#193 - This #1 marketing strategy you need for 2024

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Hello guys, it is Kate here from the Doing It Online podcast. And welcome to our latest episode. Today we're going to be talking about something that I'm sure you've all seen around, and that is those $9 offers. Sometimes they're seven, sometimes they're five, usually they're $9. We here have dubbed them micro offers and I wanted to take you behind the strategy behind them and give you a couple of little tools that you can use to figure out if one, if these are going to be beneficial for your business and to how you can absolutely make the most of them. So let's dive right on it.

Okay? Before we jump into the nitty gritty of how they work, how to figure out if they're going to work for you, I wanted to make sure that I quickly covered off that question of what is is a micro offer. So, I mean, if you've been around this part of the Internet for very long, you've probably heard me talk about what we call mini but mighty offers. They're also known as self liquidating offers and they've got a bunch of other names. These are not new. These are something that's been around for a long time and that seem to pop up and become more popular whenever there is a bit of time of economic uncertainty, which I think we can all pretty safely say is right now. So that's why you're probably starting to notice them more and more. And if you haven't, the fact that you've listened to this episode, they are now going to be in your consciousness and you are going to see them everywhere. So the good old mini but mighty offer typically had a price point of $27. That was what was really, really popular. Again, sort of early pandemic kind of stage. You would have seen a bunch of these. And the purpose of these products is actually not to drive a profit, not right away anyway. The purpose of them is to cover the cost of ads and to make sure that right up front, that sort of chunk which would normally be allocated to marketing budget, which normally kind of come out of whatever sales then came after your marketing came after your ads that's covered up front. So it kind of gives you one that sort of little bit of extra safety so that you're not going out spending money on Facebook and then hoping sometimes the next 30, 60, 90 days to get that back, which when things are a bit uncertain, they're a bit up and down, isn't, you know, the best strategy you want to make sure you've got those Sort of like safety guardrails in place. And this, this is a really, really good one if you get it working properly. So number one is to absolutely help you to have that extra level of security, I guess. And then the other thing is it just allows you to actually usually scale faster and to a higher level than what you probably would have been comfortable with prior if you weren't getting those sales back right away. Otherwise it feels a lot like a gamble. So, you know, it used to be the good old methodology of when it came to launches. I know a lot of people used to recommend whatever you're wanting to earn in your launch, you should spend 20 to 30% of that on ads to get enough people into the launch in the first place. Which is all well and good. If you've got a very, very dialed in offer marketing system, all of that kind of stuff, I think it's terrible advice for people who don't have that stuff dialed in. So where this kind of came to play, like where how it made that safer, I guess for people to spend more is that if you are spending to start off with, with ads, if you feel comfortable spending $30 a day to start off with and you do that and you get one sale back, you're like, okay, cool, maybe Tomorrow I'll spend $60 and then you get that back, you go, okay, oh cool. And you can see how so, so much quicker you are able to feel comfortable spending more versus that okay, I'm going to spend 20 to 30% of my goal now and then cross my fingers and cross my toes and Hope that in 60 days time I get that back. That feels super risky even to me. And I've been doing this for a really long time. So yeah, removing that risk factor, allowing you to scale quicker, I mean it's one of the key things that we teach in our Ecourse Empire program. We have its own program funnel fuel, which I'll actually talk to you about in just a sec because I do think it is so important and it really, really, the strategy does really come into its own in times like this. And the third reason why I love this strategy so much is that when Facebook ads and things start getting more expensive, as they tend to do and as they are and they have been for the last sort of like 12 months or so. Again, if you're getting that revenue back straight away, it doesn't matter so much. Like, you know, if you, you're putting a hundred dollars in and getting a hundred dollars back every time you don't care that okay, it used to be maybe it used to cost you fifty dollars to make fifty dollars. Now it costs you a hundred dollars to make a hundred dollars. You don't really care. You're getting it straight back. So it helps to safeguard you from ads increases. It helps to safeguard you from launches and things like that that don't go to plan. And it helps you to scale your list building faster. And pretty much once you've got it working, once you've got that dialed in, it really becomes this leverage that you can pull and go, okay, well, I really want to ramp this up. And you all of a sudden have so much more control over your business. Like, it really is super powerful. Like, it's one of the strategies that when we first implemented it, it pretty much doubled our business in that year and has been like a really core. Like, it's actually one of our KPIs. And when in all of our programs, it's KPIs for our clients as well, that you have your marketing pay for itself. Like, it's one of the numbers we get people to check every month. So today, like I said, this is not a new concept. But what I are seeing being done a little bit differently at the moment is this new thing, what we're now calling a micro offer. So that is, I said those $7, $9 offers, you've probably seen them around, and when you probably notice, you're probably going, how is that even any good? How can they do something for that cheap? And there's actually, there is a strategy behind it, and it's one that we've been testing and playing with. So the main problem that I think the micro offer is solving versus what would have been so a $9 offer versus a $27 offer is it's still out trying to do the same thing. Like, it's still about making your ads pay for itself. It's still about having all those same benefits. However, one thing I did notice with when you had your $27 offer, for example, even if it's working well, and again, it does depend on your niche. And we'll talk about that in a second. But for most people like to get a 27 sale, you maybe have to spend 60, 70, $80, depending on the niche that you're in. And even though you're getting that back, and yes, even though that means that you can start to spend at a higher level than you would have been feeling comfortable with before because you're getting it back. So maybe you used to feel comfortable spending $200 a day. And now you feel comfortable spending five or $600 a day. If you do the maths on that, like just say, just for easier math, let's say it cost you $50 to make that sale and you're spending now $500, which is more than double what you were previously spending per day. So like, yes, I'm able to, but if it's costing you $50 for a sale, it's only 10 sales a day, which is great. It's still 10 sales, it's still 10 buyers, which is traditionally, you know, someone who's a higher quality lead than someone who's just come in versus a freebie hasn't cost you anything. All that stuff like you're not negative 200. Like you would have been if you've just run ads to like a free PDF or some kind of free download. However, it's still only 10 leads. So if you were using other types of list building where, yes, you would have been going into the neg, yes, you wouldn't have been recouping that spend. You probably could have been getting like 50 leads or something for a similar amount spend, if not more. So it can actually start to slow people down. And as ads costs started to rise, it started to get a bit trickier to hit that goal of spending the 100, getting the hundred back. So people made this switch from the $27 offer, which I think if you think about like biopsychology, someone thinking about spending $27 and the amount of trust and the amount of information that they need and all that stuff, like it's still a low price point, especially depending on what it is. But it goes into a completely different category of, you know, that candy aisle kind of spending when it's just $7 or $9. Like if it's that sort of like standing there seeing the Mars bar or whatever versus seeing the 10 pack of like which one are you going to feel more comfortable? Just, just grabb.

People actually coming in and coming down to that much lower level and bringing that product then down to that lower level as well. And to that different level of that biopsychology of that different level. It means that for most people actually the cost to achieve that sale drastically reduced as well. And so no, for most people it's still not $7 or $9, just like it wasn't ever $27 to make a $27 sales. We'll talk about how that works in just a second. But that's, that's kind of the problem that I See it solving for a lot of people, they're like, okay, even though it was coming back to me like right away, I still don't feel comfortable spending more than $500 a day on lead gen, but I would like to be getting more than 10 leads a day. So it's like, well, what if you could cut that cost per acquisition in half or a third or a quarter and get therefore three, four times as many for the same spend and it's still paying for itself. Like obviously that becomes, you know, a very desirable proposition. So that's sort of where I see that micro offer coming in and where I see it having its place. Having said that, it's still not necessarily the right choice for everybody. And for some people it still is actually better to have a $27 offer as your mini but mighty offer or a different strategy altogether, like to solve the problem of making a marketing pay for itself. There's, there's lots of different ways of doing it, but these are the two most common 1. So if you are thinking about that, like if you're currently trying to scale your online course, you've got launches that do well or you've got a funnel or whatever it is, or you want to be able to get more people on your list and you're sick of having to go out there and do endless social media and be pimping yourself out on all the podcasts and stuff like that. And you'd like something you've got a bit more control over and that's a bit more passive feeling. This can be a really, really great and is a really, really great strategy. But you need to decide, okay, which is going to be better than should I go for the mini but mighty offer or the micro but mighty offer? So before you make your decision, there's two questions you need to ask yourself. First of all, how cheap are your ads? How inexpensive are your ads? Because different niches, the ads cost vary massively. Like we have some clients who are getting amazing leads for $2 and others who it's, you know, it's a great deal for them to get a lead under $20. So that init is going to make a big difference. Because remember, the purpose of this is to create an offer that the cost of getting someone to purchase it is going to be less than what the average order value is. And that brings us to part two, which is how good is your stack? And that is it's not just about that front end offer. So it's not just about that offer that people see the ads for whether that's $7, $17, $27, whatever you price it. It's not just about that. The purpose of that offer is to get the right people to the page and get them to convert as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible. But it's very common that Even for a $7 offer, it might be costing you $35 to make that sale. So where does the other, what is it, $28 come from? And that comes from your stack. So the stack includes your order bump, includes one time offers or upsells or even downsells and having those dialed in and desirable and irresistible and being a clear upsell or a clear next step or extra benefit to that initial thing, getting those pieces working right, that's the real key. Because then what you're looking at is not all right, how do I get someone to buy a $7 thing for $7 or less? Then you start going, okay, what's the average order value? And you know, you start getting that to like 60, $70. And then you know, okay, well I can now happily spend 60 to $70 to make a sale. And if you're lucky, which some people are like, we have clients who spend $50 a day on ads and end up with $500 a day because their stack is so good and they have a really great niche. That's not for everybody. The goal is always give a dollar, get a dollar back. But if you can make some profit, which some people do, that's always a bonus. So those are the two questions that you really need to think about and will abso with that. It's really important with, particularly with this type of offer that you run the numbers and you know the economics behind it. We're never about like just donating money to Facebook for the fun of it. It's all about starting with realistic, affordable investments and scaling it in a safe way that feels really good for you as.