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AMY PORTERFIELD: “The reason why I think one digital course in your business is such a smart marketing move is that you could take this one asset; put all the time, energy, and effort into creating it; and then, you could sell it over and over and over again. Sure, you might want to improve it, tweak it, make it better. But still, the course is the course. You never have to start from scratch.”
“We are going on our third launch of Digital Course Academy®️, and I've made the course better each time I've launched it, but it's still the core course. I never had to start from scratch in my second launch, my third launch, and it is a huge success. So I tell you that because you can have that in your business as well. You might not be ready right this minute, but I want you to start thinking about what a digital course could look like in your business, because it's an asset that can make you money over and over and over again.”
INTRO: I’m Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-million-dollar business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, money, and time to focus on growing my small-but-mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur, or one in the making, who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and helps you create a life you love, you're in the right place. Let's get started.
AMY: You have something to offer your audience—that special something that people need—so how are you going to get it into their hands? The answer, my friend, is by crafting an irresistible offer that your audience cannot resist. An offer is a product or service that you're going to sell. This could be a digital course, a PDF guide, one-on-one coaching, group coaching, basically, everywhere you look, there's an offer.
But here's what I really want to know. Are you making it as easy as possible for your audience to buy from you? Many of us, myself included, struggle with thinking that more is better when it comes to the products and services and programs that we offer our potential customers. After eleven years of growing a successful online business, I can promise you that in your business less is more. So having only a few core offers that are really good will set you apart from your competition and set you up for success. And especially right now, in a time when online businesses are even more in demand and people are searching for their solutions that they need online more than they've ever done in the past, having a clear offer to ensure you thrive during uncertain times is essential, which is why I want to walk you through, step by step, how to take what you have to offer and package it up into something that your audience will love and buy.
We're going to keep this very simple. There's no need to overthink it, because it will evolve and change over time. In fact, what you start with, especially if you're in your early days of being an entrepreneur, most likely will not become your signature offer. It can help lead you to figuring out your signature offer, that thing that makes you a lot of money and you offer over and over and over again. But basically, what you're going to create when you're just starting out is going to get the ball rolling, is going to create momentum, is going to get you into action. And remember, action leads to clarity. So my best advice for you as we go through these six steps is to simply do the work, use it to create only one offer, and be willing to be flexible.
Here's what we're going to identify so that you can walk away from this episode with your offer or package planned out and ready to get into the hands of your customers. First, your offer promise. After that, we'll identify the amount of time it takes to see results, which will then allow you to craft an outline. From there, you'll select your offer format, and you're going to set your price point. And then, we'll wrap up with creating your money-back guarantee. And as usual, I’ll use examples from my own business and my students’ businesses to help you craft your offer. Whether you're hustling in your side business or you're a full time entrepreneur, this episode will help you create an offer or some kind of package that will not only make you look like the professional that you are, but help you create raving and loyal customers. Here we go.
Let's kick it off with step one in crafting an offer your audience won't be able to resist. For starters, you have to identify your offer promise and who the offer is for. So let me give you an example from one of my digital courses, List Builders Society®️. The promise is to teach entrepreneurs how to successfully set up and grow their email list using my proven formula. Simple and sweet. So keep in mind that your solution and promise should be really simple and very clear. The one I just mentioned is both. So use clear language and get straight to the point.
Now, if you've been with me for a while, you know that a huge part of knowing what to offer comes back to having a clear picture of who your ideal-customer avatar is, your ICA, that one person you're serving in everything you do and everything you create. If you have a clear picture of your ICA, you'll know exactly who this offer is for and what your promise should be. If an ICA is new to you, head to episode number 235 for more guidance on identifying your ICA. We also just created the wildly popular guide Be Your Own Boss™️: How to Start an Online Business from Scratch. Now, this guide goes into depth around identifying your ICA. I’ll link to this resource in the show notes at amyporterfield.com/317.
Okay, here are a few other ideas to get clear on what your offer promise is. One, you could just ask your audience, even if you have a small audience, ask them on social media, or if you have an email list, ask them there. Also, pay attention to where your audience is engaging most on social media or with your content. What are their interests? What are they gravitating toward? And also, is there an Instagram post or a Facebook post that you've done that's received a lot of comments or direct messages? Also, was there a video that created a lot of buzz? Did you get tons of feedback on a specific podcast episode you released? Pay attention to what your audience is responding to. This could be a really big hint, a green light, for what they want more of and are willing to pay for. So if you listen closely, your audience will tell you exactly what they want.
So another way is to think about a transformation that you've gotten for yourself or for someone else. This, too, could create a fantastic offer. What was the transformation? Could you package that and offer to teach it to somebody else? So start taking notice of these things because that's where you'll find the promise.
Here's another example to get your creative juices flowing. My student, Amanda Genther, is a digital-marketing strategist for female entrepreneurs. She has an offer called Slay Your Sales Page, which offers a solution to help her audience create money-making sales pages, with her high-converting templates and a workshop that teaches them how to do it. Such a solid offer.
So now it's your turn. Grab a pen and paper, or just grab your iPhone and start typing in the notes section, what's your offer promise, and who is it for? What are you going to do for them? What solution are you going to solve, and who do you want to serve? I bet you already have some ideas, and if you already know your ICA, you've got that one already figured out as well. So just take a few quick notes, and then, let's move on.
Step number two, now that you know what you're promising, how long does it take to achieve these results? So if you are promising something to your ideal-customer avatar in the form of an offer that they're going to pay for, they want to know how long it will take them to get the results that you're promising. Seven days, two months, six months? Thinking back to the transformation that you've gotten for yourself or someone else, how long did it take to get to that transformation?
Now, here's an important question that I tend to teach my students when I teach them how to create a digital course. My question is, can you tighten that timeframe up for your students now that you've paved the way yourself and you know the dos and the don'ts to get results? So when I first created my first digital course, it took a long time, and I made tons of mistakes. Now what I teach in Digital Course Academy®️ is way better than the actual experience I went through because of all the mistakes. So I can get you from point A to point B a whole lot faster because I know what the success roadmap looks like because I've done it so many times.
So remember, your paying customers are looking for the fastest way to go from point A, which is a challenge that they're having or a desire that they want, to point B, which is your solution and their results. So I do want you to think about the fastest way possible, but don't exaggerate. We don't want to over promise. So find that middle ground that's going to be enough time for you to show them what they need to know, but also fast enough that they're going to feel like, okay, this is worth paying for. I'm going to get the results I want, and it won't take me too, too long to get there.
Okay, for my List Builders Society®️, giving you an example from my own world, I know that it takes about sixty days to see results, which is why I have this as my money-back guarantee. But I'm jumping ahead of myself, so more on the guarantee a little bit later. But typically, I promise people can see results within sixty days.
So now it's your turn. How long does it take to see the results that you're promising? I want you to write it down, don't overthink this, and you can come back to it and kind of work it out a little bit later. We're just taking action right now so we get that ball rolling.
Okay, next step, step three, which is outlining the steps or the phases of your offer. Now, this exercise here is step three about outlining. It works for a digital course, but it also works for crafting a roadmap that you'll use in, let's say, one-on-one coaching or a group-coaching session. So I think just outlining what the offer looks like in terms of the content is really important. It also allows you to sell it easily, especially if you're selling it before you actually create it.
So again, my example for List Builders Society®️, I knew that I had gotten myself and other results with just three easy steps. So step number one, define your list-building value proposition in your ideal-customer avatar. Step two, create irresistible content, a lead magnet, and add a whole bunch of consistency. And then, step three, attract potential buyers and organic leads with proven online-marketing strategies. So those were the steps for List Builders Society®️.
Now, for my newest offer, Be Your Own Boss™️: How to Start an Online Business from Scratch, I laid that out in five phases. So within each step for List Builders Society®️ and within each phase for Be Your Own Boss™️, I've broken it down even further into smaller, bite-sized pieces. And I suggest you do the same. Here's my secret to success. I'm always looking for the framework or the roadmap or the path so that it's easy to talk about in my marketing, it's easy for me to teach, and, most importantly, it's easy for my students to follow and get results. So I want you to start by writing all the steps it takes to achieve your promise. Once you have those written out, see if you can start to notice any patterns or similarities or steps that go together well.
So, for example, in my newest offer, Be Your Own Boss™️, I have a section all about building your online presence. When I first laid out the sequence of steps that it would actually take to get results, I noticed that setting up a web page, selecting a website platform and an email software and crafting web pages all went hand in hand. So I clumped that into an easy-to-understand phase with smaller, bite-sized sections to make it feel more doable. So if you actually do the work of kind of outlining the steps and the phases and what you want to teach, whether it be in your digital course or inside a group coaching offer or a workshop that you're going to offer, if you spend the time, even just an hour, brainstorming it all out, you'll start to be able to kind of chunk together the phases or the steps, and now you've got a simple roadmap, and it kind of eases your mind, like, okay, I know how I'm going to teach this. I might need to go back and refine some stuff, do some research, whatever, but I've got a simple outline that I can follow. So it really does ease your mind as a marketer.
Okay, so, once you're done identifying your steps, it's time for step four, which is deciding on your offer format. So this part is really fun because I want you to ask yourself, what would be the best way to get my students through these steps and achieve the results that they're seeking? This is, again, where you should lean on your audience. And no matter how small, ask them. Get some clarity here.
Now, before I share some options with you, I’d like to remind you that if this is the first offer you've ever created, keep it simple. You'll expand from here and continue to create magnificent offers over time, but start small so that you can see what works and what doesn't work and what your audience likes and doesn't like. And then you can start really shifting your offer to hit a home run each time.
So here are some common offer formats to choose from: a PDF; video or videos; one-on-one coaching sessions; group-coaching sessions; or my favorite, but a little bit more intense, a digital course. So when I was first starting out, one of my first offers was one-on-one coaching. So this taught me a lot about what I like to do, what I didn't like to do, but it also gave me a wealth of knowledge for how my ideal-customer avatar would think about different things related to online marketing and social media, what they struggled with, where they needed the most help. So I learned a lot.
Now, that led me to create a digital course down the road. But before I did that, my second offer was doing Facebook page audits for my clients. Now, this is back in the Wild West when no one knew what the heck to do with a Facebook page, so everyone had a million questions.
So my clients paid me $297, which, guys, at the time, I thought I was asking for a million dollars. Like, $297, that was more than—well, it was the first time I ever put together an offer like this, so it was the most I've ever asked for something like this—but it felt like I was asking for so much money. But when I tell you about what the offer was, you'll notice I put a lot of time and effort into it, so I'm like, I cannot charge any less. So looking back, that doesn't feel like a lot of money for an offer, but when you're new, even asking for $100, you're like, what? I can't do it. I get those feelings. I've been through all of them.
So I put together this offer, this Facebook page audit, $297. And basically, what I promised was to review their Facebook page over seven days, watch their activity, see how they set it up, audit the entire Facebook-page experience. And then from there, I created a detailed report inside of a Google doc, with images and graphs and examples to show them all the ways that they could increase their fan base and increase engagement. And then, I made a short video, walking them through the report. So that was the offer, and it did really great, especially at a time that I really needed a little cash injection at the time.
So, there’s always small, little offers that you can put together, especially while you're creating your digital course. So let's say in September you want to join me in Digital Course Academy®️. But right now, you don't really have a big email list. You've never made a dime online. You're a little bit nervous about diving into creating a digital course. Well, get started with just a small offer—a small group-coaching offer, or maybe you put together a one-hour workshop and you sell that, or you do one-on-one coaching. Just do something to make a little extra money so you get into the rhythm of putting out an offer and you know how to take money online so that you kind of have a little foundation. I think it goes a long way.
So your offers do not need to be elaborate. You don't need to make hundreds of thousands of dollars with them. I think it's all about getting into motion and also making a little money. And heck, you could make a lot of money with your offers. I'm just speaking to those of you who are just starting out. If you're at a place that you haven't yet made money online, you could follow these six steps, and you could be making money online next week. So pay close attention.
And I think for all of you listening, whatever you put together as an offer, it doesn't have to be your forever offer. Especially for those you just starting out, it's going to evolve. It's going to take shape. It's going to change. I just really want to see you get something out there.
Okay, so, let me give you another example. Remember that guide I told you, Be Your Own Boss™️; it's our new offer we just created? It's a PDF guide. So it includes tons of snapshots, images, examples, so that my students can follow along step by step by step. Plus, it has sections where they can answer question prompts and jot down just a bunch of notes based on what I'm having them do. So that's a little unique, something I haven't created in a long time. But because of our current climate, because so many people are wanting to start their online businesses, I wanted to meet them where they're at, and I think a really good PDF guide showing you how to get started with an online business is perfect for the climate we're in, so that's why I put that together.
Now with List Builders Society®️, my digital course, that is training videos and PDF guides and audio as well. So it’s a mixed-media digital course offering a lot, and that’s more of a substantial offer that took me a bit of time to put together. So I created this when I was further along in my business, so I had the tools and the knowledge and the experience to do so.
I also want to introduce you to one of my students. So her name is Melissa Groves Azzaro, and she's a licensed nutrition professional who specializes in polycystic ovary syndrome and fertility nutrition. Now, she has a few offers, one being a digital course. She also has an offer that includes one-on-one coaching calls and a personalized plan for her coaching clients. So a variety of offers—not too many, just a few—is always a great strategy to explore, especially when you're just starting out and you're still testing what's going to work best for you and your audience. So as you can see, there’s no shortage of options when it comes to how you want to deliver your offer to your audience.
Of course, I ultimately want your offer to be a digital course. And the reason I'm saying that is when you create just one digital course, whether it be something that's like a starter course—you're helping somebody just get started—like, Facebook marketing 101, or training your baby to sleep 101, or whatever that might be, so that would be a starter course right from the beginning. You could charge $100, $200, $300 or something more substantial like I have with Digital Course Academy®️, which is a $2000 program, the reason why I think one digital course in your business is such a smart marketing move is that you could take this one asset; put all the time, energy, and effort into creating it; and then, you could sell it over and over and over again. Sure, you might want to improve it, tweak it, make it better. But still, the course is the course. You never have to start from scratch.
We are going on our third launch of Digital Course Academy®️, and I've made the course better each time I've launched it, but it's still the core course. I never had to start from scratch in my second launch, my third launch, and it is a huge success. So I tell you that because you can have that in your business as well. You might not be ready right this minute, but I want you to start thinking about what a digital course could look like in your business, because it's an asset that can make you money over and over and over again.
Okay, so, let's get back to step four. It's your turn. What format will be best for your first or your next offer? Write it down, first thing that comes to mind. We're just getting some motion here, getting into motion.
Let's move on to step five. And step five is to price your offer. So when it comes to pricing your offer remember that, just like everything else, this could change down the road and likely will. So start out by doing just a little—and I repeat a little—research to see what your competitors are pricing their offers at. So take note and keep that in mind as you finalize your price point.
Another approach is to reverse engineer your ideal-revenue goal. So to do this, start by setting your ideal monthly revenue goal, divide it by how many offers you'd like to sell, and figure out a ballpark number for what to charge. Now, I want you to be realistic with this strategy and make sure you're not inflating your prices. That’s where it’s helpful to know what other experts in your industry are charging, so you could see what's working, and then, you decide where you kind of want to fall on that scope of pricing.
Now, keep in mind that if you have a bigger-ticket item, one like one-on-one coaching, you'll likely have to sell less in order to hit a revenue goal. However, it may be more of a challenge to sell, especially if you're just starting out. Now, with a lower-ticket item, like a PDF, you’ll have to sell more. But your audience might be more willing to make a small investment, especially if you're just starting out, because they don't necessarily know you well yet, but the investment is not a huge risk. So the key is to get your ICA into your sales funnel, get them results, and get a customer for life.
Were you multi-tasking? Do you need to come back to me? because that part was important. With everything I'm teaching you today, these six steps, the key is that you're going to get your ideal-customer avatar into your world, but more so, into a sales funnel where they've actually paid you. Even if it's just twenty-seven dollars, ninety-seven dollars, they've paid. They are a paying customer. And then from there, you're going to get them results that you've promised with your offer, and then, they are a customer for life because as you have bigger offers—maybe your first digital course is finally ready to sell—and now they’ve already invested in you, they’ve gotten results, they trust you, and they’re more likely to buy.
We’re in this for the long haul, guys. We're not looking for get-rich-quick kind of strategies. So one small offer can lead to a very big offer down the road.
Okay, so, every industry and ICA is different, so you want to be sure you’re catering to what your audience wants and will respond to best. Sometimes you don't know, and you just got to experiment.
So let's break this down. Let's say you're just starting out. So you want your monthly revenue to be $5,000 a month. So here's how you could reverse engineer it. If you have an offer that you know you'd like to sell for a higher price point, let's say one-on-one coaching package—so you do six coaching sessions over the next two months, whatever you want to put together—and let’s say you know you only want to offer it to five clients. So you take that $5,000, divide it by five, which is a thousand bucks per package, and that's what you're going to sell your one-on-one coaching package for.
Now, conversely, if you have an offer that would fit better as a lower price-point offer, and you know you could likely sell more of it, let's say twenty-five units, so you take that $5,000, divide it by twenty-five units, and now it's a $200 price point. Now, if there's a few different ways you make money in your business, then you're going to do the math a little bit differently. But if you want to go that route to say, “I've got to meet these revenue goals each month,” especially when you're just starting out, you're trying to make enough to pay the bills, and so you could reverse engineer a bit. So just something to think about.
Now, as you can see, when you do this, it kind of helps you to zoom out and get an idea of how many units you're going to have to sell to reach that goal. And I always love to say, “How many units do we need to sell in order to hit our goals?” I'm asking my team that all the time when we're launching. So this is a good way to look at it.
Now, once you're done with this episode, I want you to take some time to look at what other industry experts are charging for their offer, if it's similar to yours, and then take a moment to reverse engineer your pricing. I promise you, by doing these two things, you'll land on a perfect starting price for your offer. You can always change it. I also like to go out with a lower offer that I might want to increase over time versus a higher offer that I'll have to decrease over time if I don't like it. So I’d start out a little lower if you have plans to maybe increase it down the road, but not too low just because you’re so scared to sell.
Remember when I sold that $297 Facebook audit I freaked out? But I couldn't sell it for any less. There was too much time and effort on my side, and I needed to pay the bills. So make sure you're not pricing just because you're scared to charge what you're worth. Deal? Okay.
Last step, step six, craft a money-back guarantee. So when someone purchases your offer, what will your money-back guarantee look like if your students aren't satisfied? So they need to feel confident that if this offer is not a good fit for them, they have the option to get their money back. The more you can eliminate the risk, the more likely someone is to take a chance on your offer.
So the most-popular offer-refund timeframes are thirty days and sixty days. Now, before deciding what your timeframe will be for your offer, I think it's important to take a moment to remember how long it will take to see results when working with you, and allow that to kind of guide you. With that, you can decide to make it a no-strings-attached refund policy, where all your students need to do is ask for a refund in that timeframe and you refund them. Or you can do what I do, where the guidelines for a refund include doing a certain amount of work and showing that you actually gave it a try before you ask for a refund.
For example, in my List Builders Society®️ program, I offer a sixty-day money-back guarantee. However, in order to qualify for that refund, you must provide my team with proof that you've rolled up your sleeves and you've done some of the work. So I choose to do this because I know that if you put in the work, you will get results, and so I wanted to minimize refunds for those who were not committed to doing the work. So you're welcome to model this similar refund policy if that works for you.
But I will say, when I was just starting out, I didn't have a lot of clout. A lot of people didn't know me. I did a thirty-day or a sixty-day money-back guarantee, no strings attached. And I think that's the easiest way to start a refund when you're just starting out so that people who don't know you yet don't have to sacrifice a lot if the program is not a good fit.
Now, if you’re offering coaching, check out what others are doing in your industry for their coaching guarantee. Use that as a model to craft what feels right for you. So you want it to protect your time and your efforts while also being a benefit for your potential clients. So finding that middle ground might take a few tries, just get it going, and over time I believe that it will lock into a refund that works perfect for you. You won't know until you try it.
I think that's my biggest message for this whole entire episode. There's so many things you want to do. There's money you want to make. You want to make an impact with your audience. But if you don't try some things, you'll never know if it's going to work for you or not, if you like it or if you don't, or if your audience wants it or not. So I think looking back on my success of building an online business, I just tried stuff. And you can't let your ego of, “Oh, my gosh, that didn't work. I'm a loser,” get in the way, because we all have that. We all have that voice in our head. But if you're willing to try things and fail, then you're going to be successful so much faster than, let's say, someone that's also trying to build their business at the same time you are in the same market. If you're more willing to experiment, make mistakes, get back up, put together a different offer, try it again, you’re going to win. I have no doubt in my mind.
Okay, so, once you've written your guarantee, it's good practice to have it reviewed by a lawyer just to make sure you don't miss anything. I think I didn't do that a lot in the beginning, but I think it's a nice thing to do just to keep your business safe. And also, a money-back guarantee, it shows that you're confident in the results that you're promising in your offer, and it makes it more attractive to your potential customer because you're taking the risk away. So I really do think you should be clear about what the money-back guarantee is.
All right. So let's wrap up the six steps with a bow. Let me do a quick review. Okay, step number one, define your offer promise. Step two, identify the length of time it takes to get the results. Step three, map out the path, the framework, the roadmap, the step-by-step journey that it will take to get the results that you're promising. Step four, select your offer format. So it could be a PDF; a video; one-on-one coaching; group coaching; my very favorite, a digital course. And step five, price your offer. Now, this might not be the final price. You're going to experiment with this, but just make a decision. And step six, craft your money-back guarantee, something that also can change in the future. Just get something going.
So truth be told, we just scratched the surface for how to get started with an online business with an offer. So I want you to know that if you're looking for a “step by step by step, everything that you need from top to bottom” guide for starting an online business, I want you to check out the offer that I have recently created, Be Your Own Boss™️: How to Start an Online Business from Scratch. It not only gets into more detail around crafting your perfect offer, but it gives you everything else you'd possibly need to get started as an online entrepreneur. So if you think that's something that would be really valuable, go to amyporterfield.com/317, and you'll find details about my brand-new offer.
And before I forget, have you left me a rating and a review yet? I want you to head on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and let me know what you thought about this episode. All you need to do is scroll to the bottom, select, hopefully, five stars, and then click Write a Review. Now, in that review, make sure to let me know what you loved about this episode or what you love about the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast so that I could do more of what you want and need. I love reading those and getting tons of ideas for show episodes, so leave me any notes you want so that I can give you the episodes that you're looking for.
All right. Thanks so very much for tuning in today. I hope you love these six steps of creating an offer. I’ll see you next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.
