Episode #028: If I Had To Start Over, Here's How I'd Do It
If I Had To Start Over, Here's How I'd Do It
Have you ever wondered what you'd do if you had to start from TOTAL ZERO?
I think of it as a fun exercise to see what I would do if i had to start over!
This episode details exactly what I'd do to start from scratch to grow a list, build a series, and sell a digital offer.
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 28. And in this episode, we're talking about what I'd do if I had to start from scratch. You know, I love to record episodes like this because it gives you ideas and new perspective on what you can do in your business. So if you've been trying to get new perspective, you're early in the game, or you just want to have a little fun, this episode's for you, so stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now, I am really, really excited for this week's episode, because I love to kind of play this game in my head of, "What would I do?" I've seen some quotes around the internet, and I'm going to paraphrase here, because I don't have any of them in front of me, but I see them in passing all the time, that's like, "If you develop this skill to grow your business, you always have a way to make more money." And I love to kind of play this game in my head of, "Okay, Zach, if you were starting back at zero, what would that actually look like?" And that's what I want to talk to you about today, is how I would kind of build my business from the ground up if I was starting with absolute zero, okay?
So we'll get right into it. We're just going to dive right in, and I want to tell you that for me, I want to look at this as my first 90 days in business. What would I do in those first 90 days? And what I'd like to see is three big things. One, I would want to grow my email list to 500 plus people, two, I would want to set up a initial sales sequence, or onboarding sequence, or welcome sequence, whatever you like to call it, for new subscribers, and three, make an offer in that first 90 days so that I can generate some revenue on my efforts.
So here's how I would do it. First things first is, I would create a really good freebie in my niche, okay? And we've talked about this on the show. Freebees need to be really relevant, valuable, digestible, and people want something that isn't necessarily like, "Oh my gosh, look at how much content there is." Or, "Look at how juicy and massive this freebie is." What people really want is they want value, right? And if you want more content on creating freebies, I did a whole episode on it, episode number 19, that you can check out. So episode 19 is How to Create High Converting Freebies, and we'll link that up in the show notes. I'll give you the link at the end, but you can definitely check out that episode if you want to learn more about creating freebies.
But really the biggest thing that I want you to understand for this episode is that I would create a freebie that solves a specific problem. What is a specific problem that people in my audience has, and how can I solve it? So for me, if I was talking about Facebook ads, I might do something like, how to create your Facebook ads launch plan, right? Because that's a big pain point for people in my industry. "How do I get more people to actually join my launch?" Right? That's a big issue that my audience has. So I would create a really great freebie.
Couple tips. One, I love to use canva.com to create my freebies. But two, if you haven't heard of creativemarket.com, if you go to creativemarket.com and you typed in "freebie Canva," what will come up is all of these pre-created Canva documents that you can buy. Yes, they are for sale, but you can buy them and import them right into your Canva and just rebrand them, and they have all kinds. They have stuff for coaching, courses, masterclasses, webinar. They just have all kinds of really cool stuff that you can download for a small fee. So I would probably go to Creative Market, find a workbook that I like, choose a couple of brand colors to get started, and create a really great freebie that solves a problem.
Now, the next thing that I would do is I would get a CRM system, and I like ConvertKit. ConvertKit is my absolute favorite CRM. And the reason that I love ConvertKit so much is that you can get started for free. You will need to pay for it if you're going to play out the scenario that I have here, but I want you to know that you don't have to use ConvertKit. You can use anything that you want, but I personally really love ConvertKit. So I would go into ConvertKit and I would set up a welcome email that people get right after they join my email list. Okay?
So now what I've done on is I've created a simple freebie, I've set it up so that when people join my email list, they get the freebie, and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start running low cost Facebook ads, okay? Facebook ads are really great, because unlike ... In this scenario, I'm starting from zero, right? Unlike organic social media, I'm not trying to find the best way to reach my audience. I'm simply spending a little bit of money to get in front of them right away.
So I would use Facebook lead ads. And what Facebook lead ads are, are they actually collect leads on Facebook without asking the Facebook user to leave Facebook and share their name and email on your website. Now, you might be thinking, "Hey, I want to send people to my website," but here's the thing. Facebook rewards you with a lower cost for keeping people on the platform, and it's a much lower barrier of entry to get people to opt in. So what we find is that we pay less for opt-ins, and we get more opt-ins as a byproduct of using this, right?
So here's the thing. A lot of people ask this big question. They say, "I've heard that lead ads are low quality, or that I'm not going to get as many good leads." And here's the thing. We tend to see a 40% to 60% lower lead cost with lead ads than we do with conversion ads. And we personally still see great open and engagement rates, right? Even if 20% or 30% of the audience is not great, you're still paying 40% to 60% less per lead, right? So I believe it's better to get more leads and then clean your list regularly than fewer leads and pay more for them, okay?
So what I would say in terms of what I'm going to do is, I'm going to set up this ad that is geared towards my freebie, and my goal would be to generate 400 to 500 leads over 30 to 60 days, right? And that might sound like a lot, but it really breaks down to about 10 leads a day, right? And depending on your niche, that could be a few dollars a day to $20 a day, depending on ad spend. We tend to see less in the B2C space and more in the B2B space. And I know that it can be a little daunting to invest in Facebook ads before you see a return, but the reality is it's hard to sell an offer when you don't have an audience, but it's much easier when people are already connected to you, okay?
So once I've done that, once I've got those ads up, the next thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to create a really simple welcome sequence for new subscribers, okay? I want to make sure that everybody who joins my email list is going to get a series of emails that promotes either a wait list for an upcoming course or a low ticket product. Now, if you don't have either yet, that's okay. You can still create a welcome sequence, and I would, that promotes some of your content, blogs, podcasts, whatever you have, or even just has great content in the email.
Now, on the podcast, I have episode number 12, where I break down how to write an email sequence for brand new leads that are coming in, but here's the basic gist. I like to write five emails. The first email delivers the opt-in that they signed up for. The second email is value-based. It promotes a blog. It may just have great value in it. The next day, I send out an email that either pitches a wait list or a product. So if you're just getting started, throw together a wait list with a simple form and say, "I've got something great coming up around the problem that your freebie solves." The next day, I send out another value-based email, and then the fourth day, I send out an email with a final call to action to get on my wait list or buy my product.
So the point of this sequence is to start warming up your audience and get people to engage with your content, okay? Now you might be saying, "Zach, I don't have a ton of content yet." And that's okay. You can put the content that you would generally blog about or podcast about and throw it into your emails directly. And that can work really well too. But the point of this is that you want to start moving brand new subscribers into taking the actions that you want them to take, and you want to make offers to them.
What most people do is they say, "Thank you for joining my email list. I'm going to email you once a week." But what about brand new people? How do you acclimate that to the type of content that you create? How do you move them into wanting what you have to offer? Right? You have to write a compelling sequence that does that. And so if you're thinking about it, and you're kind of like, "Okay, this sounds great," what I recommend that you do is just get started. Just start writing the emails. Don't overthink it. Don't think, "Oh my gosh. I don't know what to say." Or, "I don't know what to put in there." Just start, right? Follow the basic flow that I gave you, right? Delivery, value, pitch, value, pitch, over the course of five emails. Keep it nice and simple, okay?
Now, once you've done this, right, and just to clarify, I would write that sequence right after I publish my ads. So now that I've got my ads running, and they're going to my email list, and my email list has a simple welcome sequence, now it's time to launch an offer, okay? And I want to have a quick conversation about this, because I think so many of us see other people around the internet launching big stuff, right? Like, "Oh my gosh. I have this epic training that's like $2,000." Or, "Come join my $5,000 coaching program." Or, "Come work with me inside my mastermind." And we feel this pressure externally to basically perform at that same level, to charge at that same level. And I recommend that when you're getting started, you just create a simple, low ticket offer. Something between $17 and $47 that people can really buy on an impulse, but provides massive value to your audience, okay?
I personally have created several low ticket offers. We have my Facebook Ads Lead Generation Bootcamp. My Challenge Launch Toolkit. You might have heard of some of those on the show, but basically they're priced around $25 to $35, and we sell those really passively inside of our sequences and in our business. See, the point of a low ticket offer is to turn a subscriber into a customer, because customers tend to use our content more frequently and see value in what it is that we're creating. So I recommend a low ticket offer just be one or two hours of video-based content that you package up into a mini course, right?
You might now be thinking, "Okay, I'm kind of in this groove, but why low ticket instead of high ticket?" Right? "You're kind of convincing me," or, "You're trying to convince me, Zach, that I should." Here's why. Because you, when you start your business, or when you're creating a new product, you don't know exactly what people want, right? And you're kind of trying to figure that out as you go. But what I've learned along the way is that you may not, when you first start your business, have all the tools to create a $2,000 experience. You might not have the team, or the software, or the products, or the offers, or the experience, and that's okay. So start with a low ticket product, because it's easier to build, it's higher perceived value when buy it, and it's easier to create, okay?
So I like to ask myself the question, when it comes to creating my offer, "What does my audience that I've been growing keep telling me they want?" Right? If you're like, "My audience hasn't really been telling me anything, Zach," well, you can ask them. Send out an email that says, "Hey there, first name. I'm working on some new content. Can I ask what you need help with? When it comes to Facebook ads, health and wellness, weight loss, meditation, whatever?" And then just wait to see what people reply. Now, realistically, you're only going to get a small percentage of people to reply, but the good news is, those people who reply and are engaging with your email are more likely to be your buyers anyway. So ask them. Ask them what they want.
Now, for me, a low ticket offer, I actually build it in three pieces. I have the core offer that I charge $17 to $47 for, but I also do an order bump and an upsell. And an order bump is an optional add-on that happens before they enter their credit card. So you've seen this on a page. It's usually like, "Do you want to add this to your order for $17 more?" Right? It's something that enhances the experience of the core offer. So for example, in my Challenge Launch Toolkit, that's my core offer, I teach people how to launch their digital product. My order bump is a workbook to help them write a sales page and create the offer that they can sell to their audience, okay?
It makes it easier to generate more revenue when you have additional offers kind of connected. And then I also have an upsell. So after people complete their checkout, it takes them to a page with video where you say, "Hey, if you love the Challenge Launch Toolkit, then you should check out my Evergreen Challenge Training for $97." Right? So I basically say, "What are the next steps?" So for people that are about your offer, what are the next steps that they can take after they opt in or after they buy to continue their journey? And I make that an upsell. So even though my Challenge Launch Toolkit is priced at $37, we see people spend on average $55, right? And we've done some math over the course of the life of the toolkit. Having that order bump and that upsell has added about $30,000 in extra revenue, right? So it takes a little bit of work, but it's definitely worth it to create a really cohesive, complete kind of mini product suite.
So what I recommend that you do is, before you build all of this, pre-sell it for 15% to 20% off what you're going to offer it to the public for a limited time, and email it to your list. Why do I do that? Well, it would make it easier for people to feel that incentive to join, right? It also means that you can sell it before it's completely built and validate that your offer has legs. So I just use three to five emails that kind of promote my low ticket offer. I'll send one out, announcing it with a link to buy, a couple promoting it, one to let them know the price is going up, and then a last chance email, right? You can send more emails, but I wouldn't re sending fewer than four to five, right? Keep it simple for that first launch. Email, promote on social, and then just see what happens, okay?
So let's do a super quick recap on what I would kind of do to boost my business if I was just getting started or starting over. First things first, I would create a freebie and run Facebook ads to it. My goal behind this is to spend $5 to $20 per day, getting 400 to 500 leads over the course of 30 to 60 days, okay? Again, the cost will vary depending on your niche, but the ultimate goal is to get those 400 to 500 subscribers. Once I've started running the ads, I want to create my new subscriber sequence. I want to set it up so that when people join my email list, they go through a sequence that promotes a wait list or a product. Now, if you don't have a product, make a wait list for the low ticket product that you're going to start working on. Once you have this low ticket product created, you can go back to your email sequence and add it in, so that you're now passively always promoting a product.
Just as a reminder, that simple welcome sequence goes: Delivery of content, value, pitch, value, pitch. And I just like to have a simple five-email sequence. I keep it really, really simple. Now, once you've done that, and you're growing the list, and you're marketing to the list, then what I recommend is that you create and mini launch your low ticket offer. Pre-sell a low ticket offer. And we talked about how the elements of the low ticket offer include the core offer, the order bump, and the upsell. And I recommend that you map all of those out and pre-sell it to your audience for 15% to 20% off retail for five to seven days, so that there's a limited time window, there's incentive to join, and you're encouraging people to take action, right?
If you're not sure how to come up with an idea for your low ticket offer, because you haven't been getting a lot of feedback from your audience, well, you've built a list of 400 to 500 people. Shoot them an email and ask what they need help with, right? Shoot an email and ask the question. That's where you're going to get the answers, okay? So it's as simple as just saying, "Hey, I'm working on some new content. Can I ask you what you need help with?" All right? So I would pre-launch the low ticket offer.
Now, here's where it gets fun. Once you've done this, you just keep going. So continue to build your email list with regular advertising, give value to that list in the form of blogs, content, video, update your onboarding sequence as you develop your new offers, and now, as you have this win under your belt, you can start developing those higher level, higher ticket offers. Bigger courses, coaching programs, all that kind of good stuff. See, I like starting with this kind of 90-day plan and going low ticket, because it gets you that win. It builds you that audience, it gets you in the game, right?
So as we start to wrap up here, if you're listening to this and you're going, "This sounds like something I want to implement, but I don't have all the pieces," I want to invite you to check out Not Your Average Membership. You can head over to join.notyouraveragemembership, which we'll also link up inside the show notes, and Not Your Average Membership is a monthly training program where we give you all the tools to create this machine, and then fuel it on a monthly basis.
So in your first 60 to 90 days in the program, we literally have training that covers everything that I talked about today. How to run lead generation ads, how to develop your freebie, how to create your welcome sequence with templates and samples, a complete low ticket offer training. Plus every month we drop training on how to fuel that machine. Live calls, action plans, implementation weeks. We have lots of great stuff in the membership, and I could go on and on about all the stuff that's in it, but I won't. I'll just invite you to check it out over at join.notyouraveragemembership.com, or like I said, we'll link it up in the show notes. And speaking of show notes, we will have the show notes for this episode, along with a complete transcript, over at heartsoulhustle.com/nyap028. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap028, for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 28.
So get out there, try out some of these strategies, and let me know what you think. I love to hear from you, so don't be afraid to tag me over on Instagram stories. Let me know what you thought. DM me. I'm @HeartSoulHustle. I love hearing from you guys. I hope you find massive value in this episode, and I cannot wait to see you out there, crushing it with this strategy.
