How to Grow Your Authority to Become an Influencer in Your Niche – in Just 7 Minutes Marina Barayeva

Resources/Links:

• Find out where you are on the way to become an influencer, Take the Quiz at www.marinabarayeva.com/influencer and get a guide to the next step

Summary

Marina Barayeva is an international portrait photographer, speaker and a host of the Marketing for Creatives show.

Marina is a known authority in helping entrepreneurs become influencers in their niche. Always busy with creative projects, she organized an online photography conference, fashion show and has been featured on Art People, CCTV, China Radio International, and other media.

In this episode, Marina shares how she guides creative people to become profitable business owners. Tune in and learn the mistakes business owners do in building a brand that aims to become a recognized expert in the niche.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 02:07 – Marina shares her ideal client: solopreneur, entrepreneur and creatives who have problems in marketing and building a personal brand
• 02:50 – The problems she helps solve for her clients: Help them do what they love, at the same time help them market their services to become an expert or influencers in their niche or industry
• 03:43 – Ways to help clients deal with frustration and fear
• 05:14 – Marketing mistakes entrepreneur don’t realize they are making and how to avoid them
• 06:30 – Marina’s Valuable Free Action: For now we talk about the audience- who your audience is and come up with 1-3 topics which you can share with people. What you can do and be good at and give practical advice. And then try to spread the word about it
• 07:29 – Valuable Free Resource- www.marinabarayeva.com/influencer. Take a quiz and discover What type of influencers are you as an entrepreneur
• 07:44 – How to speed up your growth? Try to collaborate with other people with other influencers

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“To become an expert or the influencer in the niche. There are two parts. There one is the audience. Those people who you already connect and another one those people who you can potentially reach.” -@marinabarayeva Share on X “(on how to speed up your growth) Everyone wants everything fast. So, the key here is to collaborate with other people and with other influencers.” -@marinabarayeva Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: Hello everyone. A very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland beaming up to as always from on the sand that Little Castaways Beach next to the waves here. Joined today by Marina Barayeva. Marina, very what is it a good morning for you? Good afternoon just.

Marina Barayeva: Good afternoon.

Tom Poland: We’re about you hanging out?

Marina Barayeva: I’m in Beijing China.

Tom Poland: Beijing China. Yeah, and I’m in this city in the capital of China in Beijing.

Tom Poland: Wow, commercial hub of the world pretty much. You are the very first person I’ve interviewed not only just the very first person I’ve interviewed that’s been in Beijing, but you are definitely the first Russian that I’ve interviewed in Beijing.

Tom Poland: So thank you for adding such an international flavor to our little show here.

Tom Poland: Folks, if you don’t know Marina, she’s an international portrait photographer, par excellence, but she’s also the speaker and host of the Marketing for Creatives show. She’s got a terrific little model for building brand awareness and generating inquiries from that. And also terrific little profiling, sorry, a questionnaire which delivers the sort of brand influence, so you are, and what level you’re at, way how you can get to the next level. So I recommend that we’ll give the URL in a moment.

Tom Poland: She’s an authority for helping entrepreneurs become influencers in their niche. She’s always busy with projects, travels the world, she’s organized an online photography conference fashion show in her spare time. And has been featured on Art people, CCTV, China Radio International, and lots of other media.

Marina, absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Marina Barayeva: Thank you, Tom for such a great intro. Privileged to serve your audience today.

Tom Poland: Terrific. Well let’s rock and roll. So the title folks is, “How to grow your authority to become an influencer in your niche.” We can do that as always in just seven minutes. Marina your seven minutes starts now. Let’s go to question number one– who is your ideal client?

Marina Barayeva: Okay. Well, my ideal audience is solopreneurs, entrepreneurs and small business owners who usually work on their own or in this small team. And they’re often good in what they do but they’re not really good at marketing. Especially creative people. When you create something, it’s more difficult to market yourself and sell your art because many people consider it as a rejection. It’s too painful for them.

Right. So if you don’t risk, if you don’t promote, you’re doing risk rejection. So six and a half minutes left just a little less. So is that the problem? Question two is what the problem you solve? So tell us more about that.

Tom Poland: Yeah. People do their work but they struggle in marketing they usually go one by one to people. And like my clients wouldn’t come to me for the consulting. They’d say like,”I do a good job. But I look at other businesses and get the most of the deals. People talk about them. They don’t talk about me.” And this is a problem. You could be good at what you do. But if nobody knows you. You’ll stay unknown for years and you can go play that you’re good but nobody buy from you. But you do not market yourself.

Tom Poland: Best kept Secret sort of thing. You know, 10 out of 10 services trapped in 2 out of 10 marketing. Thank you. Five and a half minutes left, so question 3 is what are some of the symptoms that people are going to experience with that sort of problem? Frustration sounds like one of them.

Marina Barayeva: Frustration and fear because when one person until you know, and then you come to another one, you’re already don’t feel comfortable in selling. And then if it goes for years, I had a client who had the Limo company and he’d been in business for more than five years, and then he’s like, ‘I tried to do most services. I tried to add some new features.’ But you don’t specialize in something specific. Maybe you will do your Limo service just for executives. And then you promote yourself you position yourself as only this specific service.

Marina Barayeva: Because what happens we think that if we offer more services more people will come and buy. No. You all-in-one person. Instead of that just speak one specific area and be really all good in that and make sure that other people know that you are the one. If you have a limo company you are the one, the best Limo company in the town who provides services for executives.

Tom Poland: Thank you. So. Question 4, just four minutes left, when people understand that they, what they really know they’re good at what they do. But when they realized that their marketing sucks and that they are the world’s best keep secret then they want to do something about it, before they get to you,. they’re gonna try some stuff and some of those things aren’t going to work.

Tom Poland: So questionable number 5 is what are some of the common mistakes people make when they’re trying to solve this problem?

Marina Barayeva: They tried to get good at their work. They tried to reach people in small groups that put more effort into their service. But they don’t understand that to become an expert or the influencer in their niche. There are two parts. One is the audience- those people who already connect and another one those people who you can potentially reach. You can get to others, can collaborate with other businesses, you can get media publications or speakers like all of these options to get to the new audience and offer good service. But you need to know who is that person who you target to.

Marina Barayeva: Because what happen with that Limo company they put a big banner and everyone sees that. But they do not target specific people who they want to reach. Your market to everyone instead of that you need to know where your audience and go to those places. If you focus on executives who can go to executive clubs, and do some like marketing organized event, or do some promotions over there. Then you reach the people who you want to work with.

Tom Poland: Thank you. Question 5, two and a half minutes left. One valuable free action that an audience member can implement that’s going to help them a little bit with this problem.

Marina Barayeva: For now, we talk about the audience- who your audience is and come up with 1-3 topics which you can share with people. What you can do and be good at and give practical advice. And then try to spread the word about it. Maybe you can do some public speaking, maybe you can tell about your client a story how you help them to solve the problem and it will be related to a topic, and feature the magazine in your town. And then they’ll share about you.

Tom Poland: Perfect. Thank you. Very practical. So question 6, one minute forty-five seconds left. What one valuable free resource that you could share with the audience that’s going to help them bit further.

Marina Barayeva: Well I do 5-step authority system which takes you through the very beginning to the end, how you can grow your authority. But right now you need to understand what kind of influence are you are. So you can go to marinabarayeva.com/influencer, answer a few questions and then you’ll get the result and which stage you are and what’s your next step.

Tom Poland: I’ve done it very worthwhile so that’s it up www. Marina b-a-r-a-y-e-v-a dot com forward slash influencer.

Tom Poland: Perfect. Question 7, just under a minute list what’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

Marina Barayeva: How to speed up your growth. Everyone wants everything fast. The key here. Try to collaborate with other people with other influencers. And those can be micro influencers, or journalists, or bloggers. You need to go very very high if you can you welcome to do this but think about the influencers who already have their communities. If you’re a mom blogger, for example, you can go to mom’s events, do something with them. Collaborate with the event. If you are a fitness trainer, let’s say, you can come up with a project and say within this month I want to work with ten best executives in the town, and make them look perfect. Then you have the project. You come to them with a project and then here you are when you give them the service they may share about you inside of their communities.

Tom Poland: Marina, thanks so much for your time.

Tom Poland: Thanks for checking out our Marketing the Invisible podcast if you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.