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Welcome to the exponential marketing club, where we talk about everything, content marketing from just getting started with your business, to growing a captivating presence with your website and social media and onto scaling with Facebook and Instagram advertising for exponential exposure and longterm success. Hi, my name is Sally Hendrick, your host and exponential marketing strategist. Let's get started. Y'all
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Hey everybody. Welcome back to the exponential marketing podcast with Sally Hendrick. That's me. And today we're going to talk to you a little bit about info products and why you want to have those and how it can apply to any business. If you ever find in your business that you repeat information to your customers, your clients, vendors, referral partners, anyone really, uh, if that information could be documented and used in repeatable information to give out to people that is an info product, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that you have to be selling online digital courses in order for this to be viable for your business. But honestly it could go for any type of business and any type of relationship with, you know, other people besides just course takers. A lot of us will find that we have to document step-by-step processes in order to have our businesses run efficiently. Think about that just from an internal perspective, you could create info products that are for your own employees. Another way of looking at this, let's just assume you're going to be working with clients or potential customers. Sometimes you can help educate them with an info product that will get them up to speed so that when they come to you for whatever it is they're buying with you, whether it's a service coaching consulting, they will have the prerequisite information out of the way.
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Would you rather work or would you rather play? If we're going to go through all of this business building stuff, it better be for something that we love doing, right. Take a moment to do this quick life purpose challenge to discover what makes you truly happy. It's free visit Sally hendrick.com forward slash life purpose.
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Now, before we actually get into talking about the reasons why you want to have info products and some of the deeper aspects of that, I want to tell you a little bit about myself before I became a marketing and Facebook advertising professional or expert. If you will. I worked in the insurance industry. I was a statistician helping clients to understand how much they needed to book in reserves on their balance sheets, in order to, uh, take care of the liabilities that they had with long-term, uh, long-term tail liabilities, like workers' compensation, medical malpractice in the hospital industry, uh, general liability, automobile liability, anything like that, where you didn't really know exactly how much claims were going to cost, but there could be some sort of predictability built around the history of claims that you already have. Now, when I was building my digital courses, I was still working as an actuary and I was building my business at the same time on the side.
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And because I wanted to be able to transition clients easily and smoothly with other people within my office, I started to document information really well, and I started to create processes and do a lot of training. And I also right towards the end, started creating video explanations of some of the actuarial reports that I was putting together for these clients. Now, these clients had never seen anybody do this before, so they actually really appreciate it. And very much wanted to understand how it was that we were calculating their numbers so that they would know what types of effects would be happening based on the actions that they may be taking with their policies within their companies. So at the same time that I was building my business with digital courses and videos and, you know, documents, all kinds of PDFs and downloads different things that I had, what I was doing was I was building the skills to be able to bring that to my current job at the time, my career, and to enhance the experience that we had with our clients. And that was really, really helpful. But now that I'm full-time in this career, I absolutely have learned a whole lot more. You learn a lot when you get in and you start practicing these concepts,
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First of
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All, the course is a direction or a route to be taken, to achieve a specific outcome. It can be delivered any way you want to deliver it. Videos, documents, an email series, an audio series, an ebook, a full-blown curriculum with modules and lessons, workbooks videos, and interactive workshops online, or in person. Now you can make this as simple or as complicated as you want. In fact, there are several software programs that are available that will deliver digital e-learning courses and track student progress. The choices range from a simple course delivery with simple solutions to full blown programs that cater to those who want to create additional passive income streams and market those. But some may ask, when is your digital course enough? Most coaches and business owners and consultants will overly complicate courses to be the ultimate. Be all end all resource for their clients in a perfectly packaged digital program.
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Now this overwhelm tends to stop them from developing courses in the first place, thinking that what they're creating is not enough, but courses do not have to cover every single topic, every example, or every situation to create a significant outcome for the client or for you as a coach, to be able to reach the clients and you need so consider the following and ways that you can develop a course for your business, an info product. If you will, to help you expand what you teach, enhance your offers and to coach your clients into bigger and better outcomes. So let's get into the five reasons to add info products to your business. Let's get into talking about educating your clients, vendors, and business partners. This is the first segment I want to cover when your client struggles to understand industry lingo, giving them a glossary of terms with examples is key to helping them to be able to know what solutions they may be looking for.
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We tend to speak our own language in our businesses, and we assume that our customers know what we're talking about. Now, that's the number one obstacle to take a client's language and turn it into industry solutions. Our potential clients do not know industry speak. They don't know what they don't know, and they don't know what they need to solve their problems. For example, if you're coaching someone on how to follow a ketogenic diet, for example, it would make sense for you to have documentation that defines the ketogenic means teaching someone how a body responds to the diet, why it helps someone lose weight or to see examples of outcomes is key education for someone to understand before they commit to following the plan. Now, if you're the coach who teaches prospective clients, what industry terms mean, you provided valuable information and you show success stories.
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Then you will be the one who is top of mind when they are ready to take action. Or when you put an offer in front of them, that's irresistible for them to pass by imagine being the business partner or the vendor who provides extra value, not just products to sell, but the one who's has expanded the worth to those within your network, you are going to be the favorite, the second reason to build an info product. And one of the things that you can do to make it better focus on what you do best when you provide a service to clients such as Facebook advertising, or marketing or something else, your clients are required to know who their audience is, what they're actually selling and how they plan to deliver their product or service. And once someone signs up for it now, digital marketing is an excellent way to fast track qualified leads into your business, but you must be ready for an onslaught of traffic to your website, your landing page, your Facebook business page, so that you can handle the volume that it produces to give you an example.
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Facebook loves to tease the business page owners into boosting posts, to their potential clients. As a form of advertising, they make it look really easy to amplify your content, but dropping money on a boosted post without doing any of the digital marketing research. First to define which audience you're trying to reach can make $150 investment in Facebook ads slip right to the bottom of the ocean, producing no results. Now a course that teaches someone how to do the market research that helps them define their potential. Customers would greatly advance the conversation when they want you to create and place ads for them as an ads manager or an ads management expert. So if your business is to help your clients to create place monitor and troubleshoot ads, having them come to you, prepared to run the ads in the first place, not only saves the client money, but helps the ads specialists focused on what they do best
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Turn, what you know, into what you do. Join the platform with the most ways to monetize what you know, whether it's online courses, coaching memberships, podcasts, newsletters, communities, or more Kajabi gives you all the tools you need to build market and sell it with just a few clicks. Sign [email protected] forward slash Kajabi. That's K a J a B I.
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Now the third thing I want to cover is how to save time, how to save and how to save you on burnout when your clients need quick outcomes, but they can't afford to hire you for every step of the way. A course will give them a way to be able to afford your private coaching services. Entrepreneurial adventures are particularly difficult because the business owner will find themselves in the business of running a business. Instead of in the business of serving their clients, successful coaches who want to free up their time and energy to be able to do what they do best have processes in place to market, sell on board and work with their clients on what they love doing business needs such as software content equipment, and more can really weigh heavily on a coach trying to serve their clients. More time, ends up being spent on administering the business then on helping their clients solve real problems.
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You know, for example, many coaches will find themselves spending more than half their time, figuring out software, creating content, marketing, networking, setting up payment systems and everything else that has nothing to do with the actual service they provide. So the tools and software they use are complicated and require integrations that make non-technical coach's head spin. So even those who are tech savvy will end up wasting so much time on tasks that are not getting them more clients or getting their clients results. The number one contributing factor to the failure of a business or burnout of the business owner is working outside of your zone of genius. Now, number four is to create passive income streams courses or info products are a fantastic way to create passive income. That doesn't take up a lot of time. Once the system is in place and functioning properly as coaches or consultants gain new clients, processes and procedures should be put in place to be able to serve more people efficiently with the same types of products or services without the efficiency of onboarding procedures, material, delivery, or marketing in place, it becomes more and more difficult to serve clients and still enjoy doing your business.
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Now, once you create a course that you use successfully with clients, many questions will arise as to how you can be successful marketing and selling it. This requires understanding your client's digital profiles, understanding marketing funnels, understanding advertising what software you may need and how to package offers in such a way that helps warm up cold prospects into paying customers. For example, a fitness coach who loves to focus on fitness motivation knows that nutrition is a key element to her client's success. The fitness coach does not necessarily enjoy teaching the nutrition. So she creates a nutrition plan or a course that her clients can follow while she focuses on the motivational and life coaching aspects that she loves.
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Do you want to stand out from the crowd with your content? Come discover how to market yourself as an expert, as a change maker, as a positive influence on other people's lives. With the exponential marketing club, you will learn the ins and outs of content marketing. That makes a difference in the world. Visit Sally hendrick.com forward slash club.
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The fifth and final point I'm going to make is enhancing relationships with your referral partners. Referral partners love to reap the benefits of recommending your business to their clients. Not everything has to be about money though. Sometimes sharing educational materials, valuable research, or a simple list of, to do's simple list of don'ts can be appreciated as much as a referral fee. So imagine that you are a local grocer selling local makers products, looking for makers who are loyal and reliable. You want to make doing business with them easier for them and for you. So you could provide miniature courses on how to make your website more market friendly, or how to share social media more effectively to promote the stores, carrying your goods, or how to use accounting software to make bookkeeping easier to do the value of that information will keep your supply chain happy and loyal.
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Now, imagine if you were a high-end interior designer who needs referrals from architects, supply stores, artisans, builders, product makers, and other customers, you rely on them to promote you. So imagine gifting them with many courses that they can give to their clients to help them envision their dream home or their dream kitchen. A well-branded free course on things to watch for and consider when building a home or an addition would go a long way to promote your interior design business. And another example, what if you're a gym or a fitness studio owner, maybe you get shut down in the middle of a pandemic. You know, how fast people scrambled, um, throughout 2020 to get their classes online, online options are here to stay and will continue to be great opportunities to serve our clients who cannot partake in a local in-store option. There is some serious income that can be made from this. If you've got an idea for a info product to sell, tell us about it, and we will talk together about how to figure out the marketing elements that will make promoting it successful. Now, if you find this information helpful, make sure you head over to the website, Snoop around, look at our blog posts, listened to our other podcast episodes, and definitely send us a message and say hello and tell us what you, uh, ask us the questions that you want answers to. We'll be sure to help. Thank
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You for listening today. Now, head over to Sally hendrick.com forward slash clubhouse to participate in our live and recorded events. Thanks for being here.
