HSH 020: How to Flip $140 into Your First $1k Launch with LeadPages & Convertkit
Today I wanted to take some time to teach you guys is how you can have your first successful launch. Even if you're new to the game, even if you're struggling to create a product, or sell or a product, and even if you don’t know where to start to start making money online - it's possible.
I want to walk you through what I'd suggest you do in your first 30 days to start getting super profitable, super fast.
Here's the cool thing- whether it's your first day or your 500th day, this stuff will work as long as you apply it.
I'm going to walk you through how you can turn a free workshop into an income generating machine that essentially does three things:
- It brings money in the door and makes profit.
- It validates your idea.
- It helps you get a jumpstart on your list.
- It allows you to create an influx of people into your community.
Now to keep it simple, I’m doing to break this process into 3 simple steps:
1. the tools you are going to need
2. the process that you will go through
3. the follow up and the extra saletes pickup/audience building.
First things first, what exactly are you going to be doing to craft your $1,000 Launch? SIMPLE!
You're going to put on a 100% free workshop! You're probably thinking to yourself, "Zach, is a free workshop the same as a free webinar?" Why, yes- yes it is, my friends - but it's got a BIG twist!
In this free webinar, you're essentially going to do a free workshop, but here's the caveat: you're going to let people know, "Hey, we're not selling a course at the end, but we are going to sell a copy of the recording if you'd like to own it forever."
I personally like to be really, really up front with my workshop. I like to say,"Hey, free workshop. The offer is on the table to buy it on demand."
(It's very similar to the CreativeLive model, if you're familiar with them.)
(Screenshot of the ORIGINAL) Registrations page - of course done in LeadPages
Tools You Need
landing page software
I Recommend Leadpages, Because Leadpages Will Actually Allow You To Host The Webinar, Host The Sign Up Page, Host The Thank You Page, Install Your Facebook Ad Pixels If You Decide To Run Ads, Quite Simply.
An Auto-Responder
If You're New, I'd Recommend ConvertKit. But anything like MailChimp, Aweber, GetReponse, Ontraport, InfusionSoft, etc. will work just fin!
Social Media of Your Choice
Whether It Be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Wherever Your Core Following Is. Even If It's Small. Don't Panic. Facebook Ads Are Optional And I Would Recommend That You Use A Live Streaming Service.
Obviously I'm Very Partial To Periscope, But I'd Recommend That You Use Either Periscope and/or Facebook Live To Help Generate A Few Extra Leads During The Process.
(If You Wanna Learn More About Livestreaming, I Have A FREE Training Right Over Here)
The Bird's Eye View of The Process
The way that the process is going to work is you're going to announce this free workshop. Using Leadpages you'll do everything you need with the workshop. You'll set up the signup page.
You'll set up a live webinar page which you can do with Leadpages. There's actually a live webinar template within Leadpages.
You use Google Hangouts On Air. It costs you nothing above the cost of Leadpages to run the webinar.
Then you set up the thank you page and you connect Leadpages to ConvertKit.
Note: I'm just going to say ConvertKit going forward but you can fill in the blank with your choice of service.
Here's the template from LeadPages for the live webinar
Leading Up to the Workshop
Connecting ConvertKit to the webinar is easy, just grab the link and for 4-7 email reminders before the free workshop, you're going to remind them that it's coming up and just drop the link to the “live page” in your emails, even though it’s not starting yet.
The minute they sign up for your free workshop, you send them an email that says, "Hey. You're all signed up for our free training."
If you're going to promote a week or more in advance, I'd recommend a second email three to four days before the webinar. I'd recommend you send another reminder email the day before the webinar.
Then three reminder emails the day of the webinar:
- One the morning of
- One an hour before
- One when you're going live.
The FREE Workshop Element
On the free workshop all you're going to do is talk about your topic of knowledge. You're just going to give people two to three hours of training with no motivation beyond really, really solid training.
You might be thinking, "Zach, doesn't that mean that some people are going to get this premium information for free?"
Yes it does!
But what we're doing is if you're just getting started or you're really struggling to build up that audience, we're showcasing your authority and your knowledge in a free setting.
They didn't pay anything to be there. They can't be upset that they didn't pay anything to be there. We're not withholding information as a way to get them to buy our product.
We're just giving them everything we've got for two to three hours. At the end of that training, what you will do is you will offer them to buy the training live.
Selling the Recording - Live
Here's what you do: remember we said we're not going to sell them anything, we're just going to offer them the recording. I like to say, "Hey for those of you that buy the recording, we're also going to throw in a bonus PDF, or two, or three for the next couple days" or however many you have.
These Are the 3 PDFs we Created - This Was Before We Had Our Branding Down!
When we did our free workshop we taught people how to set up a really basic webinar. Then we sold that recording.
It was a two and a half hour recording for $97. We threw in three bonus PDFs.
We did about $2,200 in sales from about 200 signups. It converted well. Right around that 10% mark.
To move right into the sale, you say:
"Hey, like I said, I'm not really selling anything except the replay if you want to have it on demand. I'm also gonna throw in some bonus PDFs for anybody that decides to buy the on demand version as a thank you from us for buying."
Then do a Q and A at the end and say:
"While we're answering questions, I'm going to throw in a free 15 minute laser coaching call with me." or "A free 15 minute consult with me" if that makes you feel better.
There's two reasons you do this:
Number one, it encourages more people to buy live.
Number two, it's going to give you an opportunity to get on the phone for 15 minutes with your ideal customers.
If you talk about your area of knowledge, they pay you $97, and then you get them on the phone. Guess what.
They're not a lead.
They're not an ideal customer.
They're a proven customer.
The 15-Min Bonus Calls
We know that this person is the target for this product. We can get them on the phone and we can really start to dig deep into, what exactly is it that you're struggling with?
Imagine that you make ten sales live. You can now get direct access to ten people who are the perfect customer, who will tell you everything you need to know about your product. THAT. IS. MONEY.
As I told you, the really cool thing about this workshop is that it does three different things. It brings in money.
It also validates your ideas because, guess what, if you do a free two hour workshop on your subject of interest and attempt to package it up and sell it and people buy that it means there is a market for your product!.
If I do it with Facebook ads, there's a market for Facebook ads training.
If I do it with Periscope, there’s a market for Periscope training.
Yes, we did a free training for both, and yes - we now have both products (Check Out The Periscope Product & The FB Ads Product Here)
If you're wondering, we validated it with various offers. We found time and time again it works. Then if you add in that laser coaching bonus, not only do you make money, not only do you validate, but now you get real tangible audience research.
Pretty powerful stuff. I know what you might be thinking at this point. You're like, "Okay, Zach. Cool. That's the process. Those are the tools I need, but how the heck am I supposed to get people into my free workshop?"
Filling Up the Workshop
The First Thing I Want To Tell You Is I'm Going To Encourage You To Create A Facebook Event.
Before You Roll Your Eyes So Hard That You See Your Brain, Hear Me Out!
Facebook Events Are Often Overused By People Trying To Fill Up Their Webinars Because They Don't Fully Understand How To Use Them Effectively.
We Have What I Feel Is An Incredibly Effective Way To Leverage Live Events On Facebook, Or Events On Facebook, To Bring In More Live Viewers To Our Webinar, Or Workshop Whichever You Prefer To Call It.
Notice We only Invited About 328 People, But 11% Said Yes
The key is you only want to invite people that would actually be interested. I can't tell you how often I get invited to a Jamberry nails party because I'm friends with somebody who does Jamberry and they click the "invite all friends" feature.
That's not strategic, even though this is free marketing, even though it doesn't cost you any money to invite all of your friends.
We want to treat this as if it's a paid marketing system.
We want to act as if we're paying for every person we get in front of.
If you're paying for every person you're getting in front of, you only get in front of the right people.
Let me say that one more time. You only want to be getting in front of the right people with your Facebook event.
Here's the really, really cool thing, when you're creating a Facebook event, and you go to invite people, you'll find that you can choose people based on groups you're in together.
If you're reading or you listened to my podcast, you're probably in my Heart Hustlers group.
Let's say you're teaching people about copywriting. Do you think people who are in my Heart Hustlers group, an online marketing group about selling digital courses and building a digital based business, are interested in copywriting?
You bet your bottom dollar.
You can only invite people you're friends with who are in this group, but guess what. If somebody's already connected with you, is in a group with a similar topic, and you invite them to a Facebook event, there's a good chance that they're a targeted person. What I do is maybe two to three weeks before the event, do some research and find really good Facebook groups to join. I'm going to recommend that you not just join Facebook groups for the sake of adding people into this event.
Remember you have to be friends. Generally speaking most of you, if you're reading this, are in multiple Facebook groups with multiple friends in them.
You can leverage the existing groups you're in. Take a moment and make a list of five to ten Facebook groups that you’re in or find five to ten groups to join. Spend the next two weeks getting really, really active in them.
Invite the people who become friends with you onto your free training. That's one way to bring people in. If you're wondering if it works, it's incredibly effective when you do it the laser targeted way.
Bonus points, before you do the webinar be super active in the two to three groups you're going to invite people from because you will have name recognition.
People will be like, "Oh, that's the Zach that's been posting in Heart Hustlers all week. Let's check out his training."
Social Promotion
As far as other social promo, whether you're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Periscope, FB Live, I don't care. Wherever you are that you have any size audience, I would recommend that you promote this.
You might be saying, "I only have 150 Instagram followers." Or "I only have 300 people connected to me on Twitter." That's okay.
This isn't designed to make you an overnight success.
This is designed to bring profits in, validate your idea, and give you access to the ideal customers to do further research and build out your high level products.
Post where you're at and post every day leading up.
A Great Way to Promote Your Webinar is With The Cover Photo On Your FB Page
Here's the caveat. If you spend the next seven days, every day at 12PM, posting "Join me on my free webinar", no one's going to join you.
What I would recommend is once a day, on one to two platforms, promote it and be aware of the platform.
Twitter you can tweet out every day at the exact same time "Join my free training" and it's never going to hurt your viewership.
If all you post on your Facebook page for the next seven days is this free training with the exact same link, you will hurt your engagement.
Make sure that you intermingle this promotion with content, and quotes, and pictures, and whatever your audience is most responsive to at this point in time.
Rock Your Live Streams
The last thing I would do is I'd recommend Periscoping every single day leading up to it.
We did this. We brought over 100 leads directly from Periscope over the course of five to seven days because we promoted very heavily on Periscope.
The cool thing about Periscope is you can just take pieces of this free workshop.
Maybe take like a five minute part of this free workshop you're going to do, promote it and do it on Periscope, and then at the end say, "We're going to go even deeper into this in my free workshop so make sure you get yourself signed up. Here's the link."
Facebook Ads
The last thing that you can do are Facebook ads. I understand that not everybody's comfortable with Facebook ads. I know that not everybody's ready to go with Facebook ads.
Here’s a link to one of my Facebook ads freebies in case you're like, "Yeah. I do want to try out Facebook ads."
Here's the caveat. If you're not down with ads, don't spend a ton of money trying to validate your idea. I say set a budget of anywhere from $100 to $200, if you can afford that, and test it out.
If you're like, "I've never run a Facebook ad before in my life." This isn't the place to try it. Focus on your organic marketing. I'm connected with a really smart advertiser, they recommend you don't even run ads until you've proven organically that your model works. I absolutely love that. I endorse that specifically with this training. You really shouldn't be running ads until you know that you're going to make money because, remember, part of this is validation.
What could happen is you promote this free workshop and nobody shows up, but that validates like, "Hey, nobody's interested." Or you get 200 people to sign up, 100 people come live, and nobody buys the replay. That validates that people aren't seeing the value in what you're offering or that you need to work on your sales pitch. There's so much validation happening in this process that you have to understand you don't want to throw on another variable, like Facebook ads, if you don't already understand them. They're an amazing way to fill up this training, but they're not vital.
That's a little bit about the process and how I would promote it out. I would make your goal to get 100 to 200 people because the really cool thing about this is once it's done, you're then going to have a list of 100 to 150 people.
It's a pretty great way to just create this influx. We talked about on the event how you do it. It's a two to three hour workshop and it's not a webinar.
Please remember it's not a sales webinar. It's a FREE workshop.
The distinction is the workshop is totally free. You're not selling something at the end other than the on demand purchase which you can totally promote.
So What Happens After?
Looking back on this, we've seen some things that you could easily do that would be an “upgrade”.
Things that we didn't necessarily try out or things that we know based on our marketing experience now could work really, really well. I’ll delve into this further, but I want to mention an important step- follow up.
After your workshop is over you have two options when it comes to the workshop. You can have it so there are absolutely no replays, meaning after signing up for the workshop, there are zero replays. You have to be there live to get it.
Depending on the time you do it I wouldn't necessarily recommend that, but I would have a very limited replay window. I would recommend a 24 hour replay. That way they can't get access to it later.
The weird thing about this offer is that if you send people an email who weren't there live letting them know they can buy it, they might be like, "Well, I didn't really see it. I don't know what I'm missing."
If you give them that 24 hour replay opportunity there's a good chance that, let's be totally honest, they're going to watch ten/twenty/twenty-five minutes, get distracted, walk away, and decide from that whether or not they want to own it forever plus get the free PDFs.
I would send a follow up email within a couple of hours of ending the training letting people know (starting now) you have 24 hours, or until the next day at midnight, to watch the replay. In that first email, remind them all of all the bonuses they're going to get.
The next two days I would send one or two emails a day reminding them that they can purchase it even after the replay expires.
The replay expired, but the bonuses are available for 24/48 more hours.
Yes, the bonuses are not available forever. They're only available for the first couple of days. Remember, those bonuses are the couple of PDFs that you're going to add in to complement the free training.
You want to put a scarcity factor, or a deadline, in place that says, "Hey, you must buy by this date in order to be eligible for these bonuses."You're probably wondering,
"What do I say in these emails? How do I do them?" I recommend that you have three different email types.
Follow Up Emails
Number one is just the replay. Core focus of that first email is the replay.
The core focus of email two, I like to tell a story. The thing is facts tell, stories sell. It's a quote you've probably heard before. I like to tell a story of a time that myself or a client overcame an obstacle as a direct result of the content in the workshop. It doesn't have to be specifically from the workshop, but the content.
A perfect example, when we promote our Periscope course we love to share testimonial of a successful student from our program! She was able to launch and land a coaching client, and she did it without a lot of emails.
She did it all through Periscope and she made about $1,300 over the course of a couple days days.
We say, "Let me introduce you to my student. She was only a couple months into her business and she generated over $1,3000 in a launch leveraging the power of Periscope because she plugged into our system.
She plugged into what works. She used our script to make sure that people are interested in what she had to offer."
This paints that story and makes it more of an experience. It's not "buy my stuff," it's "follow my story."
With that story if you can put yourself in the place of where your viewers are right now, where your leads are right now, and show them that this transformation is totally possible, they're all ears.
Painting a story is really, really effective.
Then the third email is what I call either the “results” or the testimonials. You might not have testimonials depending on where you're at in your business, but if you do I would include the testimonials in email three and remind them that the doors are closing.
If you don't have results that's totally okay. You're going to talk about the results you've achieved with your training. I might say (we love to do this during our promotions):
"Just in the last week, here's what we've done with Periscope."
"Since I started running webinars, I make $1,000 a week. Is that something that would help you in your business?"
It's kind of like the story except it's directly highlighting either a case study, or a testimonial, of yourself or verbatim words from your clients. Understand that the story is a little different in that it's painting a picture.
The result is a little different in that it's more clinical and to the point and it's reminding them of that deadline. If you have those one, two, three follow up emails, I think that that's going to be your ideal situation.
RECAP
- We walked you through the tools. We told you that you should get Leadpages, ConvertKit, leverage Periscope, maybe Facebook ads. I would also recommend if you're going to make the PDFs yourself you check out Canva. Canva's a really great tool for PDFs.
Then we talked about what you're going to do in that workshop. It's a two to three hour free training. You throw in that $97 for the replay plus a bonus PDF. While you're live you give a fast acting 15 minute laser coaching call which allows you to provide more value and make more sales as well as get direct access to your customers.
Then we talked about your follow up. Make sure you have those three key emails. A replay, a story, and a results and or testimonials. You promote with a Facebook event that you strategically invite people to. You don't invite all your friends, you only invite the people strategically connected to you who are looking to get more value.
You post on your existing social media channels and I'd recommend that you leverage Periscope every day up to to get more people interested in on the actual call.
Wanna Take it To The Next Level?
Now what I want to tell you about some stuff that I might try if you're an adventurous person.
One of the things that I've really tuned into is the fact that I love to experiment. I'm totally into experimentation when it comes to my marketing because the thing is, so many people are afraid.
They're afraid to try things. They're like, "Well, no one's done this before."
I say be audacious.
I say be different because the worse thing you do is you test something with your business and it doesn't work.
When Lays did the reuben sandwich you had friends who were like, "Oh my Gosh. This is the greatest idea ever." and you had friends that were like, "Why the heck would you want to eat a potato chip that tastes like a pile of meat? I really don't understand."
Lay's wasn't afraid to test. They weren't afraid to try it. Be like Lays.
I want to give you what I would consider little "upgrades". Things that I would test out that I think could result in really awesome results.
Presell The replay
The first thing I would try, if you want to take this shizzy to the next level, I would turn the thank you page of your sign up into an on demand discount offer. I've got a buddy who's a really successful marketer that swears by this.
Let's say that you're going to sell the replay for $97 live on the webinar.
What you could do is, the moment they sign up, you send them to a thank you page which you could do in Leadpages - that offers a discount of that $97 price tag if the buy in early!
Shoot a little YouTube video using your webcam and say,
"Hey guys. I just want you to know you are all signed up for the workshop. Everything on the previous page is now yours. You're going to get free access to the workshop, but I know that some of you can't attend live or you might want access to this training forever.
On this thank you page I'd like to offer you instant access to the replay, when it's ready, for $80.
We're going to offer live to everybody on the webinar for $97, but if you buy it now it's only $80. If you'd like to save about 20% and have access to it, plus we're going to throw in some cool bonus PDFs, we'll even give you our 15 minute laser coaching call that we're going to offer only on the webinar to buyers.
You can get that today for $80 instead of $97. If you want to save, click the link below. It'll take you right to PayPal and you can buy it."
Boost Your Group
Second thing that I might try, and we have done this and it works really, really well, is at the end of the webinar invite people to join a Facebook group.
I know that, a lot of you listening, you have a Facebook group and you might be thinking, "How the heck am I supposed to fill up this Facebook group?"
If you do this free training and you get 80 people signed up live. Those people, they decide that they're going to make it all the way to the end. Those are really engaged viewers.
Take a second and invite them to your Facebook group. Say, "Hey, whether you bought or not, we do have this really awesome free community that you can join."
That will instantly boost the number of members that you have into your Facebook group and those members will be highly engaged because they just came off this high of three hours with you.
Dump them into a Facebook group and ask them to introduce themselves. Ask them to start building content in that group. We find that that works incredibly effectively.
This is the Group We Add People Too - Sitting Pretty At About 5,000 Members
The last thing that you can do is when you do these 15 minute coaching calls you can be ready with an up sell.
Please hear me because some people kind of turn up their nose when they hear this.
The primary goal of these 15 minute calls is not to attract high level clients.
However, if you're getting people on the phone for 15 minutes, and they're asking you for help, you can say,
"I know you bought that replay for $97. If you're interested, I would love to offer you a one hour coaching call, or a one month coaching package, or a three month consulting package. We do it for $1,000 normally. What we would do is we'd take the $97 you already paid off the top and you could become a client of ours and keep everything you already paid for."
Just be careful to make it a VERY soft sell so it doesn’t feel like you just “trapped them” into a coaching offer from a free workshop!
How to Sell the Replay - Tech Wise
I can already sense people who are like, "Well, how the heck am I supposed to promote it on demand? What do I use?"
You can use...
- Gumroad
- PayPal, and collect emails, and then send them a Dropbox link with a download
- Vimeo on demand.
There are all kinds of ways to deliver the free video. That's not as important as delivering really, really, really good, free content. The delivery is not something I would stress too much about, but it's something that there's tons and tons of options for.
The only thing I wouldn't do is put them on YouTube and then send people to a YouTube link. Why? Because there's something about YouTube where it's free.
When people pay you they want something that feels premium. Imagine if you had spent $1,000 on a course, you logged in, and you found out all the videos are YouTube videos.
Even if they're private, and protected, and password required, you'd still be like, "Aw man, I just paid $1,000 for YouTube videos?"
We don't want people to feel that way about even $100 so just don't YouTube it.
Promise, Okay?
How Much Can I Make
The truth is, if you really want to knock it out of the park with this, you need about $111 for a quarter of LeadPages, $29 for ConvertKit.
That's $140 and that's everything you need. You don't have to run Facebook ads. You can build out the PDFs yourself in Canva. With LeadPages and ConvertKit you can do a really successful webinar.
Like I said, we did this when we were first starting out. We made about $2,200 in a couple of days. We sent out those follow up emails which are absolutely vital.
We ended up taking that money and putting it right back in, and upgrading, and then spending money on Facebook ads. Tons and tons of options abound.
That's what I would do in my first 30 days of business if I was starting over today.
So there you have it, our FREE Workshop to $1,000 Launch Plan!
If you test this out and you validate, please don't hesitate to drop a comment below, or drop it in the Facebook group. I want to hear how this goes. I'm dying to hear hear what happens for those that try it.
I want to see you validate some product ideas.
Like I said, it's a great way to validate, infuse profits, and really kick off your list building.
Now get out there and crush that workshop!
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