AMY PORTERFIELD: Well hey there, Amy Porterfield here and welcome to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I want to tell you guys that for those of you who have listened to my podcast regularly, you probably know that every time I start a podcast I typically say, “Well hey there.”
I try not to say that and nothing else feels natural. I try to say, “Hi, Amy Porterfield here,” or whatever, and it never sounds like me. So I’ve just got to start the same way. I also think it puts me into the right energy for my podcast.
When I say, “Hey there, Amy Porterfield here,” it’s like, “game on!”
I think I learned that from Tony Robbins back when I would go to the live events with him. He would talk about getting into the state of delivering and I think that must be my power move.
If any of you are Tony Robbins fans you will know all about the power move and you know what I’m talking about.
Another thing I wanted to talk to you about before we get into a really cool mini workshop about creating your bonuses, I had a weird experience recently and I thought I should share it with you. I bet some of you can really find value in this lesson I learned just last week.
I have one full-time employee. I actually just got a #2 full-time employee but have had one full-time employee, Chloe, my project manager, for about a year. That means she is on payroll and I have to use a payroll company in order to pay her.
Taxes come out and there are forms to fill out in the beginning and a lot of paperwork that most of us entrepreneurs actually detest. Can I get an amen? What happened over the last year as Chloe has been employed, I kept getting things in the mail about payroll.
I look over the mail really quickly and wasn’t exactly sure what they were about so I would put them aside. One said I owed $2.37 for a weird tax and the other said that a paper was missing. A lot of stuff started coming in and it stressed me out.
I have an assistant, Trivinia, who would have been more than happy to help me figure it all out but sometimes I don’t want to bother Trivinia with stuff that I feel I could knock out. That’s a really bad habit because she could knock it out faster than me.
So, I just started collecting these envelopes that started to come in the mail. Over the last year I looked and, this is terrible and I can’t believe I’m admitting this, I had a whole folder full of tons of paperwork from the payroll company.
Every single week I would tell my self I had to spend time and get to it. I hate paperwork so I just wouldn’t do it. In the back of my mind I thought nothing seemed that urgent. If it was really, really important I think I would have known and would have gotten to it.
I just knew this was something that needed my attention but I didn’t even want to deal with it so I put it aside. I always had a nagging feeling that I had to do it. I would put it down as one of my goals that week and I would ignore it. I would pretend I didn’t see it.
This has been going on for months and months and it’s been stressing me out and giving me anxiety. I was worrying I had missed something important and questioned whether I would screw up my business. I knew I had to attend to this but I didn’t want to.
It has been taking up way too much space in my mind. So I finally sat down at a time when I didn’t think I had time for it but thought it was ridiculous. I sat down and opened all of the envelopes and spread them out.
I got the support phone number for the payroll company and called them and went through each envelope step by step and asked them questions. They were incredibly helpful (I use ADP). I got through it in about an hour.
It was painless. It wasn’t painful, it was painless. I also found out they have a support email so that if I didn’t know what something was and it needed to be attended to I could give it to them and they could figure it out because I pay them for that.
There was no need for added stress. I didn’t need to build up all of the anxiety and be thinking I wasn’t getting to something, shame on me, I’m bad, I should be doing it. Then, when I sat down, I saw I could have cleared out so much stress and space in my mind if I had just done this months and months ago.
I tell you this story because I think we all have something in our business right now that’s sitting there taking up space in our mind that really is unwarranted. It doesn’t need to. But we’ve built it up so much that it’s become a monster.
It’s usually a paperwork monster because most entrepreneurs don’t want to deal with that kind of stuff. But I want to encourage you, in the next 24 hours, find that one thing that you know you should be getting to. What is that one thing that keeps nagging you and needs your attention?
You need to sit down at your desk and just tackle it. Tell me what it is. Say it out loud right now and pretend I can hear you. What’s that one thing that you have been meaning to get to forever? Big or small, it doesn’t matter.
Then I want you to sit at your desk and tackle it. It might mean you get to delegate it or leverage it to somebody else. It might mean you just get in the trenches like I did, make the call, go over the stuff you need to do and then be done with it.
I just want to kind of throw that out because I wonder why I didn’t do this six months ago. It would have been way easier. I have since given it to Trivinia and all of those letters that come in the mail go to Trivinia.
We talk a few times each week and on our calls she will say, “I’ve got one about XYZ, what do I do with this.” I tackle it. I tell her to do “this” or “that” and send me a scan of it so I can take care of it. But now she is on it and we know she’s going to take care of it and not let a whole stack of envelopes pile in her office for six months. That would give her a heart attack. I know her personality.
That’s my story and my challenge for you. I hope you’ll take me up on it. Believe me, it creates more space in your mind and that means more freedom for you to do what you love to do and more creativity.
Now we are moving on to what this episode is all about, creating bonuses (or a bonus packager) for your next course offer. All of my students in Courses That Convert will appreciate this episode even more because I talk about this in the program but I’ve added some thing to it. I’ve gone a little bit deeper in certain areas.
As you are creating your courses I want you to really pay attention to this episode because this one’s for you, for sure. But it’s for anybody that is wanting to create a course and wanting to get even more value and maybe even charge more for that course.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back up. When I’m developing courses, bonuses are one of my favorite, if not the favorite piece, for me to plan out. You ask why?
There is always something I want to include that doesn’t quite fit in the core product. Or, there may be some advanced piece of content I want to fit in but it would be a little bit weird to throw in when I’m teaching step by step.
Either way, I know it’s an important part of me to include in the program. It feels like a must but just doesn’t work into the outline. Plus, I think bonuses are a surprise added value and they are fun to create when you get them right.
I am also a sucker for bonuses. I’ve bought many products based solely on the bonuses. Now I pay close attention and I hope you will too, to product offers online specifically about the bonuses. I know some people do really well with their bonus offers.
James Wedmore does a lot of video marketing and does great bonuses. They are always really nicely aligned. Melanie Duncan, who I mention all the time on this podcast, does brilliant bonuses. I mention her again because she puts thought into those bonuses and I’ll tell you how to put your own thought into those bonuses to make sure there is alignment.
Marie Forleo does great bonuses for B-School and I’m going to be talking a little bit about B-School and how those bonuses work into her program and affiliate bonuses for people who are promoting her program. We’ll get into all of that.
Again, I’m a sucker for bonuses. I’ve always been a sucker for bonuses. When I was a kid, once in a while (it was very rare), my mom would let my sister and I buy a sugary cereal. It was a really big deal in our house. We loved Cap’n Crunch. We loved it. It was the kind that totally ripped up the roof of your mouth but it was oh so good.
When we would get Cap’n Crunch we would always get it at a time where there was an extra special prize at the bottom of the box. You guys know what I’m talking about. We would be excited to get our sugary cereal but even more excited…the whole way home from the grocery store, all my sister and I could talk about was what the prize was going to be.
We had to talk about how long she got to play with it versus how long I got to play with it. This was a big deal in our family. The funny thing is the toy was super small and cheap. We all know that. But as a kid this was a big deal.
Now in my adult life that’s kind of how I look at bonuses. I want my students to anticipate how good those bonuses are going to be and they cannot wait to get their hands on them. That’s what this is all about.
Today we’re going to do a mini workshop to help you create your next bonus or series of bonuses. First let’s talk about why bonuses are important.
- You can enhance your offer by increasing the perceived value with bonuses. When you stack really good bonuses into an offer the perceived value of your product is sure to increase. That’s important to know. Sometimes you can even increase the product price if those bonuses are really, really valuable; perceived value, yes, Sometimes even the actual price.
- Bonuses allow you to dive into areas that don’t necessarily always fit into your content outline. Let me give you an example. I recently launched Courses That Convert all about course creation. It is about the content, the outline, building the content, putting the content into slide decks, delivering it, recording it, the technology you use, the platform you use to house your content. It’s really content focused in terms of creating a program. I also knew my students would want to know how to launch it. So that became the whole bonus package. It tells how to launch your program once you have it created. Launching didn’t really fit into the core program. That’s not where I wanted to focus. But I knew it was something my students needed, wanted, and it would increase the value of the program. That’s an example of how you can dive into areas inside your bonus that don’t necessarily fit into your course.
- Bonuses act as encouragers, or at least they can act as encouragers to get through the course more efficiently. There are two ways this works. You can create bonuses that people don’t get until the very end. In B-School, Marie Forleo unlocks advanced bonuses. I got to actually do one of the advanced bonuses that doesn’t get unlocked until you reach the end of the program. I love this because it encourages people to get to the end so they can get those really cool advanced bonuses that she teases along the way. It is pushing people to get to the end for a really great prize, like the gold at the end of the rainbow.
I’ve never actually done an unlock bonus but have been considering it for my next program. I like this because sometimes bonuses can distract your audience from getting into the core content. So if you keep them until the end people will stay focused on getting through your program.
As course creators, one of the most frustrating things is when people get going and don’t get to the end. Although I don’t unlock my bonuses, I do encourage my students not to even touch the bonuses until they get through the entire program and create their course.
My bonus is how to launch it. So don’t even look at the bonuses until your course is created. I encourage that throughout my course. That’s how I do it in my course in terms of encouragement.
Some of the bonuses you create could also be blueprints or planners that actually help your students stay on track step by step. One of the bonuses you could give is a complete step-by-step planner on how to attack whatever it is you’re teaching.
People would then download it right away when they join your program and could follow along. That will encourage them to get through your course. There are so many
different ways you can look at bonuses and I just wanted to take a minute to remind you how very important they are.
Before we dive into exactly how you will create your bonus package, I wanted to tell you about today’s freebie. You know I always have a really cool PDF download that goes along with my mini sessions I give you on the podcast. The freebie for today’s episode is a worksheet that I want you to download and use the next time you sit down to map out your bonuses for a program.
When you download the free PDF I created for you, you will be able to walk yourself through the questions you need to ask to create bonuses that are fully aligned with your product as well as bonuses that will increase the overall value of your offer.
This PDF worksheet is a complete must. It’s really good. I want you to get it now and then just save it for when you’re ready to tackle your course offer and your bonuses.
Go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/120download or, if you like to text, text 120download to 33444. That’s how you get this PDF download. Do not pass it up. It is going to 100% help you lock in your bonuses quicker than you’ve ever done before. And they are going to be bonuses that actually get you more sales. That’s the ultimate goal, right?
Let’s go ahead and dive in to your bonus-creating workshop.
The first question you might have is how many bonuses you should include with your product offer. I think the sweet spot would be two to three bonuses. If you add too many bonuses or if they are complicated bonuses, your product gets buried under the bonuses and it’s way too distracting and overwhelming when you try to explain what the offer is.
I have seen so many people get on a webinar and start explaining their offer and then they get into the bonuses and go on and on because there are so many bonuses. I have to stop and ask, “What’s the offer again?” Just keep it clean with two to three bonuses max.
Let’s talk about creating your next bonus or bonus package. I like to look at it as a package because if you have a main topic over your bonuses it’s easier to talk about them.
For my Webinars That Convert bonus, I have the Sales Booster Bonus. Inside the Sales Booster Bonus I have two or three trainings about selling on webinars. I talk about how to transition in your slides, what the script should say, and that kind of stuff.
I break it into mini trainings but it’s an overall theme and that’s why I like to call it a bonus package. It is just something to think about.
Speaking of something to think about, state of mind is something you need to consider when you are thinking about your bonuses. This is what Marie Forleo, one of my mentors, says about bonuses, “Ask yourself, ‘how can you contribute the most value to your customers? What would help them experience outstanding results or more joy, delight, more peace of mind, or happiness? How can you over deliver?’”
Marie is so spot on there. I think bonuses definitely help you over deliver. But I really like that she asked, “What can you create that gives your students peace of mind?” We all know that when someone specifically enrolls in an online training program they are nervous.
They just laid down some cash and they are not really sure if this program is right for them. Buyer’s remorse is alive and well. So, if your bonuses offer a little peace of mind that’s always a good thing. I’m just giving you some examples to try on to see if that might work for you.
Let’s get really specific in an example so you can see how this might play out. Say you are creating a course around how to set up organic, fun meal plans for busy families with working moms and kids under the age of five. See how specific that is? That’s always good.
I would think about setting up bonuses that could make meals more efficient and convenient. Or, extra tips about nutrition for this age group that may not necessarily fit into the course. I’m adding value to that specific audience in ways that would make the whole meal planning even more efficient.
It’s all about the state of mind, giving them more joy, more delight, more peace of mind. It makes it easier for them to navigate through the core content.
Number 2 in terms of what you want to think about and what you want to do in order to figure out what bonuses to create is to connect #1, the value and experience, the state of mind, to the outcome you want to deliver.
Think in terms of four categories when we’re talking about the outcome you want to deliver.
Category 1: Get results quicker. If that’s an outcome you want to deliver in your bonuses you want to really put that front and center. An example of helping get results quicker might mean, if you have a smaller audience and you have the bandwidth, one of your bonuses might be a Skype call that you offer with your students to help them set up the foundation of whatever it is you’re teaching them before they dive into your program, some kind of implementation call that you would do with them before they dive in. That helps them get to the finish line quicker.
Category 2: Provide extra support. That could be another outcome. I love Facebook groups. I think a private Facebook group for members only is a must when you want to add value and support and increase the perceived value of your program. I have private Facebook groups for all of my programs. I get into some of them regularly and others are supported by my community manager. It depends on the price point of the product. But I think it’s a great way to add extra support.
Category 3: Bring them deeper after they finish the course and help them anticipate next steps in their journey. I’ve already mentioned this one but an example would be my Course Launch Master Plan which is the bonus for my Courses That Convert program. The program is all about creating the course and the bonus is all about the anticipation of the next step, which is launching the course.
One side note here, I know some folks who provide additional unrelated products as their bonus. I do not recommend this. I hate when somebody says, “I’ll just throw in that old course I did two years ago as a bonus.” I never think there is true alignment there. If anything, rerecord that in order to make it 100% focused on the product you are promoting.
You can use old content and maybe I’m creating more work for everybody but the way I’ll do it is to record the content I’ve done in the past but make sure it’s aligned with the new course I’m creating. That is just something to think about.
Category 4: Give them peace of mind on something that’s scary or intimidating. I always use examples from my most recent course because it’s fresh in my body and I remember it the most. But, one of the things I did, an additional bonus for Courses
That Convert was the Successful Sales Page Formula for online courses. Nothing’s more intimidating than creating sales pages.
I wanted to at least get the conversation going around needing a sales page when you create a course. So I give some tips and tricks to get going in the right direction. If you like that idea, I actually recorded Episode 113 and Episode 114 about sales pages so you can check that out.
I wanted to point out that you really need to get clear on the outcome you want to deliver with your bonuses. Do you want to create bonuses that get them quicker results, provide extra support, bring them deeper into a topic after they finish your course and anticipate the next steps in their journey with the bonus content, or give them peace of mind on something that’s going to scare them as they go through your course or product?
Some of your bonuses might actually tackle some of the scary things they are thinking about as they are in your course. They can add peace of mind and they will know you are going to cover something later. They will know they don’t need to worry about it.
Now I want you to take the state of mind that you want to give people, remember, I talked about how Marie Forleo looks at it, and the categories we just went over. I want you to pair them. This will be outlined in your freebie and that is why you want the freebie to actually do this when you’re ready to implement.
Basically, you’re going to put the state of mind together with the actual concrete outcome you want people to get. To make this more actionable let me give you an example. Based on our meal plan example I gave you earlier I could create a bonus where I give a one-on-one call with families to start them on track.
I kind of mentioned the implementation call earlier. This would go under the category of getting results quicker. I did individual calls for one of my bonuses way back when I did the Profit Lab the very first and second time I did it. People would have a one-on- one call with me on Skype at the very beginning of the course and then we would have a Skype call at the very end of the course so I could send them on their journey of the next steps now that they have completed the course.
I did this when I had a smaller audience and actually had the bandwidth to do so. I really do think that put me on the map because I was offering one-on-one support where most people don’t offer it. That’s something to think about.
Another idea is to do a series of webinars with nutritional experts to answer your students’ questions serving as a sounding board and offering extra support. I think this one’s a really good one because you don’t have to do all the work.
Again, one of the bonuses could be that you include some experts in your course. Maybe you interview them, you do some live calls or webinars with them once the course gets going, but this is a great way to offer extra support and be a sounding board.
You could also create reminder cards that they can download and print out. Something about getting meals on the table each night can be daunting so you want to make sure they have a tool to keep them on track with their menu plans. You can have little reminders or cards they can print out.
I’ve seen printable cards for so many different products. People love these. They are well designed, they are really valuable, and people can carry them around with them. Downloadables might be a really cool bonus you can create.
This would refer back to #4 to give them peace of mind on something that’s scary or intimidating or overwhelming to them. These reminder cards will help just that.
Once you download the freebie, at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/120download, you will know exactly how to walk yourself through the whole idea of the state of mind with the outcomes that lead to results. I’ll make it really easy for you in the download, I just wanted to map it out for you here on this episode and give you a bunch of examples so you can see it in real time.
Next you want to decide how you will position your bonuses in your offer. Once you decide on the kind of bonuses you want to create you have to position them well. This is equally as important as the content in your bonuses.
Let me give you some options. You could add your bonuses for everyone. When they buy your program they also get these two extra bonuses. That’s just how it goes for everybody.
You could also add a fast-action bonus. This can work in many ways but I will give you two examples. On opening day when you open your cart you could do a bonus that if people sign up on Day 1 they get this bonus but the bonus goes away at midnight. I have done this many times.
Once the cart opens we have a special bonus that goes away that night. That creates some extra buzz and urgency right when you open the cart. The next thing you can do with a fast-action bonus is on webinars.
My Webinars That Convert students know very well that what you want to do on the webinar is tell people, “If you purchase this program while we are still here live on the webinar you get the fast action bonus.”
You create an extra special bonus for only those that take action right away. That’s another way to position your bonus. Yes there is some tricky work on the back end to make sure you are tracking people accurately. I’ve messed this up before so just know it’s not the easiest thing.
But, depending on what email service provider you are using and what shopping cart you are using, you can track what time of day people are buying and you could pull them out to get an extra special bonus.
Another great way I like to position bonuses is with a 24-hour or 48-hour bonus. I talked about this on Episode 116 when I went over my entire launch of Courses That Convert. I talked about almost forgetting to do the 48-hour bonus so we made it a 24- hour bonus. I was still wildly successful.
The thing is, if you find a really great bonus you know your audience will love and you pair it with packaging it well you have a homerun. Back on Episode 116, the launch episode, I talked about doing a 24-hour bonus where I did a live webinar with live Q&A right at about 60 days into the program.
That is when people would start to have a lot of questions, feel a little bit overwhelmed, and I knew they were itching to talk about launching more now that they have been creating their courses. That’s exactly what I did. I offered Ten Battle- Tested Lessons I’ve Learned From Launching and a live Q&A. It was only offered to people that bought in the middle of the launch in a 24-hour period.
The great thing is if you had bought before that you also get the bonus because you get any bonus I add if you have already bought. But if you haven’t bought yet you have to buy before 11:59 p.m. It was right in the middle of my cart open schedule. It breathed new life into my campaign.
If you’re launching live for about two weeks there is always a little bit of a lull. These 24-hour or 48-hour bonuses are really good to create some urgency.
You could then also do a cart-close bonus. On the final day you will hold out on one more really good bonus and have an extra excuse to email your list. That’s another thing, when you add bonuses throughout a promo you can then email your list and say, “Bonus just added, here’s what it’s all about.” That’s another way to use email marketing, to talk about the extra email bonuses. I love to do that.
I did a cart-close bonus for my B-School bonus package. I’ll talk about this in a minute but B-School is a big, big deal in my business because I always create my biggest bonus package for that program. I’ll tell you why I put so much effort into it. There are a few factors that help me decide if this is going to be worth putting a lot of effort into a bonus package.
When I did that, I did a cart-close bonus. I revealed it on the very last day. It’s really cool because it might be just the thing people that have been on the fence need to tip them over and say they want it and “give it to me, that sounds really good, that’s exactly what I was waiting for.”
Again, you see why it’s so important to put some genuine thought into these bonuses. I already said this but I guess I need to go back to it really quick. I really do believe that bonuses that you can add when you have the bandwidth, and it’s always hard for me to do this but I push myself if I can, to offer live webinars or calls or one-on-one calls or small group coaching calls as a bonus.
If I can give a piece of me in real time I think people find that extra valuable because the instructor is saying they are actually going to communicate back and forth one on one or in a small group setting or in a live Q&A. The live aspect is a really high- perceived value.
If you can do it and you’re good in the moment on live, I definitely recommend it. There are different ways you can add that live aspect. People want access to you so if you can find a way to do that it’s always a really good, valuable bonus.
Let me recap. You can do bonuses that everyone gets. When you join my program for Courses That Convert everybody gets access to the private Facebook group. No matter when you buy, first day 24-hour bonus, last day, whatever, whenever you buy you get the bonus. That would be an everyday everyone bonus.
Then you have fast-action bonuses or 24-hour or 48-hour bonuses and your cart-close bonuses. There are other things you can think about in terms of timing but what’s important is that you want to position your bonuses in a way to create scarcity, create urgency, and to increase the perceived value.
Those are things you want to think about. I suggest you do a mix of these. Maybe do an everyday bonus but then do a 48-hour bonus in the middle of your promo or maybe do a fast-action bonus on a webinar. I don’t always do all of these things but when I do I see a huge increase in my revenue.
Are you seeing how important it is to plan this stuff way in advance? My Courses That Convert students know this. Everything is mapped out in advance. That way when you go live in a launch you’re not just deciding you should think of a bonus.
I’ve been there, believe me, I’m trying to help you learn from my mistakes. Map it all out in advance and unveil it as you go. It is really important. It takes out a lot of stress.
As a quick side note, since we’re talking about positioning the bonuses, when you have an evergreen program…let’s say you have a program that runs all the time. Right now we are promoting Webinars That Convert at all times to a cold audience.
We’re not running ads or emailing my audience, my list, my fans, or anything like that, but we are reaching out to a cold audience and inviting them to an automated webinar and inviting them in to Webinars That Convert.
When you have an evergreen program you might wonder how to do the bonuses. I am actually going to do a live launch of Webinars That Convert again this fall. I am going to create a brand new bonus. I’m going to breathe new life into that campaign.
Anybody who is already a member of Webinars That Convert will get the bonus. It kind of gets them reexcited about the program. Anybody who is brand new will also get the bonus.
When the live cart closes that bonus will go away and it won’t be a part of my evergreen funnel. It will be extra special to that live launch. If you have an evergreen program but you want to do live launches think about using bonuses to breathe new life into your campaigns. That’s good stuff, right?
Moving on, we’re going to wrap up soon. You also want to think about how you want to deliver the bonuses. This is all about timing more than anything. You want to be up front with this. You have to always set the expectations so your audience knows what is coming.
I will give you a few options. You can deliver your bonuses right up front. I did that for the most part with my last launch although those who got the 24-hour limited-time bonus were given a date that I would be doing the live Q&A. If you give them the date they are good as well.
It’s all about expectations. When you are thinking about doing a live Q&A or a live bonus and you want to give it as a bonus you have to tell them you are giving them a bonus and they have to sign up “now.” Then you tell them the date and time you will be doing the live bonus and let them know if they can’t make it you will have it recorded for them. These are things you need to communicate.
Again, you can deliver your bonuses right away. You could deliver your bonuses after the refund period. Sometimes people like to wait. Once the 30 or 60-day refund period is over then people get the bonuses. There are a few reasons you may or may not want to do that. If people can download your bonuses and keep them forever you don’t want that to happen until the refund period.
If it’s a long refund period like 60 days, I don’t know if I love waiting but 30 days is manageable.
You can also unlock your bonuses like Marie Forleo does with her advanced bonuses. You first get through the entire program. She delivers an eight-week program and then she starts to unlock the bonuses one by one, week after week.
It’s a really cool experience that gets you excited. Your program is over and you are still getting cool stuff. It is brand new to you because you didn’t have access to it until after the eight-week live program ended. It’s a good experience, for sure.
Right away, after the refund period, or unlock them after they have gone through your course. Those are some options.
Finally, once you get through all of that it’s time to execute. Remember, you don’t have to do it all on your own. I gave you the example of the nutrition experts that you could actually have come on webinars with you, help you do content that is not solely your own, it also actually adds a little excitement to your program.
You can leverage some of this stuff, for sure.
Before I go, you may be asking about an affiliate launch. Does this all apply to a partnership where you are promoting somebody else’s program but you want to create a bonus so that people will buy the program from you?
All of this definitely applies. But I want to add a little extra to the conversation. First of all, with affiliate bonuses (you are creating bonuses to promote somebody else’s program) you want to think about how you can shine in terms of your own content, what you know best, as well as which bonuses will completely align with the product you are promoting.
I think the best job I’ve ever done with this is with B-School. You have heard me talk about B-School again and again. It is Marie Forleo’s program. She offers it once a year. It is $2,000 and is really all about getting started in the online marketing world, setting your foundation, building your email list, getting your offer straight, and so much more.
I’ve gone through the program many times. I know the program content back and forth, left and right. I’m very familiar with it. When you’re very familiar with the product you’re going to promote for someone else it helps you get really clear about where you can either fill in some holes or add an extra layer of support to the content that’s already in the program.
That’s one factor you want to think about. What could you offer that, again coming back to our categories, will help people get results faster, give them peace of mind, and will allow less overwhelm. Remember the categories…that is not all of them, but some of them.
You want to think about that. A few other things you want to think about is the commission. When I promote B-School I get $1,000 per person that joins using my link. That’s a lot of money so I want to make sure I offer full support and am all in during that B-School promotion, partly because the commission really warrants the time and energy that I’m going to put into it.
Another thing is the level of involvement. If you’re just going to send out a few emails and that’s going to be your affiliate promo then you probably don’t need to do a whole big bonus package. But for B-School I did live videos, I did a lot of social media marketing, I sent a lot of emails, I did webinars.
I had a lot of different promotional pieces with that so it warranted spending some good time on a bonus package. You also have to look at the competition. When you’re promoting somebody else’s program, if there is a lot of competition and a lot of people are also promoting, make a really kick-ass bonus. That way you’re going to stand out from all of the other competition.
I definitely keep that in mind. Whoever has followed Marie Forleo’s promotions for B- School knows that a lot of people are promoting it. I have to think of how I am going to stand out. I’ve got to do my very, very best work inside that bonus package.
I also have to add a piece of me. I have to add that engagement, that one-on-one with me because I know it will make it a spectacular bonus package. I do a live event in San Diego. I do a private Facebook group where I promise to answer every single question people ask.
My team isn’t answering them, I’m answering them for a limited time. I think I did 90 days. That’s when you have to go above and beyond, when there’s a lot of competition.
Finally, when you’re thinking about creating bonuses for an affiliate offer you’ve got to think about your ability to create alignment. B-School works perfectly with the content I teach. I taught one year how to do webinars as a bonus because that was perfect.
People were creating offers inside of B-School so how were they going to promote them? I know webinars well and before I had a webinar program that was a big bonus inside that program. If there is complete alignment it becomes a whole lot easier.
That is some stuff to think about when you’re creating an affiliate bonus package.
One last tip. If you aren’t already, start taking notes on other people’s bonus offers. How are they taking on objections with their bonuses? That’s another thing I didn’t really get into. But, if your bonus will tackle an objection, heck yeah, that’s a good one.
How are they positioning their bonuses? How are they stacking the value? If you start paying attention and creating some swipe files for yourself to go back and remember the product offered and the bonuses, pay attention to people’s launches, when did they offer bonuses, this is the kind of stuff that really helps you decide what’s going to work best in your own business.
I’ll leave you with little loving caution. Make sure your bonus package doesn’t take up more of your time than the course itself. It’s easy to get caught up in creating all of the bonuses and then all of the sudden it’s like you have two courses you have to create. That’s not fun.
If you’re creating a course right now, one thing that can help you is to treat your bonus creation just like you treat your course creation. If you’re scheduling time to create the content, to put it into slide decks, to record it, if you’re making the time to create your program you should also add in the time and schedule it to create your bonuses.
Don’t leave the bonuses until the night before you launch. Don’t leave the bonuses as an afterthought because it will really show. Don’t let bonuses be the whole shebang where it takes tons of your time but also don’t leave them until the very end.
There is a fine line you are walking with bonuses. They are incredibly important but you’ve got to do a great job on the course creation itself. That’s where you want to focus first. I could say so much about this and I really want to wrap up so that it’s not too long, but what’s really cool is if you do what I teach inside Courses That Convert… create your offer first, get really clear on what the content is going to be (modules, lessons, and bonuses), then record the course.
When you are recording the course you can say, “I created an extra bonus about this so if you want to go deeper with me here, when you’re done with the course go into the bonus section. I have something waiting for you right there.”
It’s always fun to tease your bonuses inside your course content. If you plan ahead of time you can do so. You can talk about them while you’re teaching. That’s something I love to do.
Remember what I mentioned in the very beginning when we were just getting started with this mini bonus workshop. Bonuses can increase the perceived value of your course or literally allow you to actually increase the price of your course.
You decide which is going to work for you but there is that potential for sure. Bonuses are definitely an important piece of your overall promotional plan.
Before we sign off, make sure to grab the freebie for today’s episode. Grab it right now so you don’t forget it when you really need it later. It’s your own guide to create the bonuses that are going to be a best fit for your offer.
When you download the PDF I created for you, you will be able to walk through all of the questions you need to ask yourself. There will be triggers I mentioned that will remind you what state of mind you want or what outcome you want with the bonus. We’ll walk you through that.
There are places to take notes or type in your notes. We made it into a worksheet to make it completely actionable for you and your bonus offers specifically. Go to http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/120download or text 120download to 33444.
Thank you so much for being with me here. I cannot wait to connect with you again next week. I hope you have an amazing week. Bye for now.
