AMY PORTERFIELD: Well 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 are tuning in today.
The title of today’s episode is a bit off brand for me, Five Ways to Make Money Online (Without Using Webinars). It’s off brand, of course, because I eat, sleep, and breathe webinars.
Webinars are my number one battle tested, most powerful strategy that I use in my business to sell my online courses. Truth be told, I think webinars are the best of the best.
I’m totally biased. I have a course called Webinars That Convert and I’ve taught thousands upon thousands of people how to integrate webinars into their business to sell online training courses.
However, I wanted to mix things up just a bit today and introduce some simpler strategies to generate revenue in your business.
Before I do so, there are a few details I want you to know about.
I’m going to introduce five ways to make money online that do not have anything to do with a webinar. However, keep in mind I still believe webinars will be way more powerful and profitable than any of the strategies I’m going to share with you here today.
Why the heck would I share these strategies with you if I don’t think they’re going to be as profitable as a webinar? Well, my friend, I believe in baby steps. Sometimes it’s best to ease into the bigger strategies.
Sometimes it’s best to test out a simpler strategy just to get your feet wet, just to test out an offer, and then once you’ve nailed it take things up a notch and move into the more robust and much more profitable strategies like webinars.
I believe webinars work best when you’re selling a pre-recorded online course or a live online course that you release each week over a series of four to eight weeks. I also know that not everyone who listens to this podcast is ready to create a course.
That leads me to point #2. Before I talk about the different ways to make money online I thought it would be incredibly valuable if we talked about a few ways you can create an offer, ways you can craft an offer with the content you already have.
I’m not going to include creating an online course as one of those offers because I talk about creating online courses throughout so many of my other podcast episodes.
Today, again, I’m going to focus on much simpler offers that you can get started right away. First we’re going to dive into ideas for you to craft really awesome offers. Then we’re going to get into the actual strategies to help you promote the offers.
For each I’m going to give you an example. I thought I would actually bring on a few of my friends to talk about how they specifically created some of these strategies and some of these offers so you can hear some real-life examples.
Before we get started, this episode is sponsored by Gravy. If you are one of my students then you’ve already heard about the power of Gravy. Here it is. If you have a subscription model business or offer payment plans like I do for my online courses you’ve got to listen up.
Imagine having your own 24/7 U.S.-based engagement team who contacts your customers within hours of their failed payments and captures updated billing information and saves the customer you worked so hard to acquire. That’s what Gravy does for me.
On average, our failed recovery payment rate increased from 33% when we were trying to do it internally on our own to over 80%. That’s a lot of saved payments. If your revenue is currently at $250,000 or more a year and you know you’re losing money due to failed payments each month I encourage you to check Gravy out.
One more thing. Gravy does a lot to get all of the technology set up on your backend. They do a lot of work to make sure all of the automation is working well and they take time to get their team up to speed on your business so they can save your payments.
Because of that they usually have a set-up fee to get started. But, because we are great friends with Gravy over at Team Porterfield, they have created an Amy Only Offer. When you go to allgravy.io/amy they will waive all of the setup fees and costs to get started.
This is huge and it creates no barrier of entry for you to go ahead and start saving those failed payments. I’m going to link to Gravy in my show notes as well at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/201 and I really, truly hope you check them out.
Let’s go ahead and dive in to the different offers and the different promotional strategies to make money online.
Let’s start out with the five offers that you can create inside of your business. As I go through each offer I want you to think about content you’ve already created that you might be able to put into these different offers.
Or, think about the content your audience has been dying for you to create but you haven’t yet created it because you didn’t know how you wanted to put it all together. Think about the old content you’ve created in the past and the new content you want to create and I bet it will get those creative juices flowing.
Offer #1- Offer a Review
This first idea is to offer a review. I have a personal example for this one. When I first started out doing online marketing I didn’t yet have any online training programs to sell. I started to get really into Facebook marketing around the time I coauthored that big yellow Dummies book, Facebook Marketing All-in-One For Dummies.
That feels like a lifetime ago. Because I was really into Facebook marketing and teaching Facebook marketing at the time I decided I would offer reviews of other Facebook pages for small businesses.
At the time, many years ago, Facebook pages were very new to most small businesses. They didn’t really know how to use them. They were way more popular and way more effective back in the day so you definitely wanted to get more engagement on your Facebook page, you wanted to make sure it was well branded, and you wanted to make sure you had all of the bells and whistles you could have on your page.
I charged $297 per review. This is what it included. First, I reviewed the page and took a bunch of notes on my own just so I could point out some of the things I would want to talk about inside of the review.
I went through everything on the Facebook page. I had access to the back end so I would go into the back end and at the time they didn’t offer many insights like they do now but I did my best going through any insights they did offer.
I looked at all of the engagement. I looked at all of their posts and everything about the Facebook page. I took my own notes.
From there I created a detailed report, something I would actually type up. It was probably three, four, or maybe five pages depending on how many examples and images I added to the report.
After I had done this a few times I designed a template for myself. I got really good at these reviews and I went through them very quickly because I had a template that was broken into different sections I wanted to focus on.
In the beginning it took me longer like everything does in the beginning. Again, I put the report together in a Google doc and I would type out all of the notes. I would organize it in sections and if I wanted to show them an example of somebody else’s Facebook page that was doing it better or something they could model I would take snapshots.
I would pull the snapshots into the Google doc and I would really make it something where I wasn’t just telling them what to do but I was showing them a bunch of examples as well.
After I created the written review I recorded a screen capture video where I was on their Facebook page. They were watching a video where I was navigating through their page. I would point out some of the most important aspects of their Facebook page, areas where they could improve, things they could do better, or that they could take to the next level.
I wanted them to hear my voice. I wanted them to see what I was talking about as I was discussing all of the tweaks, changes, and suggestions I had for them. I was pulling from the written report but I was going a little deeper with the conversation on the screen flow video.
For $297 they got a Google doc with all of the details of ways to improve their Facebook page with tons of examples included and then they also got a screen capture video from me to walk them through some of the areas I wanted to dive in a little bit deeper.
I think the video made it even more personal for them. I did many, many, many reviews back in the day and this is how I supplemented my revenue when I wasn’t making a lot of money and I had a few clients that I was doing social media for; but, I didn’t yet have an online course.
I needed to make more money and these reviews were really, really lucrative in the sense that I wasn’t making seven figures with them. However, I was able to bring in a little extra cash each month and at the time that felt very lucrative to me. A little goes a long way when you’re just starting out.
That is Offer #1, reviews.
Offer #2 – Create Customized Plans
Let’s move into Offer #2 and this one is all about creating customized plans. Customized plans can work for so many different niches including health and wellness, lifestyle coaching, business consulting, parenting, and so many more.
Let’s take an easy example. If you’re a nutritionist you could do customized meal plans that not only cater to the person’s needs, likes, and dislikes, but you could also include shopping lists, recipes, and tips/tricks for implementation (ways to make it easier to meal plan).
One way to do this is to first get on a discovery call with a client. Based on the intake information you would draft a comprehensive and personalized plan. Then maybe do one more follow up after you put the plan together to walk them through all of the details and answer any questions they may have.
That can be your package: two calls and a customized plan. This one is pretty self explanatory. This is not a new idea. However, based on your niche it might be something you’ve never even thought about.
I think it’s really simple to think about if you are a nutritionist or in the health and wellness sector. But, again, let’s say you are in the parenting niche. Have you ever thought about creating a customized plan?
What you want to do is look at your content. Think if there is a way to customize what you know to a person’s specific situation (likes, dislikes, needs, wants, fears, challenges, concerns). Can you make it more personal after getting on a call with somebody?
Could that be incredibly valuable for them? One thing I know for sure is that I would make a whole lot more money if I offered more one-on-one services.
I am just one person and I’m lucky enough to have a really big audience so I don’t need to offer one-on-one to make the kind of revenue I would like to make. I couldn’t serve that many people based on how many yours are in a day and what my business looks like today.
However, back in the day when I was just starting out and wanted to supplement my income, heck yeah I would have considered something like this.
If your audience is still very small or if you’re not making enough money doing what you’re doing and you can find extra time to do something special like this then by all means explore it.
I say when your audience is small this is when you get to be more nimble. This is when you get to experiment even more. So don’t look at your audience and think you hardly have any people on your email list or a big social media following.
Instead, think that you’re going to one day have a really big social media following. You are going to have a huge email list one day and you could never just say, “Hey reply back to this email, tell me what you think, and I’ll respond to every single one who does.”
You will get to a point in your business where that ain’t happening. When it can happen that’s when you start building customers for life. When you can experiment with something like a customized personalized plan for five really awesome clients you love to work with, they pay you for something like this, and it’s going to supplement your income, by all means explore it.
Let’s say you do already have a big audience but this is something that really appeals to you, then you put a really hefty price tag on it. That way you’re only going to attract people that are incredibly interested in working with you one on one.
Offer #3 – Create an Online Live Workshop
This is probably my favorite of all five offers I’m going to share with you today. Let’s say you’re not ready to create a full-out online course. Or, maybe you have a course or a membership site but you really want to drill down into one specific topic for just a few hours.
A live, online workshop is an awesome product you can offer. This is something I’m actually considering doing in the future. I’ve talked about it a little and I even teased you all with it in January.
I had plans to do it in January but then I looked at my promotional calendar and thought I was crazy. This is not the right time to be adding something like that to the mix.
My adult self had to say, “No, no, no. This is not the time.” However, it is something I want to do so I’m crossing my fingers I can make it work this year.
Back in the day I did something similar to this. But, since I haven’t done an online live workshop in years and years I wanted to invite somebody on my show that has recently done it a few times in their business and seen really great success.
You are going to get to hear from my friend, Tyler J. McCall. Tyler’s going to talk about his successful online workshop and what I love is that he’s going to talk to you about how he priced them.
He’s going to talk about the fact he actually has a membership site but was still able to sell the online workshop to his current members because the content was aligned but didn’t overlap. That was awesome. He was offering something else to his existing students.
He’s going to talk to you about how he marketed it beyond his existing students and he’s going to talk about the fact that once it was done he was able to sell it again and again and again in different ways. I thought that was really cool.
I don’t want to steal his thunder so I’m going to let you listen to Tyler talk about his successful online live workshop offers.
TYLER J. McCALL: Hi there. My name is Tyler J. McCall and I’m an Instagram marketing strategist for creative entrepreneurs. You can find me online at tylerjmccall.com and also on Instagram at TylerJMcCall.
Recently I’ve been adding virtual workshops into my business model as a way to teach my students and my audience something they can use in their business really quickly that’s highly actionable and that does not require a ton of effort on my part as far as mapping out a lot of content, planning a huge launch, or creating a new course.
I did this at the end of 2017 and into 2018 by hosting two workshops so far, one around content planning and one about using Instagram stories.
I actually picked those two topics based on what my audience wanted to learn from me. I did some polling on Instagram stories and in my Facebook group just to better understand what they needed help with and how I could better serve them through a workshop-like model of teaching them.
I asked them what they wanted to learn more about and then I worked on creating the content and marketing the workshop to folks on Instagram, through my Facebook group, through my mailing list, and to members of my online membership community.
That was a really great way to supplement the content they were learning in the membership community and also get some folks into this workshop at a discounted price.
I promoted the workshops to all of those people and I hosted the workshops live using a Zoom Room online. No fancy technology needed, no webinar software, nothing like that.
I literally posted the workshops in my own personal Zoom Room. I sent out the link to people who had purchased a ticket from my website. I let them know the day and time and they could come and watch live.
It was also recorded so all of the attendees got audio and the video recording after the workshop was over. I also sold the audio and video recording after the workshop as well.
The workshops were 90 minutes to two hours long. As I said, I was focused on making sure the content was highly actionable, that it was result oriented, and that it was an actual workshop.
I wanted it to be filled with practical education and information that they could use really quickly to see results. I just delivered the content live, direct to camera. I didn’t use slides. I didn’t use graphics or anything like that.
I actually did some screen sharing on my phone and on my computer as I was teaching them and, like I said, they had access to the video and the audio recording afterwards so they could go back and watch it over and over again.
One thing I did create for those who attended the workshop was a PDF workshop. It was filled with all of the material I was teaching in addition to templates, worksheets, and a ton of different fill-in-the-blank prompts for them to use.
Since this was a workshop I didn’t want it to just be content they would consume. I wanted this to be content they would interact with. As they were watching I was prompting them to go into their workbook, to work through the material I had written for them, to fill in the blanks, to complete the templates, and to use the worksheets.
They were actually working during class instead of just consuming everything and then having to figure it out after class was over. These students really came out of this experience with a ton of knowledge but also with a plan they could put into action almost immediately.
I know on our Instagram stories workshop I had students messaging me on Instagram later that day saying they had done something differently on stories that exact same day and they had already seen results, either through more inquiries, through direct messages, through people just engaging with their content in ways they had never done before, and they walked away with that plan so they could implement things really, really quickly.
As I delivered the workshop it was direct to camera and was live with me, a talking head, to my webcam. It was nothing fancy. And, I actually broke it down into three main parts.
We had an introduction at the beginning to set some ground rules of what they could expect to experience. We had all of the education throughout the bulk of the workshop, of course, and then I left about half an hour at the end for live Q&A so I could answer their questions about the topic or any other questions they had related to the realm of what we were talking about and what I was teaching them.
We also had a break in the middle because I was talking directly to them for 90 minutes to two hours. I gave myself a little bit of grace and about a ten-minute break in the middle to get some water and freshen up before I kept teaching them.
As I said, as I was writing the content I wanted to make sure the workshop was an actual workshop so I didn’t really run through topics really quickly. It wasn’t necessarily high level. This wasn’t always strategy related. Instead, it was down in the weeds of doing the actual work of planning out a strategy.
It was almost like I was working with someone one on one, walking them through a process, and giving them resources. Instead I was doing this to a group of people in a room online.
I chose to do virtual workshops for a few reasons and they fit really well into my business model for a few reasons. Firstly, I wanted something that was easy to create and implement. These workshops didn’t require a need to create a ton of content ahead of time.
There wasn’t a huge launch sequence. There weren’t any slides. Really, all I had to do was outline the content. I literally just opened a note on my computer and on my phone and started outlining the content. I worked through what they were needing the most help with as I was hearing from people about what they wanted to learn.
I pulled all of my resources together an outlined the content. I laid out the action steps underneath each topic I was going to teach them about or each topic we would discuss. From the outline I pulled the content to create the PDF workbook.
For example, if I wanted to talk about how to create a certain type of Instagram story then in the PDF workshop I would actually lay out that type of Instagram story and walk them through how to create it in the workbook itself. I then taught them live and they had a workbook as a resource so it laid it out for them.
It was really easy to create this content. I wasn’t recording a ton of content ahead of time like I was doing a course. I wasn’t doing a ton of videos live like I would be delivering a group coaching program. Instead, it was just a one-and-done thing in my business.
I also wanted something that allowed me to make money beforehand. This was really important for me to make money before I delivered the product. These virtual workshops were the perfect way to do it because all of the tickets were presold.
Since these workshops have finished I’ve been selling the recordings on my website and it’s just great passive income coming into my business.
I really wanted to create something that my students could implement quickly. I didn’t want this to be another course they bought and put on the shelf. I didn’t want this to be something conceptual that they learned about but didn’t know how to apply it.
I wanted them to come out of this experience with something actionable they could use.
In promoting the workshop and selling tickets, I actually sold tickets a few different ways. I sold early-bird tickets about two to three weeks out from the actual live workshop date. These were half the price of a regular ticket.
I promoted the tickets online and to my mailing list that I had segmented down based on their interests. I then sold standard tickets that were about a week before the live event. People could buy the standard ticket. Then I sold replay tickets that went online for sale immediately after the event finished.
The way the pricing worked out, for example, the Instagram stories workshop was priced at $97 for the standard ticket. Folks who bought the early-bird ticket got it for $49 and now the replay is on sale for $197. That’s how the pricing worked out for that live event.
I also sold tickets to members of my membership community and they could get in on the workshop for half price. They got a discount code to get half off the cost of the ticket if they wanted to join in the workshop. They can still purchase the replay and get access to that.
As I was creating the content I wanted to make sure it was really supplemental to what they were learning in the membership community but it wasn’t content they would actually learn in the community.
There was a really great connection to the content. There was a great opportunity for our members. They could sign up for it. They could learn more and get more out of it but they also didn’t have to do it because they had a ton of content available to them in the membership community so there was a great option for them there.
Overall, both of these workshops have brought in nearly five figures. These were just one-and-done type workshops. I promoted them for a few weeks on Instagram and in my Facebook and through my mailing list. I sold the tickets presale, I sold the live standard tickets, and then I have been selling the replay on my website as well.
I had been marketing leading up to the workshop. Every now and then I will market it now to my mailing list but it’s not something I’m promoting as regularly as I was before.
I loved doing these workshops because they were so easy. They were so seamless and they fit perfectly into what I was doing. They didn’t require all of the work and energy of plotting out a huge launch or creating a ton of content for a course or some kind of online program.
Instead, it allowed these students to get in the doors, to learn something that was very actionable for them, to give them a plan they could take away and implement almost immediately for both of these workshops. They could also start seeing results very, very quickly.
Overall, they have been a huge success in my business. My students have loved them. They are something I will continue to do as a part of my business because of how easy they are and how much result my students from them.
AMY: Wasn’t that so fantastic? Thank you Tyler for being so organized with your thoughts and sharing your experience with an online live workshop. I am so glad you contributed to this episode.
Offer #4 – Create a Template Pack
With a template pack you offer documents where your students can plug and play. For example, my sweet friend, Jenna Kutcher, has a customizable media kit and brand style guide on her site.
For $39 all the way up to $79 you can buy her templates and have an instant resource that Jenna uses for her own brand. In that media kit, for example, she offers Photoshop, InDesign formats, and instructions via a tutorial library on how to make the template your own.
I want you to think of your niche and what you’re able to offer your clients. Think about the things they would love for you to do for them in advance. People love done-for-you options.
Templates are a way to kind of meet them halfway there. You’re not going to create the whole shebang for them but you can create templates as a way of helping them get started without having to start from scratch.
Give this one some thought. You might have a gold mine waiting for you right now that you’ve never even thought about. Template packs. This would be a really cool thing that you could sell on your website in addition to the other offers you’re making.
Offer #5 – Offer a Small Group Coaching Experience
Now we’re moving into the home stretch with a small group coaching experience. Here you can grab five to seven students you are going to coach personally but, of course, in a group.
Say you do a 90-day program with weekly coaching calls and maybe a few one-on- one calls every few weeks if you want to do that to make it even more personal. Choose a topic and then for the next 60-90 days you drill down into that topic with a really small group.
The reason I like this as an offer is because you don’t have to do just one-on-one coaching that is very limited and not scalable. Instead, you’re offering more people to come into the mix.
You can create a small community and they can help each other while you’re helping them. I like the idea of making it over a concentrated period of time around a specific topic.
Like I said, maybe 60 days or 90 days around a specific topic that everybody is struggling with or really wanting to get results in quickly. You are going to be the coach. I think this is a great way to put an offer together quickly.
There you have it, five offers that are not groundbreaking. This is stuff you’ve heard of before. But I always say you might have heard of these offers but have you ever implemented any of them? Are you actually doing any of them in your business?
If the answer is “No” then this might be a game changer for you if you actually take action. That is what my podcast is all about. I always want you to leave feeling inspired but also driven to take action immediately.
In order for you to do that let me review these five different offer opportunities.
- Start doing some reviews.
- Create customized plans.
- Create an online live workshop (like Tyler has done).
- Create some type of template pack or do-it-for-you-kind-of package that you can put together to get your students start without actually having to do it all for them. It is kind of staying away from the do-it-for-you service-based business but a template pack meets them in the middle.
- Small group coaching experience.
Now we’re moving into Part 2 of this mini training which is all about making money, money, money. This part is all about how to sell online without using a webinar. I’ve already said it but I can’t help it. I’ve got to say it again.
You know I believe a webinar strategy in your business can be incredibly lucrative for you. I hope you make it your goal within the next six to 12 months to add a webinar strategy to your marketing toolbox. Believe me, it is a game changer.
But I also believe in baby steps. If you’re not ready to add a webinar strategy to your business let’s talk about some more simple way you can make money until you’re ready to take the webinar leap and make it happen in your business.
Strategy#1 – Create an Email Promotion
I’m going to go through five different opportunities to sell online and Opportunity #1 is by far my favorite. It is so, so good. There are a few things I need to tell you and then I’m going to have my friend, Rachel Perry, who has a business called Tag Team with her partner, Amanda.
Rachel and Amanda did an email promotion and knocked it out of the park. I’m not going to ruin it for you but they’re talking big numbers. I’m going to let Rachel explain to you what it looked like inside of their business but I want to let you know a few things.
This idea of an email promotion is not anything new. Many, many people have done it. But Rachel learned from James Wedmore all about this strategy. James talks about this strategy in a program he has called Business By Design (BBD).
That’s where Rachel first learned about it. Plus, she’s in the mastermind so she learned about it in there as well. I want you to pay close attention to a few things. She’s going to talk about the number of emails she sent and about one training video they created.
The goal of the training video is to add value inside of your email promotions. You’re not just asking someone to buy something but you’re also linking to the video and are offering value through that.
Notice that Rachel’s going to talk about the fact that whatever they were selling was good. You’ve always got to have great content but I think that goes without saying. However, I guess I needed to say it because it’s just so important to remember.
I also think the timing of the email promotion was so smart. In addition to that Rachel is not going to explain every single detail about what they put in the email. I just want you to take a deep breath and think that you are learning the different strategies right now, what is possible.
She’s going to talk to you about how many emails they sent and what that basically looked like for them and the results they got. What I want you to think about in terms of writing an email promotion is that you want to connect with your audience.
You want to talk about the value of whatever it is that you’re going to offer them. You want to talk about the challenges they are facing, where they are right now, and how you’re going to help them get to the next level.
These emails are promotional but they also offer value by linking to this free training video that Rachel’s going to talk about. Just keep an open mind here. You won’t get every single detail but I just want you to know an email promotion is definitely a specific way you can sell online without using webinars.
Let’s listen in to Rachel.
RACHEL PERRY: Hey Amy. Thank you so much for having me. I am so honored to be doing this for you. So honored. It’s like, what is happening? I am Rachel. I am with the Tag Team.
My partner, Amanda, and I tried something this past November and that’s the email launch. You guys, this is two days of emails, literally three emails we sent out. We ended up making $30,000. Yes, you heard me.
We were coming off a really tough launch that happened in October 2017. It was tough because we had a lot of bumps in the road. We were launching a new website. Right about the time we started this launch we had some issues with our emails. It was just bumpy.
We needed something easy and low stress and that’s when James Wedmore’s email campaign came in. We were selling a product for the holidays. Our audience is mainly direct sellers so we were selling a product called Jingle Bell Rock Your Business.
It focused on ten ideas that direct sellers could literally rock their business out using Facebook. This email launch consisted of three emails. We sent the first on a Monday and the last two were sent on Tuesday.
The first email consisted of an introduction to what we were doing. It kind of led up to a video we had linked in the email. It basically taught them how to add more followers, more people to their groups or business pages.
Our methodology behind that was that we knew that these ideas we were teaching them for their holiday ideas were going to revolve around Facebook. They needed followers. They needed people in their groups first.
Our free content was just that. In the first email we linked them to that video. After they watched the video there was an opt-in page. There was an opt in so they could purchase the Jingle Bell Rock Your Business for $47.
We offered a bonus as well. It was our previous training, which was Deck the Walls, ten more ideas on how to rock out their holiday sales. I’m not going to brag or anything, but these are pretty amazing ideas. They are super fun.
Direct sellers need that during the holidays because that is their highest selling season. Then the emails on Tuesday (one in the morning and one in the evening both linked to the video, the free training, which then obviously gave them the option of opting in and purchasing this training.
I have to tell you this was the easiest launch of our entire lives. We sent this to our entire list of 83,000+ people. Since it was only three emails it didn’t feel like we were spamming them. It didn’t feel like we needed them to opt in. It was literally a “Hey, guess what? Here’s some free training and if you’re interested you can buy this training.”
We sold over $30,000 of this product. That is pretty incredible since we only sent out three emails. I do have three takeaways.
First, it is short and sweet. It really worked well with our audience. Coming off the five- day challenge this was kind of so easy and simple. Our audience was really receptive to that.
The second takeaway would be that it’s a really great option for lower-priced products. It really is. It’s something not invasive. There is no pressure. There’s really no commitment. They don’t have to show up every day. It’s just very easy and there’s free content.
That is so incredible to be giving content away to people. I think so often when people receive this free content they are much more willing to buy in to what you’re offering.
The third takeaway is a big one. It is low stress. It was so low stress. Coming off, like I said before, a launch that had been really stressful, this was just so wonderful. This was a product we had to sell during the holidays. This is not a product we could have sold in March or April. It had to be sold in November.
We had no choice but to step on it even though we were still recovering from a tough launch. Let’s be real. There are going to be those times where we have tough launches. This email campaign was absolutely a gift.
We were able to reach a lot of people in a low stress, low commitment, less invasive way.
AMY: That was pretty good, right? They did so well with this email promotion. If you ever drink what Marie Forleo calls Compare schlagger you are likely thinking, “Wait a second, Amy, her business is bigger than mine.”
You think because they have 83,000 people on their email list and were able to make that much money because they have a big audience. Not necessarily. I believe you can still have really big results with an email promotion even if you have 4,000 or 5,000 people on your email list.
If you are nurturing that email list, if they are hearing from you regularly, if they are loyal followers, then you can do an email promotion that is equally profitable for your business. I believe that to be so.
You can also experiment with different pricing models. Rachel was saying that theirs was a $47 product and that she might go up to about $97. Hey, you could even test something higher than that. It’s all about experimenting and being nimble in your business so you can see what’s going to work.
Strategy 2 – Create a Five to Seven-day Challenge
Let’s move on to Strategy #2 to sell online. This one is to create a five to seven-day challenge that leads directly to a sale. Challenges are a smart strategy that can work really well in your business. I’ve since shied away from those 21-day challenges or even ten-day challenges.
I like really short challenges that go directly into, “Are you ready to buy?” Zach Spuckler was on my show and it was actually one of the top five most popular episodes. If you haven’t listened to it it’s Episode #144.
Just go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/144 and you can listen to Zach talk about the step-by-step strategy to create a five-day challenge that leads to a sale. He’s got a great freebie to walk you through it so that when you’re ready to do it you can look at his guide and follow along. It is really, really good.
I wanted to bring that up as the second way to sell online without a webinar. People usually talk about challenges as just a list builder. But Zach says, “No, no, no. They can build your list but they can also sell.”
That’s why we’re putting a little twist on this. Episode #144, if you like this type of strategy, is really solid.
Strategy #3 – Participating in an Affiliate Promotion
Instead of selling directly to your audience you can consider partnering with a friend or peer and use their audience to sell. When you have a really small email list and you don’t have a big social media following you can always create a stellar offer and then partner with somebody and sell it to their audience.
It’s usually a 50/50 split but you can propose something different if you would like. I know somebody right now, I’m not going to name any names because I didn’t get their permission to talk about this, but I know a guy that has had a one-on-one coaching business for a long time.
He decided to create an online course that really spotlights exactly what he’s been doing in one-on-one coaching. But he wanted to scale it. He wanted to take it to the masses.
He put it into a 12-module course. It was 12 different training modules Instead of paying big bucks to coach one on one with him you can buy a course that’s maybe just a few thousand dollars but you get all of the benefits of the results he promises.
He didn’t have a big email list. He sure as heck didn’t have a big online following. The guy was amazing at getting results but it was one on one. He didn’t have a huge online presence so he partnered with my friend who does have a huge online presence and who did go through this coaching with him one on one and got big results.
Now they are partnering together and they are marketing this product to my friend’s audience and they are crushing it. I thought it was interesting because it’s exactly what I’m saying here.
You might have the most amazing offer and you might be so spectacular in what you do but you don’t have an audience yet. Go collaborate with somebody who does have an audience that needs what you’ve created.
That’s why it’s so important that you build relationships and network. If you can you should go to some live events and start to form real relationships. If you do it for the right reasons and you’re there to support other people and you want to have real relationships that go beyond just the computer you never know where those relationships might lead.
They could lead to some really amazing business opportunities. But you’ve got to go into it for the right reasons. You are there to form relationships. You are there to be for people and support people. Again, you never know. So don’t just think you can hide behind your computer because those relationships can be incredibly powerful to help build your business as well.
I want to tell you one more thing about this affiliate promotion idea. I created a podcast episode called Seven Ways I’ve Collaborated With Friends and Influencers. It’s a really good episode because it talks about how my collaboration started and what they look like in terms of business and how profitable they were.
I highly recommend you checkout this episode. It’s #180 at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/180. It will take you right there.
Strategy #4 – Free Consultation That Leads to a Pitch
I hate the word pitch. It sounds so salesy. But, let me break this down for you. Let’s say you actually have a high-priced offer. Maybe you put a small group coaching program together that also offers one-on-one calls a few times over the next few months.
Let’s say your offer is $2,000, $3,000, or maybe even higher. One way to market that type of offer is with free consultation calls or what are often called discovery calls. Somebody gets on a call with you and you offer some value. You also help them decide what their next step should be.
You kind of analyze their situation. You ask them questions. You really learn about who they are and where they want to go. You might even offer some free advice, some suggestions to help them move forward, and then if they are right for your program, product, or service, that’s when you invite them in and make your pitch.
If I were to do this, this is not my style at all because I’m not really good at making a pitch on the phone, but if I were to do this I would study how to do that right. I think there is a right way to pitch something via a discovery call and there’s a wrong way.
I would do some research online. I would talk to my peers. I might even work with someone one on one for a few hours to really nail this down but this can be incredibly lucrative, especially if you have a high-priced program, product, or service because you likely don’t need to get in 100 people for it to be profitable.
You might be looking for five perfect clients for this offer you created. It might be worth getting on the phone, doing the discovery call, and then if they are the right fit, moving them into your program.
I know a lot of my friends who use this strategy. They have had great success with it but I think you need to do your homework a little bit just to make sure these discovery calls are really profitable and actually work for you.
The great thing about doing free discovery calls or consultation calls is that you can market them online. You can talk about them on social media, you can run Facebook ads to get people to sign up for a free call with you. They can be really valuable for people because they want some answers.
There are a lot of different ways you can promote them online. To actually sell, once you get them on the call, you move them into your program, product, or service if they are a good fit.
Strategy #5 – Sell Using a Facebook Live Series
I really like this one too. I told you that #1, the email promotion, was my favorite, especially because we got to hear Rachel talk about her huge success but #5 is my second favorite.
You can make this your own and you can play around with this but Facebook Live has become incredibly popular. I’ve really thought about this and I’ve seen some people do it but I thought about this in my own business and what this might look like.
Maybe you’re not ready to take that webinar leap. But one baby step could be that you put a three or four-part Facebook Live series together. Let’s say it’s a four part and you do it over a month.
Every single week you are on Facebook Live teaching some new content. You might be dropping some hints about a new program or offer of some sort that’s coming out. Remember, we already talked about different offers you can put together.
You might be dropping some hints. You might be referencing it. But you are really teaching in at least the first three videos. Your call to action is some kind of free giveaway that will be aligned with whatever it is you plan to sell.
You’re collecting emails, you’re getting video views with this free content you’re teaching in Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3. Then, in Week 4 you can present your offer. You’ve been warming up your audience. You’ve been offering impeccable value and now it’s time to take them to the next step with you.
It might be a live online workshop. It might be a template pack. It could be any of the offers I talked about or anything else you might have been thinking about. But here’s why I love this idea of a Facebook Live series.
First, all of those video views can be retargeted when you present your offer in Week 4. Let’s say you keep the cart open for a week after the fourth video you do, the fourth Facebook Live.
You’ve presented the offer. Now you keep the cart open for a week. You can take all of the video views from Week 1-4 and retarget all of them with ads that lead to your offer.
I love retargeting video views because it’s considered a warmer audience. The other thing is that you’re building your email list by offering free giveaways each week leading up to the offer.
If they are not ready to buy right away you’ve started to build your list every single week with these videos. The other cool thing is that these videos can live on. After they are live they can live on in your Facebook page’s recordings.
You can run ads to them. You can get even more views by running ads directly to these videos if you want. But, even after the promotion is over Video #4 can send people to a wait list.
You can make a video saying the offer is now expired but that you are going to come back out with it soon and, “If you want to be on the wait list and want to be the first to know just give me your name and email and I will email you the second it becomes available.”
Now you’re growing a wait list after your promotion has ended. I always love a good wait list. When B-School opens up I always have my bonus page go to a wait list. We’ve got hundreds of people who signed up throughout the year that are interested and now when I open it again I already have people I can market to. So, I love a good wait list.
Think about Facebook Live as a promotional series and you will want to map it out on your calendar. You will want to tell people it’s coming. You will want to email people about it. Let them know when you’re going live.
I would do the same day of the week and the same time every single week for four weeks. You can play around with it. Add a few bells and whistles if you want but I think it’s a great way to sell online and I think it also gets you ready for doing webinars.
You are getting the experience of being on video and delivering content. After a Facebook Live series it’s smooth sailing right into a webinar series that could be even more profitable when done right.
Backing up a bit, one more thing I forgot to mention is that in Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3 if you deliver impeccable content and you’re call to action is some kind of freebie, people have to give you their name and email to get to Week 4 when you present your offer.
People may or may not buy or maybe they miss Video 4. But you have a bunch of emails now that you have collected over the last few weeks. You can use those emails and send out some promotional emails letting them know of your brand new offer that was just released and any bonuses you might want to include.
Let them know how long they have until the offer expires. You can send out some promotional emails after this Facebook Live series making it even more powerful. It is just something to think about.
There you have it. We’ve gone through the five different ways you can sell online. I’ll give you a quick recap.
- Email Promotion (my favorite).
- Five to Seven-Day Challenge. If you’re interested and like the idea of doing a challenge to grow your list but also sell quickly you’ve got to check out Zach Spuckler’s strategy. I talk about it in Episode #144.
- Participate in an Affiliate Promotion.
- Do Free Consultations That Lead to a Potential Pitch (if the person is a right fit for your program, service, or some kind of coaching package you might want to put together).
- Facebook Live Series.
There you have it. I hope you found this mini training valuable and I hope you implement one of the offer strategies or selling strategies into your business. I want to hear about your success as well.
Speaking of wanting to hear about your success, did you know we just launched a brand new Online Marketing Made Easy podcast community on Facebook? Yep, this is something I’ve wanted to do for over a year now.
We finally took the leap. It’s up and running and it’s been so incredibly valuable. I absolutely love it. For those of you who are already a part of my podcast community, thank you so much for being a part of it.
For those of you who want to join our community, you’ll never miss a podcast episode because we post about it in the group every single week. We offer some extra freebies that we don’t actually offer on the podcast. If you want to see some of the behind- the-scene videos of the making of some of these episodes we’re going to include that into the group as well.
We’re going to do a lot of new things we’ve never done before. I would love for you to come join us. Go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/podcastcommunity and it will take you into the private Facebook group.
Request access and we’ll get you in there within 24 hours. I can’t wait for you to join us. We’re already having a lot of fun and we’d love for you to be there as well.
I can’t wait to talk to you again next week. Until then, make it a great week. I’ll see you soon. Bye for now.
