Marketing Runs Deep: Episode 2

Hey everyone,

This is Brian Hatch, CEO and founder of AutomateBIG. I'm excited to be able to jump into something that is a passion of mine today to teach you some really important tactics that'll work with your business. Again, if you're an influencer, if you're selling digital courses, events, online trainings, anything of that nature, you're going to love this. If you're selling physical products of some sort or you're selling a high priced item of some sort, this is going to be very helpful for you as well. So let's dive right in because that's what I'm here for, is to give you value so that you can go out and make a difference with your business.

And today's lesson, maybe you can guess it while I go through here. Okay, you got it? That's the whole training. Ready to go? Okay. No, what this is called is the step ladder. And everybody in their business knows that they have to have a core offering, right? You have to have something that you're selling. That's like, that is your main thing. Or maybe you have a program that's like your low tier, your middle tier and your high-priced tier or whatever, right? But it's still bits and pieces of the same thing and there's a lot of softwares that run that way. A lot of different companies have their low, medium and high-priced offerings, but still it's a base offering.

But how do you think people started? And that's what we want to be able to look at through a step ladder, okay? This typically is a free value piece. So basically you ... and you know this. This is where you're going to go through and get somebody's name and email and opt in, something from them so that you can return value to them, right? That's the key here, is there's a trade between you and them, is that you have something valuable that'll help them and then they want what you have and so they're going to give you their name and email contact information.

Now, this free piece of information can be PDF. It can be a book. It can be an ebook. It can be like, a training. It could be online videos, a mini course. There's all kinds of things you could do that would satisfy this free side of the fence. But one of the great things right now is, you've seen or probably have seen are challenges. I won't write it down. You can think about that yourself. Challenges, so like a five day challenge or seven day challenge. We did a five day challenge with Chris and Heidi Powell to be able to get people kick-started onto their weight loss journey, right? So that was one way that we got people in for free and they got got a little taste of what we could offer for them in a real true, beneficial way for the customer, right? So you want to have something free that gets people, you know, you get people's name and email.

From there a lot of people say, "Well, what should I do next?" Right? And a lot of people miss the opportunity here. They might go into some high-priced ... you know, high-priced, meaning they haven't paid you anything and now you're going to ask them for 100 bucks or 200 bucks or whatever the case is. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the business you run ... so don't think that this is a one size fits all scenario, but it's not always necessary to go into a paid offer.

What you can do in this instance is go for more contact info. And what I mean by that is, if they give you their name and a email address here, this next step on the rung of this step ladder could be asking them for their physical address or their cell phone number, something more to kind of make the conversation more intimate. And you've got to realize, you can use free content in here as well, and just say, hey ... for example, you can see some people that do vlogs, right? And they say, "And I also have this other thing that I do daily. If you want to get access to that, give me some more contact information." Right? That's probably their opt in here, but still if you think about it, if they're already watching you here, you could always say, "Hey, give me your cell phone number and that's where I do this special thing only for people that opt in with their cell phone number." Right?

And stick true to that. Do something special for the people that give you extra contact information. The same thing is really good if you want to ask for their physical address. There's really two great reasons for that, because now you know where your audience is, worldwide, nationwide, statewide, wherever you are. Secondarily, after you know where they live, it's really helpful for you to segment what's working best in your marketing and you can send them little postcards. You could send them a book. You could send them something physical that is helpful for them, even if it's not your own book. I was talking with a lady two weeks ago, and she decided that she would send out her three favorite books to people if they'd trade their email address, right? Or sorry, trade their physical address. So that's another way to do that. Now again, you don't have to have this secondary stage, but it is a way to get people up your step ladder, okay?

The next thing you want to do is offer something that actually costs them money. That's important because if you want to get people to this ... Now you see only four steps here, right? But this is your core offer, okay? You need to have something that they have to vote with their dollars. They have to commit. We all know this principle by heart, but we don't always address it or use it in our marketing, which is just a pain. But people that don't commit with their money usually don't commit with their heart, with their brain, with their intentions. They just don't. It's kind of like, you've heard the saying that you get what you paid for. If it's free, well what good is it? But if they actually pay for it, they're going to be more invested into it. And the higher price actually, the more you spend on something, the more thought you put into it ... your home, your car, you know, a big business decision. You understand that principle, but it doesn't mean you always live that way. So you want to have something here.

Now I've seen conversions in this first step. If you do sub-$10.00, you're going to get like, the most conversions. And again, that could be this step technically for you. But either way, this conversion right here, if you do something that's sub-$10.00, $9.00, $8.00, $7.00, $5.00, and you're typically going to get pretty similar conversions. From my experience, nine, eight, seven and six and five there's not a massive difference between them, so I recommend the $8.00 or $9.00 range because hey, might as well make an extra buck if you can. But at least that way they've now voted with some dollars and you can take them up this step. And note that, not because this is four steps, you can't go further if they buy something worth $5.00, $7.00, right?

Then take them to something that's $49.00 Or $59.00, maybe even $69.00, but in that price range right there. And then you can keep going up the ladder depending on the price of your program, right? But if you have a very high-priced program, which still our clients do, and your core offer is maybe thousands of dollars, well you still need to have people go through this step ladder in a way that is powerful for them, right? So to get them to your core offer, they still have to vote with money. Otherwise you're going to be working with people down here ... if you work with everybody that's free to try to get them to buy your $10,000 thing, $5,000 thing, you're going to have really tough conversations, so I don't recommend it. So wait until they've voted with some of their money, put some skin in the game, done something, taken special action, and then give them this high-priced core offer.

Now, the other part of this that I'm not going to go deep into, but I want to at least leave all of you that already have some form of this running in your business, is what's next for your customer? Most customers that have experienced this and get your core offer, there's still something in the back of their mind that says, "Well, what else do these guys do, or could they do for me," because no one wants to stay stagnant. So I highly recommend that if you haven't thought through this process and said, "What's my next step," think about it. Find another higher-priced program, a mastermind, a weekly video or a weekly training for special people that that pay extra hundreds of thousands of dollars that work there ... maybe not hundreds of thousands of dollars, but maybe hundreds or thousands of dollars extra.

And that way you can get a better step ladder. And that's more of your customer journey experience you can look through. But at any rate, a step ladder will help your business take care of your customers and your clients in a far better way than if you're just doing transaction, boom, boom, boom, boom. No, you want to have a feel that it's like, we're going to continually progress here. And if you do that for your customer, they'll be happy. Well, this is one small training and small way to AutomateBIG.