What is a Visibility Tour?

The visibility itself is the tool, it's not the result. It's the tool that you need in order to continue to grow more awareness for your brand for your business for your message, to create more credibility and authority in who you are and your expertise, and to really enhance your profile in the space in the market that you want to reach.

This is the Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO, while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

So I have been out speaking in real life rooms lately, and also on virtual events and podcasts and doing quite a lot of this. And the theme that I've been talking about is this concept that I have been applying in my own business for several months now. And something that's working really, really well for me. And so I wanted to unpack it a little bit more, because I always get asked when I start talking about it because I use this phrase visibility tour, and the visibility tour method. And what does that mean, exactly? So I want to share a little bit about what is the visibility tour, why and when you might want to use one in your business, how it works, also a case study from my own business and how this has been really building over the past several months, as well as the four elements of what is actually part of the visibility tour. So first off, I wanted to like debunk something, because this idea of the visibility tour that I had was totally inspired by Taylor Swift eras tour and then I've been talking to people are like, Whoa, now, like, I don't want to do what Taylor Swift does, because that's insane. That's like a lot of flying all over the world. And it's like years and years of I don't know, it's like the never ending tour. Now this era is tour. And it's like, so big and so unattainable sounding. And I like Ooh, yes, I understand. So let's just be honest, that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about you, going on some never ending like a marathon tour of visibility for your business. It's not even as intense, as you may have seen people doing with launching books or things like that. But it is based on this idea of from PR campaigns that I have worked on where the purpose is to enhance your visibility, and increase the volume, essentially, of your marketing and your message for a specific period of time. And my initial recommended timeframe for that is 60 days. So that's that's eight weeks, where you go a little harder than normal, you commit to some consistency, which doesn't mean you have to do something every single day. But you build your momentum. And so that's the real benefit of going on a visibility tour. It's a creates a chain reaction of momentum. And it's really amazing because you don't tend to know what one action you take is going to lead to. I mean, we'd all love to know that if I do this, then this is going to happen. But the reality is, you have to like reverse engineer it, you have to go, this happened because I did this and I talked to that person and I went to this event. And I can trace it back to like step number one, right, which is a fun game that I like to play. For me, it goes all the way back to when I was 13 years old. I had the choice to pick between two different high schools. And if I'd pick the other one, I would have never met my husband, though sometimes it's amazing how a decision and an action can really create that ripple effect that spreads out to sometimes for months at a time. Right? Because a lot of what we do when it comes to visibility can be a longer game. It's not necessarily an instant results or response that comes.

So building this habit takes this intentional action. And that's what the visibility tour is all about. And so I wanted to make sure that you didn't get kind of like, overwhelmed by the idea of creating a visibility tour, because it's a lot more simple than, like, planning for years in advance for a book tour or things that use that word. And if you're like, hello, oh, thank you, I just really needed to hear that it's not like so intense, please send me a message. If you have a different name that you think would be, you know, more exciting, have to apply to this, I'm all ears, I'm up for change again. But for now, we're calling it the visibility tour.

And so I'm going to break down just what the four pieces are, of what's included when you think about how you're going to approach doing a visibility tour. So the first one is your trusted touch points. So this is essentially what I'm calling the actions that you take on that regular basis. These are the small things that you do that take under 10 minutes, that are external facing, so they involve somebody else. So they're the kinds of things where you're making a connection. And also, it's not the behind the scenes stuff. So I just want to clarify that. We can fill up our to do lists with so many things that are like, listen to this podcast, thank you for listening, or watch this video, or do this training or, you know, redo like, like, website, copy, or whatever you're doing behind the scenes. And sure there's a place for all of that too. But I'm talking about like really putting yourself out there and making like somebody else can validate like somebody else verifies there's proof that happened, right? You didn't go for a walk by yourself with somebody else. There's proof that had happened. This is external facing. And that's what's really important is because it's about building relationships, because relationships is the core of visibility. And the best way for you to reach more people is through other people's audiences, people who have built a reputation who have created trust, and built authority with the people that are in their circle. And when they bring you in to share about whatever it is that you're doing to feature you on their podcast, or to share a gift of yours with their audience. That is giving you extra credibility and trust by way of extension from them, which is a lot easier than breaking through to a cold audience, like getting discovered on the Explore feed on Instagram, for example. So this is what the real focus is behind everything.

And then you know, doing a collaboration with somebody that's about something different and it's just you are the only consistent part of it. We want you to become known as the go to in one particular space that you work in. So that is an important part and that's the second part of the visibility tour.

The third part is that you capture your leads. So I say this all the time visibility for the sake of visibility is not helpful. You need to be able to actually build relationships. apps and nurture the people who are seeing you and connecting with you in some way. So that means you need a lead magnet to be able to collect email addresses.

So this is again, I do not prioritize social media as a method of communication, or as a method of getting discovered for visibility purposes, I prioritize email marketing, which means that we have to build an email, lead magnet. And this is relevant for you, regardless of whether your business is primarily online or offline. Because this is like the key approach to tying those two things together. And having a way for you to actually reach out and follow up and share more information and be seen more frequently, inside of a space, aka somebody's inbox. That is where they're actually going to pay attention. Because they look at their email as work, they take it more seriously. And emails get opened 30 to 40 times more effectively than social media posts get seen. So you're a percentage of your audience is going to see your social media posts is like one to 2%, statistically, and your percentage of people who are going to open emails from you is like a minimum of 30 to 40%. And that's on the low end of industry standards. So that's why email marketing is so important and why you have to create something, and I show you how to do this really simply inside of the visibility revolution, as well, within a week of a PDF, or a free resource or a cheat sheet or something that's helpful and can get somebody a really quick win. And that is valuable enough that they will trade their email address for it. So that is another important piece of what you're going to build as part of your visibility tour. So then you go out and you say, get on a podcast or you speak somewhere, or you are going to a networking event, you have something to give. So just as an example, as well, I did go to an in person event and I was speaking, but as part of it, I also got to kind of have a booth as part of the event. And what I did at that booth was I gave away a code for people to get one of my digital products, my new audio course the ultimate roadmap to visibility off social media as a gift for being there. So I was able to get their email addresses. So now I have a way of contacting them, connecting with them, following up with them, and keeping them in my world and keeping myself present and visible to them. So that I, I come to mind when they think about visibility, which is the whole purpose. And that is the key message of my visibility tour in case you didn't catch on.

So number four element of the visibility tour is that you measure your results. So a lot of this is going to be like testing out different ways to reach people testing or different collaborations that work really well. And just assessing what feels good for you. And what doesn't, right, like maybe you do decide you want to like go to a trade show or an event where you have a booth and you put all of this effort and probably some money into creating some visuals, you know, I bought a tablecloth for the booth that I did that kind of thing. And you want to know if it actually worked like was that a good audience for you was that a good connection? Are people in this space, a good fit for you to get in front of so that you can then go find more of those. One of the things that I do as part of my consistent visibility is I participate in email bundles. So these are hosted, I've never hosted one myself, but other people, there's lots you've probably he might have found me through one actually. But people will put together a bundle of great products that support a particular audience with a particular need. And so I'm finding that aligning really specifically with the messaging of that bundle is important. Like it could be part of a bundle that, you know, has all kinds of things like it has business resources, and it has personal tools, etc. Those haven't worked as well as being very specific to entrepreneurs specific to people who want to build their business and get more visible without using social media is like the ultimate level of alignment. So that's the kind of assessment when it comes to measuring results that I'm looking at, as far as like the numbers of people that are actually getting as subscribers on my email list as a result of just being really aware of what's working and what isn't so that you can fine tune that and double down on what's going to work really well for you.

So that Is the visibility tour, I hope that that makes it a little more accessible, seeming like something that's easy to do. And quite honestly, since I started it last July, I haven't really stopped. Because it's become a habit. It's enjoyable, I find it simple to make these connections. And I continue to this day to track everything that I'm doing on a calendar. So that even on the days where I feel like I just don't want to do anything, I know that if I make one connection, and do one thing that's going to set me up for future me is going to be so happy when future me has somebody sending out an email on my behalf in July. That's something that I just secured yesterday, for myself, even though I didn't even put on makeup yesterday, I didn't want to show up at all. So this is what I mean by like, what might seem hard right now is just getting going. Right is is building that momentum and taking the first step and feeling the energy. So it's not just like getting a result of, you know, getting 500 people on your email list, that's a great result or getting front page media coverage, that's a great result. But the extra benefit is the feeling of momentum, when you know that you're doing something intentional, to push yourself a little bit outside of your comfort zone to get that visibility that goes so far towards building your reputation, and your profile as the go to brand in your space. So you get to do more of what you want to do with your business, like you got into this business, because you love it. You love what you do you know the power of the impact that you can make with what you do. And you need clients in order to do that, which means you need to get more visible.

And I hope that this visibility to our method can help you there. And if you want more information, you want to unpack this a little bit more deeply, then I would love to invite you to my masterclass, you can watch it now on demand. And it is going to help outline for you the next 60 days of your visibility plan. What to do, how to do it, how to get over the fear of self promotion and the key to using social media for relationship building rather than being a content Turner. Somebody who has to create more posts and create more content. I know that I totally resist that. And if that resonates with you, then I'd love for you to check out the masterclass, the link is ksco.ca/masterclass. It's also in the show notes. And I will see you there and I'll be able to send you some follow up emails as a result of you participating in that. And I'm always here on Instagram as well, for questions for connection for you to reach out and actually let me know what's going on for you when it comes to visibility. If this resonated, please reach out, please connect and I will be glad to have a conversation with you. And so I will see you next week. The you hear you speak to you like the one sad thing for me is that the podcast is one way communication. So I really do appreciate when you guys send me a message back and let me know that you've watched or listened. You can watch it on YouTube. Actually, if you really want to watch me, speak with my hands. I'm a big hand talker. See what my fingernails are painted like right now, because they're always flashy in some way, shape or form. So bye for now and I'll talk to you next week.

You did it you just listen to another episode of the Entrepreneur School Podcast. It's like you just went to business school while you folded your laundry, prep dinner or picked up your kids at school. Thank you so much for being here. I want to personally celebrate your commitment to growing your business. You can imagine I'm throwing confetti for you right now. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review. Make sure you're subscribed and let us know you're listening by screenshotting this episode and tagging us on Instagram, head to entrepreneurschool.ca for tons of tools and resources to help you grow your business while keeping your family a priority. You can subscribe to our email list and join our community. And until next time, go out there and do the thing.