You have a business that you love, with a product or service that you know will make someone’s life better. There is only one problem; getting your offer in front of the right audience is tedious, and often yields disappointing results. In fact, the stress of it may be stealing the joy from why you started your business in the first place. I’m here to tell you that there is a better way!
In fact, I want to walk you through the exact process I follow for my own business. Copy these steps to create a system that will have leads coming to you every day on autopilot!
Before I learned this process, I would create freebie after freebie, thinking that I was adding tons of free value to potential clients’ lives and that one of those freebies would eventually go viral and explode my email list with qualified leads. Does that sound at all familiar?
After being an entrepreneur for over 10 years, the roadmap I’m about to share with you is the exact one I use to get 10-25 leads a day on autopilot. Until I’m in the stage where I’m nurturing and guiding them as part of my offer, I don’t have to do anything! As the digital environment changes, I may have to tweak something here or there, but the main processes stay the same. Even better, I only have to plan and set them up once.
Does it all sound too good to be true? I promise it’s not, it’s simply the beauty of putting processes in place so that you don’t have to do certain tasks over and over again!
I’m a firm believer in the importance of having a strategy and a plan before using technology to put it in place. Creating freebie after freebie with no plan other than to build your list can leave you feeling like you're spinning your wheels. Your freebie (free workshop, PDF, etc.) is what gets future customers in the door, and your offer is what you are guiding them to buy through this system.
Ok, Ready to make a purposeful plan? Let’s go!
5 Steps to Creating Your Digital Offer
Step 1: Believe in yourself. Before putting any offer out there, you have to believe in yourself and in the product or service you are offering. You have to believe that it's valuable for potential clients and that by using it, their life will be transformed, or more enjoyable.
It might sound kind of cliche or “woo woo”, but I promise, it’s an incredibly important step. If you aren’t quite there yet, tweak your offer until it’s something you believe will fulfill a need.
Step 2: Make sure you have the skills you need to deliver quality work. For example, if your offer is to build a website, you might not be ready to offer web design as a service if you’ve only done a few (even if you watched a few tutorials on how to build it first). You want to make sure that you have practiced, worked through the roadblocks that come up, and built several websites to develop your skills and confidence. Educating yourself and building your skills ties in with Step one as well, as you will believe in your process more as you become more confident!
Step 3: Make sure your offer is vetted. You want to know that the benefit or transformation your offer promises is tried and true. It’s important that it’s been successful for you or for others so many times that you know it will produce results for the people who purchase it. Also, it must be something people are asking for. Validating your offer BEFORE you sell it is critical.
Step 4: Know who your offer is for. This will not only help you attract the clients you want to work with the most, but you'll be confident that it's exactly what they need. You’ve heard this a million times, but it’s worth taking the time to do. If you’re not sure who your offer is for, create a story about who that person is. Often, that person looks a lot like you because we tend to attract people that are like us, and are looking for the same transformation we’ve been through. The story should describe their persona, their likes and dislikes, what lights them up, their daily struggles, the mindsets that hold them back, and anything else that rounds them out as a person. This becomes your ideal customer avatar. If you are having trouble deciding how to start your story, use my Ideal Client Story template to help walk you through it.
Step 5: Promote your offer. Email Marketing is king when it comes to promoting what you have to offer. My favorite software for email marketing is ConvertKit. Not only is it affordable, but it also does everything you need to get from the freebie —> to the offer. Technically (pun intended), you can start making money in your business with this tool without a website. You can recreate these steps in almost any good email software, but I’ll be using CK for this example because it’s the one I use for my systems!
Steps To Build Your Offer Delivery System
Build a landing page. ConvertKit has lots of good templates to choose from, or you can build one from scratch. This is the page that your leads will initially land on. It prompts them to leave their email in exchange for your freebie. Don’t try to sell them anything in this step, it is just to give them a sample of value and nudge them into the rest of the sequence. Keep the text short and exciting! Hint: “subscribe here” is played out. Choose something fresh and unique to you!
Incentive email confirmation. Once they sign up for the freebie, make sure that it prompts them to confirm their email address and then add the download button to that email.
Automate delivery of your freebie so that when they confirm their email address they can download it.
Now, write 4 emails and automate them to go out at these times:
- First email: 3 hours-2 days after freebie goes out, whatever works best for your situation: Include a “Get to know me” paragraph; write a little bit about you and your business, but keep it short and fun! Ask them for feedback on the freebie or ask what they are struggling with so they will reply and maybe start a conversation with you.
- Second email: 2 days after the last email. Send a tip or resource to help them get ready for your offer. My offer is website design, so I would start suggesting tools they might find helpful in the future, such as stock image sites or email template tools. Provide tips that relate to what they need to plan and put together for their project.
- Third email: 1 day after the last email. Mention the offer and even offer an incentive that they can get it at a discount for a limited time. Start to mention the reasons the offer will benefit them, and assure them that you are available to answer any of their questions. It can be valuable to include a link to frequently asked questions on your website if you have it.
- Fourth email: 2 days after the last email. This is the final email, the one that promotes the offer. Talk about all the benefits and how their life will change for the better by using your offer. Make it exciting, add in some testimonials, and answer a few FAQ’s that could be hesitations in your future customer’s mind.
Now that your email sequence is ready, it’s time to setup the page for your offer:
- Create the offer: After your emails are written in ConvertKit, you can go to Earn > Products to create the actual offer. Title your offer, then choose your payment method. It can be a one-time fee, payment plan, or subscription.
- Choose how you will fulfill the offer. Is it a physical or digital product? Digital products can be uploaded at this step.
- Change the custom domain, basically the back half of your URL. This isn’t 100% necessary because ConvertKit will default to one they set up, but I like to do it because it helps me clearly track metrics.
- The next step in ConvertKit allows you to customize the pages with an image, or change the text, and customize the colors to your brand colors! This option might be on a different step if you use a different email software.
Once the offer is built in your email software, it’s time to promote it to the world! There are 2 ways you can do this:
- Set up a series of social media posts and schedule them. I suggest every day or even a couple times a day.
- You can create a facebook ad to promote your freebie. Set it up to spend $5-$15 a day, tweaking it after a few days if it’s not converting the way you would like.
To sum up, the steps to creating your digital product and automating your leads are:
Determine your offer
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Create a freebie that supports the offer
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Set up the freebie with an email sequence that leads to the offer
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Set up offer
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Promote it
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Tweak it as you need until you see it start to convert.
If your offer is more expensive, say over $1000, you may need a little more nurturing to close those sales, but as you get good at it you will know exactly what to say in your sequence and won’t need to nurture them as much with conversations after they have been through the sequence.
You know they need your offer. You vetted it and are confident that you have the talent and skills to provide them with insane value and results. You know your process works because you have done it for yourself and others. You’ve got this. Now, go create your first offer!
