#250 - How I cracked the low-ticket code

If you've ever tried to add a low ticket offer to your business and it's been a total horrendous, unprofitable waste of time, then this episode is for you. Look, I spent the last five years trying absolutely everything to make a low ticket offer and funnel work and then keep working and scaling and to do that profitably. And at the start of this year, I finally figured out the simple missing piece that I was missing. And I know so many of my clients were as well. And once you add this piece, things totally change. And inside this episode, I am going to share it all with you. I'm going to break it on down. So let's dive right on in.

Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. I am Kate from hellofunnels. I am your friendly local neighborhood super nerd. I've earned over $6 million in totally automated online course sales, and I've helped hundreds of clients to create their own highly profitable sleaze free funnels. I'm sharing the best bits with you right here. So now I've got the intro and the receipts all out of the way. Today, I wanted to talk to you about low ticket offers and low ticket funnels because they go together, my friend. That is how you make them work. So let me know if this sounds familiar. Pop a comment below if you're watching this on YouTube or shoot me a DM at hello, funnels. Me know, basically back in 2020, I think you probably all remember it, unless you've blocked it out, low ticket offers had a bit of a moment, right? Everyone was bringing out their low ticket offer. Kind of similar to what was happening last year, actually. Because pretty much anytime when there is a bit of economic uncertainty, low ticket offers, it really is their time to shine. Because while people might feel a little bit hesitant about spending on those bigger programs, people are still out there, they're still buying, they're still wanting to learn things, to achieve things. And low ticket offers kind of fill that gap. It's that easier. Yes, that lower first commitment. So with that in mind, being the proud owner of a pretty premium program at the time, I was like, okay, what can I do? Let's give this low ticket thing a go. I, you know, I had all of the doubts that I'm sure a lot of people have. I was worried that people who buy low ticket offers wouldn't buy premium products. I was worried about the amount of ad spend I was going to have to do. I was worried that this was going to just be a total Waste of time and distraction. It actually turned out to be the exact opposite. So when I first started it, I sat down. It took about two afternoons. I had a newborn at the time, so I wasn't able to do a big long stretch. But two afternoons of I came up with the idea. I created a sales page when my goodness, with AI would have been even faster. But back then it was all done by hand. And you know, I got it set up and done and running and I tested it and got it out into the world. And I started with an ads budget of about $50 a day. And I was amazed with that $50 budget. We were making multiple sales a day of a $27 offer that then had an order bump, it had upsells, and it was. This became this really, really profitable thing. I was like, oh my gosh. It was like I discovered gold and it was amazing. And we started to scale and we definitely were able to get it from those couple sales a day up to pretty consistently 10 to 15 sales every single day. Most of that done fairly profitably. Although as we got higher, we seemed to hit a ceiling. And it was that ceiling we stayed stuck at for a really long time. I couldn't break through it no matter what I did. And I got really, really frustrated. And then it actually started going backwards as I think more people jumped onto the low ticket offer trend and you know, the ads environment got a lot more competitive. So over the last five years, I've had this real up and down roller coaster kind of experience with low ticket offers where sometimes they work and I get to the point and then they get stuck and they go backwards and then it repeats over and over and over again. And actually at the start of last year, I was like, I am jack of this. I'm turning it off. We're only getting like a handful of people through anyway. Surely this isn't the be all and end all. And it just feels like a big distraction. I feel like this is probably one of those things we can cut. We won't miss it and we can just focus on what matters. I was very wrong by cutting it even at the trickle state that it was in. We then definitely saw a big impact on our other sales. Lesson learned. End of last year, I was like, right, let's rally, let's get this fixed. But I knew it had to be different this time because, you know, I didn't want to have the repeat of the last five years of being on this constant up and down roller coaster and just living in this land. Of frustration where I could get to a point and then stay stuck there and couldn't get past it. I was like, we're going to do this, we're going to do it differently. So I decided to do it completely differently to what I'd been taught to what, you know, I don't know, I'm going to say a fake number like 30, but it's probably more like 4, like online courses of different price points at this point point all around low ticket offers. And they all were saying the exact same thing that you come up with an offer around $27, you have this upsell track and then you write great ads and you run those ads straight to the offer and that's kind of it. And that's, you know, that's what I was doing. It had worked very well in 2020, but that was a strategy that was no longer working today. So what did I do differently? So before we dive on in to the change that I made, I wanted to cover off a couple of quick little no nos. I've seen people do a lot with their low ticket offers that even if you grab this little tweak and implement it that it's still you're going to have issues with your low ticket offers because you don't have these fundamentals covered off. So first thing that I see people do is that they don't actually have a strategy behind their low ticket offers. I think a lot of people don't realize that low ticket offers, they don't actually design to be profitable. They are designed to be a lead magnet. They designed to allow you to grow your list as fast as you like and to cover the cost of that list growth. So this is what we call a self liquidating offer. Right. So if you don't have a strategy of what happens to those people after they join your list, whether there's a funnel, which is my personal preference, or launches or a combination, then this strategy is really not going to get you where you want to go because it's not designed to put money in your pocket. It's just designed to grow your list. So you've then got to go and do something with them. The next thing is that people go too cheap. Now I saw there was a big trend probably about like 18 months ago of this, what I would call a micro offer. So it's not even low ticket. This, this price points were tiny. This came out to try and combat that issue of the ads costs rising. It's like what if you made an offer that was just so Irresistible that more people will buy it when they click through. Therefore your ads costs aren't going to be a problem anymore. Like that I believe was the rationale behind it. It sounds solid. However, the problem is with a $7 offer, it then becomes even with those lower ads costs, it actually still is quite hard to get this to be self liquidating. Because now if you think about it, if you had a $27 offer and a couple of upsells, maybe your average order value was actually 60. That means you can spend $60, get a sale. If you have a $7 offer, even with a couple of upsells and you know, it is actually there's a bit of maths and science here. You know, rarely someone goes from A$7 offer to like A$300 office. Your average cart value is often a lot less lower than with the, with the $7 offer than with the 27. So then you again have a smaller number to play with. Maybe your average cart value is $20 for this, but that means you can only spend $20 to get that sale. So it kind of actually ended up causing just the same problem rather than solving it. So if you're seeing all those, you know, if you're one of those people who like, surely it's easy to sell something for $7 than it is for $20, the answer is yes, it is. But maybe leave that strategy for your warm traffic, not your cold, otherwise you're going to end up in all kinds of problems. The last problem that I see, or mistake, sorry that I see people have, is that their low ticket offer, it's just a watered down, crappy version of their main offer. And I know a lot of people do this because they're like, I really want to make sure I'm attracting the right people, that the people who are coming in to my low ticket offer are going to be interested in my main offer. So I'm just going to make it basically sound like it's the same thing, but I'm only going to make it, you know, a very small, you know, or maybe it's like an ebook version of your program or something like that. So the again the logic sounds like it makes sense. But there is a secondary goal of your low ticket offers these days and it's not just to cover the cost of the ads. It's also to create a list of buyers who've had an amazing experience and really can't wait to buy from you again. So if you give them a watered down crappy experience, then what are they going to do. They're going to think that you're probably totally full of it and they're going to move on to the next person whose ads are popping up in their screen even as we speak. So, you know, making sure that whatever it is you choose as your low ticket offer, my recommendation is don't water down your main offer or your main product. Choose one piece, one small piece or one step before something small and specific that you can solve quickly and well in that sort of smaller container. Still make it obviously amazing value for whatever price they're paying. But don't, just don't try and do that watered down, cheapened down version. It's actually not going to serve you solve a smaller problem really, really well and just watch as people are absolutely lining up to solve their bigger problems with you too. So, so now you know what not to do. What is the solution? What is this super simple fix that I found that has totally flipped the script on our funnels, our results and that is continuing to work, that has, you know, just destroyed the roller coaster, is working steadily and growing well? We're going to go old school, which is actually so exciting for me because I have been doing this since 2007. You know, to kind of go back to my OG marketing roots is really fun. And the, and the solution is actually an old school tripwire funnel. So like I said before, the way that low ticket has really been taught in the past is all about driving traffic directly to an offer. And the problem that you run into with this is that ads costs go up, that you have to spend a lot of time and money to be creating new ads, to be running and testing ads. And you're probably going to need an ads team to get that beyond a couple of sales a day. And that's not going to get you what you want. Like to be able to get those big results, you need to be making sure you're getting lots and lots of people in to your funnel. So how does the tripwire version of this solve that? Well, basically what this now looks like for you is rather than having ads running to a sales page and then maybe some retargeting ads, retargeting those people who don't buy. Instead you now have ads running to a killer lead magnet. When people put in their details for that lead magnet, they then get redirected to a thank you page. On that thank you page, you have your offer. That's why that's what's called a tripwire. And we're not putting any gross 15 minute timers on that page. I mean you can if you want, but you don't need to to make this work. You can actually do this without any of the sleazy bro marketing tactics. So ads to great lead magnet. Lead magnet to thank you page. Thank you page has the offer and then the the next trick here is that you're going to then add a follow up sequence, right? For people who've opted in back to their offer, you're going to create a specific follow up sequence that brings them back to the offer that has a deadline, not 15 minutes. So give them a bit of time to think about it. Okay? And in doing that, what you have now done is solved all of the previous problems from the how low tickets working before. So first of all, the ads costs. It is so much cheaper to get a lead than it is to get someone to buy. And at the moment, lead magnets, like if you have a really juicy lead magnet and you do your ads right, you could be getting new leads for as little as 1 to $3. That is pretty amazing because it hasn't been that cheap for a long time. So right now this is a real opportunity to jump in on it. Actually don't tell other people because it's going to put all our ads up. Then you now actually have their details. So you don't have to continue to pay for ads to retarget that person. You can just email them and you set up a really simple sequence. You're not needing to do big launches or webinars or anything crazy. Just a specific set of emails over the next couple of days with the proper deadline. And you can see results of up to like 5% or more converting just from this piece. And then if you want to really go that next level. And this is where we're seeing just this is like blowing my mind. How well it's working is this becomes just the first piece of your funnel stack. You then can actually stack other layers on top of it. That can include many chat sequences, that can include other offers and funnels. And these now start to play together to be a really powerful ecosystem. But each of these pieces is really simple. In fact, you can create each of them, particularly with the help of AI, really, really quickly. Now this particular system that I'm talking about we've dubbed the daily sales system. And right now we are walking through everyone inside our daily sales society through this step by step. We actually have a live workshop coming up where we're going to go through it together, plan it all out together, make sure your offers are right, make sure that you know everything is connected how it should and give you the game plan you can walk away with so that you can set this up super fast and not just be making sales from this low ticket offer, but also be making sales of your other offers as well. As I said, we called it the Daily Sales System. It's something that I implemented in my own business at the end of last year and it has just blown me away with how simple it is and how well it's working. And you know, our students who are jumping in and doing it as well are also seeing massive results. So if you want to come in, if you want to get my templates, you want to get my AI prompts, you want to get our checklist, everything you need to set up this old school tripwire style funnel. As I said, that's the first piece of the puzzle and also all the other pieces. Come and join us. The doors are currently open to the Daily Sales Society and we have a special founding member rate which is only for a few more days. So if you want to come in and join us, go, go to hellofunnels Co Society or link is below. Can't wait to see you in there. Can't wait for our workshop to walk you through all of this. It's going to be super fun and yeah, I hope it's been amazing guys and I will see you inside. Bye.