56: Ronii Bartle: Data Focused Marketer and Serial Entrepreneur + Course Creator

Hi there. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you an important question. Are you wondering why your hard work isn't reflecting in your bank account? If so, I've got something that could change the game for you. With my digital product accelerator one on one coaching program, I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs like you be bank consistent revenue without sacrificing your time or sanity. Imagine shifting from 90% client facing work to enjoying consistent revenue from your digital products, all while reclaiming your time. You already know that you don't need another course and a one size fits all approach isn't going to cut it. What you need is a strategic long term plan that tailored just for you. So if you're ready to build the profitable freedom giving business you dreamed of, apply to work with me by going to destinycop.com apply I cannot wait to learn more about you and your business. Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host Destiny Kopp and and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. Before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is on the AppSumo Marketplace at a special deal and the link for Course in A box on AppSumo is in our show notes. Today we're in the middle of our Course Creator series where I'm chatting with ordinary course creators just like you. We're talking about their journey in their online course business, how they got started, the challenges they've experienced and how they overcame them. These are real discussions with real people. And today I have a special guest with me. I have Ronnie Bartles. Ronnie is a business and marketing expert that loves how the science of data creates the art of marketing. Her focus on creating real world processes that are results oriented has earned her an impressive list of credentials including an MBA from the Citadel, former President of the Charleston American Marketing association, and as a most influential Woman in Business Rising Star finalist. Through her straightforward, no nonsense style, Ronnie is here to teach you how to get in the hearts and heads of your ideal clients so you feel like your marketing is effortless. Ronnie, thanks so much for joining me. I'm so looking forward to our conversation today.

Thank you for having me.

So I'm going to let you begin and just take tell the listeners a little bit more about your journey into online entrepreneurship and how you got started in the online course world. Sure.

So in 2008, when the economy crashed and we went to a recession, I was working for a marketing research agency out of Durham, North Carolina, And I went to them and I said, you know, I have this idea for a business. And, you know, they were looking for ways to try and cut costs just because they knew what was coming down the pipeline. And they were like, you know what? That's a really great idea. We'll be your first client. And they're still my client today. So I started off doing done for you kind of agency work, just freelance work for, you know, marketing and business and lots of. Lots of different things. And like a lot of entrepreneurs, my business since 2008 has gone through a lot of different changes. You know, there were moments that I'm like, I'm gonna be, you know, an office organizer, and there are moments that I'm gonna be a bookkeeper. You know, so you kind of go through the whole gamut of it when you're trying to figure out what you're doing. And then about three years ago, I got the opportunity to basically go back to the 9 to 5 world and went to a software company where they hired me as the director of marketing. And it was a small startup. And part of the reason that they wanted me on board was because I had been an entrepreneur for so long and kind of knew the marketing side of, you know, bootstrapping a startup. And so I did that for a few years and kept my business, you know, on the back burner. A few of my private clients that I really loved. And then when the pandemic hit last year, they were in the vacation. The hospitality space, the vacation rental space. And. And obviously, it definitely went under at that point just because they were a new startup in the middle of a pandemic that nobody was traveling and everybody was locked down. So I had to start all over again and jumped straight into the online course world last year and just saw the opportunity of so many people now working from home, trying to, you know, further their knowledge for their business. Because we're thrown into this situation where we have to figure out new strategies that we haven't even encountered before. And so that's where I was like, you know, rather than doing this for people, I need to teach people how to do what I do, because I can impact more people that way.

So about three years ago, you went back to the corporate world. What made you do that?

It was one of those opportunities where it was a tech startup, and I had the opportunity to go into a company where I was employee Number two, in hopes that being in the tech world, it would take off and go public within a few years, and I would be part of that initial employee base that could hopefully go with the company as it grew and took off. As well as it was software development, which I hadn't ever done before, and I found very intriguing. So that was really interesting that I could translate marketing and the voice of the customer and what they wanted over to how you actually build software products. And I loved that piece of it as well as it was really nice to go work for a company where I had, like, a huge budget for marketing. So I got to play with a lot of different marketing techniques and strategies because I had a budget to work with, as opposed to a lot of my private clients who were like, what can we do for 100 bucks? So it was really kind of nice to be able to experiment with that and then kind of take that knowledge of what I was able to experiment with those kinds of budgets and come back to the entrepreneur world and go, okay, now we've done this with the large budgets. How do we figure out how to do that same thing on small budgets?

Now, I could definitely relate to what you're saying about big budgets and the appeal to that. You know, I worked in the corporate world in marketing as a director of marketing, too, and having millions and millions and millions of dollars just to spend on marketing was definitely a plus.

Yes.

So this particular business that you went to, they were in the vacation rental space.

Yes.

Okay. And obviously with the pandemic last year, there was a lot of, you know, I know, somewhat familiar with this particular niche, and a lot of the, like, vacation rentals, they couldn't even rent. Like, in Florida, they couldn't even rent out their houses because of the pandemic. And the governor said, nope, nope, I don't want anybody coming into Florida.

Yeah. Well, and this is an interesting little twist kind of in how, you know, my business has grown over the past year is because I came out of the vacation rental industry in the software side. I had a lot of contacts there, and I got together with two of my colleagues who are also in the industry, and we've had, over the past year, a lot of really great success building courses specifically for vacation rental industry owners and managers on how to get more direct bookings. And part of the philosophy of that is, after last year when Airbnb was like, all right, cancel everything. One of the guys I work with lost $70,000 in Airbnb reservations that he doesn't. He can't recoup. So he's like, I just need to figure, we need to figure out how to transition more of your bookings into bookings direct and off of those OTAs, because you never know what they're going to say one day and be like, oh, you're violating the terms and then your business is gone. So we've built actually a course called the Book Direct Accelerator and it really kind of teaches people how to go from the relying on Airbnb or VRBO or any of the online travel agencies and transition their guests into getting more direct bookings and kind of marketing for themselves, but still using OTAs as a marketing tool, not as their booking channel.

Hey there Destiny here and I'm the host of the Creators MBA Podcast and this episode is brought to you by HelloContent Shop. You your go to Destination for content creation in your online digital product business. I understand how busy you are as an online business owner. I am right there with you. And that is why I have filled our hello Content Shopify store with low cost digital products that you can use as a lead magnet or part of your paid programs like your online courses or memberships. We also have marketing templates like email swipe files and social media templates designed to save you time and money. So whether you're looking to streamline your content strategy, enhance your digital products, or just save some precious time, I've got you covered, my friend. Now visit the HelloContent Shop today and take the first step towards effortless content creation. And I completely get that. So let's talk about your course and tell me about the process that you use to come up with the idea to find your students to develop your course. Start from that beginning of that process.

Sure. So that course, I have a couple of different courses, but that particular course has been a really interesting process because I do have two colleagues that I work with. And the nice thing about that for us as a team is that we each bring kind of a little bit different background. So my background obviously is very heavy in marketing and one of my colleagues, Derek, he is an actual vacation rental manager who manages over 80 properties in Seattle. So he's a very deep understanding of management operations. And then Matt is, he sold his digital agency that he owned for 16 years and, and he's an owner as well. So he kind of brings in that smaller business operational kind of background as well as a lot of marketing too. So we all supplement each other really well. And we started off with creating a Facebook community, a free Facebook group, and Having people come in and join that group. And it took us a long time to kind of, you know, hit that hundred member mark. But then once we kind of hit 100 members to 200 members, it started to kind of grow on its own a little bit more. So that was a little bit more organic. But our strategy was start to create a community where we were positioned as the thought leaders. And then once we did get to launching a course, then we had an audience to launch to. So we definitely started off with free content and we were heavy free content for six months, probably a little bit even longer than that while we built that community. So we started at zero of the three of us, three people in a group and built it to we're over 600 now. And while we were doing the free content, we used the group really for lot of market research data on what are they looking for, you know, what are the questions they're trying to answer. And obviously with the state of the vacation rental industry they're trying to answer how do we get more direct booking? So I don't have to work with OTAs as much after, you know, what happened last March. And as we were going through that, the three of us kind of sat down and brainstormed what would a six week course look like. We kind of put together an outline and a very, very basic launch marketing plan to our group and the email list we had started to build. Once we kind of just got an outline together, we threw it up on the group and made graphic and was like, here's what we're doing. Who wants in on a beta group? And we priced it a fairly low price point. We priced what it was 197 for six week course and the course was an hour call once a week and a private Facebook group and all the materials that we put together. And we had three weeks. We basically launched over three weeks and our goal was to get 10 people into the group at this beta rate to kind of test what we're doing. And we sold it out in that three weeks that we had to launch. We got 10 people into it and basically we built the course. And each week as before, we would have our call, which, you know, from my perspective, I have also built evergreen courses where I drugged my feet because I didn't have anybody to necessarily launch to yet. And I wanted the content to be done first and it took me forever to do it, whereas this took us six weeks to build it because we had people we had to do it for. So it was kind of a nice experience. I've been through both in that regard and personally. Personally, I like building it more on the fly. I'm more deadline driven that way. And then going back that everybody in the group knew it was a beta group. So going back to all of them and saying, okay, now that we've been through it, we need some feedback on how could we make this better. And so our next round will be another round of taking that feedback and making it even better and eventually then transitioning it into an evergreen product where really all our job is is to market it and sell it.

And for sure, when you have a beta course that you're responsible for delivering content every single week, that is a huge motivator to get it done.

Oh, yeah, yeah, it definitely did. And you know, I personally have courses that are evergreen courses, and it took me six months to do them because I didn't necessarily. I wanted the content to be done first. And looking back now on having done both strategies, I'm like, you're kind of better off just selling your outline and building the course as you go in a beta. And we even did the beta for a cost. We didn't even do it for free. Like, we still, we still charge 200 bucks for it. So still made a little bit of money, made it at least, you know, worth our time to keep moving forward. But as far as the course creation piece of it, I found it much easier to do it in a beta format like that where I was motivated each week because I had a call to do with 10 students.

So you started the Facebook group and for about six months you gave away free, you know, free content and did some market research. When did you first start that group? I'm trying to get an idea of how long it took.

It was about May.

We started 2020.

We started in May of 2020 and we launched the course in January of this year.

Okay.

So we were up to about 500 to 600 members between May and December.

Okay. You said you had other courses. What are the other courses? And are they still related to the vacation rental market?

No. So that my courses for me personally are not. I have another course called Stalker. And so what that's about is my background is in consumer behavior research. I spent 15 years in marketing research doing online surveys and focus groups and being that creepy girl that sat behind the two way mirror taking notes about everything everybody was saying in a group. And so I have a different marketing philosophy than most small business marketing people. I'm very data driven with my marketing, and I tend to not Be the. I do test quite a bit and like, you know, throw things out and see how it does. But I tend to then use data points to really understand who your target is. And as my personal business, as an entrepreneur, I find with marketing, what happens with small business owners and entrepreneurs, they get so passionate about their product or their service and they're like, it's amazing, everybody's gonna want it. And I love their enthusiasm, but it's really hard to market to everybody. You know, as the old saying goes, if you're marketing to everybody or if you're talking to everybody, you're not talking to anybody. And so I tend to work with my private clients in okay, who is our target market here? Who's the niche? Who are we really trying to understand and how do they purchase, how do they make decisions, where do they hang out? And really understanding your ideal clients and creating your customer profile or your client profile, your avatar and understanding who that person is that then drives back home your marketing messages and makes them more effective because you're speaking to your ideal client. And so my course stalker kind of really comes around as to how you can basically stalk your ideal clients in a non creepy way and really do content creation that's based on your ideal clients and that's an evergreen product. For me, it's very short, bingeable kind of course. And I go through the, you know, how to, how to really kind of build a client profile and then into how to create content based on those client profiles that are marketing strategies that are a little bit more on the long term kind of marketing side of things of, you know, creating blog posts based on SEO keywords that are based on your avatars. And so those kinds of marketing strategies are very long term but organic in nature that once you kind of like set it, you don't have to think about it too much outside of a few promotional pieces from there. So that course is very honed in on kind of ideal clients and building those profiles.

So for that particular course, how are you finding your students? Are they coming? You said it's the evergreen course, so are they finding you through your website? What are some other traffic strategies do you have?

So for me there, I basically use my own. That's in the course do content creation, a lot more organic stuff and paid ads. I kind of piggyback that it's a more traditional nurture email funnel. So with that strategy, my strategy there is, you know, get them on my email list with a free download and then nurture them through a sequence of Emails then that lead up to a call to action for the course. But how I get cold traffic is really through paid ads. I do that through Google and Facebook and Pinterest for that course.

I'm just curious because I've done all of those except for Google. I haven't done the Google Ads yet. Which ones are working best for you?

Google.

Okay.

Yeah. So from a marketing strategy perspective, and I do this not only for myself, but even with any private clients that I work with, is when you're thinking about paid ads, when people go to Google, this kind of comes back to how the psychology of how people buy and search for stuff and search for content when they go to Google, they're typing in a specific keyword so they're going there for a specific purpose. So that's where when you're trying to sell your course or sell anything, when you're doing your Google Ads, thinking about what are they going to Google and typing in. And then that's kind of how you build your content and your ad there. So there your person that is landing on those are coming looking for that thing basically. Whereas when you're running say Facebook ads or Instagram ads, that ad's purpose is to interrupt their scroll. They didn't come to Facebook or Instagram to look for your thing. They came to those platforms to scroll through and see photos of their friends and their family and you know, their grandkids or regular kids or whoever it is. And your purpose, your ads purpose there is to interrupt their scroll. So it's not, it's a different mindset. So while those are extremely effective ads and I love them, you really have to think about, oh wait, I have to interrupt what they're doing. They're not here looking for me, whereas on Google they're there looking for you. So those are always going to be more effective because they're already pre qualifying themselves basically. And so that's why those always do better for me.

For you. So tell me about Pinterest. Have they worked for you or what have you seen with the Pinterest ads?

So Pinterest, I am a huge fan of Pinterest ads. I'm a huge fan of Pinterest, period. I'm finding that when people go to Pinterest they're using it more like a search engine than a social network. So it works a little bit more like Google as opposed to Facebook. So they're typing in keywords looking for stuff. Pinterest is a planning platform, so they're planning to do stuff. And I Find content to work really well on Pinterest and it drives a lot of traffic for my website. Pinterest is my second top traffic driver under Google. So my Pinterest ads are actually even working better than my Facebook ads right now. And I have one client, they are product client, it's not a course client, they're a product client. So obviously Pinterest is a good spot for them. And we're finding that between their Facebook ads and their Pinterest ads, while Pinterest doesn't drive quite as much traffic as Facebook, the average person on Pinterest when they order spends $250, whereas the average person on Facebook when they make an order spends $40. So I'd much rather have a Pinterest person.

Yeah, yeah, definitely for that product.

Right. So Pinterest people spend more while you're. You don't get quite as much click throughs or traffic and eyeballs you can, depending on your budget. Obviously they spend more money, they're more willing to spend and part of the reason is they've gone to Pinterest because they're planning to do something. So I find them very effective and I find them very effective for free content and then starting your funnel from there drive them to free content, get their email address with a free download and now they're in your nurture funnel that then you can lead up to a sale.

What student or revenue numbers can you share with us for the stalker program that you have?

Yeah, so stalker is an evergreen and it's fairly new to me. I've only had it for a few months and I've got the funnel set up so that it's a free download. That then is a sequence of emails. And so it's kind of a more of a slow trickle. But I'm getting on my email list, I'm probably getting close to 50 to 100 new emails every month. And my conversion rate right now is at about 2.3%, so. And that course is $197.

I mean 2.3% is good.

Yeah, it's very good. It's pretty average, you know. So, you know, now in that process, kind of what I look for is okay, well I'm at an average conversion rate for that. Well, to make that conversion better, I can start to tweak those emails a little bit more to make it slightly better, you know, now that the once you kind of get it all set up, you know, from the like. Okay. How do they journey through, you know, getting to know you and you Nurturing them into a sale. Once that's all that funnel is all set up and automated. Your job then is to just tweak it to make those numbers work better for you. Because marketing is nothing but a math problem at the end of the day.

Absolutely. So looking at the data and figuring out where you can make improvements.

Right? Yeah. And even within, you know, that funnel, you know, some of those improvements are super small and free. You don't necessarily need to improve the ad. I had actually a client just last month who I'm doing ads for, and he called me up in a total panic about, like, they're not doing great. They're spending all this money and they're not doing great. I was like, wait a second, let's sit down and look at these numbers here. And so, you know, we kind of went through. I was like, you know, your ad is converting at about 3%, which is average. And, you know, I only work on his ads. I don't work on the rest of his funnel. And I was like, so, you know, I got, you know, 61 people clicked on this ad. That means the ad is working. 61 people clicked on it. Now they've landed on your landing page. If they didn't convert. Now we need to look at your landing page. The ad did its job. It got it to the landing page. The ad's not to get them to sign up. The ad's just to get them to the landing page. Now the landing page needs to be tweaked to make that conversion better. And he's like, oh, yeah, I didn't think about it that way. I was like, yeah, my ad did its job. Now we need your landing page to do its job. So, you know, you have to kind of sit down and think about each one of those little pieces as the standalone thing that now you have to work on individually. And really, him to tweak his landing page is free for him. Like, I mean, he just needs to go in and tweak it. So you can easily change your conversion or your numbers by making small tweaks on landing pages or within your email funnels. The hard part is getting it set up for sure.

So what I'd like to kind of switch gears a little bit here. You have your vacation rental kind of life. That new venture that you started this year. You have your stalker course with you. Obviously do services too. What do you see as the next steps for you in 2021?

In 2021, I'm actually going more towards nothing but online courses and or Programs I'm getting out of the one on one client work. You know, at the end of the day it's not scalable unless you're starting an agency where now you just need a staff of people. You know, client work's great and I love my clients. The ones that I have absolutely love them. And we have, you know, great relationships and we've got great marketing strategies set up and I'm very happy with that. But to be able to scale better and to reach more people with what I do and my knowledge of how I, how I do it is going to be through online courses and that's what this year will be, is developing more programs. You know, I'll take Stocker and keep tweaking that, you know, as, as it grows and progresses. But now that it's built, it is built and I'll probably move more towards more group kinds of programs, like small group programs that I can get, you know, really kind of get in there and help people more one on one. Whereas, you know, doing it at a do done for you service just is. It's too hard to get to a lot of people and actually make that scalable unless you're in and you know, wanting to build an ad agency.

I can completely relate to what you're saying there. I'm actually in the process of, you know, stepping away from doing like Facebook ads and Pinterest ads for people.

So yeah, I love them, don't get me wrong. But.

Yeah, but just focusing on my digital products business.

Yeah.

So my closing question for you is, what advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?

My advice after my experience in the last year is to. It doesn't, you don't have to have it all together and done and perfect before you go ahead and do it. Done is better than perfect. So just launch, get even. If you only get two people, that's two people you didn't have before and you've started and once you get started, then it goes so much easier that then all you got to do is tweak from the build, from the main build. So just get it out there and get people in the course because it's going to force you to build it.

And Ronnie, I think that is great advice.

Thank you.

Where can people find you either with the vacation rental life company that you're doing or with your main business?

Yeah, so for my main business, ronniebartles.com is where that kind of all lives. And I personally am an Instagram girl myself, so I live on Instagram at Iamroni. You can find all of that on the website as well. And then for the Vacation Rental Life business, really the best place to kind of get to is in our Vacation Rental Life group on Facebook. It's all free content. We've got a great community there. I'm in that group pretty much daily with posting and interacting with everybody and that's the best spot to get us right now as we're growing that little side of the business.

And I will make sure all of those links are in the show notes for folks so they can reach you. And thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you for having me.

Course creators. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Ronnie. If you have any questions about course in a box which is offered on AppSumo, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Instagram. We'd love for you to rate and review the podcast on itunes or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.