MBA1007 How to Adapt Spotify’s Business Model + Free Ride Friday!

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Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA show. Real business lessons for real business people in the real world with our daily 10 minute business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn how to adopt Spotify's business model to your business. If you've noticed, Spotify's business model has sort of grown in the business world in the last few years. The concept of offering a free service that may include ads or something else to help promote their business, but then offering a premium service of the same content, but without the ads and a few more bonus features. Spotify is one of the fastest and most profitable companies in their market and that's attributed to this business model. So in today's lesson, I'm going to show you how you can do the same, how you can apply the same business model in, in your business, no matter what kind of content you are providing. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So when I say Spotify's business model, this is not a business model they invented, but they really perfected it and did it very well. Sharing content for free with ads or some other way to promote their business and then offering a premium product, premium offering at a reasonable monthly price. That removed the ads and the disruptions and also included some bonuses. Since Spotify, some big players have adopted this model, including YouTube. This model is basically what YouTube Red is. It's YouTube without the ads, along with some bonus content like original programming from YouTube as well as some music app and a couple other bonuses. But the point here is, is that you can watch YouTube for free. Well, you have to endure the ads and the promotions. You won't get any of the bonuses. Or you could pay, I think around $13 a month and you can remove all the ads, get all the bonus features and the featured content. And YouTube Red has really been growing this past quarter. Now, believe it or not, this is nothing new. It's just a formalized way to monetize content and leverage your free content. That free content is really just content marketing. So let me give you some obvious examples that use the same model, but not in a completely aligned way. There are many authors that write books, self publish their own ebooks and they sell them. But how do they market those books? Well, they probably have a very successful blog. People love their writing, they read their blog posts, but they want more. They want something that's a little bit more cohesive, a guide or a one stop shop. And therefore they buy their books. Another big example is the correlation between YouTube and online courses. The example that comes to mind is Brian Dean from Backlinko.com he has a very successful YouTube channel that teaches you how to be better at search engine optimization. And he has some really great tips, really great content. You have to go through the YouTube ads and they're not completely in depth, but they give you some great insights. If you want something in depth and cohesive and something that's kind of like you go through the whole thing and you know exactly what to do. In your business and in your website, then you have to buy one of his courses that are on his website. And that's kind of like the premium model. You have to pay to actually receive that content. But the challenge with the blog and the ebook or the YouTube and the online course is that it's not a direct transition. It's not one customer moving from your free model to your actual paid model. It's also on two different platforms and often it's not an easy switch to get them off one platform, like the YouTube free platform, to your online course and pay for your course through your website. It takes some effort to get them over to your website. So more and more people are using their website to, to implement Spotify's business model. How do they do this? Well, they create a vlog, so to speak, a blog that has videos and they launch these videos that are basically mini courses. Within these videos they insert ads for their paid content, paid courses. They insert calls to action and they also insert a way for people to give their email so they can get discounts on these courses. So you can consume the content for free, but you will be interrupted by these calls to action and ads. Or you could pay a monthly fee or a one off fee to buy a course or access to all the courses. Now you might be thinking this is probably going to be a technical nightmare. No, actually it's quite easy. With any kind of website builder, let's say Weebly, one of our sponsors, you can save 15% off. You go to weebly.com MBA shameless plug. You might as well save some money and use something that works, right? They have a membership website option so you can give people access to certain pages that have paid. And this is easily done by adding one of their apps in their marketplace. There's one called Paid Members. It's pretty easy to use. But the point here is that you can have a blog with these videos that are free, but a paid membership area. Only those who have access have access to that paid membership area, obviously. But you might be saying, well, how do I insert those calls to action and those ads and those, you know, places where I can collect email address? You can easily do this with Wistia. Wistia is our favorite video hosting company. We use Wistia on all our websites. We've been doing it for years now. They're not a sponsor or anything like that, but they're great people. I know the founders and their product is awesome. You can actually insert all that kind of stuff in your videos and you can put that on the videos that are on your blog. So those who go to your website can easily consume your content for free while learning about your other paid content and be encouraged to go and be a paid member. Now you can do it via blog or another option is making them a free member in your membership. So that way they also have their own area and you have their email address and their contact information so you can market to them. So this is easily doable with a online course or course content. But you could definitely do this in other ways. Let's say, for example, you sell coaching services, you're a life coach or a business coach. How can you apply this model? Well, you could start a podcast where you give great advice in your area of expertise. And in your podcast you can insert some sponsored spots which could be your company or showing them how they can actually sign up for your programs or for your coaching. They can consume the free content and then they can also learn about your paid products or services for this example. So you can put your podcast on your website and you can also syndicate it on itunes, Stitcher and everywhere else. But the point is that you can put it on your website so they can find you easily and they can convert over to a paid customer and become a client of yours as well. And this is a lot easier on your website because you can have your podcast episode and you can have easy links for them to click so they can become a client of yours. There's an app called Book Like a Boss. This is a small business, a small company that made this great software. Allow people to book you for your time and actually pay for the session when they book. So this is great for coaching and services like that.

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USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and Sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply. To wrap up today's lesson, take a look at your business model. See if you can introduce a new product or new offering where you can have free content. And within that free content, you can insert ways to promote your premium content. And it's best that premium content is a membership model where they pay a reasonable fee every single month or year. And the premium content don't necessarily have to be so different. What you listen to on Spotify is no different from the free to the premium. Except there's no ads, right? And a few extra bonus features like you can download the music and listen to it offline. What other features or benefits can you add to your product line or to your offering? So your premium line is worth the monthly fee. Hey, and don't Forget Spotify and YouTube Red, they always offer a free trial to get people in. I know as a YouTube Red customer that once you actually live your life watching YouTube with no ads and it's hard to go back, that free trial really does work. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. But today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. I gotta let you know who won this week's Free Ride. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride Friday. And the winner is. A exclamation mark hyphen one. That's the handle guys. I'm sorry, it's random. So A exclamation mark hyphen1 says awesomeness. Five stars. Thank you for all the work you've done and continue to do. I've definitely learned a lot and it keeps me motivated. Well, thank you so much for that awesome review. A explanation Mark Hyphen 1. You are our winner. Your job is to email me at omar100mba.net to claim your free ride. We do this every single week so make sure you leave us on itunes rating interview and you can win next week. Our winner this week won a free membership to easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. That's $500. But he's going to get it for free or she's going to get it for free. You can win next week. And if you're curious about the course, you could check us out at easycourse Co. Alright, before I go, I want to leave you with this. If Spotify's business model just doesn't work for your products or services, don't worry about it. You don't have to take it on. It's only really advantageous when it's a great fit. So if you can make it a great fit, utilize it, leverage it. If not, don't worry about it. Try something else. All right, I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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