from you. Partnerships can be super powerful, especially if you find someone that compliments what you have to offer.

And we’re going to talk about three tiers of partnership to help you grow your business inside this episode. Now, before I die, then I just want to review some episodes that we’ve just done. Did you brainstorm your title for your next offer? Go back and listen to that amazing episode, that workshop that I did a link to it in the show notes.

Did you listen to Dr. Kimberly Wagner to figure out how to become one of the elite in your industry, like those pro baseball players that have a 20 year career? Go back and listen to those awesome episodes, and if you want to work together and you want to work with a digital strategist like myself and you want my eyes on your course in your marketing, think about applying for our coaching and audit, or we also have our six week accelerator to get your starter course out to market in just six weeks.

Or you can think about applying for done for you. I’ll list all those in the show notes. We’d love to work with you. Okay, let’s dive into talking more about partnerships. Now, before I go to those three levels, let’s talk a little bit about what it means to have partnerships and where to find those kind of relationships. I really pride myself on developing relationships to help build up my business.

And I know when I add value to someone, it’s going to reap dividends. Now, where are you going to find these relationships? You can connect with people via courses or mastermind or groups. You might build relationships through networking events or even doing coffee chats like Zoom chats. Can I pick your brain kind of chats? I think people sometimes miss opportunities, civil partnerships, because we’re so focused on selling.

However, if you connect with people and look for how you might support one another, that’s where new opportunities tend to emerge. I do recommend you having some sort of relationship database. It can be a simple spreadsheet where you have somebody’s name and contact information and don’t forget to leave some notes about what they do and how you connected with them.

So if someone referred you, for example, or if maybe you want to follow up the next time you have a promotion, make a note. You want to nurture these relationships and you want to remember. So having a spreadsheet and if you have a virtual assistant or assistant who can help you with this even better. All right. So now that we’ve established where to find these relationships and you’ve got that system in place and by the way, it doesn’t have to be a spreadsheet.

It could be a notebook, right? I don’t care what kind of system you use, as long as it’s consistent and you keep coming back to it again and again. I want you not just listening to this podcast and then leaving it alone, right? I want you to actually take action and maybe once a month, maybe you put this on your calendar every third Wednesday at 10 a.m. you’re going to look at your spreadsheet or your notebook and think about, okay, who do I need to reach out to?

Who do I need to nurture? Maybe I need to do a Zoom coffee chat with this person and really ask yourself how you’re going to embed partnerships and building relationships as part of your routine. Until you build it up, until it’s second nature. Dawn Ethan is the master at this. I’ll link to her episode where we talk about story, we talk about building relationships, and it is embedded in who Dawn is, this idea of building up relationships.

She It’s who she is. She’s even I have to think about it. So any time I think about nurturing, I think about dawn. And what would Dawn do? How would Dawn add value? So you could use that to how could I add value to this so that they feel supported so that maybe in the end or eventually this can be a game changer for me?

All right. Let’s get to these three tiers of partnerships. And by the way, you can jump up and down. It’s not a stepping stool or anything like that’s not a ladder. You started to your why did you work your way up to tier three? You can go up and down depending on where you are in the phase of your business, what’s your outcome, etc..

So tier one is what I call the acquaintance tier, and it’s just about spreading a little bit of love. Maybe you’re asking for a social media mansion and you’re helping spread the word about this. So maybe you have a workshop. Let’s see, for example, you have a $97 workshop that you’re putting out. You designed a couple of graphics and I say a couple, two, three.

Maybe you have a static graphic, an animated one, maybe a carousel. You can reach out to them with a quick note, send them a DM that says, Hey, I’ve got these graphics. I’m putting together this $97 workshop. We’d love if you would just spread the word. The link is this and thanks so much. Or even better, you can tag them in a post you can mention this to them beforehand, right?

Hey, I’m going to tell you in a post if you wouldn’t mind sharing it. This is another great way for them to get the word out. And it’s easy peasy. It’s very easy to reshare a post. This is definitely the most low key tier. It’s casual. You’re sharing on stories, probably not your feed. You can also tag them on LinkedIn and they can reshare.

That’s very easy to do. The effort is not huge, but it could be nice for you because if their audience is seeing what you’re sharing, what they’re sharing, then they’re getting eyeballs on something that you weren’t getting eyeballs on beforehand. Right? So it never hurts to ask. So that’s tier one definitely are most casual, not a ton of skin in the game in terms of their audience, but you’re starting to get out there, right?

It’s little baby steps. So if you’ve never asked someone or anyone to share something of yours before, this might be a really great way to dip your toe in the pool in the sharing pool. Okay. Tier two This is the beginning of a partnership. This is the friendly tier. So you got your acquaintance tier and then now you got your friendly tier.

So this could be the beginning of swapping promotions, But no money is changing hands yet. So you’re going bigger than just saying, Can you share this social post? Right. Maybe there’s an email, but again, there’s no money. You’re not invested in this way. And I’ve done this a couple of times and you don’t have to be small, by the way.

So sometimes I see different experts having promotions and I’ll reach out. So Cynthia Pacheco was on the podcast back in episode 133. She talked about starting out with SEO. Cynthia is a great digital friend. She’s in Argentina. I’m in San Diego. We keep tabs on each other. We’re always talking about what offers you the person is putting out.

I’m always looking on her stories and looking on her feed posts. This was about a year ago and I said to her, We’re both putting out packages that are similar in tone and delivery, just different in topic, right? Because she does SEO, I do courses and I said, Hey, I’ll take out your offer, you tout mine, and we just give each other a little bit of love, right?

And I could email for her, I could share on social, but it was added value for my community and it was a great swap for us and it’s somebody I keep in touch with because I consider her pure and I love to know how she’s putting out her offers and her invites. So that’s an example of something that I mentioned on social media.

But again, I could have put out an email or gone out in a bigger way, ran or Poor is another example. Beer was on the podcast in episode 64, taking the stress out of course creation. I think she’s an absolute genius. Love her. She’s somebody I put out emails for because I believed in her courses and her programs, and in exchange she’s mentioned my workshop, she’s mentioned my courses and my products, and she’s really added value to my life.

And again, no money is exchanged hands, but we’ve just promoted each other in a bigger way because we’re peers, because we’re experts. And now I do want to point out what’s so great about both Cynthia and Rand Beer is that they’re not in competition with me. They complement what I teach and their audience is a great fit for me.

So Cynthia talks about SEO. She’s in digital marketing, but she’s not talking about courses. And Rand Beer is an online marketer, but talks about stress and meditation and things that I am interested in but obviously don’t talk about, right? I’m very straight forward and get get it done. And I think she’s a nice complement to what I have to teach.

So those are two great audiences for me. My audience is great for them. So think in terms of who’s a peer, in terms of your platform, your space, and who you want to speak to, who would be great to build a partnership with and build a relationship with ongoing. All right. So that’s tier two, kind of the swapping of promotion, that friendly adding a value Tier three, in my opinion, is where you’re really becoming a paid affiliate.

This is the big leagues now, a tier three. I could break this down to different levels of launches, but the big thing here is you have a bigger structured launch planned and money does exchange hands. There’s an incentives, by the way, you can go from a simple affiliate launch to a big time affiliate launch. And if you’ve ever launched for these bigger gurus, there’s contests, there’s big money at play, There’s you get money if you have the most leads, if you have the most sales, etc..

For our purposes, I’m just talking about a foundational launch. And when I think in terms of a foundational launch, what you need for affiliates, it’s really four pieces. One, it starts with an offer, an incentive. So typically be your course with some kind of bonus package. You’re thinking through what your launch is like. It could be five, seven, ten days.

You have that launch calendar set, you have your bonuses set, and this is super important. You have an incentive because in tier three there’s money that’s exchanging hands, right? You’re with me here. That’s why it’s kind of the big leagues, because you have some contracts in place and you have incentives, whether it’s 50% that you’re giving them as a commission for a static course that they’re selling on your behalf.

Or if you’re teaching something live, it could be a 30 or 40% commission. You set that up, you’ve decided what it is. You’ve communicated that once you reach out to your affiliates, then the second piece I think you need is you need to host some kind of free event, usually free because it’s tough for affiliates to sell directly to your program.

They want to have a free event where you can promote and you show off your expertise. It could be a webinar, Hot Seats, a challenge, some kind of training, informational calls. I’ve seen it all work out in terms of having a free event. You choose what it is, setting that up and knowing you’re going to have affiliates to drive traffic.

The third piece you’re going to want in place is set up tracking for your affiliates. I love Thrive Kart. I’ve used Thrive Kart for my affiliate marketing in the past. If I can use it, anyone can use it. You can track everything inside of it. Pay outs. It’s really easy to use all link to thrive part in the show notes.

Then the fourth piece you want is a toolkit for your affiliates to help get the word out. That means email copy, social copy, graphics, etc. Anything that you think could help to get the word out and promote your course. So it’s really those four components. Now, I’m really oversimplifying an affiliate launch right now because, you know, I’m trying to keep these podcast episodes short.

Let me know if you want me to do an episode just on affiliate launches. They’re fun and there’s a lot of detail and I’ve learned a lot about them. Message me and let me know. So there is those four components to launch with Tier three. So I want you to thinking about these three tiers and what’s appropriate for your business and how you can work your way up these different tiers and one final thing I want to say for any partnership, make sure you take the time to send a quick note or a message and thank them for their support.

You want to keep building up that relationship beyond that one partnership, like I talked about with Cynthia and Rand Beer. And when people have a positive experience in partnering with you, they’re going to want to do it again and we’ll tell others about you. And that’s great word of mouth. All right. Next week, something awesome. Becky McCleary is my online business manager and has been helping me for years.

And she’s an absolute genius about, well, one, partnering and networking and building up your audience and two, summit. So I want to talk to her because I think she’s the queen of summits. How to get you out there in a bigger way and really build up your audience. You’re not going to want to miss this episode, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it.

And until next week, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.