Have you ever tried to get paid to generate leads in your business?
There's this limiting belief among experts that they have to pay for leads. If they don't pay directly with their money, they pay for them with their time.
I could understand if you were selling wallets like Ridge does. Their whole business is buying leads with ads since they've got, well, wallets to sell.
But you've got more than your deliverables to sell. You've got years of knowledge, experience and processes you could be selling.
(Download my Process To Product worksheet to help with today's lesson.)
My friend, Miles Beckler, is a master of this. He built a million dollar business using $7 to $27 digital knowledge products.
The strategy is called: Self-Liquidating Offers.
It goes like this... run ads pitching a solution to a big problem in your space. Ads send them to a landing page where you have two choices: squeeze them for their email or go directly for the sale.
5 years ago, I would have told you to get the email. Today, with the way social media advertising works and buyers behave, I suggest going for the sale first. You can always split test the traffic, but in most cases the direct-to-cart page will outperform on LTV and CAC.
You sell your knowledge product for $7 to $27. If it's a hit in your market, you might get a few thousand sales, but expect under 100 sales while you learn the process.
The goal is to break even. Profit, if any, is a bonus and gives you more money to pump back into ads.
Let's say you spend $700 on ads and make 100 sales at $7 each. That's a win. You can take that money and buy another $700 worth of ads.
What you have to track for is how long it takes for these $7 buyers to turn into clients.
Most won't. That's okay. Something else really cool happens with those people and I'll cover it in a bit.
If just one of the 100 buyers becomes a client, you've had a huge win.
If you use my lessons from this newsletter then you'd make at least $25,000 at a cost of zero dollars.
Here's an example of an agency who used this strategy (at least partially):
Metacake was advertising these booklets several years ago. You can still get them as ebooks on their site.
They did a good job of promoting them. I wish I knew how many they sold, but the big mistake they made is they didn't put me into an email sequence to qualify me as a potential client. I think they sent me a newsletter or something. I barely received any communication.
Now lets compare to an Internet Marketer who used a booklet to sell over a million dollars worth of consulting.
Frank Kern used his knowledge and experience selling millions of dollars worth of digital products and services to generate thousands of leads. I think he sold over 5000 copies of this booklet back in 2014. I can't remember how much I paid, but it was cheap - maybe $15.
Once you bought, you were put through multiple email sequences designed to get you to buy his Infusionsoft consulting service. If you didn't buy that, you went into a sequence to buy his monthly coaching service. If you didn't buy it either, then you were offered his high-ticket courses.
I call this services + products ecosystem: Clients, Members and Customers.
Expert service businesses like yours and mine become predictably scalable when we use self-liquidating offers.
Here's an example from one of my clients did a few years ago:
My clients had this book, but were barely generating any leads. I designed a "Free + Shipping & Handling" funnel and helped them find the right advertising channel.
It immediately went from bringing in one or two clients a month to flooding the business with $20k to $25k in monthly recurring revenue. They grew from $800k in revenue to $3M in a matter of months.
I know I've shared all physical products with you, but this works even better with digital products because there's barely any cost to deliver ones and zeros.
So what I want you to do now is pick a process you have that creates results for your clients and make a simple digital product.
It could be a short video with an AI generated worksheet. It could be a simple ebook (also built with AI).
Get started with my Process To Product worksheet.
Reply back if you need help getting your knowledge to the market.
Tim Conley
PS. What happens with all the opt-ins and offer buyers who never become clients?
Nearly everyone who enters your self-liquidating offer funnel won't become a client. BUT...
They will expand your authority. Whenever your topic arises in their life, they will mention you to others.
The toughest thing in our business is being the "best kept secret." We're really good at what we do, but if no one knows it then we stay broke.
These people will read your newsletter. They will buy more of your digital products.
And a few will join a group program or membership site where they pay thousands of dollars each year.
Those benefits are great, but the biggest is they spread your message.
Oh, and the ads that your market sees, even if they never click, will increase your authority.
How freakin' cool is that?
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