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AMY PORTERFIELD:
Hey there, welcome back to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield, and I am thrilled that you’re tuning in today.
Look, I know you’ve got a lot of options when it comes to listening to business podcasts so the fact that you tuned in today means the world to me. I promise I will not disappoint.
We have a really good episode today all about simple, yet really powerful ways to personalize your next promotion or launch. I think you’re really going to like these.
If you’re just starting out, or if you’ve been at it for a while, you can use these strategies. They’re not just for those that are more advanced. They really make a huge impact.
I’m ten years into my business and I’ve been doing these for a long time now so I’ve definitely got something for everybody in this episode today.
Before we get there I want to get back to doing my student spotlights. I haven’t done one in a few episodes. This one is from one of my Online Marketing Made Easy Facebook group listeners. She’s in my free Facebook group.
Her name is Liz and this is what she said:
“Amy, oh my, you have done it again. The podcast this week is amazing. Somehow you always know exactly what I need to hear. Thinking and acting small is something that has been on my mind for a long time. I’m working on it with my coach but I’m still struggling with it. I will be doing the exercises in that episode this morning and I would love to hear from this community if they’re interested in sharing answers. With all there is to do it’s easy to slip back to the old ways of thinking. Wishing you the best. Playing big this year.”
Liz, thank you so much for this. That episode (I’ll link to it, guys, if you want to hear it or missed it) about playing a bigger game in the new year was one of my favorites. I’ve been hearing from so many students about how it resonated with them.
Don’t miss it if you haven’t listened to it yet because I think it will give you a lot of inspiration and a course to make those big, bold moves this year and beyond.
Let’s dive in to today’s topic all about different ways to personalize your next promotional launch.
This episode was inspired by my recent Digital Course Academy®️ launch, my brand new program. Doors are now closed so I want to give a really big shout out to my Digital Course Academy®️ students. You guys are kicking butt.
I’m watching you get in there, the energy in the Facebook group and the quality of questions you’re asking and the fact that you’re doing the work and talking about it in the community, you’re sharing your wins, you’re troubleshooting together.
As a course creator my heart is bursting watching all of you get in there and do the work. First of all, thanks for showing up like champs. Second of all, I can’t wait to see what you all create.
We’re in this journey together now and I just couldn’t be more thrilled to get to know all of you so welcome to my students.
With that, before I had all of these new students, I had to launch the program. I haven’t launched live like this for a long time so it was a little bit of a shell shock for me and my team because it’s a lot of work, as you all know if you’ve launched before, you know there are a lot of moving pieces.
One of the things that really stood out in this recent launch is our ability to personalize things. There were a lot of ways that we personalized but I wanted to bring three to your attention today because these are three that you could replicate really easily.
Why do we want to personalize a launch? I believe right now where we are in the online marketing world, what’s working, and what’s not working is this place where people are so used to bots and hearing from virtual assistants versus the actual course creators and getting canned responses versus actually talking to somebody.
Because of that, as a course creator and someone in your business who is running the show, I want to encourage you to show up, especially during promotions and during launches.
Of course you’re going to show up once you deliver whatever it is you deliver and you’re going to deliver on your promises. After people pay I know you’re going to show up like a boss there.
But what about during your launch? What about those personal touches that, when people are on the fence, when people aren’t sure if they’re right for the program, are scared to spend the money, or deeper, they’re scared they’re not enough, or that they won’t be able to get the results, what about the personalization there so that they hear from you and others on your team so that they know they are making the right decision?
I think that’s what this episode is all about. I want them to hear from you during your launch. And I’m going to give you three ways to do so.
Of course if you have a virtual assistant and your virtual assistant is talking to potential students I get that. That needs to happen. You’re just one person. However, every person counts so if you could reach out to ten people during your promotion that wouldn’t expect to hear from you personally that makes a big difference.
You can’t get to everybody. Believe me, out of the thousands and thousands of email responses that we sent out (people on my team responded to questions) I was only a fraction of those that got in there and personally responded. But, when I did it made such a huge difference. And that’s what I wanted to share with you today.
Personalization Touchpoint #1 – Personally Respond to Question in Customer Support
The first way you can add more personalization to your launch is by responding to questions in customer support, quite honestly, even anywhere online like social media, with a video or with an audio response.
Here’s what I did personally and then you can tweak this and make it your own. I used a tool called SnagIt. I’ll link to it in the show notes. SnagIt allows me to do a screen capture.
If somebody wrote in to Help Scout, the customer support tool we use, I could get into Help Scout and read their response. I would then turn on SnagIt.
SnagIt would only show my screen so it would show the question was asked and it would record my voice. I would look at the question and I would say,
“Hey Sally, I saw that you had a question wondering the difference between my old program, Courses That Convert®️, and my new program, Digital Course Academy®️. Since you’re a student of mine I wanted to personally respond and make sure you really understood the difference.So, here it is.”
I would then tell her the difference. From there I might give a few other reasons why Digital Course Academy®️ was so powerful and encourage her to join and tell her, “I can’t wait to see you inside the program.”
That was it. The audio might be two to five minutes depending on the type of question I’m answering. And that was it.
Then SnagIt, what I love about it, allows you to get a URL that you could just post in the email. I would say, “Hey Sally, Amy here. I recorded this audio for you. Click here to listen.” That’s all I would do.
I would send it off to Sally and she would hear my response. The reason I did this is because years ago I would get into Help Scout and I would respond to people to help my customer support team because as our business grew we were getting a lot of questions and I needed to jump in.
I would respond to people and they would almost always respond back and ask, “Is this really Amy or is this one of her team members?” They would ask if it was a canned response.
I thought, “Oh my gosh,” I spent a lot of time and energy responding to that and they were discounting it because they didn’t think it was actually the person that created the program or the person running the business. They didn’t think it was me.
I started to want to record them in audio. You guys know me. I’m not quick to jump on video all the time and that’s just my personality. I didn’t want to make a video because the minute you tell me I’ve got to make a video I want the lighting to be right, or at least good.
I want to move my computer in front of a window and then I want to make sure the background is okay. Although it doesn’t need to be perfect I still want it to be good and that would just take time.
The goal was that these people were on the fence and they needed to hear from me. That’s when I started to record these audios. But the trick was to get the audio into a simple URL that people could just click and listen versus having to download the audio or play with any weird or fancy technology.
That’s why I loved SnagIt. I can’t believe the responses. Almost always, the person would buy the program. That actually wasn’t just my only objective. I actually wanted people to feel very heard and supported.
I didn’t want anyone to join the program that wasn’t a good fit so I told many people they weren’t a good fit for the program in my audio files that I would send them (my audio responses).
Even though it is great that many purchased, many left these beautiful, quick responses to my audio.
Here’s the deal. In Help Scout we have this feature turned on that you rate the person that responded to you. All of my team members could get a rating of how well they supported the person that wrote in. The person that wrote in is giving a rating of 1-5 and then they can leave a comment.
We tracked the value of our customer support during the launch, which was over the charts amazing. I was so proud of my team. But these are some of the responses I got after I sent those audios. One woman said, “Wow, love the personal touch, Amy. Looking forward to learning much more from you.”
Another man said, “Wow, I did not expect to receive a response directly from you, Amy. You guys are amazing. Thank you.”
Someone else says, “I don’t think I’ve ever received such a personal response. Brilliant service. I feel really valued.”
Oh my gosh. When I heard that my heart melted. That was my point. I wanted people to feel heard and seen and understood. So that’s why I did the audio and there is something special about people either seeing you or hearing from you personally with audio or video.
This is something you can do. I told you about SnagIt but last week, I know I’m late to the game, you guys know I’m not quick to take on new technology, but I’ve learned about Loom. It’s totally free where SnagIt is not free. It’s not expensive but it’s not free.
Loom allows you to do the screen grab or video where with SnagIt I couldn’t do video. You could do video and just straight video with Loom or you could do video and screen grab or just screen grab with audio. You have more options and it still gives you that URL that you can paste in the email and send.
I’m actually going to suggest that you check out Loom for this strategy and I’ll link to it in the show notes as well.
You know about the technology and you know how it works. The last thing I’ll say is that I couldn’t get to everybody. So, every day during my launch I would spend about an hour. I would go into Help Scout and respond to a bunch of questions or concerns.
I would find the ones where the question might have been, “Are you going to teach XYZ?” But I wanted to go deeper than the surface question. Most of the questions, if you went deeper, were”
- Am I enough?
- Can I do this?
- Do I know enough?
- Am I good enough?
- Am I too far behind for this to work?”
So much of it was around being scared you aren’t going to be one of my success stories. They even had the fear that it was a lot of money for them. If they thought they could be a shining star and kill it right out of the gate money wouldn’t matter.
I’m learning to look at questions now and drill deeper and see the surface question. I like to address it but then I get deeper with what it really means for them. I’m not always right.
I’m doing my best to figure out what’s really below the surface but I do always try to address it. So, if you’re wondering which questions you should be answering if you have your team answering a bunch of them, look for the ones that you can go deeper. I think that makes a big difference.
Personalization Touchpoint #2 – Live Chat on Your Sales Page
All of my Digital Course Academy®️ members, you are going to be building a sales page for your course. If you’re not in one of my programs, whatever you sell, you’re likely going to have a page where they can learn all about it, they click a button, and give you their credit card to buy.
On that page I highly recommend Live Chat. The tool we use is Olark. Olark allowed us to be in the moment with them when they are making the buying decision. I did live chat for Olark a lot.
With this one you kind of have to be really quick because people are right there in real time with you. Me recording these audios didn’t work as well so I just typed all of my responses.
Then, of course, they would ask if it really was Amy. All I could say is, “Yes, it’s me.” What else am I going to do? I guess I could take a quick picture but it wouldn’t totally prove it. But that came up a lot. It’s not my favorite part.
However, I think the real time conversations, whether it was me or somebody on my team answering, they went a long way.
I had my whole team help out on Olark when they could during the launch. Anytime somebody had a quick question while they were on the sales page they could click a button, it would pop up in a portal, and the questions would be filtered through whoever’s on my team that was live in the live chat on my team at the time.
The person that I think was the most effective was Jill, my content manager. Jill was most effective because when they had content questions Jill was able to knock them out quickly.
This is something I learned on this launch that I’ll be sharing with a lot of my students in depth as we go along. People on your team, not just you the course creator, really need to understand how to talk about your course and what’s included and what the students are going to learn.
Before you ever venture out into a promotion with your team, no matter what you’re selling, courses or something else, you really want to make sure your team is educated.
We’re going to get really tactical with what that looks like. Open a Google doc and, in the case of a course, you list all of the modules and then you list what lessons are below each module.
You give everybody a blurb about what your course is all about that they can literally copy and paste if someone asks, “In a nutshell, what is Digital Course Academy®️ all about?”
My team would know what to say. If you don’t give your team the tools to talk about your course and educate people who are asking questions at a time when they are ready to take out their credit card you are leaving money on the table.
This is important. I’ve got to do a podcast episode just about this, how to talk about your course, how to break it down in a way that people really get it. It’s important because during a launch, it’s funny, you feel like you’re saying the same thing over and over again and that’s good.
You’ve got certain things you’re going to touch on about your course, maybe five or six different blurbs or snippets, and you continually drill into those. That’s what people need to hear the most.
Being prepared in advance before a promotion or launch to say, “Team, this is how you talk about the course and here are some questions (guided responses) you are likely going to get. Here’s a guided response on how to answer it so you can pull from this document at any time.”
This should be a document your team goes back to again and again and again.
I mentioned that Jill was probably the most effective on Olark because she helped me create the course. If there is anyone on your team besides you that helped create the program or the product or coaching package or whatever it is you’re selling get them on Olark or live chat. Have them spend a majority of their time there.
Because Jill helped me create the program, during the launch she didn’t have to do a lot in terms of launching. Chloe, my team’s integrator, is running the show. Jess is my director of operations and customer support so she’s in Help Scout.
Angie is running the community. They have specific roles of how to take care of things during the launch. But Jill is content development so during the launch it made the most sense that she get in there and engage with people.
I know you all don’t have a Jill. But you could have somebody on your team that you really invest time in before a promotion who is your right hand when it comes to talking about the course and answering content questions. Give them everything that can help them to do so.
You can share that with your whole team but designating one person to be your sidekick in terms of knowing your product the best would be really valuable even if you hired a VA for a launch that you really educated. VAs could do this very, very well.
The live chat version was incredibly valuable. We saw people go from live chat to buying. We could see the transition immediately.
Imagine if you’re ready to buy and you have one more question. Even when I’m buying a pair of Lulu Lemon yoga pants, right when I buy if I’m like, “Yeah, but is this the right size because…” and whatever you’re thinking, if you could ask someone right there in the moment you would feel better about the purchase.
I also believe live chat minimizes buyer’s remorse. If they get their questions answered right there in the moment and buy they feel confident. If they are still a little uncertain and they buy then buyer’s remorse is alive and well and they start to think maybe it wasn’t a good decision.
If they got to talk to Jill or me or Angie or Jess right before they bought that’s a whole different experience.
One more thing, again it’s tactical because I want it to be a very actionable episode for you. When you do live chat, when it’s on and no one’s there (we had that issue sometimes) basically if someone goes to talk with live chat and no one’s there because everyone’s sleeping it will say, “Hey, we’re not here right now but your question will get pushed into our customer support portal and we’ll be in response.”
That can work with Olark. When we’re not there it goes into Help Scout, our customer support portal, and we can email them back. I did that a lot if someone came through a live chat I would record one of those audio messages to get right to them.
You could do that but what I was going to say was to plan a schedule for live chat. We would decide Jill would be on live chat for the next three hours. When live chat was the most valuable (Listen up. If you’re multi-tasking come back to me here) is directly after any webinar or Facebook Live you do.
Any time you’re actively live in real time sending someone to a sales page you want multiple people on that sales page in your live chat.
Your volume might not be as much as mine now if you’re just starting out. But even having one or two people on live chat works.
One of the hardest things to do is go from a live webinar over to live chat but, gosh, it can make a huge difference. I know you are going to be exhausted but jumping over there, even if you’re a one man/woman show.
On my webinar I have already gone through all of their objections. I’ve answered all of their questions. If they are still on the fence I will say,
“If you’re still on the fence right now come on over to the sales page (I don’t call it the sales page, I give them a website) and ask your question there. I’m going to be jumping over there. My team’s over there right now. You’ll hear from Jill, Angie, Jess, Chloe, Megan, or Racheal (I say their names). They will be over there so ask your questions because the worst place to be is on the fence when I close the doors because if you’re still on the fence when I close the doors I’ve made the decision for you that you don’t get to be a part of the experience. I want you to make that decision whether it’s a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’”
That’s how I kind of move them over to the sales page with live chat from a webinar. I’m giving you all of my secrets today.
Personalization Touchpoint #3 – Off-the-Cuff, From-the-Heart Final Video
This final video is something you will send out on the final day when you’re closing your cart. You’re closing the doors to people buying your product, program, service, digital course, or whatever it might be.
You can send it out in the morning or afternoon or just hours before you close the doors. I tend to send it out either in the afternoon or hours before I close the doors. Not in the morning.
I send three emails on the final day. In the morning I might just do one more, “Today’s the final day. Here’s why you need to join the program. Here’s who it’s for. Here’s who it’s not for.” I give them a lot of info.
In the middle, if I don’t send this off-the-cuff video I might just say, “You know that time’s running out, right? If you have questions we’re live on the page right now. Come on over.”
Then, at the end I will say, “I recorded this video for you.” The email is super short and my Digital Course Academy®️ members, you will be getting a script to this for the email and you will get to see the actual video I created for Digital Course Academy®️ for my launch. You’ll get to see it inside the program.
I’ve got to save that for my students because they invested in the program and they get all of the extra good, juicy stuff. But, for you listening, if you’re not in my program, I’m going to give you enough that you can start to piece it together on your own so you understand the concept.
In the final video, the subject line of the email might say, “I recorded this video for you.” That’s all it says.
In the actual email it might say, “Just an hour ago I recorded this video and if you’re still on the fence thinking about joining Digital Course Academy®️ you definitely want to watch this.” I might have a picture of me in the video (or not) and just a link to go watch the video.
They click a link and they will go to a Kajabi stand-alone page with just the video. Under the video there’s a button to buy the course. They just go to a stand-alone page with the video embedded on it and a button below the video that says, “Check out Digital Course Academy®️.”
That’s what the email is. It’s very short. You do not get into any detail.
The video is genuinely recorded from you on the final day. You’re not doing this months in advance in a fancy studio with good lighting and thinking about it and have a teleprompter with a script. It’s not that video.
It is genuinely off the cuff, from the heart. That part is as important as the person doing the promotion and selling whatever it is you’re selling because you’ve just gone through a live launch and you’re feeling all of the emotions.
Hopefully you have been in Help Scout answering questions and seeing what people have asked questions about on the webinars. You’ve tackled all of the objections. You know where the head space is of the people who are genuinely right for your program and you want to talk to them.
It’s important that you are in that space genuinely feeling all of the feels for wrapping up the launch. In your video you are talking to the people that are still on the fence.
I went into my home studio and flipped on the camera. I did not have a script. I thought about what I wanted to say but I didn’t even have an outline. If you guys know me, going into a video without even an outline, who is this girl talking to you, right?
But it was important that I wasn’t scripted. It was important that it did come from my heart. In the video I did mess up a few times (I tripped over my words), which my DCA students will see.
Here’s what you do. Basically, you say,
“Hey there, I wanted to record this video for you this evening because I’m closing the doors to my Digital Course Academy®️ program in just a few hours. If you’ve been on this journey with me where I’ve done my webinars and my Facebook lives and social media posts and emails, if you’ve seen all of that then thank you for going on this journey with me. Right now, right this minute, if you’re still on the fence I wanted to talk to you. If you already know you’re not going to join my program don’t waste your time. There is no need to watch this video. You’re good to go. I’m glad you made a decision that’s right for you. But, if you’re still on the fence this video is for you.”
Then I just talk about if they are feeling “this” way or “that” way. I start to address some of the objections that came up a lot during the launch, “If you feel like you’re not ready because you don’t have an email list let’s talk about that. If you feel as though you are not ready because you don’t have a course idea, let’s talk about that.”
I’ll say,
“If you’re ‘this’ or ‘that’ then you’re not right for the program. But, if you’re genuinely worried because of ‘this’ or ‘that’ then you are right for the program and here’s how we’re going address it when you enroll.”
It’s very specific to those that are on the fence and I’m talking about their fears and questions that are coming up. I’m just tackling them.
At the very end I paint a very realistic picture of what life can look like if they get into my program, do the work, and actually make it work. I’m not saying they do it perfectly. I’m not even saying they hit it out of the park the first time they do a webinar. I just mean if they stick with it.
I remind them of what they really want in their business and what life can look like for them. Then I end the video.
I’ve done this many times. Because it’s from the heart and because it’s sincere sometimes it’s just five minutes. I can say what I want to say in five minutes. Sometimes it’s longer. This one was over 12 minutes.
When I was done I thought, “Shoot! I didn’t mean to do 12 minutes.” But then I thought it was really from my heart, it was really what I wanted to say. I left it all on the table.
That’s kind of what you’re doing in this final personal video. You’re leaving it all on the table. You’re really coming to terms with yourself as the person promoting whatever you’re promoting.
You’ve done your best. You’ve told everything that the program can offer. You’ve talked about who it’s for and who it’s not for. Now it’s up to you. It is all up to you. I’m done. This is the last time you’ll hear from me before doors close. So if you’re in, “I can’t wait to meet you.” It’s that kind of thing.
This video has always been very powerful. Even though all of this is marketing strategy, I never hid that. But, if you do it without the marketing hat on but you want to make sure if anyone is still on the fence and they are right for the program that they don’t miss the opportunity.
If you believe in your program you know you can serve them. So, if you believe in what you’re doing you will want to get those people that are on the fence but are right for the program. That’s what this video does.
Yeah, this one’s a little bit more intense. You’ve got to get on video. I feel you should do it the day of closing the cart or the day before at the earliest but nothing sooner than that. I believe you really need to time it right for you.
You’ll be tired. At one point I think I wanted to cry. I was emotional because I was tired. It was a long, long launch for us. I didn’t cry but you’ll feel all of that and that’s good. I want them to see how you genuinely are in the moment.
No faking. Don’t fake this. Go with what you feel. People are smarter than that. They will get that so just be as sincere as you always are.
There you have it.
Personalization Touchpoint #1 – Personally Respond to Question in Customer Support – One more time, for personalization in a promotion or a launch you are going to respond to people with audio. Or jump on video if you’re a bad ass and you’re just going to go beyond what I’ve done.
I love when people take my ideas and make them way better. You might just want to jump on video. But also, one more thing. It’s easier for people to listen to audio when they’re on the go so it’s not so much that they see you. They just need to hear you so please keep it simple.
SnagIt and Loom are the two tools I told you about. You can get to them in the show notes.
Personalization Touchpoint #2 – Live Chat on Your Sales Page – Second, live chat on a sales page is so valuable. But it’s not just live chat. Make sure that whoever is on live chat can be an extension of you talking about the program, the content, who’s right for it, and really understand the questions that are being asked and giving valuable responses.
It’s a conversation. We’re not doing quick, canned live responses on live chat. I want you in conversations or I want people on your team in conversations with people that are still on the fence.
Personalization Touchpoint #3 – Off-the-Cuff, From-the-Heart Final Video – I think this makes a big difference and I encourage you to send that out at the very end of your launch.
There you have it. I hope you found this valuable. I hope you feel as though you can do these personalization strategies because I know you can. I think the biggest thing is making time for them.
During the launch you have very little time. You’re emotionally and physically exhausted and it’s hard to rally sometimes. But you can.
One more thing I’ll say is that I teach my students in Digital Course Academy®️ how to do live launches and how to do evergreen. When you get into evergreen these strategies aren’t as sincere. They aren’t as timely and some of them aren’t even practical.
You could still do the final video. I don’t do it in evergreen but you could. But I don’t think it’s as effective. I’ll teach my DCA students how to do evergreen, how to do automated webinars and launches. The strategies there are different because I don’t want to be insincere and use scarcity tactics that aren’t true.
We’ll talk about that to my students in DCA later. I’m sure I’ll do more podcasts about turning evergreen so for you guys that aren’t my students yet know that I always have stuff for you as well.
These strategies are for live launches or promotions. I think that’s where they work the best and you all know I think there is magic in live launches. Even though I was exhausted and overwhelmed and tired and stressed during my live launch I would not trade it for the world.
I am a better marketer right now, right this minute, because of what we did in January with that live launch. My team is stronger because of it as well. We are stronger and have better connections with each other because we went through that together. There’s magic in live launching. Never, ever forget that.
But I think evergreen is a whole lot easier and I will be sharing about that as well.
Alright guys, thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure if you haven’t yet subscribed to this podcast to do so. We have bonus episodes that come out that only my subscribers will hear about and I would love for you to never miss an episode.
We have some fun things coming out and I don’t want you to miss any of it.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I’ll see you here same time, same place next week. Until then, have a wonderful week. Bye now!
