Episode 007: Webinars, Low-Ticket Offers, and What I Learned About Sales

Each week I ask my guest what their biggest fuck-up was in business and what they learned from it… are you curious about mine?  In today’s solo episode I am sharing my experience with webinars, low-ticket offers, and what I learned about sales after doing one. 

Transcript

Hey! Today I want to talk about sales. 

Nearly everyone who teaches you, how to create and, or market and sell an online course now, teaches a live launch and masterclass method.

You create a webinar, you teach people the WHY for like 30 to 40 minutes, and then you sell them on your HOW, for the last 20 minutes. Now, it works for a lot of people. I know a lot of people that make a lot of money doing the masterclass method, but it is definitely not for me.

 So a little over a year ago, I decided I wanted to make a webinar that was 100% sales pitch free.

And I mean, I shouted it from the rooftops. Come learn how to convert more leads into sales and there will be no sales pitch at the end. It’s just a come and learn webinar. I mean, I didn’t have hundreds of peoples, you know, sign up, but I had enough and it was really awesome. I got to hang out with some people.

I got to give them some tips on nurturing their leads, while automating the process and then came the sales part. I know I said it was a hundred percent sales pitch free, but I do want to say I didn’t do anything on the actual webinar itself. It was probably a month after I did Love Your Leads, that I was like, you know, I do actually want to sell something that tells people how to do this.

I mean, because I had my course CRM Blueprint for Dubsado users, but I have a very large base of followers that aren’t using Dubsado and I don’t think that everyone needs to change. So I wanted to create a product finally, that wasn’t necessarily linked to Dubsado, it could be used by people regardless of what CRM or not CRM they were currently using.

So this is when I set out to create my very first Tiny Offer. Well, I say my very first, it was my only cause it completely flopped. And that’s what we’re going to talk about next. But, in case you’re unfamiliar with what a Tiny Offer is. I’m sure you’ve bought one. And if you haven’t bought one, please instant message me on Instagram and tell me that you haven’t. Because I just think nowadays there’s probably no one that hasn’t purchased a Tiny Offer on their own.

So a Tiny Offer is a low ticket offer, traditionally under about $47. Some very popular price points are $27, $37, $47, but many people use it to grow their email list and sell higher ticket items. Which sounded amazing to me, because I could sell this Tiny Offer to people who had any CRM and then if they were Dubsado users, or if they looked at my process and were like, oh no I really need Dubsado and they decided to change… hey, I have this course. I also have a VIP day offer, that I could try to sell you on the backend. But at the start, my goal was just to make this low ticket item so that I could help people convert more leads in their business um, regardless of what CRM they had. Now, I want to talk about the failure part guys, because this product was 100% a failure, but it kind of wasn’t its fault.

So let me explain. So, on the backend of these Tiny Offers, really the only way to make them successful is high volume sales. I mean, cause you know, we’re talking about just a few bucks every time you sell one. So most people have a very strong ads sales process on the backend of a low ticket offer. 

I actually bought a few low ticket offers to teach me how to make and sell and use Facebook ads, to sell my low ticket offer. I know it’s very meta guys, but, um, after I made the product, which was no small feat, because we’re talking about, I was making instructional videos for five different CRMs, three of them I had never used myself. So I had to go in, I had to learn how to use the CRM, and then I had to figure out which parts of my process could be replicated in that CRM and, you know, turn it into checklists, an instructional video of how to, whatever it is that you want to call it. So it took a lot of time to make that product.

I also decided that I didn’t have time to write a sales page. Um, you know, because for these low ticket offers, you have to have a strong sales page in addition to, you know, running the ads campaign. So I hired a copywriter. And I hired a copywriter for not one, but two back-to-back VIP days. Which was a chunk of change guys.

And that mostly comes into how this low ticket offer failed, because when you think about the $4,000 that I paid for the sales page, and you think about all of the other low ticket offers that I bought in the name of research and/ or to help me put together my very own low ticket offer. I mean, we’re talking about, let’s just say, well, over $5,000 invested.

And a few months ago, I started using Airtable to, you know, figure out some things in my business. And one of the things that my sales hub in Airtable did, was tell me exactly how much money I had made off of this low ticket offer. Are you ready? Are you sitting down? $397.

I don’t care how you do the math. I don’t care how bad at math you are. You can definitely see that selling $397 worth of product comes nowhere near the investment that I put in. Now I do want to say. I’m not dumb. So when I realized that I didn’t want to continue to try to sell this low ticket offer, that I wasn’t going to put all of the money into the Facebook ads that I had originally planned, oh because of course, I also paid for Facebook ads, guys.

Wow, okay, I’m sorry. We’re not even going to get into those numbers. Um, but when I decided that I wasn’t going to do the low ticket offer, I carved up that very expensive sales page that I paid for and I repurposed it, parts of it, for my other two offers. So you will see things that my copywriter wrote for Love Your Leads that I reused for the sales pages of the CRM Blueprint and for my Dubsado VIP days.

So, in the end, I don’t really consider it to be a complete failure in terms of a lot of money invested that I didn’t get back. Because I did end up using that very expensive sales page for something else. I ended up repurposing some of the emails that she wrote for the sales sequence, for my CRM Blueprint Course.

So everything wasn’t lost, but at the end of the day, I learned a few things. 

Number one, I don’t think I’m ever going to put money into a low ticket offer again. I, it’s not the kind of business that I want to run. I like talking to people. I like helping people. The thing about low ticket offers is you, if it’s successful, you get hundreds, if not thousands of people, that are buying this product that you never get to talk to. And while I would love to get a good balance between my online course and my VIP day offers, I just don’t think low ticket offer suits my personality and where I want my business to go. 

Um, number two, let’s talk about Facebook ads. As I said, low ticket offers very hard to sell without a good Facebook ad or, I mean, Google ad, whatever kind of ad it is that you want to do, but without driving people to your sales page, because you need a lot of people visiting that sales page, in order to get conversions. Because the conversion rate on low ticket offers is actually quite low.

I think it’s under, it’s 2% to 5% if I’m remembering the numbers correctly, but lots of things have changed in Facebook ads guys. I mean, you know, we’ve got the privacy wars going on. And so even though Facebook ads might have been extremely, um, worth it for low ticket offers three years ago, I do think that, you know, it’s a little harder now. Even though there are ways to still make sure that you’re driving traffic to your sales page, it is harder. 

I know many people right now that have seen, you know, huge dips in their conversion rates based on Facebook ads. Based on all of the changes that keep on happening in the online world. So I want to circle back around guys, to the main topic of sales today, because what I learned through this whole process is how I want to run my business going forward and how I see the sales process, as an education opportunity instead of a close the deal moment. So, now I want to give you the opportunity to think about the sales process in your own business. How are you currently selling your services? Are you engaging with your audience on social media? Are you using a newsletter to reach people who have already indicated that they are interested in what you have to offer?

And I want everyone to think about what Britney Jeanine said on a previous episode of the podcast, everyone should be reevaluating what they’re doing in their business, especially when it comes to your sales process. If your sales process does not feel good to you, if it is not producing the sales that you want and need in your business, might be time for you to rethink might be time for a pivot. That’s it guys, thanks for listening to today’s episode.

Links

Episode 002: Pivoting Your Business with Britney Jeanine

CRM Blueprint – Dubsado Implementation Course for Photographers

Dubsado VIP Experience for Creative Entrepreneurs

Love Your Leads webinar