#227 - The Iceberg Effect: The TRUTH behind those income claims posts

These invisible strategies, they're making up something like 30 to 40, even up to 60% of those big names out there of their actual revenue and it's making up the majority of their profit. Which means that without these strategies, many of those big names out there that we all follow would actually be running at close to or a loss.

Hey, hey lovelies. Kate here. I have a really special treat for you today. We recently launched a brand new private podcast called the Secret Funnel File. You won't find it here. This is an exclusive deep dive, get real kind of conversation where I'm literally peeling back what is actually working with big names, the secret strategies they're using and how you can use them too. Now there was a couple of episodes that were really juicy that I couldn't just keep them locked up though. So I am sharing one of them with you today. And if you love this episode and you would like to listen to the rest of the secret final files, then all you have to do is grab the link below or head to hellofunnels co secret, pop in your details and I will send you the private link. Anyway, dive in. Enjoy.

News flash lovelies, if you like me, love it when someone online shares any kind of income or sales breakdown or post launch debrief. I'm not going to say you're being lied to, but you are definitely not getting the whole picture, not by a long shot. Because what you are seeing in those posts, they are literally the tip of the metaphorical iceberg with majority of the strategy activities and even revenue that is actually hidden beneath the surface and that's not being talked about, it's not being shared and it's not getting the credit for the impact that it actually has in their business. And therefore because it's not being seen by everyone who is out there trying to replicate those above the C level strategies, then you end up with a whole lot of people going well I'm doing what they're doing. Why the hell isn't it working for me? And to be honest, those more gatekeep strategies that are really the secret sauce that is allowing some of the biggest names and you know exactly who I'm talking about when I say that to be able to have their biggest and most successful years yet, even in a year where pretty much every industry is having a downturn to allow them to share stats like having a 400% ROAS on a launch ad strategy when really the real strategy, or should I say strategies that made their launch so successful were running quietly behind the scenes for Months and months before that, pretty much all year round. And those ads that got to claim the credit, they were just the icing on top of the, well, the iceberg. So what does this mean? Well, let's talk about the kinds of strategies that you do and you don't see and the problems with implementing just those above the water, top of the iceberg tactics on their own. Okay, so what are some of the most popular, we'll call them, above the water strategies? First of all, live launching, usually between two to four times per year. Right? We've all seen that. Then you've got live launching's little sister, which is list building and Facebook ads, or using Facebook ads for list building before your live launches, usually eight to six weeks out. Then another favorite is sharing lead magnets from, say, your podcast or social media content. And people usually do this all year round, but with a big emphasis, usually before a launch. And then finally, one of my favorites, low ticket offers. We're kind of seeing them everywhere, especially right now. Those are $7, $37. There's toolkits, there's prompts, there's all kinds of things. We see this all everywhere, right? And most people believe that that's pretty much all there is to having a successful online course. This or some combo of. Now the problem is when you just have top of the iceberg strategies, you are really missing out and you run into all kinds of problems and it's going to be really hard to grow. So, for example, if you're out there doing your live launches two to four times a year, well, the problem is if you're a small team or a solopreneur, then there's a lot that goes into a successful live launch. They've just gotten more and more complex over the years. So what this means is you're going to be spending a lot of your time, a lot of your resources just on launching. It also means that you only have the opportunity to make revenue a handful of times per year. And if one of those times does not go well, then you have a big hole and a long time until you can make it up. While it looks great when you see other people doing it on its own, it's got so many issues. The same with using Facebook ads for list building. Yes, it's great. When done right with all the other pieces of the puzzle, it can really help you to grow your business. But when done on its own or even just live launching, the problems you run into are that can be very, very expensive, particularly if you're going like eight weeks out trying to add thousands to your list, then add on top of that that you don't really have a guaranteed return. If your launches aren't dialed into absolute like, you know, they're working at 110%, you might spend all this money and time list building and then go and make your offer and guess what? It might not even sell. Then the next thing, which is adds to the stress and the problems of the live launching in the first place is when you've gone and pre spent a few thousand dollars to grow your list in the first place. You open the cart to your live launch and you're in the red from day one. And it can take days, if not, you know, almost your whole launch to get back into the green. And then by the time your launch is finished, yeah, sure, maybe you've got a bit of extra money in the bank, but that's not going to last you all the way through to your next one. Or if it does, you'll be skimming in on fumes. The same goes with lead magnets. When lead magnets are used on their own and without the rest of the strategies needed around them, well, what actually happens is you end up losing sales. So what I mean by that is if you think about it, when people, they're floating around the Internet, they see a piece of content or an ad of yours that leads to some kind of freebie. The reason that that's probably caught their eye is because they are currently looking for a solution. They currently have a problem. There's something they're trying to fix, trying to solve, trying to achie. And that piece of content stood out to them because it was speaking to that. So you've got people out there going, I'm trying to fix something, I've got a problem, maybe this person can help me. And if, you know, if they opt in and then just dumped onto your email list and then sent emails maybe every so often, but no actual offer anytime soon, you're going to find that they go elsewhere because they're like, oh, well, they don't have a solution. For me, I'm still seeing all this content. Oh, here's another person's content. Because guess what happens? As soon as they click on one thing, Facebook will show them 10 more exactly like it. And if that person has a funnel and an offer, well, guess who gets the sale? That person does. And then the fourth example I gave, low ticket offers. You've probably seen them everywhere, especially right now. They are definitely a favorite. When things are a Little soft in a market, but again on their own, they can actually be catastrophe for a business. I have so many people come into our program equals empire who like I created a low ticket offer. Why am I in the red? Why am I not making profit? And the reason is low ticket offers aren't really designed to make profit on their own. They're designed to attract leads and to cover your ads costs. That's it. So if they are sitting on their own, all they're doing is taking up time and energy. And it's a strategy that's not even designed to actually make you money. So you can see how if you were just cherry picking, even these like four most common strategies that are out there for selling courses and even any combination of those, it's just really exacerbates the problem. So what are you going to do? Well, if you're just following these, probably right now you're feeling a bit exhausted, a bit, you know, fed up, your bank account's probably looking a little bit sorry for itself and things have probably been quite slow. Enter your new friend, the below the surface strategies. So these are the unsung heroes that not only make each of these above the surface strategies work better and faster and more profitably, but they also allow online course businesses to actually be that businesses, not just extremely stressful side hustles. So what are these below the surface strategies? There's a bunch of them, but I'm going to share with you my faves. So number one is an email engine, AKA an email funnel. So this is a email sequence going to your what I would call most funnel friendly offers. And this allows you to send the best of your best content to every single new subscriber to connect, to engage with them, to warm them up and of course to promote your offers to them too. And this is the one of the most impactful strategies that we teach inside our mentorship program Ecourse Empire. Plugging this in can be just light and day for your business. The second one is a front end funnel and this does not always mean a low ticket offer by the way. I just wanted to put that in there because I know a lot of people hear the term, you know, front end funnel, particularly if you've been around the online space for a while and you think, oh okay, Facebook ads to a $7 offer or $27 offer. I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about, that is the right funnel and right strategy set up for you that yes, allows you to run ads and to pay for those Ads and it's not always with a low ticket offer. I've seen front end funnels run really successfully for 9, 97 offers, $500 offers. So the goal here is just to have something that is set up that is automated, that runs on autopilot in the background and that allows you to run ads and not have to worry about paying for those ads because they pay for themselves. Because imagine how much faster you can build your when you know that that list building is essentially free because it brings in that revenue on day one. Like you give Facebook a dollar, it gives it right back. So it's much faster and it's way less risky. Number three upsells in particular in cart upsells. So one of these I love about in cart upsells is this is one of the quickest things you can add into your business. And when you look at the benchmarks for an in cart upsell, and if you're wondering what I mean by that, you would have seen them, you go to pur something usually on the actual checkout page, like where you're putting in your details and you know your credit card numbers, you'll see there might be a box saying, hey, would you also like to get this other thing for like $50 or $97 that there's called an order bump. Whether you take that or not, you purchase and you go through and what instead of that thank you page you'll get another offer or another couple of offers is usually one to three. Those are your in cart upsells. And the really important numbers you need to know for this, and I'm a numbers girl, is that if done right, 35% of people will take that order bump and 15% of people will take that upsell. So imagine what that does to your sales and your profit when literally 35% of people are buying another thing. And all you have to do is set up a little rectangle. Pretty simple. It has to be done right and in the right, you know, at the right time, at the right stage, as with all of these strategies. But so impactful. And just imagine, particularly at scale how impactful it can be and how negatively impactful it would be if they didn't have these things in place. So next down sells similar to upsells. And again we look at the numbers. So a downsell is when someone has shown interest in something but they haven't purchased. And so you make them another offer. And this is all done automatically, by the way. All of these are automated. All of these are funnels. And so down sells, the number we are looking at is between 5 to 15%. So that's 5 to 15% of the people who showed interest in your offer but didn't purchase it, then go on to purchase your downsell. So again, just imagine you start compounding these on top of each other and all of a sudden things can get really profitable really fast and lucky. Last of my five favorite funnels is the VIP Evergreen. Upsell or cross sell really depends on. But you know, it all works the same depending on what you want to call it. Now this is where you have an automated sequence set up. And that automated sequence can be run on a timer or it can be even run live. Like you literally take this group or this segment and you pop them through it at a certain time each year. But this is an automated sequence that you run that converts 10 to 20% of people. And what it's designed for is when you, you promote to your existing customers, like people who've already purchased either any product or a certain product from you, you make them a special offer, a special behind the scenes sequence and no one else can see and invite them to take the next step either to your next level or to a related offer and they get a special deal for that. So that's our VIP upsell or cross sell. And again totally automated. So you start to add all that up like 10 to 20% of people in your VIP upsell. 5 15% in a downsell, 35% of people taking an in cart upsell. Plus you've got a front end funnel paying for all your ads. Plus you've got an email engine converting 2 to 4% of people who subscribe to your list to another offer, sometimes even higher, really, depending on your niche. Now add these all together and in many cases these invisible strategies, they're making up something like 30 to 40, even up to 60% or even more of those big names out there of their actual revenue. And it's making up the majority of their profit. Which means that without these strategies, many of those big names out there that we all follow would actually be running at close to or a loss. And now you can start to see how important they are and why so many people out there end up struggling because they are not seeing these strategies, they are not adding these strategies in or they when they are, they're not doing it soon enough. And it's basically like trying to build a puzzle, but you have most of the pieces missing. Now I'm sure you're thinking, sure, that all sounds great. But I know sometimes it can be hard to picture without some real world examples. Which is why in our next episode, I'm going to be opening up another secret funnel file, and I'm going to be breaking down the exact funnels, the exact numbers that the big names are using, how they're using them, and how they you can make them work for you. I'll see you inside. Bye.