8 Ways to Leverage Guest Expertise to Boost Customer Loyalty and Retention

Want to maximize the value of your expertise and guided practices? Use these 8 tips to leverage expert teachings to boost customer loyalty and retention!

When you’re looking for someone to teach you something new, you look to the experts, right?

That same is likely true of your online customers, who are going to be more interested in tangible, practical solutions from experts they recognize in your niche.

This is especially true for those who are looking for spiritual, financial, or physical healing: they want to be empowered by expert healing content…

…not left wondering whether you’re the real deal!

So the question is: how do you leverage your own healing expertise to maximize sales and customer loyalty?

And what’s the best customer retention model to make sure your customers keep coming back for more?

When it comes to online healers, spiritual teachers, and other life coaches and mentors, we recommend branching out of your comfort zone to incorporate expert opinions from within your industry into your content and website.

By that we mean inviting guest experts to contribute to your content through podcasts, webinars, or online events that you can share to your audience through free and paid offers.

You can even host a video interview and live Q&A on the topic of your choice, and boost it online through the social posts, landing pages, and email newsletters that are already a part of your marketing strategy!

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Then, as these experts share their knowledge and techniques with your existing user base, they’ll not only enrich your own content offerings online and provide a ton of authority to your brand…

…but you’ll also benefit from high-quality, qualified leads that come to you from their existing network. Best of all, it’s likely these leads are already interested in the topics, themes, and practices your business explores.

Bring in external experts to boost customer loyalty and retention

Our founder Pol Cousineau would be the first to tell you how he raked in a ton of great benefit from inviting guests to speak, including being named among iTunes new and noteworthy top 10 spiritual podcasts with his show, The Spiritual Voice.

In fact, here’s what he had to say when we asked how that looked for his business The Spiritual Voice (which had over 100 episodes at the time):

Sure, sure, these experts can help guide content creation and interesting topics, but what other benefits did he see when it came to sharing other’s expertise?

See the pattern here?

When Pol invited guests to join his podcast, he gained more followers, more content, and more engagements with other members in the spiritual healing niche.

This was a win-win situation for everyone involved–which is why we continue to recommend this customer retention strategy here at The Digital Navigator.

In fact, that’s the main reason we’re exploring 8 specific ways you can leverage yours and others’ healing expertise into ultra-loyal customers who are more likely to purchase your digital products and services down the road.

Here we go!

8 Ways to Leverage Expert Teachings to Boost Customer Loyalty and Retention

As promised, there are the customer retention examples and strategies for small businesses that we use ourselves (and for our clients) at The Digital Navigator:

1. Leverage Visibility and Access

Inviting guest experts to your show is a mutually beneficial agreement, and so it’s not uncommon to see that these experts will be willing to participate in interviews and podcasts in exchange for visibility and access to your free and paid audiences.

So, when you start reaching out, make sure you have a good snapshot of who your audience is, how many people you are connected with, and what they’re interested in. As a result, they may be more willing to collaborate without an immediate need for monetary compensation.

(See Step 3: Define payment arrangements beforehand for more details on leveraging visibility)

2. Be selective about collaboration

You might be tempted to take just about any guest that is willing to share their expertise on your streams, but we recommend focusing on those who already have some experience in collaborations or with guest speaking.

That’s because they understand the value of making the host look good, and can naturally promote your platform in return for the increased visibility they’re getting. They also tend to be more eloquent, due to having more speaking experience, which can help ensure a better finished product or save countless hours of editing.

Of course, we do encourage you to prop up beginners in the space if you really trust their work, or feel confident in what they have to say. You can even show them other guest interviews you’ve done that were successful. This will let them know the style of responses you prefer.

3. Define payment arrangements beforehand

Over time and as your business grows, the experts you hire may already have fees associated with their appearance. Not to mention, as you become more recognized in your niche, the ability to pay others to share their knowledge will give you a ton of added authority.

But should you pay for guest experts?

By default, you should not pay guest experts. That’s because access to your audience is valuable!

If they have a large audience, then you can consider paying them, but remember: the larger your own audience, the less you should pay the guest expert since you’re leveraging increased visibility.

If, however, you don’t have anyone in your audience, then guest experts may ask for a fee–and in this case, the trade-off is more balanced. Similarly, if you are going to share that content in a paid community, the guest expert may understandably ask to be paid. Just don’t forget to leverage the fact that your paid community has already ‘proven’ they’re willing to pay for content in your niche.

4. Schedule recurring content creation

As you begin to invite more and more guest experts into your ‘circle’, and as they see the tangible benefits of presenting to your audience through clicks, social media engagement, and the like, you may find that you no longer have to seek out new experts. You can invite interesting and metric-boosting guests back on a monthly, or even weekly basis!

For example, you might give them a time slot every Friday to share special insight on the topic you’re discussing. Whatever the case may be, make sure these guests are sharing practices, techniques, and insights that are super accessible to your audience.

And don’t forget to add categories and tags to the pages you use to embed or host this content, so you both can benefit from increased organic traffic as well.

5. Share content with both free and paid users

One of the key balancing acts that you have to do when sharing content is to discern what will be offered for free, and what will be offered to paid, member, and VIP audiences.

As a rule of thumb, we like to provide our VIPs with extended how-tos and video access that leads them through step-by-step guides, practices, and techniques to improve their coaching, course creation, online training, or spiritual mentorship business.

Then, we provide our free users with short versions of that lengthy content, including the practical aspects that move audiences toward solving their needs. These are almost like teaser trailers that get them excited about, and potentially invested in, the paid membership content your primary audience is already getting.

That way, we can ensure we are catering to various audience segments in our marketing retention funnels and lead generators as well!

6. Repurpose expert content into other formats

We talk about repurposing content a lot at The Digital Navigator, since it is deeply connected with how much work we end up putting into the content we create.

No one wants to be swamped with content blocks when there’s already so much opportunity to create more sustainable content practices through repurposing.

That’s why we recommend using your interview, guest appearance, or podcast recording to curate other content that you can share around your site, and on other platforms you’re connected with.

For example, you can use it to create simple infographics (that you can then share with your guest expert…yet another perk you may be able to offer), email campaigns, social media posts, and other article or blog content that maximizes the reach of that one initial guest appearance.

Just don’t forget about using related and relevant search engine keywords to keep things organized inside and outside of your site.

7. Develop a set of content teasers

We mentioned content teasers above, but what exactly does that look like? Basically, you want to share the most high-level parts of that content in your teaser, while hinting that your paid programming or membership will help them achieve the results they’re looking for.

What you can do is formulate a small teaser in video or audio format that showcases these central points at about five or ten minutes in length. Share the ‘how’ of the technique or practice in 3 short steps, and then talk about how this practice will help address customer challenges and goals (you’ll need an understanding of your target audience to do that).

8. Publish interview transcripts and optimize for search engines

One of the simplest ways you can repurpose guest expert-centered content to get yourself an extra blog post in your content schedule is to run the video or audio content through a transcription software like Otter.ai (or you can upload to Vimeo, and their transcriber will do it for you, free). Otherwise try software options like YouTube, HappyScribe, Riverside or Descript.

Next, copy that transcript to a new article or post, insert a few search engine optimized keywords that are relevant to the theme, and have your developer embed the video or audio at the top of the post. Just make sure the landing page or post actually links to the original source content as well, to connect the two for customers, and for search engines who want to categorize your content.

Want help with your expert healing content to boost customer loyalty and sales?

Not only will you find the ultimate resources to help life coaches, online trainers, course creators, and spiritual mentors grow their online business through our free resource library and free digital marketing masterclasses…

…you’ll also find a team that genuinely cares about making sure you meet your sales goals over the next year!

We have a well-proven process for helping online business owners create, market, and sell their expertise, and we have transformed that expertise into a service that will boost your online impact in your niche.

So whether you’re looking for a little advice on where to go next with your business (our marketing specialists can help you navigate our library of resources), or if you want to see how we can provide flexible, hands-on support with your coaching or healing business, then go ahead and schedule a free consultation with us!

We’re so excited to see what you can do, and what you’re already doing. Plus, getting to know you will give us even more of an opportunity to see how we can help online businesses with great new content–so don’t hesitate to ask any of your questions: we’re here to listen.

Until then!

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